Working

I'm still working hard!

I had been doing a good job of working out weekly, but the start of cold weather has discouraged me a bit. I'm trying to get back into it. I've been eating well -- lots of good home cooked meals with veggies or delicious comfort food. Taking vitamin C and eating broccoli has kept me safe from the perils of colds at the start of the fall students return. I've also gotten the office a supply of anti-cold defense: cough drops, hand sanitizer, and disinfecting wipes. Working hard takes a lot of strength so I want to build that up and preserve what I already have.

I'm taking a class at Boston University. Completing the homework is hard some weeks, but I'm trying to focus on studying rather than just vegging out.

Still, it's a long process. The adjustment to working after work is hard! I didn't realize it, but I do put a lot of effort in during the day. I'm hoping that pushing myself will pay off.

Also, I'm going to try my best to work towards a promotion. I took a training on personal branding! We did an activity of coming up with 3 adjectives that would describe the unique way we tackle the tasks in our job. Mine were:

1. Proactive
2. Straightforward
3. Innovative

I based these on a lot of the ideas that I bring to the table. The fact that I volunteer my ideas and ask questions is part of being proactive. My proactive skill is that I like to sit in the chair of another role, trying to understand what they need, and then actually ask a person in that role (or with insight and experience) if that idea would really be helpful. Usually I approach new tasks with a lot of background research and I bring new ideas with a specific example in mind to help both myself and others evaluate the use of my idea. 

I also thought that my place at the start of my career should be turned into a positive. I think that my youth can lead to me being straightforward. Sights seen before are new to my fresh eyes; I'm willing to suggest things that have been overlooked or dismissed but now are tenable. Sometimes I am unaware of the bureaucracy that make new ideas difficult, making me ideal for the bravery needed to bring up new ways of doing things. Once I encounter the challenge of entrenched protocols, I can be honest and straightforward about why I want to change things.

Finally, for innovation: I love to read lots and lots of things. I take a little time each week to try to combine my ideas, fluttering about based on my reading, experience, and frustrations. Maybe it's the upside of laziness, but I am always looking for ways to make my life easier. If I can streamline or automate a process - oh that is the best! By taking ideas from many places but grounding them in my experience, I'm able to come up with new ideas. Better yet, I keep up with the innovation that others in my field are pursuing. I apply my own engineering thought process to them in order to find areas of improvement and matching areas of implementation. 

Truly, I'm working hard. I am trying to downsize the junk in my life and upsize the joy. That does take work, but I feel that it pays off. Already, I'm amazed by how far I've come in just a few years. 

Archaeology and Analysis

Textbook information for 3.985 is here.

Archaeology and Analysis: Intro

The typical steps to studying organic residues are extraction, instrumentation, and interpretation. Extraction is the removal of the residue from the artifact. The removal of residues can be done through a selection of solvent, temperature and pressure. Instrumentation is the process of separating the removed residue into parts. Chromatograph was the main example used in lecture of 3.985, with gas and mass methods being used depending on the sample. Interpretation is the process of identifying and analyzing the residue’s constituent parts.

Ideal and Aged

The ideal situation would be comparable to the finger print database, where the chromatograph can be compared with a large library of known materials to create a reliable identification without much effort. This is the end goal of ARCHEM. However, ancient materials are quite different from the recently collected samples. For interpretation, there is a balance between achieving a perfect match and the reality of material’s degradation. Due to this, the fragmentation pattern is the most useful technique. Additionally, the analysis of these trace amounts is quite advanced, using isotopes and chemical ratios to date. Combined with ARCHEM, the process of extraction, instrumentation, and interpretation are the method for studying organic residues.

Example: Lipids in Pottery

Lipids that have been left in pottery can be compared against modern samples. Lipids are good for analysis because they are fairly stable since they’re C based and are insoluble in water. This means that they stick around, although there is some degrading. Archaeologists can find how domestication has affected human diet by the introduction of milk. The challenge is that fatty acids are not enough to determine the presence of milk. Also, lipids in pottery can mix; it’s not clear the order that the organic commodity was introduced to the pottery. You can read more about the methods of this example here. However lipids remain a useful material to be focused on with tools of analysis of porous materials like pottery.

