Do we need to know the context in which an artwork was produced in order to claim that we have knowledge of the artwork?

Every art is created with a purpose and is affected by historical and cultural context, so if you understand an artwork’s background it will of course give us a better insight and understanding with in the artwork, because artworks are base on the artist’s cultural context. But on the other hand, they are also base on the audiences’ cultural context, different audiences can gain different knowledge of the artwork. So I think without knowing the context of the artwork, we can also gain knowledge from the artwork.

Firstly, we can gain knowledge from the elements in art, for example like the colors, lines, style, and form. By looking at its color we can know the emotion that the artist is trying to deliver, like cool colors usually give us a sad feeling and warm colors usually give us a cheerful feeling. Other examples like black usually give a depressing feeling and red usually symbolize love. By looking at its use of line and pattern we can gain knowledge about the artwork too. For example some aboriginal culture have their unique style of patter, so just by looking at the pattern of the artwork we can know where the artwork come from. There are many forms of art, such as 2-D forms and 3-D forms, and form can give you the knowledge about the time period. Because some form of art only exist in a certain time period and some forms only come out in the 20th century. By recognizing the artwork’s art style, we can know which movement it belongs to.

Secondly, we can gain knowledge through the imagination and creativity of the artworks. There are many possibility in art because it doesn’t have to make sense or to be real. So artist can just use their imagination and creativity to create any art they want, because anything can be art. As an audience, we also need to use imagination to truly appreciate the art sometimes. In this case, we can just use our imagination to interpret the art. Because honestly for some artwork, no one except the artist can truly understand it, especially some of the contemporary and abstract modern arts.

Lastly, we can gain personal knowledge. I think the point of artist presenting their artworks is to let the audience think about their meanings and what the artist is trying to deliver and come out with their own way of interpreting them and that will become your personal knowledge. Some people even use intuition to gain knowledge in art, sometimes when you look at an art you just immediately get the meaning.

Therefore I think even without knowing the content of the artwork, we can still gain knowledge about its context through the elements the artist used in their artworks. Although we might not fully understand the artwork, I think we can still claim that we have knowledge of the artwork.

During my english class I had been reading this creative non-fiction called I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, which is written by Maya Angelou. This is a coming of age novel and is mainly talking about author’s childhood of living in South America during the 1930s and 1940s. Thought out this novel there are severals Ways of Knowing.

I think one of the major Ways of Knowing in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is memory. Because this is a story of Maya’s childhood so there whole book is a memory for her. Although it is written out as a novel, it’s still a personal memory of Maya. But our memory can be unreliable and we forget things easily, not to mention Maya wrote this novel 20 years after the events. So this mean that is possible that what Maya wrote in the book might not be 100% accurate. But it’s okay because this is not just a memoir, it’s an autobiographical fiction. The difference is that memoir is just writing about exactly what happened while autobiographical fiction is “based on a true story” but with some changes. So it doesn’t matter if Maya add or change things in her novel.

Another major Ways of Knowing in this novel is emotion. Because it is an autobiographical fiction so it contains a lot of Maya’s personal emotions. The whole book is very emotional, not just for the author , but also for the readers. Because Maya is very good at describing her feeling as a child so it can provoke our emotion easily. Because all the event happening in this book is striking and astonishing, so it can also bring out readers’ feeling. For example the event of getting raped by her mother’s boyfriend or the event of getting pregnant at the age of 16. All those events are very emotional towards both the author and the readers.

Language, I think is also a Ways of Knowing in this novel. Firstly, Maya have to write this book in a child point of view, so she have to use the language carefully in order to sound like a child. Secondly, after the big event Maya had stopped speaking for 2 years, this is also a tremendous event of her life. Language is use to express our idea and thought, so not speaking for two years meaning that Maya don’t want to express her feeling to the others that also means that she don’t trust anyone. Luckily, later on in the novel Mrs Bertha Flowers helped Maya to over come her silence by telling her to read all the books that she give her out loud. This is also why Maya loves language and literature so much, because it brings back her voice.

