The Ecological Thought Response

Favorite Sentence:

"It exists, for instance, as a poem on a page made of paper from trees, which you hold in your hand while sitting in a chair in a certain room of a house that rests on a hill in the suburbs of a polluted city." -page 11 (on ecological art)

I like this sentence because it shows how connected every little thing in an ecosystem is. Even parts that you wouldn't normally think of as related to the ecological thought has an impact in it. I like how Morton says ecological art isn't ecological because of the subject matter but how it is made from materials and physically exists in the ecosystem. The sentence shortly after that also helps illustrate the point of interconnectivity: "The shape of the stanzas and the length of the lines determine the way you appreciate the blank paper around them." Even a poem can be it's own ecosystem, with the text and the paper working together to create something whole. The focus of poems is not normally on the blank space around the words, so I thought this sentence was very eye-opening.

Field Trip Responses

     The Daniel P. Thomas Material Recovery Facility showed me what happens to our materials after we recycle them. My favorite part of the trip was the room with the recycled art. Most of the furniture in the room, such as the benches we were sitting on, was beautifully decorated with recycled materials. I liked hearing how the tour guide got into this field of work. I find it interesting that he is also a firefighter; I think the two fields are well intertwined.  I wonder how much overlap he finds between his two jobs. The facility was very organized in the way they sorted each item by material. I was amazed at how large the quantities of recycled items were. It was somehow quite aesthetically pleasing to see the large piles of recycled materials. 
     The second part of the field trip, the Westchester wastewater treatment plant, gave me an appreciation for all the hard work put in to making our water safe and clean to drink. One thing that stuck out to me was the large stream of wastewater outside, where I could actually see the garbage accumulated from people. I saw a bunch of  half eaten corn on the cobs floating in the water; it is interesting to see where all our waste goes. Seeing burning methane is not something I see everyday, and was also a memorable part of the trip. 

Idea for Sound Project

For my project, I am thinking of getting recordings of various sounds pertaining to trash cans- such as people throwing garbage away, using a contact mike on a trash can, the bees and the bugs inside a trash can, etc. I want to explore the question: what does garbage sound like? I would like to have the audio installed inside an empty trash can, and make the trashcan echo, so people can interact with the piece by putting things in it and seeing how it sounds.

Still Sleeping Response

Meira Asher felt constrained when she was told to stick to a specific valley for a sound art event. She wanted to make her piece a sound walk to the other side of the forest, where a 16 year old boy got killed. She worked with these creative constraints, however, and installed her sound art inside a car. I think this way of presenting her project adds more symbolism and meaning to the work than if she had done a sound walk. Cars at night are the catalyst for tragic and dangerous situations not just for this 16 year old boy, but in many incidents. I think mothers often are fearful when their children start learning to drive and start going out alone at night, so the car installation symbolizes that fear. It also gives a sense of the motherly instinct she is expressing; people may imagine someone they care about in that stuffy car and feel worried and protective as Asher expresses she feels.
The soundscape piece is so clear and crisp. It feels as if she is not only whispering into my ear, but is physically in the room with me whispering into my ear. The raspy and deep tone she is speaking in sets the mood of the piece. The recurring moments of silence add tension and are very effective. I couldn't tell if one of the sounds was of footsteps, thunder, or a heart beating, but having the somewhat constant beat throughout the piece also added tension.

The Whale and the Reactor Response

The idea that hardware and infrastructure has politics is very fascinating to me. The reasoning behind Robert Moses' low-hanging overpasses is disturbing, but opened my eyes to question the construction behind infrastructures. Every building was built in a specific way and in a specific location for a reason, although the reasoning is very rarely thought about. In that sense, it is invisible. Technology can have original purposes which are sinister, such as the machines meant to destruct worker unions. I do think it is important to note that technology is not always added for the purpose of modernization, and that inventions often have unintended consequences. Computers were originally meant for mathematical calculations, and probably were not intended to be used and often abused in ways as they are today. A website such as Kim Dotcom's Megaupload was created based on the principle of sharing, however unintentionally turned into a site to aid criminal activity and pirating content.