 Investigations of vessels dating from the Neolithic period show that biomolecular information, i.e. the structures, distributions, and particularly compound specific d 13 C values derived from individual acyl lipids, can be used to distinguish between subcutaneous fats of the most important classes of domesticated animals exploited by ancient man.

-- New Criteria for the Identification of Animal Fats Preserved in Archaeological Pottery, by Evershed, H. R. Mottram, S.N. Dudd, S. Charters, A. W. Stott, G. J. Lawrence (1997)

Conclusion

The broad implication of studying organic commodities is a movement toward a holistic approach to analysis. By layering information gained through different aspects of analysis and the environment, a better understanding of ancient societies can be found.  The study of organic commodities suggests that a holistic approach would be more useful to approaching archaeological sites and their analysis. For the selection of site on to the preservation of ARCHEM samples, a range of disciplines is necessary. The analytical methods must match the goals of the investigation as informed by a historic background of the culture.

Dog Town and Skater Culture: Commentary

Arianna McQuillen

Essay 1: Documentary

Subcultures have different values than the mainstream culture, but remain connected to the larger society. Different subcultures reveal different and morphing forms of alienation from the mainstream due to the continued relationship to the larger culture. The documentary covers the development of skateboarding out of surfing in the low income town of Dog Town. Interspersed with black and white interviews and old low-fi footage of skating moves, the documentary focuses on a few key skaters who developed a distinctive style. The Zephyr team was composed of several members who inspired each other to develop more unique styles, pressuring each other to translate surfing moves to concrete. The documentary reflects some of the concepts of aesthetic, economic class, racial blindness, and resistance in a particular instance of 1970s Southern California youth subculture.

Dogtown and Z-Boys focused on the aesthetic and competitive nature of the skate and surf culture. The skater subculture relied on masculinity. Masculinity bound together these young people, mainly young white men. They gathered together in order to enact their burgeoning masculinity, proving in escalating skating feats and escaping other looming masculine forces like the police or abusive fathers. The method of setting up courses to challenge each other created a binary way to measure adherence to the ideal of prowess while the discussions of style bring a subjective narrative of artistic merit. In addition to a competitive nature, the Dogtown Boys focused on pushing individual athletic limits and promoting each other as an ideal male hero who is able to innovate alone through innate genius. Jay Adams is referred to specifically as “the youngest and most naturally gifted.” The talk of warfare, genius, and rivalry all fit into hegemonic masculinity. These narratives are in conflict. The hero of warfare needs a nation to defend but the hero cannot accept a revolt from within his ranks. The tension of these narratives is clear in the shifting social focus on the groups between collective business, individual success, and teamwork. Following: most of the skaters are men. The two adults who run the Zephyr team are men and the one female member named in the documentary, Peggy Oki, is described as “skating like a guy.” To be a member of a subculture that prided masculine competition, her activities in the culture had to be defined apart from her female-sexed body. Despite the documentary’s focus on the spread of skate culture through the United States, gender and the lack of female members is an important sociological aspect.

The Dogtown Boys come from the same city, united in low economic class status. Skaters and surfers alike protect the dry pools and abandoned theme parks that became their cultural site. Locals resist encroachment from outsiders, especially those from higher economic class status. For example, poor skaters invading the private property of expensive homes to attain access to pools is a mark of concrete warfare. The skaters further antagonize the police, admitting that they couldn’t afford the fines that their trespassing would cost them and their family. The older men harken to their shared difficulties, coming from broken homes and non-valedictorian status. Both masculinity and shared experience of poverty bound the developers of skate culture together with a focus on developing a positive sense of style and identity.

