Gabriella DiFulvio - Class Scribe 9/24

During our class period on Thursday we attempted to complete a participatory exercise by a member of our class, Nick Stango. Nick's idea had to deal with a physical means of communication only, no talking or writing allowed. An image is displayed on the screen and based on your views you would move to one side of the room or the other. Before we began the exercise as a class we discussed what would be gained from participating? A few members of the class brought up the point that while an image may not directly affect you, you don't have to be indifferent to it. Once the rules were clearly agreed upon we began the exercise. Some of the pictures displayed included : Lil Wayne, Kanye West, Michael Jackson (Circa Jackson 5 and Post surgeries), Hugo Chavez, President Obama, Marilyn Monroe, John Lennon and Yoko Ono. Something that I found interesting was the reaction of people to the two different Obama images displayed. The first one was a photo used on his campaign trail with the word PROGRESS stamped across the bottom. The second image was one of Obama more relaxed, not posed, laughing. The reaction of students was to agree less with the campaign photo and more with the casual image of Obama. It was obvious that rather than agree with the propagandized image of Obama, more students enjoyed viewing our president in a more laid back setting. Overall the exercise was successful and allowed us to become more comfortable with each other while seeing others viewpoints as well.

After completing Nick's participatory exercise we took a look at the Arcades Project website. As discussed in class, Arcades were thought of as a series of stores and shops, that would give you access to an array of things. The Arcade Project website was originally developed as a literary project that used quotations and ideas from different writers and put them together to describe our culture. The idea to distribute all products of cultures to everyone is similar to the dissemination of information that takes place on the internet daily. The URL is : www.e-arcades.com