I'm was listening to Led Zeppelin and the song Ramble On came on. This made me want to blog. I'm gonna go ahead and blog about a class session we had a few weeks ago. It was the class where we were verbally presenting our theses. For people who weren't there, I will briefly recap. I was introducing my thesis, which is about "white trash." I put that in air quotes for reasons I will explain later.
When I started my explanation, I was using the term "white trash" completely indiscriminately. Not that I was using the term with derision towards anybody, but I just thought that it was a term that was generally accepted in our society, and although I know it is an insult, it was never really used seriously where I am from.

so i was thinking. in doing our thesis, we have the paper option and the project option. yet it seems that many of us doing the paper are incorporating project components, whether that be a CD of mash-ups or digital poetry (from people whose new bff is dreamweaver-lol!) mine has a website component too.

all this makes sense, because we want to show it, not just say it. that was the cool thing about scott mccloud and his theory of comic books; he debunked the notion that "truly great works of art and literature are only possible when the two are kept at arm's length" (mccloud 140) by using comics to theorize on the validity of the comic form and its ability to convey complex ideas. well done. he has a chapter on this called "show and tell" (138).

Wow! So we got that first big chunk of thesis out of the way. I am so relieved. It took me so long to completely figure out my interest and how they could all be molded into a coherent, structured argument.

(It ended up being about the relationship between women and the digital biography—past, present, future, and how they are using it for activism, expression, and more. I ended up dropping a lot of that crazy talk from class presentations about how post-postmodernism=feminine=multimedia. It was faulty logic and not practical.)

So, going on now to plan the next stages of thesis, I went to look at some examples from last year. One thesis stuck out to me in particular: Melissa Budinic’s “It’s a Theme Park After All: Constructing Disney as a Postmodern World’s Fair.” Because Disney has long been a fascination of mine, and because I find postmodern theory very interesting, this topic appealed to me. It also seemed to be of real interest to Melissa, which really showed in her writing.

So I’ve been looking at commercials so much for my thesis, and reading about how advertisers address women in commercials, that I just can’t break myself out of that mindset. Probably a good thing, if I were motivated to work on my thesis right now (which I’m not, thanks to the Charlie Brown Christmas cd and the Steel Magnolias DVD my mom sent me). In any case, today was my LAST final, in Macroeconomics, if you’re interested. I don’t think it went very well, so I’ve been hiding in bed watching television when I see a commercial for Exclusive Smiles, a cosmetic dentistry practice by Gary Demerjian. What struck me about the commercial is how upfront it is. I can’t remember the exact voice-over comments but it was something like, “Exclusive Smiles will give Susan a new smile, and maybe even a new relationship!” (in that knowing, hinting voice, as Susan frolics with some hunky men).

I just realized that it's been a while since I've posted anything relating to my thesis on the blog, even though I've been working on it a LOT lately (as we all have, I'm sure, given last week's deadline). Here's my revised proposal. Congrats to everyone on all the work you've done this semester... it's been really interesting to hear about how far you've all come.

::: BEGIN REVISED THESIS PROPOSAL :::

"Humankind lingers unregenerately in Plato’s cave, still reveling, its age-old habit, in mere images of the truth."
-Susan Sontag, On Photography

In my senior thesis, I plan to explore and examine the evolution of photographic truth, a concept that has intrigued and influenced theorists, artists, photojournalists, and the general public since the time of this medium’s invention. I became interested in this topic as a junior while taking a class on the history of photography with Professor Kathleen Howe. For my final project in the course, I created a digital exhibit called "Contesting the Myth of Photographic Truth," which featured about 40 images dating from 1839 to 2004. Through this exhibit, I wanted to illustrate the longstanding power of photography as a tool of deception and counter the popular notion of the photograph as "an unmediated copy of the real world, a trace of reality skimmed off the very surface of life" (Sturken and Cartwright 17). Pictures have been altered since the nineteenth century, but the proliferation of digital image-editing software has made manipulation more efficient, convincing, and widespread than ever. As a result, people know that photographs have the ability to deceive—yet in spite of this knowledge, they still perceive photographs as unadulterated depictions of reality. This phenomenon, mentioned in a number of theoretical texts, strikes me as an interesting contradiction. If we realize that photographs can lie, why do we still believe them?

I don't know if anyone else is doing a web-based project for this class that we could all see, but I just thought I'd post a link to mine in case anyone was interested... If anyone else did anything we could see on the web, you should post it!

I was really impressed by today's class discussion regarding the topics that you all chose to do your thesis on. The range and breadth of subject matter that was covered was amazing, as I was intrigued as well as challenged to continue to sharpen my ideas for my own thesis. I also really appreciated how helpful everybody was to each other in giving helpful suggestions and questions so that we can really tighten our content. This is a short post, but I just wanted to let you all know that I was definately impressed today, as well as wanting to encourage you all to press on with your thesis despite whatever circumstances arises.

So I wasn't able to come to class tonight due to a prior engagement so I am blogging to convey my sadness for not being able to attend class and hear about everyone's wonderful papers and projects. I am sure they were all extraordinarily fascinating as I would expect nothing less from such an academically gifted group of students.

Also, since I have yet to blog about my term paper slash thesis and I was unable to talk about it with you all in class today I am going to briefly blog about it instead.

Here goes... I have chosen to write my thesis about the ways in which the US media portray Latinos and how these representations fuel the perceptions of Latinos in American society and more specifically how these media images impact public opinion on immigration and border policy. Phew. That's a mouth full.

I love the fact that my thesis is about mashups, but it means that I often get sidetracked when I'm doing thesis research. On Friday night, for example, I was up until three in the morning downloading tracks from PartyBen.com. This is the genius behind the American Edit remix of the Green Day American Idiot album. I don't know if you all have heard of this, because I just read about it, but this time last it had Warner Brothers getting a cease and desist order against the guy. It's kind of cool, and I found a mySpace page that has decided to post many of the songs...available for download of course.

I'm currently taking Advanced Webprojects at Scripps, it's basically a Flash class, and our final project assignment was to create an extended animation or an interactive website. I decided to persue the later, using my thesis as my focus.
Here's the result, please poke around, not time consuming, it will be a nice study break, I promise! (click on "ART 144" then "Final Animation)"
It's a work in progress and I intend to continue adding to it. I plan to use it in my thesis presentation, provided I get approval to persue an Honors thesis (fingers crossed).

So I'd really like feedback. On the interface, on the content, whatever comes to mind. I'd also love suggestions for other public artworks to include.