Phoenix's blog

I am interested in Felix and what, if anything, is accomplished by giving him an entire section rather than just a mention, besides making the reader care about him. Also, I am not convinced that Nathan killed him and would like to explore that.

I would also like to further explore the structure, but I think I would need another week's time off to write that subject well.

/*I could have sworn this paper was meant to be six pages. So I trimmed my six-page essay posted earlier to 4 pages, which is slightly better.*/

Phoenix

mlord

Play in the City 028

Sunday, October 20, 2013

Playing Differently

            The purpose of visiting a city is to experience something new, or to experience something familiar in a new way. If our course Play in the City was itself a city, then our hometown must be our everyday experience of academia, in secondary school and in our other Bryn Mawr classes.

First, we played with the concept of a city, with the help of Lewis Mumford, George Simmel, and Sharon Zukin. This is a highly academic version of play, and, though mildly interesting, not different from my hometown of ordinary academia. Second, we played with Robin Henig and Cass Sunstein about serendipity and the science behind play. I preferred these. Despite the familiarity of reading and applying essays, the subjects were interesting and unusual. Serendipity is not an oft-discussed topic in my hometown. Furthermore, the topics were not overly theoretical, the opinions were easily understood, and the explanations were simple.

Phoenix

MLord

Play in the City 028

Sunday, October 20, 2013

Playing Differently

            The purpose of visiting a city is to experience something new, or to experience something familiar in a new way. If our course Play in the City was itself a city, then our hometown must be our everyday experience of academia, in secondary school and in our other Bryn Mawr classes.

Phoenix

MLord

Play in the City 028

Sunday, October 6, 2013

To Subvert With Pomegranate

As a player in the city, I “explore what is permissible and what pushes at that boundary between rules and expectations” (Flanagan 13). For a long time now, I have understood instinctively that art, to me, is a way of surprising people. The first person who put this sensation into words was Dorothy Allison in her essay, "This is Our World." Allison described art as a way to challenge and to cause people to think about the ideas that they prefer to shove aside and pretend don't exist. My reaction to this was an intense sense of "I'm not the only one." According to Mary Flanagan, not only am I not the only one, I come from a long line of artists who see art as their tool to shock and surprise—their instrument of Duchamp’s “spirit of revolt” (Flanagan 3, 10).

I take pictures of pineapples in ordinary places. The juxtaposition between the pineapple, a most peculiar looking object that has become normal, with a familiar location, reminds the viewer of the oddity a pineapple really is. A pineapple in bed, on a shelf next to books, answering the telephone, all have been ways I have played with a pineapple. Subversion, according to Flanagan, is the upending of a paradigm—but one must know what one is trying to upend. I was not sure, then, what I was trying to subvert or what I was trying to say, only that I wished for viewers to wake up to the real world if only for a minute.

I thought you'd find this amusing.

Good Cop, Dadaist Cop

1. Read the food coupons. Hmm, I wouldn't mind going for some food.

2. Google search for best food in Philly. End up on Yelp. http://www.yelp.com/c/philadelphia/food

3. Not all of the top listed are sit-in restaurants. Check in on a couple, change mind, change setting to Ethnic restaurants. http://www.yelp.com/c/philadelphia/ethnicmarkets

4. The top listed ethnic restaurants aren't foods I particularly like. Discover how to add search terms, and look for Thai. http://www.yelp.com/search?cflt=ethnicmarkets&find_loc=Philadelphia%2C+PA%2C+USA#find_desc=thai+food&cflt

5. Realize that, although I love Thai, I had Thai a couple weeks ago and I haven't had Spanish since April. Change search to tapas bars. http://www.yelp.com/search?cflt=ethnicmarkets&find_loc=Philadelphia%2C+PA%2C+USA#find_desc=tapas&cflt

6. Check out the website of the top listed tapas bar in Philadelphia. It's reasonably priced (for tapas), and right near a Metro stop. Also, it serves Manchego. http://philadelphia.amadarestaurant.com/menu

Therefore, I propose to go visit Amada and have tapas.

Surrealism was started in Paris near the end of WWI, and despite much speculation to the contrary, has become an international movement and never quite vanished. It encompasses a vast variety of subversion and therefore defies much explanation.

Surrealist games often include the "irrational embellishment" of ideas or objects, as well as the irrational placement of several ideas or objects together. Surrealist poetry is often incomprehensible. The object of most of these games and poems seems to be to create something nonsensical out of sense.

http://www.surrealistmovement-usa.org/pages/forecast.html

http://www.purselipsquarejaw.org/surrealist_games/

http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/exhibitions/Modern/resource/1049

Phoenix

MLord

Play in the City 028

Tuesday, October 1, 2013

To Subvert With Pomegranate

As a player in the city, I “explore what is permissible and what pushes at that boundary between rules and expectations” (Flanagan 13). For a long time now, I have understood instinctively that art, to me, is a way of surprising people. The first person who put this sensation into words was Dorothy Allison in her essay, "This is Our World." Allison described art as a way to challenge and to cause people to think about the ideas that they prefer to shove aside and pretend don't exist. My reaction to this was an intense sense of "I'm not the only one." According to Mary Flanagan, not only am I not the only one, I come from a long line of artists who see art as their tool to shock and surprise—their instrument of Duchamp’s “spirit of revolt” (3). “As the connection between art and critical play continues, artists will further explore embodied play and situations in and efforts to ‘unplay’ preconceived notions of…everyday living, and rework them” (Flanagan 148). Preconceived notions are exactly what I have been fighting, armed only with a pineapple and a pomegranate.