24-hour Technology Log

5:00am - phone alarm goes off. Time for Crew practice!
5:01am - flick on the light switch in the bathroom to brush my teeth, put contacts in, use sink, etc.
5:10am - check email because I remember that we got snow, so….. I find out there's no practice by an email from my coach… slightly (extremely) bummed. Back to sleep! (turn off light)
5:15am - set phone alarm for 10:00
10:00am - wake up to phone alarm
10:05am - turn on iPod radio to light music to do homework until lunch, have email open, an online word translator for my Spanish homework, and the desk light on, aquarium light on
11:30am - text my lunch homies to see if they want to go to the Great Room at 12
12:15pm - use OneCard to swipe and get lunch, and to return a to-go box from yesterday
12:18pm - use soda fountain to get a glass of water
12:40pm - put used dishes and silverware on moving dish tray cart thing… you know what I mean
12:55pm - swipe into my dorm building
1:10pm - doing the homework deal again (desk lamp on, computer on, email open, etc.)
2:45pm - unplug aquarium, turn off filter, light, heater, etc. because I notice two of the new fish I got yesterday (tiger barbs) were attempting cannibalism, so I wanted to return them and take them out of the tank

Tiger barbs. My two that I returned were named Pigger and Tiglet. (web site)

3:05pm - listen to iPod while I walk to Guam where my car is parked
3:17pm - drive the Blueberry (my car looks like a blueberry) to return tiger barbs to the pet store and get  platys instead (much friendlier)
4:15pm - talk to my mom on the phone about wether or not she and my dad are going to the ICCA's to watch me and the acapella group Interchorus compete Feb 22.
4:30pm - at the gym about to use an erg (one of the exercise machines, basically an indoor rowing machine) to do an extra workout for crew because I'm still out of shape. Whoops.

Exactly my thoughts. (web site)

5:30pm - using the weights and weight training machines at the gym as part of the scheduled crew workout
6:00pm - take the quickest shower ever
6:15pm - use wireless iPod stereo player to listen to Pompeii by Bastille in Interchorus practice while we choreograph our first song for the ICCA competition
7:35pm - use lights, AC, and piano in a practice room in Monty to practice a part of a sing for Interchorus that me and the other alto singers really need to work on
8:15pm - use OneCard to purchase "dinner" with my twin sister at The Daily Grind since we both managed to miss dinner at the Great Room (thank God for flex) (and twin sisters)
9:00pm - use One Card to swipe into the Monty Computer Lab. Work on homework, send some emails, type my log up from today!

Artist Post 1: Nancy Burson

Nancy Burson is, according to The Christiane Paul Article, one of the "pioneers in the field of computer-generated composite photographs" who was one of the first to experiment with the digital morphing of faces. Her work was revolutionary in the 1980's and was the starting block for many industries today that use this form of media art. Burson was born in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1948 and currently lives in New York City as she continues to create art.  She is most well-known for her use of digital technology to combine several images of faces and "morph" them into one.  According to a web site, she also has used aging techniques as a way of predicting what a person's face might look like many years in the future.

Her art has been used to make a point of racial equality in this example. This photo is from a web site.

This is an example from a web site of one of the products of Nancy Burson's "Age Machine" where she is able to predict what people may look like in the future. This is a prediction of what Julia Roberts may look like in the year 2035.

Nancy Burton's work is both good and bad in our society today. The benefits have helped save lives, but at the same time the effects of variations of this kid of art have corrupted our society. A huge benefit to this type of art, namely the "Age Machine" technique, is that the FBI now has a method that could help them find missing people who, for instance, were abducted as children ten or twenty years ago. These missing children's faces would have changed drastically over the course of ten or twenty years, and Nancy Burton has provided a tool that could increase the chances of finding those missing people by predicting what they might look like now. She earned a patent in 1981 for her method, as is discussed on a web site. Burson's art means that lives can be saved!

Nancy Burton's art has also attributed to the rather recent problem in our society that has to do with body image. People's faces and bodies can now be touched up in countless ways to make them look what the social media defines as "perfect".  This may help an ad in selling a product in a magazine or a commercial on TV, but what is it doing to the body image of our society? People now have a standard that they feel they must meet to be considered beautiful. Before Nancy Burton's art, this was less of a problem because the people in the magazines were not digitally altered. Her art means that society now feels a pressure to meet false expectations of beauty.

This is an example of what has stemmed from revolutionary artwork like Burson's that creates a false pretense of beauty in our society, from YouTube.

The quality of Burson's artwork is quite high and has developed over time as technology has advanced. The work she created in the 1980's can be compared with her more recent pieces:

An earlier work, taken from a web site

A more recent work, taken from a web site.

Her artwork is strong in that it has a useful purpose in multiple industries in today's society. It's one weakness, in my opinion, is its contribution to the corrupted expectations of beauty that have been a result of Burson's work.