Jenny's Automatist Exercise

Each square was approached in a completely different sense. Some included drawings and stories, while others included writing and ideas. The first of the four boxes includes a baseball, a crab, and headphones, TV. When given terms, these are the shapes that came about. The next, regarding the injury, is a series of words and arrows, giving us a sense of the event but not full details. The third box lists superstition, growth, boundary, target, and natural world as responses to the shapes drawn on the blackboard. The final square depicts a pillbox dispensing pills into a pill bottle regarding their memory of medicine.

To my surprise, these squares become a narrative when you see them all together. The first square includes a baseball and a bat (among many other shapes). The square to the right depicts an incident involving a rock and a baseball, ending in a cut and blood. The underlying idea of exercise, sports, and baseball is clearly seen in between these two stories. It is intriguing, because the baseball and bat were just objects floating in the first image, but become part of a story in the second. The result of the incident was blood and injury, which directly correlates with the medical image below in the next box. Though pills aren’t directly used to cure cuts, there is a clear relationship between injury and medicine. And finally, next to this medicine lies a box with words that do not relate to each other, but can be related to medicine in many ways. Superstition, growth and boundaries all apply to situations that can compromise or enhance human life. People cross boundaries and sometimes get hurt. If they are hurt, they grow and improve to feel better.

These bits of information are not separate chapters of a story, but incidents of cause and effect. Specifically, we can classify them as injury and cure. To be specific, I have split each of the pieces of information on this piece of paper (disregarding the lines) into these categories. Injury includes baseball bat, crab, baseball, playground, spin, rock, ground, cut, blood, superstitions, boundaries, target. All of these objects can be dangerous, lead to a disaster, or are associated with danger and injury. That leaves us with headphones, television, parents, candy, medicine, growth and the natural world. When someone is recovering from an injury, they take support from their loved ones, relax with music and movies, and hope to grow from both medicine and faith.

Composition wise, as a piece, the paper has a nice balance between image and text. Two boxes are solely image, and two are solely text. It is interesting, because the text and image create a pattern being that they are aligned in diagonals. The images are more abstract in that they come with less information, and the series of words are more informative. The balance between ink and led is also a visually interesting, but has no relation to the content of the boxes.

Not every piece of every box has an underlying meaning relating to consumerism, but some do more than others. The baseball and bat, and playground are eye openers, in that they show a progression in our society. When asked to describe our first injury, this person described one in that he or she was outside, in nature, playing at the playground with a baseball and bat, causing her injury. This made me remember of my childhood, where we were not very influenced by video games and television. We spent much more time outside. Cuts and scrapes were the types of injuries that we encountered, because of our experiences outside. Now days, kids are more likely to get brain injuries from staring at the computer or watching the microwave pop their popcorn. Consumerism is most definitely a driving factor in this progression. This goes for medicine as well. We don’t associate the healing with the actual contents of the pill (the herbs and chemicals and materials that are actually going inside of us), but with the coated caplet and pill bottle that they are in. When you walk into a drug store, these are what you recognize and associate with medicine. The packaging of containers and advertisements in hospitals and doctors offices has changed our perception of medicine. It is readily accessible, and not difficult to attain. Consumption, and production has made this possible.

The actual exercise (as opposed to the results of the exercise) did not seem to me as anything cult-like. Yes, we did follow instructions, because that is what school is to us. We learn from teachers, take exams, and follow their lead in order to grow and change. I don’t feel that consumerism has caused this. Yes, it is a factor in the way in which students obey their teachers because of the new attitudes of our youth, but it is not something that is unoriginal or different to us. We have much experience in agreeing to go along with instructions, and I do not feel as though it was ‘manipulation’ as Lasn would say. I even think that some people work better under direction. Hearing what they should do, or having a specific time frame in which they can do it often gives them a drive to do better or more efficiently.

Lasn, Kalle. Culture Jam: The Uncooling of America. New York: Eagle Brook, 1999