Class Take Away 4

We talked about our 50 What If questions for the altared book and it was crazy hearing various ideas so similar to my own.  I think the idea of turning a book into a pendant sounds pretty awesome.  I definitely considered the options of burning, transforming it into something new, cutting out the center to put something inside, burying it, and beating the hell out of it.  However, I am pretty excited about turning my works into a masquerade mask after I finish the scrapbook portion of my altared book.  I can't guarantee that I will stick with the masquerade mask idea, but right now it seems like it would be a good representation of the way my life is always switching from one role to another.  For the scrapbook portion of the altared book, I think it would be good to cut up the bindings to represent freedom from such a rigid rule bound life, I am not sure how great the scrapbook will look after that, but it would definitely feel good in spirit.


The concept that we have become desensitized to violence, in general and through media, was brought up in class. This concept deeply bothers me.  Many different scientific and medical studies were done on the effects of media in correlation with violence.  Consistently these studies found, that unless a person was already predisposed with violent tendencies, then they would not become violent just from viewing violence through media. I understand that it is possible for a child not to understand violence as wrong and may try to act out the violence they see, but then it is up to the guardians of that child to ensure that the child understands the difference between acceptable and unacceptable behavior.  I don't think that humans can become desensitized to something so innately a part of their nature. I think that because we live in America we are blessed not to be confronted with the brutalities happening in the world around us, but we are also blinded in the sense that we forget how bad it can truly be out in the world because we are so sheltered from it.