From here we can see that the novel I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings involve many different Ways of Knowing.

What are the strengths and limitation of Baxter’s experiment?

After reading the extract from The Myth of Mars and Venus: Do Men and Woman Really Speak Different Languages? I found Baxter’s experiment very interesting. His experiment shows the linguistic behavior difference between boys and girls. Although his experiment has some strengths and values, there are also some limitations.

Researcher Judith Baxter made experiment among 14 to 15 year old school pupils. They have been told to imagine that they are survivors of a plane crash in the desert, equipped with various items scavenged from the wreckage, such as sunglasses, compass and first aid kit, and their task is to rank the items in order of importance for survival. They are separated into single-sex groups to do tasks and their conversations and discussion were recorded by Baxter.

The strength of the experiment is it shows the different ways of discussing between girls and boys. The experiment gives them a real life situation that doesn’t have a correct answer so that they can discuss more. It also shows that it is not easy to know whether girls are more competitive than boys or the opposite interpretation is require explaining linguistic behavior, because just by looking at the conversation, I cannot determine which group is girl and which is boy. But we can see that the two groups discuss very differently.

There are some limitations in this experiment. One of the limitations is the age of the students, because people talks differently at different ages. If this experiment is taking among the younger kids, their ways of talking can be more competitive, because kids are more aggressive. On the other hand, if it’s among adults or older kids, their conversation can be more cooperative because they can control their emotion more and they know how to collaborate with the others. Another limitation is the different personally between the students. Some students can be more competitive, some can be more cooperative, so that can also determine the way the conversation goes.

Intuition vs. Emotion

Real Life Situation: It’s late at night, when you are walking on the road, you feel like someone is following you and you start running.

This might happens to many people before if you are walking outside at night. Suddenly you just somehow know that something dangerous is going happen and that feeling makes you have an increasing rapid heartbeat, you feel yourself sweating and shivering or even have a rush of adrenaline, and you just want to start running. This is because your intuition told you that someone is following you and that triggers your emotion of fear.

It doesn’t matter whether your intuition is right or wrong, your environment and situation gives you this intuition. Because of your observation of the darkness and quietness around you, it gives you the feeling of someone is following you. In this situation, the emotion of fear prompts you to start running because if there is really someone that’s following you, the best solution is to run to some where that’s safe.

I used to think language is just a way of communication, so I didn’t found it interesting or important. But now I think that language is such a fascinating subject after learning that it contains so many cultures, meanings, transformations, influences and knowledge that I don’t know about before.

Everything around us can be language. Besides speaking, writing and reading, the abbreviations we use on the internet, the names of the shops and brands, noises and sounds, all of those are languages. Actually there are a lot of knowledge about language itself and how to use language. Different people can have different ways of using language. Their choice of words, way of expressing feeling and language, accents and tones, all of that can be affected by their cultures, beliefs, family, friends and communities. In different culture, words can have different meanings, and the use of language can be very diverse too.

In fact we are learning language every day and everywhere we go. We learn language when we chat with others, texting your friends and reading random quotes on the internet. Learning how to use words cleverly, learning how to express our thoughts clearly to the others, learning how to use quotes appropriately, and learning how to persuade others.

After this one week of discussing and reading about language, I found a deeper interest in this topic. I no longer think that language is boring, because now I know the importance of language.

After a careful discussion, Cathy and I decided to focus on the question “How did Romanticism lead to the emergence of Realism”. From here we came up with the research question “What are the factors that cause the shift from Romanticism to Realism”

We decided to make a video about the history of Romanticism and Realism. After talking about that we can add our interpretation of how it move from one to another base on the history. Because it’s a multimedia project we are also making posters on the literature we are going to read. I am reading a realism literature called “A Doll’s House” by Henrik Ibsen and Cathy is reading a romanticism literature called “Les Miserables” by Victor Hugo. After writing about our own literature we will compare the two to see the similarities and differences. Also we are going to create our own poem and art work base on out understanding of how a romanticism or realism poem will be like.

