I have already submitted my essay on time but I was not aware that we had to copy and paste it on this blog, so I am doing it now. sorry for the delay.

I arrived at the Second Lives exhibit with one question in mind: “What is the relationship between the part and the whole”. After seeing some of the artwork, I learned that the part is intrinsic to the whole to make the piece exists as it is. In other words, the part and the whole both go hand in hand in order to create the desired outcome for the artist.

The first piece I noticed right away was the metal jacket. I thought it was sort of out of place at first, because it looked like an authentic piece of armor from historical times. I took a closer look and learned it was made out of dog tags. The part being the dog tags, help create something entirely different. From there I started to understand that you can have one element be as it is, but when combined with the same element a multitude of times, you create a whole new element.

I really liked the eyeglasses chandelier because it looked very cool and organized. I can not imagine how long it must have take to organize that piece together and make it look so symmetrical as it does now. Even something like the red modern chair; although it looks so simple I am sure it took hours of wrapping around and making sure the sides are equal and pleasant to look at. Whatever the case may be, I am just glad we do not have to work like that using Flash CS4.

My favorite piece was tied between the vinyl records that became a tidal wave, and the vinyl records coming out like butterflies of the music player. I absolutely love music and felt those two pieces used something so simple (an album) to further explain the experience of listening to music. The artist could have used coins, bottle caps, anything else, but the use of albums I found to be very clever.

Overall I appreciated the exhibit because it showed me that art could come out of anything and everything. Further more it shows that keeping things simple is a more attractive approach when designing than to continue to add too much. My problem in the past has been doing too much to my work, rather than keeping it streamlined to one or two good ideas.

At the end of the day, I took a last round to see the artwork and continued to read out assignment to get a better understanding of what it was asking. Our assignment says it does not relate directly with what we are learning but I feel it does play a large role when using Flash CS4. In flash, the beauty is in its simplicity underneath all those menus and buttons. Flash can create those same elements we see in the exhibit, and use them to create a entirely different object. While refreshing our blog website, the banners who how previous students were able to use a couple of elements, and turn into an entirely new design.