Despite taking place in the 70s, the documentary makes no mention of political changes around race. While some skaters have racial markers, such as Tony Alva, a white passing man with dreds, or the Asian American skaters such as Oki and Jeff Ho, most are blond blue-eyed white men. The single black man shown in the documentary is Marty Grimes. The documentary overlays Jimi Hendrix’s “Freedom” over imagery of Jay Adam’s natural white talent, and does so with no trace of irony over glorifying supposed inherent white talent in a song commemorating the recent ending of segregation as sung by a self-styled black man who carefully controlled the racial aspects of his public musical character. The members who have this shared identity also make claims of legitimacy apart from race. To begin with, the documentary adopts the visual language of those it depicts: black and white photos, grainy footage, contemporary musical tone. These same claims to legitimacy are untenable for black participants as evidenced by their exclusion and the commodification of black subcultures outside of their political meaning towards race. The dreadlock is not merely a styling implement nor Hendrix a singer; these are potent symbols within 1970s black subcultures within America but their meaning is obscured by the flattening of color. The claim of legitimacy is that of racial blindness, carefully eliding racial upheaval and meaning in the background of skater subcultures in order to appeal to a presumed white audience.

The documentary covers the development of a new subculture, a resistance focused on a shared experience of poverty and athleticism. A subculture based on ignoring differences in social privilege in the larger culture is doomed for failure: with economic pressure the skaters broke apart for their individual gain. Future alternative or punk subcultures must tackle concurrent issues in order to create a sustainable base. Individual accomplishment or single-issue solidarity are not enough; punk rock ethos rely on whole hearted trust.

Dog Town annd Z Boys Documentary

Photographic production in Salpetriere and sanatoriums

Intro: Automaton 

There is a construction of what a mental illness is, a rationality of how to describe the illness, and a way of recognizing it in others. This construction continues to develop in the iterations of the DSMV. Generally, mental illness is a narrative of symptoms as actions as basis as a perception of flawed relationships with other originating in the patient subject. Women in mental asylums in the 19th century were described as mentally ill using automatism. Automatism was directed towards women in asylums as part of a larger social construction of both the role of mental illness in society and the roles of women in society; automatism was regulatory. The meaning of automatism allowed for normative standards of masculine observation to bring the female objects into both a descriptive codification and an ideal of self-regulating motion. The development of the medical portrait at Holloway Sanatorium in 1885, using photography to diagnose mental illness demonstrates how men utilized automatism as part of a particular epistemology and method to correct ways of knowing. The mechanical process of the imaging and image evaluation by doctors created an addition mimetic response to the imagery produced by a mimetic device for diagnosis.

Patriarchal

This construction of mental illness limited agency; proportional reaction to abuse and resistance to institutional subjugation was described as irrational and pathological by male abusers and female handmaidens. More so, the actions taken were described as both innate and automatic. Women, trapped in the sanatorium, asylum, and hospital, were subjected to treatments that created the patterns of behavior fitting the pathologies ascribed during admission. The photos of women under duress pantomiming respectability in medical portraits mirror the noble paintings of women exemplifying a constructed hysteria for the consumption of medical elite and the public. "Un Lecon Clinique a la Salpetriere" (1887) by Andre Briouillet exemplifies an early iteration of the panopticon in action of displaying while producing the woman suffering automatism.

Resistance

Some current art production pushes against this construction. Anna Scheliet's work "Bloom" existed not only temporarily as an installation of 28,000 flowers in the space of a mental institution to be demolished but also after the building as the potted plants were delivered to shelters, halfway houses, and other hospitals. Displaying the austerity of the hospital, the installation drew attention to the construction of an austere space that disconnects people. Further, the redistribution of the plants was intended to treat the malaise of separation rather than an admitting illness into the institutional framework. I'd like to find other examples of women's artistic production within mental institutions and folk art on the subject.

Purpose

The mental illness is constructed as a removal of the individual from rational or discursive possibilities, a construction developed in the asylum. For this removal to be maintained but the connection to the wider society maintained, the individual must be captured in another format of description that cannot be questioned: the automaton offers a speedy and habitual route to quantified description. The epistemology of what mental illness is, how to recognize it, and how to treat it, has left behind symbols in the artistic production of the 19th century.