laaaou: Camila Vi's blog

Most of the blogs on the class are fun and interesting -so by this time I have been spending valuable time for this assignment checking them- but I had to pick one. The one I chose was Camila Vi‘s Blog. It is very friendly and shows the author’s preoccupation with the aesthetic, order and good work.

You can recognize it from the beginning. At the top of the page there is this big picture which shows a collage being done in a piece of copybook paper, mixing different elements, and giving the idea of the presence of her subjectivity starting from the very name of the blog, "laaaou".
The topics and the way they are stated in the blog are always referring to the reader, inviting (him/her/it) to go further, read more, think more of the subject stated – “Give it a try, I highly recommend it!”; “if you want to learn more about this fascinating (at least for me!) subject”; quoting the common place of making the hard decision of choosing one only single piece of art. That’s cool because the blog format makes it possible for the reader to continue reading, and to give feedback to the topics posted, which makes us forget that they are part of an “assignment”, and …
I think the topic I like the most of those she has posted is “Le Baiser”, which talks about the homonymous piece by Auguste Rodin. She explains very beautifully and exhaustively the history and the story behind it.
I strongly recommend you to check it at http://laaaou.blogspot.com/ .

Las Meninas

The piece of art I'm going to refer to in this entry is "Las Meninas" (English: "The Maids of Honor"), painted in 1656 by the Spanish king's court painter Diego Velásquez. This canvas plays a central role in western art history, and also is one of the most widely analyzed piece of art. We've seen it - and some variations of the concept- in different contexts, from art books to t-shits. Personally i cannot identify the first time I saw it, provably when I was a child and spent my time drawing and painting.

What makes this piece special is the nature and the depth of what is represented in and beyond it. The composition puts together what is in the canvas along with what is outside of it. There appears to be a double movement, one of the painting going out of the canvas, and at the same time, of the spectator coming inevitably to play a -central- role in the composition of this representation, becoming for some moments the king or queen being portrayed by the painter and watched by the dwarves, court members and infanta Margarita, who is at the center of the canvas but relegated to a secondary role in the representation

The object of the representation in which we became involved is the representation of classical art and its space being represented, setting itself free from it's object, a signifier without other signified than itself, self reference, deep ontology of language.

Privacy in the Age of Information

An article i just read refears to problems that people might have with some internet sites -specially social network sites like MySpace and Facebook- publishing and sharing their private information.

In real “offline” life, people spend a lot of time and effort in the “presentation of the self” –the author quotes sociologist Ervin Goffman's contributions to the understanding of social interactions - which consist of the different things people do to present themselves to others and to the world as personalities. This process of building and showing personality is based on sharing information about the self by the clothes you wear, the music you listen to, the places you go, the way you talk, and so on.

The article proposes that the same happens in “online” life, especially considering these social network sites where people present themselves through other mediums of information –photos, comments, and so on- but, here there isn’t the mechanism people use in "offline" life to choose who this information will be shared with. That could be dangerous, specially when your girlfriend’s father logs in.

("One Friend Facebook Hasn't Made Yet: Privacy Rights" by Adam Cohen. New York Times, February 18, 2008)