thesis.

Some of you have expressed interest in reading my thesis when it is complete. Well, now it is complete.




click here to read my thesis.



It is relatively short at 41 pages long.
The topic is an interpretation of a Francis Bacon painting.

theory from: early Christian Byzantium, St. John of Damascus, Martin Luther, Joseph Leo Koerner, GWF Hegel, Walter Benjamin, Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida, my own experience
fictional literature from: Oscar Wilde, Jorge Luis Borges
film stills from: The Battleship Potemkin (1929), Triumph of the Will (1935)
art from: Francis Bacon, Diego Velazquez, Albrecht Durer


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essential free mac apps for academia

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One (the only?) skill set I picked up in graduate school: efficiency. As some of you know, my master's program required a ridiculous amount of course work (51 hours [16 courses, 1 thesis] in 4 semesters). I also worked two jobs (about 15 hours a week at the library and 7 hours a week doing curatorial work), and remained committed to maintaining a creative voice (updating this blog). Also had to, you know, do laundry, locate and prepare provisions, and socialize. I incorporated technology as my organ during this time, and survived as a result of it. I am a minimalist; I hate having tons of operations running at the same time, clogging up valuable processing speed all in the name of making one arbitrary task 10% less complicated. The following, however, constitute apps that I used all the fucking time. These are all free apps, by the way, because I am always fucking broke. 

1. "Alfred" by Running With Crayons LTD

This is the best application for MacOSX. Ever. It is an application launcher, which is exactly what it sounds like. The thing is basically a search bar that pops up when you hit space+alt. Not only can you open apps with it, but you can define words, perform calculations, shorten urls, search google/bing/amazon/whatever, search your harddrive for both locations and files, and on and on. Alfred is highly customizable, intelligent (it gets better at predicting what you want to do the more you use it), and best of all, spares you from opening unnecessary apps and windows.  


2. Skim by Sourceforge

For two of my classes this semester I was required to purchase zero books in lieu of having hundreds upon hundreds of digital .pdf files to read instead. Economical (thanks profs), but printing fucking sucks, everyone knows that. If you're looking for any meaningful engagement with this already-mundane form of reading, Adobe Reader won't do shit for you. Skim, on the other hand, allows you to highlight (or underline!), annotate, and organize all of your markings and comments. Soon I'll forget what my own handwriting looks like.


3. Dropbox by Dropbox

You probably already know about this by now, but in case you don't: an internet harddrive. Access files saved to dropbox from any computer with an internet connection. I only saved my school documents to dropbox, so everything important was always backed up (lazy). I also use this app to share files with friends, as you can set-up public folders accessible by invited users. 2GB free, invite your friends for more space.


4. utorrent by BitTorrent

If you haven't learned how to navigate the wide world of torrents yet - I dunno, what the hell? Get with it. You will be too broke to go see movie and concerts in grad school so you'll have to settle for downloading them. Why do I recommend utorrent over transmission? First and most importantly: LIGHT. LIGHT. LIGHT. Will not interfere with anything! Also: customizable, easy, fast, fast, fast.

5. caffeine by lighthead

Keeps your mac from dimming the screen every 30 seconds of disuse. Because sometimes, staring vacantly at a half-finished paper requires hours of illuminated focus.


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Kitsch or Art? Guessing Game

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A series of questions designed to gauge your aesthetic sensibility. Structure is dualistic\either/or, usually.

>>>> question one

Which magazine would you prefer to read/look at with interest?

The New Yorker

-or-

jodi.org

>>>>>question two

Which mode of highly-organized Western music appeals to you?

Mozart, symphony no. 40 in g minor, 1st movement

-or-

Tchaikovsky, Serenade for Strings in C Major, Op. 48

>>>>>question three

What film is more enjoyable?

The Royal Tenenbaums 

-or-

Rear Window

>>>>>question four

do you wear thick-framed glasses because your eyesight is so very poor it necessitates a heavy frame to support the weight of your lenses, or do you wear them because it is fashionable?

>>>>>question five

Which graph makes more sense?

-or-

>>>>>question six

Which painting seems "familiar?"

American Gothic / Grant Wood

-or-

Angelus Novus / Paul Klee

master of theology

encountering the apophatic in Hegel, very persuaded by his hesitance to enumerate particulars of the Divine. the Spirit travels in a circuit, evidently. often objects are completing their own definitions, i.e. "thought thinking about itself."

all very interesting, my previous experience with Hegel detailed the aesthetic - or just Art - and Hegel understands it as the third most effective device to communicate the Absolute, only behind Religion and Philosophy, respectively.

this is very reassuring to me, for these are exactly the three areas to which i am most drawn. i anticipate socially-correct colleagues to point out that the supersessionist construction is not only inconsistent but dated, as Hegel seems to have privileged the Greek yet demoted the Jew. no matter.

christianity is not special in its metaphysics, it is arbitrary and game-like.

whenever i become frustrated with the thing i remember that it is being presented to me mostly in formulas, or in some colorful brochure committed to dispensing justice. i remember that as a refined narcissist, the world exists for me to enjoy.

the element of christianity i most enjoy is its portrayal in film and literature. to appreciate those modes one must accure a bit of experience though, but not religious experience, just the witness of an executed vision, a masterpiece unto itself without the amendments of a thousand tiny voices yelling pieces of splintered scripture as if the whole was always too much for them.

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Working Thesis.

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for those of you who were asking about my thesis: this is the bare-bones precis.

"My final project pivots on the words “original” and “translation:” I am interested in translations of portraits that break stylistically and theologically from their archetype. The two archetypes and their translations I will be analyzing in this project are:

1.      Albrecht Durer’s 1500 Munich Self-Portrait, for which I have selected my object analysis 1. (translation of Christ Pantocrator)

2.      Francis Bacon’s 1953 portrait of Pope Innocent X, for which I have selected my object analysis 2. (translation of Diego Velazquez’s 1650 portrait of Innocent X)

I am interested in telling the story of these translations of religious art. I do not wish to merely compare the original to the translation, but I want to show how the original informs its translation and how the translation completes the original. My theoretical platform, therefore, approaches the correspondence as one that could operate within a number of historical trajectories. Specifically, I am interested in the overlap of two histories: a stylistic/artistic one and a theological one. I hope that in telling the story of these pieces of art, the reader also hears a religious story. I wish to communicate that visual literacy informs, supplements, and, at its greatest heights, is theological literacy.

I will mainly be using Benjamin to organize my paper. The two essays I have in mind are “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” and “The Task of the Translator.” I also anticipate drawing upon other aesthetic texts that envision art (or everything) historically – so Germanic aesthetics mostly. Lessing, Hegel, Nietzsche, Adorno, etc. are possibilities.

Also, I am in the habit of titling my papers after I have finished them, so unfortunately I do not have a title yet." 

Velazquez/Bacon

Christ Pantocrator/Durer