At first “A Hacker Manifesto” is a bit tricky to understand. I was caught off guard by the philosophy of hacking. I never thought of hacking as an abstract thing, just something people did to demonstrate their computer know-how or to steal information. From reading this i gained a new perception of the hacking world. What i first thought was interesting was the Wark’s idea that a creation of a new class divide had occurred. The class divide between Hackers and a Vectoralist class. The cause of this class divide Wark believes is from the rise in intellectual property. I feel in agreement towards his view on this, within hacking there are people who divulge information for the sake of spreading the truth and there are people who want to come into possession of this information.

The next thing i found interesting was Wark’s view on education. He believes that “education is slavery,” which seems to be a pretty bold statement.  Wark deems education as a way for the “ruling class” to kind of control what knowledge people gain. He says that education only grants people partial knowledge. I agree with this idea, it is impossible for someone to gain complete knowledge even if they go to school for their whole life. The next point from his section on education goes further into specifics on this “ruling class.” Wark explains that this “ruling class” can control other classes with capitol. The ruling class provides the money and the other class, the pastoralist class, provides the bodies to manage the equipment necessary for the job. I feel that this is an interesting view on the progression of society. Over the course of a couple hundred years the advancement of society has deemed what education was necessary. Such as progression through the industrial age, where society needed people to work in factories. So the owners of these factories, in a way provided the education for the workers to work in such factories.

Within the excerpts from “Seeing the brick,” is a case study pertaining to realism. The case study focuses on how animation can never be “real” since every process within animation is being constructed. The author says that animation can only mimic something ‘real’ as opposed to live action film. I disagree with this idea; I believe that live action film is just as ‘unreal’ as animation in the sense the text makes. Isn’t live action film something we construct as well? For instance within making a live action film there are people who create the set, which can be a fictional or non-fictional setting. Then there are people who create a script for which other people will read from.  These people will then read from this created script and act out the scenes others have created. In this sense aren’t these actors are the same as the created characters of an animated film? I believe that animation and live action film are both real they just have a different visual aspect to portraying the reality.

The author gives Disney as a basis to measure the amount of ‘realism’ in an animated film. The author states that an animated film can be defined as unreal the further it deviates from this model he gives called “Hyper-realism.” There are several examples within the text to describe the model of “hyper-realism;” the sound an object makes when it is depicting the “real” object determines how real the animation is. The “context and action” of an animated film also determines how “real” it is and finally, how accurately the animation depicts the movement of a human body. I feel as though all these things the author describes for determining how “real” animation is can be said for a live action film.

In my work i hoped to share my true identity rather than just a simple photo of my face. I wanted to express how big of a part music is in my life. In fragmenting my face upon the body of the guitar i wanted to create the illusion that i was fused with it. With merging my face with the guitar i own, i believe that i gave the viewer an idea that guitar is a part of my identity, both physically and figuratively.   The idea behind the different colors in this piece comes from the various music types I listen to. While creating this piece i listened to a few of my favorite artists to help inspire me. With listening to these specific artists, my mind associated their songs with certain colors. This is how i came up with the strange color scheme in the picture. I created several layers to this picture hoping that i could add a depth to the image. The depth within the picture is to signify the varied styles of music i listen to. I wanted the viewer to experience a very personal side to me, which is why every image in the piece is my own.