Readings

As I was reading through "Matter and Memory," I was very frustrated and confounded by the assertions Bergson used (he used various shaky claims, beliefs, and ruled many claims to be universal without proof to prove his points correct, which bothers me... and I think Russell has a problem with this too). However, I found myself liking a theory that Bergson came up with and didn't want to post it on Bb because it's not a question, so I decided to write it on here. I broke it down into this summary:

Present perception = one link on a totality of objects "chain"

Our memories form a similar chain

Our character = synthesis of all our past states

I really like this theory that he has asserted due to the fact that I believe that all of our past experiences and what we have learned as people throughout our lives lend to our development as a person. We existed in many different forms of ourselves and have morphed as we have grown through the years. All of these states are "synthesized" into our character and contribute to it.

One of the first images of humans, recently discovered

I saw this article on yahoo and thought it was pretty cool:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_upshot/20101027/od_yblog_upshot/very-early-photographic-images-of-humans-discovered
This image has been recently discovered and is believed to be one of the the first photographic images of humans. This photo is called a daguerreotype - "an image developed via an early photographic process developed in France" - and was taken on Sunday, September 24th, 1848 by Charles Fontayne and William Porter.

A close up of the photo, showing humans

In case you're wondering, below is currently the record holder for oldest photograph of humans - it is a daguerreotype taken by the inventor of the process, Louis Daguerre, in 1838 (says another article attached to this yahoo article).

Artist Book: Mind Games

For my artist's book, I decided after talking with Dawn to do a complete 360 from my original idea. I will now be focusing more on the science of memory - brain and microscopic imagery that is literally a photograph of memory itself, working in a definitive manner. As I said in class, I plan to use various MRI and PET scan images of the brain of patients asked to remember or think about certain things and compare these images to those in a relaxed state of mind. I also intend to compare images of people with Alzheimer's and people on drugs and how those conditions effect their state of memory. I plan to put my book in a doctor's "chart" (if anyone has any suggestions as to how I should keep all the pages together in the chart, please let me know - usually the pages in a chart are just shoved in a manila folder in chronological order). I also plan to use transparencies and print the MRI and PET scan images onto these transparencies (only some images, many overlaying actual images or representations of what the person was supposed to be thinking about since we can't include captions and you wouldn't be able to tell what people were thinking about without some form of explanation), giving them the appearance of x-rays.

I also would like to post the link to the website that I use to get a lot of nice pictures:
http://www.deviantart.com/
Some of my favorite pictures have come from this website, where various artists post their works:

Thoughts on Monday's class

I had a really fun time with the mini-essay exercise that we did in class on Monday. I loved the stream-of-consciousness style and found it fascinating the different kind of answers Melissa and I came up with when we compared them. There were definitely prompts where I wanted to write more, but couldn't; I think that's the fun in it, though - you kind of have to screen your thoughts and come up with something to write about that really makes you think.

Microscopes

I was looking through articles tonight and found this really cool one. As part of the annual Small World Photomicrogaphy Competition sponsored by Nikon, people around the world take pictures of things underneath light microscopes. This is a spin on traditional photography that seems really awesome to me - we can't see the beautiful things that these photographs showcase with the naked eye! You wouldn't think that these photos are what they actually are (especially the soy sauce one). Below are some of the winning photographs from the 2010 competition (top 10), but you can look at more here: http://www.nikonsmallworld.com/gallery/year/2010/1

Mosquito Heart

Living specimen of red seaweed (40x)

Bird of paradise seed (10x)

Crystallized Soy Sauce (note the smiley face)

Ctenocephalides canis

Endothelial cell attached to synthetic microfibers

5-day old zebrafish head

Cacoxenite - a mineral

Zebrafish olfactory bulbs

Wasp nest (10x)

Some others that I thought were cool:

Soap film

Wasp eye

Baby mollusc

Memory

I love being home and spending time with my Mom and Dad. They are the best ever and are so awesome and I love them so much. I am the luckiest daughter on the planet. When my Mom was talking with my Uncle during fall break, she started telling the story of how my cousins were adopted. My Aunt adopted 4 children, 3 of which are biological sisters (adopted at the same time). I remembered this, of course - but what I had forgotten was that I was friends with my cousin before she came my cousin. Once my Mom started talking about it, I remembered being in first grade with her, and she would come over and have sleep overs at my house all the time, joking that my parents should adopt her, not really understanding what was going on at the time. Then, my Aunt decided to adopt her and make her part of our family, not knowing that I knew her beforehand. Small world, right?

I thought it this instance was notable because this detail is one that I forgot about my cousin, it has been a while since I told the story of how they were adopted. I had forgotten a most important detail until now, and I hopefully won't forget it again. My life would definitely not be the same without my cousins and I love them so much, and will never forget the memories we have together!

One of my favorite pictures of them :)

P.S. I didn't include names because I was not sure whether or not my family would be ok with me including their names.

