Why I hate Garageband

It took me six hours, with a partner, to make a five minute podcast. This is something I will most likely never do again.

Thoughts on the Concepts of Power and Love

Disclaimer: I was trying to define how my thesis research is "critical," and ended up with a collection of thoughts about and around the concept of power, that have no place in my thesis, as yet. They are is "unofficial" because they are just my own thoughts, no references here!

We often create enemies, or those we consider to be "other," to give ourselves a sense of power and control. By doing this, we feel superior, justified, right, and like we are doing something about the problem. But by directing our suspicion, hate, doubt, and anger, we are usually just covering up our own insecurities in action. It makes us feel less vulnerable. We turn our own perceived fears and insecurities outward-- which is less scary that noting it in ourselves.

So, what do we do about it? We might try to break through our own personal barriers (hate, racism, ignorance) by looking at art. Through art we might begin to move toward self-knowledge by directly acknowledging our vulnerabilities (that art helped us see or express). Thus we can begin to approach our fears with healing, with love. Consequently, we might rearrange our values from feelings like, "you're wrong, so I'm going to alienate/destroy you," to feelings like, "I'm afraid of what happens to me if you're not alienated/destroyed," then, "I know I will be okay if we work together" and ultimately to "I love you". We might move from alienation to outward empathy and love for all.

I don't think life often works that way, but perhaps one by one in our daily relationships we can change the world.

the Language of Action Research

The Chicago Arts Partnership in Education website is of particular interest to me since it is directly related to out thesis projects and research. I can see in it that the language and vocabulary that we use in the field of art education here at the School of the Art Institute is the same vocabulary used across the field of education directed towards social justice. This makes me feel more in connection with the rest of education community, in understanding the terminology and context of action research. For example, the research questions CAPE asks are precisely the types of "open-ended" questions we were shown how to ask in our own thesis research.

Shopping for Schools

I wouldn't know how the CPS website looked before it got updated, but I find the website in its current state mostly ordinary, and pretty straight forward. Having had to surf through the hundreds of CPS schools in order to find a couple to student teach at, I have run into only one very annoying complication that is when searching schools: there may be hundreds of search results, but only four schools can be compared at a time. Also, I did not see a way to save possible schools to a list in order to continue research at a later date. The only websites I have seen that have mastered this are shopping sites like Overstock or Amazon, which require the user to sign up with an account, wherein the user can save desired items to "wish lists," or build a compare & contrast chart... I presume it sounds callous of me to compare schools to merchandise, but I can only imagine that a parent wanting the best for their child's education might spend a lot of time comparing the myriad options available or acceptable.

Perspectives and Research

As the semester gets more involved, I find myself increasingly panicky about what on earth I am going to write about in my thesis. I know deeply the reasons why I want to do this, but putting it concisely on paper, much less making it something concretely research-able, is a task for which I do not feel prepared for.

I had been thinking about how we study art. How when we see an artwork, we not only look at it, but we also use our imagination to see into it, or through it, in order to see the view of the artist, to understand the artist's perspective of the world. Basically, we try interpret it: what it is to the artist, then what it means to us. This may help us in creating our values... when we look, and see, and understand the other's perspective, (the artist in this case) it changes our perspectives and opens us to values that we might not have realized or been able to give voice to ourselves.

I don't know how to put this kind of thought into concrete research, and it's making me frustrated.