In a clear and concise blog post (at least 400 words = 1 page double-spaced) describe the role of the friend in St. Petersburg in Kafka’s story. Make sure to include a strong thesis statement early in your post; that is, state what you think this friend represents in a way that gives a strong indication to your reader what it is you will be explaining to her or him. In the body of your post, make sure to cite specific examples from the text.

The idea is for you to reformulate what we’ve discussed in class into a tightly written text. Your notes will be valuable here.

The collages all came out well however many of them are extremely hard to interpret. Our group was assigned a collage that I have no clue what it is about. I am literally going to assume it is about science and technology because the poster has snippets of two words saying science and technology on it. In addition, a news article on the expansion of Uber rides, which therefore is also about technology. However there is also a news article about Oprah buying stock which I don’t see relevant to my assumption. So, I am a bit clueless, however it is very engaging and I can not wait to find out what the collage is all about.

The collage includes pictures of hearts, hot guys, hot girls, lips, lip stick, pizza, money, diamond, airplane, and a baby. At first when I saw all the hot related objects and people, and airplane I thought about global warming. But after considering other pictures such as the baby, the money, and the diamond I realized the theme is most likely love.

Due to our leanings about the dada manifesto, we created artistic findings in class based off one word. The findings my group and I found refer to those related to freedom. In the in class collage, the biggest center piece is a bird with the word “peace” below it. This might represent the freedom a bird has to roam through the sky at peace, which is how some may describe freedom. Some other factors that hint to freedom being the main “word” of focus is an airplane. One picture that stands out the most to me is the grim reaper hypnotizing a young man with an “x” around the picture, representing how we are not under anyone’s control, and we are free. The “Ask us Anything” sign may refer to our freedom of speech and our ability to speak freely about what we want. These distinct pictures represent, for me, freedom.

Looking at the other group’s poster, I see a lot of technology and useful utensil items that help to advance the world, so I think the concept is either technology or usefulness. I see a stick of eyeliner, which could be the advancement of cosmetics and/or help women. On the other hand, another object that stood out to me is a water bottle cap, which I would say is another pretty useful item. But thinking about it more, the concept could be recycling, because there are a lot of images/texts from newspapers and I also see a picture of a really shiny car, which seems out of place, but maybe it’s a hybrid car that saves gas? Overall, the images/text are pretty scattered but one thing I see in common with them all is that it is revolved around a more advancement concept.

However, upon looking at the picture again through my albums, from a far away angel, I noticed that the texts/images made a picture of an animal. I would not have seen that if I was just looking at the picture normally because I was too focused with the large texts but from a zoom out perspective, I see now that it is in a shape of an animal.

I was observing carefully this collage and all I could see was related with sex. It might be a show of how the society is at this time, or a demonstration of how men only want to have sex with women base on their appearance. Another thing that caught my attention was the way women dress. Sometimes the way people dress it’s the way they will be respected. Today, most women dress “Sexy” but they only are seducing men to have sex with. This collage is a real image of how sex has become a real problem. As we see in the collage, two men are fighting to have the woman and take her to bed.

I learned that by observing your create objective ideas than with words. This activity taught me that images are a way better to understand the concept of something.

I think the theme of this collage is love, desire and passion. There are many images of couples and red hearts in this collage. The relationship between a man and a woman is definitely a representation of love. However, love also exists between parents and their children. The pictures of a person holding a baby and a graduate student hugging someone can be seen as another type of love. Also, the image of diamond obviously represents eternal love. The picutures of lips and cosmetics may represent desire. I think that women dressed up in order to attract men and the image of the lipsticks and the mascara can be seen as the desire for men. I am not sure about the images of pizza and the avocado but I think they may symbolize the passion for food.

The hearts are the most obvious images that reflect the theme. There is no doubt that they represent love. However, some of the images do not quite fit to the theme. I do not understand the meaning of the plane in this collage. I am not saying it is wrong but this may show that we have different views on the theme.

It is interesting that we choose these images randomly from the publications that represents the same theme. Some of the pictures are similar and some are quite different. We use both our imaginations and common sense to put together the pictures.

