Prezi Presentation Part 2

Self-Assessment of Group Oscar and Brief Review of Group Romeo 

“Trust yourself. You know more than you think you do.” – Benjamin Spock

The sentence above has become one of my favorite mottos for a long time; mostly because I have “automagically” experienced exactly what it says for several times throughout my life. –Working with Prezi and brainstorming the complicated philosophical topic Realness & Nature provides me another chance to prove it to myself—I can make it!

It is always hard to start. To be frank, we procrastinated a bit after the project was assigned, not because we wanted to, but that none of us can figure out the steps, the clues to do it. We had 5 group meetings (formal and informal), and we spent the first three trying to sort out a logical structure. One of the biggest obstacles we encountered is: it had always been difficult for EVERYONE to select an interesting subtopic of their own that can perfectly fit into the whole map of our design. Eventually, “listing and matching” serves to be an effective way to overcome the stumbling block. We displayed all the binary oppositions we can think of and the fields (subfields) we might be interested in, and matched them one by one to explore whether or not the pair can be easily developed into a “chubby” topic. We are pretty satisfied with the overall structure that we got, and as you saw, I’m in charge of Realist and Idealist under the field of Politics and Law. Once I choose the topic, it is a lot easier to expand. Definition, evaluation, examples, and conclusion—I figured out that’s the clearest step for the audience to receive and acquire my presentation.

I think our group did a great job, although our presentation was bisected and Zhaocheng and I tried so hard to rush through our parts in order to save time (some of the stuff I prepared did not get a chance to present). Our structure is clear and logical, the presenters are well prepared, and our Prezi looks neat and nice. However, I do believe there is one thing that we need to pay more attention next time—time management. We ran out of time during the real presentation since we ignored the time limit when we rehearsed. Bruce Lee made the special remark that “Simplicity is the key to brilliance.”  As WOVEN text also points out, only some carefully selected key words can sometimes do a better job than a whole paragraph of description. Some parts of our presentation can be more well-organized by replacing the long sentences with key words, and then we can try to “decipher” our notes by adding explanations that is already in our minds.

I like Group Romeo’s presentation very much! Their “swirly structure” design is breathtaking! The presentation starts with a powerful quote “Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.”  To be honest, I personally think that one downside of their spiral design is that it confuses the audience about the structure—is it developed like a string or in topics and subtopics? Based on my understanding, I think they expand presentation into a major part, which is Real versus the Ideal (and 7 subtopics under it), and a minor part, which is “Realness” in technology. I’m amazed by some of the binary oppositions they chose and developed, such as Concrete v Conceptual and Superficial v Profound—those are the fields I never thought about! The 7 topics themselves are connected tightly with each other; however, I think some of them are a bit distracting from Real vs. Ideal (which is the headline), for example, superficial v profound and absolute v uncertain. In addition, I think their Prezi can be even closer to perfect if they can focus more on details. For the 2^nd shot, Real versus Ideal would be better than Real versus the Ideal; for the 7^th shot, I believe it should be flawed v perfect instead of flawed v perfected; and later, fantasy v factual can be changed into factual v fantasy since they always talk about real first, etc.

Overall, group Romeo also did an excellent job. Their Prezi shows us a clear structure logically moves from introduction to arguments, evidence and conclusion. They carefully selected the insightful 2Qs(quotes and questions) and interesting pictures to guide and support their arguments. Presenters are well prepared, and Prezi is well designed.

The sooner I embrace an attitude of curiosity, the sooner I will start trusting myself. I enjoyed exploring Prezi, working with my Oscar group and learning from other groups’ presentations. It was a great experience and I believe I will continue to choose Prezi as a fantastic way of presentation. After all, it’s cool and attractive!

Wen Qiu

09/21/11

Part 2--Reality Hunger by Shields 81-83

238.( What is considered to be vogue now is a purposeful confusion of the realms.)
239. We yearn for the "real" as we live the life as it is, we want to pose something nonfictional against all the fabrication.
240. Mimetic(metaphor) function that is used in rhetoric: "Anything that exists in the culture is fair game to assimilate into a new work, and having preexisting media of some kind in the new piece is thrilling in a way that "fiction"can't be."
241.We are riveted(attracted)by the rawness of something that appears to be direct from the source, or at least less worked over than a polished mass-media production. Compared with the well-furnished thoughts and things, people are more fond of seeking something that is natural, that is being left as it is.
242. Our culture is obsessed with real events because we experience hardly any. (Once we experience, it is not real?)
-- from Doctor Harkey: simultaneous wanting reality and illusion?...
243-244. People are overwhelmed by  calamitous information, while Shields prefer to seek and compose rather than write things down. He wants to jump out of the sample circle and to generate some of his own things.
245-246. The rising sophistication of the nonexpert in combination with the sensory overload of the culture makes reality-based and self-reflexive art appealing now. e.g, Kathy Griffin jumps out of the constraints of a network time slot.
247. We are now, officially, lost.

