User:Se Jo Spring 2008

It's The End Of The World As We Know It (working title)

1. Objective I am digging through YouTube, finding as many examples of people harming each other and their environment as possible. these clips will be edited and coupled with text, in order to explore some of the sociological explanations for such violence and aggression. the goal is not to overload people with negativity, but to try and cast such events and behavior less as "good or bad", and more as natural or at least predictable.
2. Interest This is interesting because i am not editing to clips heavily - i am just cutting them down to the sections i feel are most relevant. the actual footage has already been edited, compiled, uploaded, and viewed by other people - implying a social fascination and level of importance attributed to such tragedy. why are we obsessed with disasters? why do people edit together compilations of street fights (and why do millions of people watch them?) this is also a great context in which to discuss sociological theories about crime and deviance. i would also like to bring in some other theories, possibly from an anthropological perspective.
3. Background reading I will read wikipedia, the text book, and several books i am reading for my thesis, like Catastrophe and Culture, Edward T. Hall's The hidden dimension (about human spatial relationships), and possibly some Desmond Morris.
4. General Plan Most of the video clips are downloaded, so the next step is to outline the information that will accompany our video and audio. We need to lay out the order in which we want to discuss our topics, and then edit the video to match.
5. Collaborators I will be working with Laura Simon.

comments from Ted

1. I made some more general project related comments on Si_La's page, see those also. Here I want to raise some more theoretical questions for both of you to think about in the construction of your project. There are several long standing debates wrapped up in your project.
   1. The first is: to what extent are human actions due to biological inclinations and to what extent are they due to socialization? The best answer is that human behavior is partly determined by biological tendencies, partly due to socialization, and partly due to opportunity structure. For different behaviors these sources of influence are likely to play different roles. For instance-- the question why do people seem to want to watch episodes of violence? Well, the neuro-biologists and evo-psychologists can likely provide some of the answer here-- through ekg, cat scans etc of peoples brains while watching different content videos and tracking which parts of the brain are activated. Perhaps pleasure centers are stimulated by violent images because people who paid attention to violence imagery in real world might be more able to act to evade, defend etc. Of course, different people in different cultures are encouraged or discouraged to value or demonize violence, another source of variation in view rates, and further, others might have differential access to such material.
   2. Why people watch is an entirely different question from why people create and upload such videos. Answering that question is likely related to models of markets for such goods. What sources of benefits do the producers have access to-- both locally and more broadly? There are plenty examples of people who, due to local prestige systems decide to upload videos or images that are violent and incriminating, and thus become evidence for their own prosecution.
   3. Another issue that your MA project raises is larger scale violence and destruction. Implicit in your project is a grouping of outcomes that come from very different types of action. At the most basic level we need to distinguish between outcomes that are clearly the results of intentional actions and those that are the unintended consequences of action and those that are the forseeable collective outcomes of self interested, and not easily regulated behaviors (tragedies of the commons, etc). While there are certainly actions (like arson) that are intentional destructive acts, but there are also negative outcomes (like acid runoff from mining) that are unintended consequences of instrumental actions of particular groups, and still others, like the smog in Salt Lake City, that are simply the collective accumulation of people selfishly pursuing individualistic transportation goals. All are 'destructive' but arise for very different reasons. Only the first type reasonably would be caused by an 'appetite for destruction'.

earlier post:

Greetings, Little People.

I am a senior BFA Photography and BFA Art History major in the School of Fine Arts at OU. I'm also a Precollege Advisor/Team Leader for the Precollege program.

At the end of this quarter I will have my Thesis Exhibition for my photography degree, and I am also completing a 10-page Thesis paper to elaborate on my work. Much of my research and artwork has been focused around the concept of humans as a species of animals - we have instincts and subconscious systems of interaction with one another (body language, pheromones, etc.) More specifically, my work focuses on our inability to ever be "outisde" the laws of nature - we are inherently part of nature, and will always be subject to natural laws.

To this end, I focus heavily on the concept of "disaster" - how we perceive it and the role it plays, not just in our daily lives, but in our species and the global ecosystem we are part of. The scale of such a "disastrous" event ranges in our lives from something small like getting fired from a job or losing a loved one, to large events like hurricanes, terrorist attacks, wars, and the ongoing condition of global warming.

For my exhibition I am creating a video installation that utilizes footage I appropriate entirely from YouTube - in this way I will only be using video that is important enough to have been edited and uploaded by someone other than myself.

This footage will result in two videos. The first depicts humans inflicting negative effects on nature (including pollution, de-forestation, nuclear testing, human-on-animal and human-on-human violence, etc.)

The second video will depict a similar collection of clips, but they will depict negative effects being inflicted on humans by nature (including hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes, droughts, famines, animal-on-human violence and - again - a wide array of human-on-human violence.

The presentation of both sides of this coin, so to speak, will communicate the concept of our species, not as superior to or separated from nature, but rather a truly integral element. We may see our actions as a species as positive or negative, but outside the realm of human interpretation our role on this planet plays out according to the laws of nature, and our input into that system.