Beach

During fall break, I decided to go home on Saturday and Sunday to spend some time with my family. On Saturday, my Mom and I decided to stop by the beach on our way home from my Dad's work and walk along the beach. I haven't been to the beach since the summer, and I miss it a lot and feel land-locked at Rollins now that I'm not sailing. The smell of the salty air brings back so many memories - I swear, our beaches have a specific smell to them, one that I love, one that I have not beheld anywhere else. That smell itself brings back so many happy times for me with my family and friends, lying in the sun or playing in the water. 

Additions

I wanted to say one more thing about our assignment; however, I would not like this to be considered as part of our assignment since it would put me way over the word limit. But I think it's an interesting thought to consider.
As I was reading our assigned reading for this past week, this quote stuck out to me (naturally, after Human Rights and Educational Justice). Halbwachs was speaking about women artists versus men artists:
"Women etchers... have typically lower survival value [as artists] because they lack many of the positive traits that enhance the reputations of their male colleagues."
Regardless of whether you (or I) consider yourself a feminist or not, I argue that this quote is relevant to the history of biological research. It is the case, in biology, that most women did not lack the traits of their male counterparts when it came to scientific studies and research - they were merely oppressed or used for their research, and all credit was given to the male scientist. For example, Rosalind Franklin was best known for her work on X-ray diffraction images of DNA. Without her, DNA would not have been discovered until much later on. However, she did not get any credit for her discovery because Crick and Watson used her data and all that she had determined to formulate a hypothesis regarding the double helix structure of DNA, and did not give her credit though it was her that indeed determined the structure of DNA. When word got out that she was the original discoverer, it was too late - she had died of complications of ovarian cancer and Crick and Watson got the Nobel Prize (they couldn't give it to someone who is deceased). There are many other examples of this throughout history (read Into the Jungle), and I argue the point that these women artists had plenty of positive traits and were put down because they were women.

Assigned Blog

Whenever I am prompted to think about memory and the photograph, a few things strike me with regards to my major (Biology).

The mind is a fascinating piece of art and machinery, and is ever more intriguing due to the fact that we don’t fully understand how it works. This is the one aspect of my discipline that speaks to me when we are talking about memory and the photograph because it is unknown and mystifying. What is the mechanism by which we remember? We know how neurons fire, how electricity flows… but really, how do we remember? And we have read about how senses contribute to ease of remembering, but how do photographs? Do they act as a portal opening up a section of the mind inaccessible without a queue? Proust is a Neuroscientist speaks to this specifically – we know that smell or taste might help one remember something because those senses connect directly to the hippocampus, “the center of the brain’s long-term memory,” whereas all of the other senses are first intercepted by the thalamus, the source of language, rendering them “less efficient at summoning our past.”It is also interesting to consider the scientific difference in processing memories and dreams; Teaching Old Dogs New Tricks addresses that a quarter of college students find it difficult to determine if something they specifically remembered was a dream or if it actually happened.

Theories abound on this topic. Many believe that thinking over a memory many times, as well as speaking it aloud, helps us remember it (Chapter 6 of Memory Observed). Based on the theories that we have read, I contend that this is the case, whether that remembrance is accurate to what actually happened or not; and that photography is a visual queue that can lead one to entertain many memories, regardless of whether the photograph is theirs or familiar to them.

Spontaneity

I have been looking for this thing that I wrote for a very long time and I finally found it this weekend. All I could remember were the first two lines, but I wrote this and used to look at it every once and a while as a pick-me-up. It was written on the bottom of the backpack that I used for my sophomore year of high school. Now, I don't claim to be any type of writer/claim this is good/I don't even know what format it's in... it just makes me happy and makes me think of the good times in life:

Life?

It needs spontaneity.

It contains randomness,

offhand beauty,

unsolved devious conundrums,

and unproved hypotheses. 

It needs wonder, 

and it needs awe...

It needs love. 

Life?

It takes a specific ability.

It takes the ability to observe and appreciate

all that surrounds you.

Life is beautiful,

and life is exactly what you make it.

Life?

You're living it.

Sludge

I was searching news articles today and found this one about a ecological disaster occurring in Hungary right now. A red sludge reservoir (red sludge is a waste product in aluminum production - it contains heavy metals and is toxic if ingested) has ruptured and spread throughout Kolontar, Hungary. Right now, one million cubic meters of the sludge has spread throughout several villages. I thought these photographs were very powerful in depicting how horrible and unreal this situation is as well as the impact it has had. What amazed me about this disaster is how widespread it is - it's also amazing that the sludge seems to be everywhere and it is TOXIC.
I have no idea how they're going to even begin cleaning this one up...

Struggles

When I decided on a topic for my photo book, I thought I had a pretty good idea - until I wrote it down. Unfortunately, I believe if I kept my topic, my book would not revolve around actual photographs but rather artist renderings of the brain, neurons, etc... since we do not have actual photographs of the things that I was interested in posting about. I have a few ideas for the topics that we have learned in class, such as pictures of children looking in mirrors, a mother sharing a story with their son/daughter, and collective memory images such as images of 9/11 or Obama's election to office.
I am excited to meet with Dawn on Thursday to bounce around ideas about my final project. Hopefully she can help me come up with a more definitive idea of what I'm doing.
I'd love to get started on it this weekend!