Thought about The Faith Instinct and The Hidden Reality

The Faith Instinct:

"Religion is not a popular error; it is a great instinctive truth. sensed by the people and expressed by the people." Religion is strongly connected with human nature-- about human's own intrinsic thoughts and expression.

Religions point to the realm of the supernatural, assuring people that they are not alone in the world.--Most religions teach the believers that people will have afterlife after they die, and what make people believe this is faith!

There is no church of oneself. A church is a community, a special group of people who share the same beliefs.-- Religion tie together people to form a community that is being called "church."

Religion is so natural to humanity that it seems to be part of human nature, as if a propensity for belief in the supernatural were genetically engraved in the human mind, and expressed as spontaneously as the ability to appreciate music or to learn one's native language. --one of the most recognizable claims that he made to express that religion is so much alike to human nature and it seems that people can not separate it from life.

Like language, religion is a complex cultural behavior built on top of a genetically shaped learning machinery. People are born with innate instincts for learning the language and the religion of their community. ?? I sort of don't agree. :( I think the ability to learn a language and religion is not innate, although babies' ability to chew, digest and drink is innate.

The Hidden Reality

The page starts with the author's own experience as a child--mirror reflection. This is an interesting way to draw our readers' attention, compared to The Faith Instinct from Wade, Nicholas, whose opening is really rigid and straight-forward.

Each envisions our universe as part of an unexpectedly larger whole, but the complexion of that whole and the nature of the member universes differ sharply among them.

Emerson P43-P47--VII Spirit

The aspect of nature is devout.(Like the figure of Jesus.)The happiest man is he who learns from nature the lesson of worship.
Of that ineffable essence(the greatest thing that cannot be described by words.) Essence refuses to be recorded in propositions, i.e., by languages and thoughts.

Three essential problems: What is matter? Whence is it? and Whereto?
What is matter? Matter is a phenomenon, not a substance. Idealism  acquaints us with the total disparity between the evidence of our own being and the evidence of the world's being. The mind us a part of the nature of things; the world is a divine dream, from which we may presently awake to the glories and certainties of days.
Idealism is a hypothesis to account for nature by other principles that those of carpentry(木工手艺，木工活) and chemistry. Matter and spirit need to exist together to satisfy each other's functions.
Whence is it? and Whereto? 
GOT CONFUSED BY THIS====>We learn that the highest is present to the soul of man; that the dread universal essence, which is not wisdom, or love, or beauty, or power, but all in one, and each entirely, is that for which all things exist, and that by which they are; that spirit creates; that behind nature, throughout nature, spirit is present; one and not compound it does not act upon us from without, that is, in space and time, but spiritually, or through ourselves: therefore, that spirit, that is the Supreme Being, does not build up nature around us, but puts it forth through us, as the life of the tree puts forth new branches and leaves through the pores of the old.


We are as much strangers in nature as we are aliens from God.

Thoughts About Shields C-Books for people who find television too slow.

46. Abstract expressionism: the manipulation of reality through its technique of spontaneous creation on the canvas.
47." The reason why Rothko is great is that he forced artists who came after him to change how they thought about painting."--- the useful definition of artistic greatness.
49. The actuality is continually outdoing our talents, and the  culture tosses up figure almost daily that are the envy of any novelist.
(Actuality, nature and truth are the essential factors of the creation of art.)
52.-58. Different Types of Writing and their influences.
Novels under Modernism long for more narration,  and their voices grow less compelling.
Plot is somewhat unreal(it dramatize the reality, and since that the formulas are sometimes predictable). People seek new means of creating the real.
Paintings(compared with photos) and novels are not as central as to the culture as they once were.
59. There are 2 unmistakable  and distinctly positive effects of novels-as-autobiography: First, they deliberately undermine the traditional and largely spurious authority of the novelist by depriving him of his privileged position above and beyond the world; and second, they narrow the gap that exists between fiction and autobiography, a gap that us artificial to begin with.
63. Since memoirs(which come from memories) are somewhat unreliable, and memories can be buried, lost, blocked, repressed even recovered. To this extent, memoirs really can claim to be modern novels, all the way down to the presence of an unreliable narrator.
66. Today the most compelling creative energies seem directed at nonfiction.
69. There are two sorts of artist, one not being in the least superior to the other. One responds to the history of his are so far; the other responds to life itself. (Sort of don't understand, especially for the 1st half of the sentence.)
70.-71. The more autobiographical the writing is, the more it splinters and explodes. Truth, uncompromisingly told, will always have its ragged edges.
72. The lyric essay takes the subjectivity of the personal essay, and the objectivity of the public essay and  conflates them into literary form that relies on both art and fact, on imagination and observation, rumination and argumentation, human faith and human perception.
79. Facts coming alive,(they quicken), multiply, change shape, elude us, and bombard our lives with increasingly suspicious promises. Facts are not inert.