Weekly Wrap-up

This week we had a few assignments to complete, including a fake Daily Nexus article and a project exploring personal space. The Daily Nexus article was surprisingly easy to write, which is kind of a sad testament to how often we all lie. But I never got my comment to work on the site! I guess Wolfe & Associates will appreciate that, but it defeats the purpose of infiltrating the public internet sphere with fiction if the article only appears on my blog, which I doubt anyone but Desiree reads. When I first came to UCSB I was actually interested in writing or photographing for the Daily Nexus, but when I emailed them a question about participating I never got a response. I'd like to think of our class's prank as petty revenge, but maybe next year I'll ask again just to be more involved on campus.

I found our second assignment to be much more complex and fun to explore. There are so many things we can do in public to make fools of ourselves, but how does walking backwards or doing jumping jacks in the quad say anything about personal space or society? I thought that our class did a good job of thinking of a variety of activities to probe at people's comfort zones and question human interaction. Some of my favorites were Maxwell's elevator experiment, Michael's dining commons video, and Eddie's Nacho Libre mask. I felt like they each had further implications to their work rather than just doing something to be funny or stay at the surface.

My smoking experiment could have been a lot more effective if I had a more obvious prop than my potted plant. Maybe I should have borrowed Skyler's gas mask to make my point more clear. But I think I still accomplished what I sought out to do. I entered a public space that was not labeled and yet is still used for a specific purpose. Public space is about what you're comfortable doing, not necessarily what everyone wants you to do. I made a choice to sit next to a smoker, and they made a choice to smoke in the first place. Neither of us own the property or can influence one another's decision by merely sitting there silently. If I want to change my surroundings and environment I need to speak up and take a stand, not passively hope for the best.