Jonathan W. Blog

Walk 6: With(in) Daily Life The “performance” I created to experiment with(in) my daily life was to speak more quietly than normal in a situation. I chose to do this during a gathering that I attended with family members and friends. I thought this would be the perfect experiment for me since I am known by my family and friends for normally speaking at a much louder volume. Family members have always commented on how I have always spoken at a higher level since I was a kid. I started by greeting everyone with a low hello. No one commented on how low I was speaking. I think it was because everyone was saying hello to each other, so they didn’t notice that I was speaking lower than normal. It became more noticeable when people started speaking directly to me and I responded in a very low voice. Initially, no one said anything, but I could tell by the look on their faces that they were wondering if something was wrong with me. As I continued to have conversations with people, I would get ...

Writing 3: Witnessing Each Other   In his article Affective Composition and Aesthetics: On Dissolving the Audience and Facilitating the Mob , Stevphen Shukaitis presents the concept of affective composition. Shukaitis believes that in order for political speech to cause affective resonance, conditions must exist for the audience to be able to identify with the speaker as well as possess a capacity to affect and be affected (p.2). Through affective composition a connection is made between the art and the audience  by displaying the feelings and experiences of the audience that are related to political and social issues. This connection creates a space of commonality and makes the emergence of new relations and interactions possible. Shukaitis discusses that affective composition in relation to aesthetic politics has become an issue over the years because the availability of public and common space has decreased due to the increase in commercialized advertisements that are being...

Walk 5: I Walk in Your Name For walk 5, I asked my mother and my cousin to suggest a walk for me. They both agreed that I should walk for gun control in the United States in the name of my Uncle Timmy who was murdered due to senseless gun violence. My uncle, who was my mother’s older brother, was murdered in 2012 while sitting on a bus bench waiting for a bus. The murderers that chose to take his life did not know my uncle. It was a random act of violence as the result of a gun being in the hands of the wrong person. Witnesses heard the murderer saying, “It’s N*gga killing night!” The death of my uncle is still painful for my family, and we still struggle with this tragic loss. My cousin is a detective for Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD, so she has seen the results of gun violence in the streets of L.A. For the walk, my mother and cousin suggested that I go to neighborhoods that are known for gun violence. They wanted me to observe what the neighborhood looked like and what feelin...

Project 1: Ephemeral, Site, and Social Space The artistic works of Andy Goldsworthy were created with materials that were apart of the environment. To create my work for project 1, I followed the mindset of Goldsworthy and used materials in my immediate environment. The environment was the back patio of at my home. The materials were rocks from a space that is filled with rocks along a long wall and small branches from a plant. I knew I wanted to use the rocks, but didn’t know what I wanted to build. I decided to create a small bridge. My inspiration to create a bridge came from a song my mom was listening to and that I’ve heard her listen to before. The title of the song is “Bridge Over Troubled Waters”. The words of the song are very inspiring and encouraging. There are many versions of the song, and I chose to use the version performed by Cynthia Erivo to play on the video that shows the process of me creating the bridge. It was not my intention to make a personal connection to this...

Writing 2: Scales of Social Space The article No Dead Air! The iPod and the Culture of Mobile Listening written by Michael Bull examines how mobile sound technologies like  Apple iPods have provided users with the opportunity to personalize their listening pleasures. Bull discusses how iPods and other mobile sound technologies have allowed users to inhabit the spaces within which they move by allowing them to be in the space, but to also personalize their experience by blocking out the outside noise with music of their choice. The phrase “no dead air” was used by a 35 year old bank executive who described how she would listen to songs on her playlist while going to work in New York. Bull explains that the iPod expands the possibilities of use, from the playing of music through the user’s home hi-fi device, to plugging it into the automobile radio, to connecting it to the computer at work, giving the user unprecedented ability to weave the disparate threads of the day into one un...

Walk 4: Cocooned vs. Engaged Walk 4 was done at The Runway in Playa Vista, California. The Runway is an outside area with small shops, restaurants, eating and sitting areas, and play areas for children. I started my walk at the beginning of the Runway with my air pods on to listen to music on my phone. I started listening to one of my favorite rappers NBA Young Boy. While I was walking I noticed that people seemed to be in their own world. They weren’t really focused on anyone else. I wasn’t focused too much on other people either. I began to enjoy the music and focus more on the music than my surroundings. I really only noticed things that were right in front of me as I was walking. Some things that I noticed were parents walking with their young children and several people walking their dog. I noticed a UPS worker that walked in front of me to deliver a package to a business. There was actually one lady that made eye contact with me and smiled, and I smiled back. Halfway through the ...

Walk 3: Social Territory The social territory I explored for walk 3 was the Westfield Culver City Mall located in Culver City, California. I chose this site because it is a place that I have visited many times growing up and I am very familiar with it. As a big sports fan and someone who has played sports for most of my life, my focus was to determine how many stores the mall had that could meet the needs and wants of sports fans like me. The many times that I have been to this mall, my only focus has been on pleasure and to purchase sports/athletic attire that I needed or wanted. I have never paid attention to exactly how many sports stores were in the mall. During this walk, I counted, observed, and photographed all of the sports/athletic stores. As I walked through the stores, I observed the layout of the merchandise, the displays, and customers that were shopping in the store.   My General Observations: The mall has three levels with 104 stores, 12 of those stores being sports/...