The Game Of Life

On monday class, the whole class time we played games in

groups. It was interesting to see all the different games that

pelple brought to play. Our group played two games, the first

one was the game of life. I never played before. The game

simulates a person's travels through his life. Go to college,

choose a career, get married, start a family, buya house, and

retire; the player with the highest worth at the end of the

game is the winner. I first time to played this game, but I won.

I think based on luck. The game of life is a fun, engaging game

that can be played by the whole family. Our homework for

wednesday is to map out the game that we played .what is the

experience of the game? What was your experience playing

the game?

Adjectives:

amused

anabolic

neutral

Powers of Ten

We watched two films on Wednsday class. One was called
" Powers of Ten". The filmed was produced in 1968 by
Ray Eames and her husband Charles. The film depicted
the relative size things,distance from earth to the universe
and how big and small things are. It starts with two people
lay on the grass and starting to zoom out the space, than
you can saw the city it becoming smaller, you saw the clouds,
the earth, the planets, the stars, and galaxies etc. Then it
started zooming in into a man's hand and you start seeing
the sikn layers, red and white cells, DNA, modules and
nucleus. It was an interesting film.
The second film was called "Why Man Creates?" This movie
start as a series of steps from 1 to 8, such as The edifice,
Fooling around, The Process, The Judgement, A parable,
Digression, The Search, and The Mark. Afer, we have
dicussed about our assignment that we have to find three
images to tell a story, it was fun seeing what people come
up with.

Adjectives:

creamy
horrible
grand

On Monday class we needed to bring 10 simple pictures to
class. but some people forgot, including me. So professor
decided to split the class into five different groups. Each
group was required to choose one simple picture and come
up with ten words or phrases to change the meaning of
picture. At fist, I thought it is easy assignment. But when
we worked on, actually not easy to come up with ten
different words to change the meaning of the picture.
Maybe it's easy for you to come up with a lot of ideas. But
it's hard to get a great one. This exercise was purposed to
train us using different words to explain our ideas.We have
to do this assignment again for homework.

Adjectives:
bisexual
zany
clownery

Dreams by Akira Kurosawa

Today in class we saw a film by Akira Kurosawa called "Dreams". "Dreams" is perhaps Kurosawa's most beautiful film...fantastic locations,interesting costuming and gorgeous cinematography. The movie consists of eight short stories. Most of which center around the issue of people's relationships whth other elements that make up this world that we live in. The first titled "Sunshine Through The Rain": a young boy is told not to go out on the day when both weather conditions occur,because that's when the foxes hold their weedding procession, which could have fatal consequences for those who witness it. This is the first in a series of eight short dreams that seem to be dealing with various elements of death. In the first movie, there is a choice between death or asking forgiveness. The next segment "The Peach Orchard": the same young boy encounters the spirits of the peach trees that have been cut down by heartlee humans. As a child cries over the loss of the peach blossoms he says: "peaches can be bought, but where can you buy a whole orchard of blossoms"? The firat two films contain magical elements surprise and delight the inner child. The third part "The Blizzard": a team of mountaineers are saved from a blizzard by spiritual intervention. The Blizzard and Avalanche will try your patience at first, but as with many of the films, your patience is well rewarded. Just as we are losing hope. Expect the unexpected in this section. "The Tunnel": a men encounters the ghosts of an army platoon,whose deaths he was responsible for.
The Tunnel brings us to the concept of fearing the unknown or not accepting our death. One of my favorite sections is "Crow's": an art student encounters 'Vincent Van Gogh' and enters the world of his paintings. Crows is much more about visual delight and a surprising ending. "Mount Fuji in Red": nuclear meltdown threatens the devastation of Japan. "The weeping Demon" a portrait of a post-nuclear world populated by human mutations. "Village of the Watermills": a sunny portrait of a village whose population is entirely at one with nature. "mount Fuji in Red" and "The Weeping Demon" are both fantastical cautionary tales about the hazards of nuclear power. Finally the gentle "village of the watermills" brings the film to a quiet, pastoral end. Kurosawa uses childhood memories Japanese traditions, and his own moral views to construct a loosely-connected series of episodes rich in visual imagery. Overall Akira Kurosawa's Dreams is a great movie, it may not be a masterpiece but the enormous amount of artistic contentinvolved, the message which Akira Kurosawa tries to convey to the audience, the visual vibrancy, the Cinematography, the small characters makes Dreams a great film to me. If you have an artistic and like to see how movies can become art, I woukd highly recommend "Dreams"


Adjectives:
Fantastic: Infml extremely good; wonderful.
Traditional: Of or in accordance with tradition.
Nuclear: concerning, or using NUCLEAR ENERGY.

Mind Mapping

On Monday class, the main topic was mind mapping or idea mapping, a mind map is a diagram used to represent words, ideas, or other items linked to and arranged around a central key word or idea. Professor showed us lots of different types of mind maps. It was very interesting to see other peple presented ideas in a graphical, mind maps encourage a brainstorming approach to planning and organizational tasks.
And then we had to creat our own mind mapping.This was a great exercise, it helps you to get fesh ideas and don't need to worry about analyzing. This idea mapping it is a wonderful way that will help in the future.

Adjectives:
temporary
attemptable
acceptable

The discussion in wednesday class covered concept of time , ideas, colors, photos, and so on. The most interesting topic for me was "time", which reminded me the new movie called "Time Traveler's Wife" It dramatically answers Prof.Moss's question: What if time was simultaneous? No kidding, the guy in the movie keeps traveling back and forth through his lifespan, even goes to the future after his death. He can tell his wife what their daughter looks like 10 years later when his wife is pregnant; he also can make friends with his wife in her childhood. That is so cool. But I have another question, if all the persons from past or from future come to the present, is our earth big enough?

Prof. Moss also showed us some pictures with strong symbolis. The mixed images had greater impact on us than the normal ones. One of the examples was the picture combining Obama with Joker. If you were familiar with Batman movie and Obama's operation, you might figure out the meaning that the artist tried to express. The reason why Prof. Moss showed us the pictures was to bring up the concept of "iconography", which is defined as pictorial illustration of a subject through logo, symbol or icon. As what we knew, "pictures speak thousands of words". Prof. Moss

also used pictures to help us understand the new concept, understand how visual evidence differs from interpretation.

Adjectives:

peaceable

ridiculous

farcical