Because Cathy is not here this week we are working on it individually, so after she come back we can put them all together to create a complete work.

19th Century European Literature:

From Romanticism to Realism

For our finally unit, we are going to do a project based learning on 19^th Century European Literature. So instead of just reading literature in the 19^th Century, we are going to do a multimedia project base on our learning and understanding. Personally, I like learning this way than just reading text.

For this project I am working with Cathy. During the first few lesson, Cathy and I did some research on the vocabularies and the background information. After discussing we decided that we are going to do something about Romanticism and Realism. Although both Romanticism and Realism were movement in literature and art during the 19^th Century, they were very different. Romanticism was more about nature and expressing feeling while Realism was more realistic. I found it very interesting about how could the two distinguished movement existed during the same period and how can they influence each other and this is why we decided to do more research on this.

In the next few lessons, Cathy and I decided to focus on “How did Romanticism lead to the emergence of Realism” and from this focus we will need to come out with our research questions.

Dark Warning

Author: Marie-Louise Fitzpatrick

Page: 61 – 109

Many things happened during those few chapters. One of the plots that surprised me is that Billy and Taney use her gift to gambling. Taney uses her talent to see how the game goes and send Billy signal on what to bet and how much to bet. They make a fine team; good collaboration and group working let them win a lot of game. But Billy didn’t clean the other players out, he kept the winning and losing fairly even so that he earn some extra pennies but not as many as he could have. They spread the coins evenly. Taney placed the coins inside her locking box, and this is when Taney tells us that those are her running away money, which makes a connection to the book cover. On the book cover (see picture) you can see a girl running away. At first I don’t know if the cover means any things or have any connection to the book, but now I know. Later in the book, Taney tells Billy that she wants to run away to London where no one knows that she is different. She wants to start again and live like everyone else. This shows us once again about how much Taney dislike her gift and how much she wants to be normal like everyone else. In chapter 15, Taney uses her talent in front of everyone for the first time. A necklace has been stolen at the house Taney and Mary Kate work at. Mistress Lacey who is the owner of this house thinks that Miss Hickson stole it. Taney, who wants to help her, uses her gift to find the necklace. I felt happy for her, she finally finds her gift useful.

The Importance of Being Earnest

Author – Oscar Wilde

Act One

In the first act, Algernon and Jack tell each other their secrets. Algernon has an imaginary friend called Bunbury, who is very sick and lives in the country. Every times when Algernon wants to go the country, he use it as a reason – to visit Bunbury. He also use Bunbury as an excuse so he don’t have to have dinner with his Aunt Augusta. Jack creates an imaginary brother called Earnest who lives in the town, so that he can go to the town whenever he wants. I found Algernon’s and Jack’s lies very reasonable. We always find many different reasons and excuses to keep us out of the things or people that we don’t like and go to do the things we like, just like Algernon and Jack. Although I never created an imaginary person as an excuse, I used homework as an excuse. When my parents wanted to take me to dinner with their friends, I’ll tell them that I have too much homework to complete so that I don’t need to go with them.

Dark Warning

Author – Marie-Louise Fitzpatrick

Page: 50 – 61

According to Taney, her brother Jon Jon is a very cute boy who is loved by everyone. Taney really loves her brother too, but every time when she wants to play with him Mary Kate will stops her.She doesn’t want Taney to touch or even go near Jon Jon. Although everyone in the family including her own father only cares about Jon Jon and not her, Taney wasn’t jealous, she still loves her little brother very much. In chapter 9, Taney saves Jon Jon by using her power of seeing the future. When her father comes back and asks her, Mary Kate helps Taney to hide the truth that she used her power by saying it’s her fault. From here we can see that Mary Kate has a good side too. In chapter 10, Taney and Billy have been meeting every other evening at the stream having fun. For Taney this is one of the best times that she has. Billy doesn’t thinks Taney’s special powers are weird, he even helps her to improve to controls her power. Billy don’t have legs and he was once laughed by other’s too. He tells Taney to be strong and fight back. The meeting become something important to both of them.