Week 6 Responses

Art-

http://www.ulrikearnold.com/galerie_meteorits.html

The work of Ulrike Arnold is very interesting, in that she insures that all of them are unique to the areas in which they are created. She travels the world and creates “Earth Paintings” that are paintings that use the Earth from the areas she visits to create them. While I found that to be an interesting pursuit, her newest project intrigued me even more. Now Arnold is creating works out of components from meteorites. She went from using the natural material of the Earth to the natural material of space in a shift to her new style of painting. The works expand on the nature of the universe as well as the beginning of the Earth from which she has created so many works. Her Earth works had viewers thinking globally, but her newest work has them thinking on a much larger and more impacting scale. The universe is full of potential, and for me personally that potential comes across in her works. The forms she creates using this alternate material are astonishing and really facilitate her project well. The forms are entirely organic, negating man-made principles of perfect geometry, and accepting the chaos of the universe from which they are inspired. Overall I find her work to be breathtaking and extremely interesting in their genesis.

Social Change-

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/technologylive/post/2012/02/google-glasses-new-york-times/1#.T0Ushk6PW8A

While this was an extremely short article, the implications of products such as these really intrigued me. Futuristic movies bring items like the glasses Google is in production to make all the time. (The first that came to mind was Pixar’s Wall-E where people are spinning around in their TV-chairs.) In my opinion, though, the implications of these spectacles are going to be much less extreme (at least in the near future.) The primary concern I found with the product is the idea of it video-recording your surroundings to assist you with finding things (which the article pointed out as a hitch with the release.) The idea of a product recording everything you do as one that has yet to be encountered.  For now all technological products give you a choice, however, the iPhone doesn’t always alert you that it is using your current location. The new Siri feature just assumes you want it to be used in order to assist you (it can be turned off, but you would have to know how.)  The primary difference with these glasses is the fact that it is video recording you versus knowing where you are. Essentially the two could be construed as just as bad as the other, they both track you in order to provide help, however, video recording is perceived as a larger invasion of privacy. Will the tracking features of the glasses eventually be accepted as common place, though? Will it fall into the realm of Facebook knowing everything we like, Amazon knowing everything we buy, or the iPhone knowing where we are at any given moment? (With unnerving accuracy I might add.) Only time will tell; but these glasses are something that (if successful) will continue molding the future of our society. In my opinion whether that change is for better or for worse will depend on the users.