After many examinations of the collage, I am still confused with what the theme of this collage this.

The key pictures that stood out to me:

1. Doctor
2. Barbie
3. Soilder
4. Nature
5. US flag
6. Guns
7. Coins
8. Religion
9. Crime
10. Vampire
11. Skull
12. Body Parts
13. Animals

This is a really random collage with images varying greatly. What I noticed is that there is age in this collage. There are images from the past and present. I was going to think this collage is about evolution but that might be a little too complicated be ause I feel the theme might be more simple than that. I thought the theme might be about power or skills because there is a doctor, guns, police, religion and money. But then I thought this collage’s theme could be Past, Present and Future but after writing this post, I feel this theme is related to power. It might not be because it is lind of complicated but I can’t think of anything else.

I see power because:

1. Doctor has the power to heal and save human lives.
2. Money has the power to buy things
3. Barbie has the power to make you think plastic surgey to change yourself
4. Religon has the power to set a base for your morals and ethics and beliefs
5. Gun has the power to take your life and prevent crime
6. Horse has the power to help you get from point A to point B
7. Nature, skull and body parts are part of the power of nature
8. Vampire and etc have other powers to and so on

My guess for this theme is going to get more cplicated and confusing to me if I continue but I believe it has to be with power ir something related to that

Some of the images in my collage were ( in no particular order):

1. stacks of coins (particularly pennies)
2. an upside down American flag in the forest
3. Barbie dolls
4. a doctor with a stethoscope
5. a pie chart
6. dollar sign
7. pistols
8. a tribute to an american soldier
9. people on the beach

I looked at this collage last night and I thought for awhile as to what this compilation/collage is representing. After a significant amount of time my mind was still blank and I decided to sleep on it. When i revisited the image of the collage on my iPhone today something came to my mind that made sense. This collage is representing the sections that you would see in a newspaper. For example, whenever a U.S. soldier gets killed in action there is always a tribute to them in the paper. This is perhaps the front cover. The dollar signs and the stacks of pennies represent the econonic/financial section of the newspaper. The people on the beach can most probably be found in the culture section. Perhaps the pistols are meant for the crime blotter area of the newspaper? I know that the NY Post has a page every single day that recaps the crimes in NYC of the day before. I am still confused as to what the upside down American flag represents. I am looking forward to hearing from the group members as to why each image is placed where it is on the paper. The beauty of a college is the mystery and questions that the viewer has to deal with. Overall, I enjoyed this activity and hope we can do more like this one.

At first, I saw the collage my group has to criticize has a big bird image in the middle. Therefore, “freedom” popped in my head. Second, I saw images of a court, a gavel, a plane and some written words: flight, peace, open, air. These made me felt certain of the theme of collage was “freedom”.

It is interesting that after reading two articles “Dada Manifesto” and “First Surrealist Manifesto“, the groupmates were supposed to gather their own materials without communicating with others like the images of DADA and surrealism as professor told s to do, but by some reasons, I could tell the theme of the collage by the first sight. I guess in this century, people have much more freedom then years ago, so we have brave and clear mind to present what we want to tell. Also, I think the origin of our activity was different from the ideas of dadaism and surrealism. The difference was: people created their photos without a specific theme or idea for dadaism and surrealism; our professor gave each group a theme(a word) to create a collage. To sum up, it is a lot easier to understand our classmates’ work than the DADA images.

In the image we had, I could tell the group created “flight for freedom” process: after struggling tons of times in the court, after lots of flights, after civilization, after people fly to other countries and have cultural exchanges, and so on, and finally we get plenty of freedom nowadays. People can give voices for themselves and say their opinions through many ways. I love that there was a report from a newspaper of people’s suggestions and opinions of subway service in NYC. People’s suggestions may give an appropriate improvement to the city if people have right to speak. Last but not least, there was another good one on the collage: “To be an expert means you are on the frontier, making discoveries, thinking thoughts never before dreamed of. I’m an expert in astrophysics.” I got the meaning of this sentence as we have to make a quality one if we have the opportunity to say. We cannot misuse our freedom, otherwise, we will against to our original thoughts.