Maras Automatist Exercise

Observations—At a quick glance, all four squares show and speak to completely different ideas and societal issues. In square one, symbols that one commonly sees on the side of a road, in a store, or in a panoramic view are depicted. In square two, words that describe an incident without actually telling a story are written. In square three, small pictures that resemble toiletries or daily staples are shown, while the words in the last square all relate to tangible objects.

When I combined all of the boxes, I came up with a narrative in my head. Since the images in the first box look like tools and items used to build, I started the scene on a construction site. Judging by the words in the second box, an accident happened on this site that caused the person working to be rushed to the hospital. Where there, they received potions and other elements to help with their injury, and the words in the last box where the items that this character had in his/her hospital room.

I wouldn’t necessarily characterize the boxes as speaking to a general theme—but I do think that it speaks to the daily routine and way that our society functions that I could take four unrelated boxes and create a narrative that makes sense almost instantly. To me, this represents our nations tendency to live life based off of a schedule, and follow a certain set of rules that dictate how we should function on a daily basis. These four people, who were completely unrelated before they contributed to this sketch, managed to emphasize and contribute to the idea of our collective habit.

This further relates to Lasn’s idea that we’re “in a cult.” While this exercise strayed away from Lasn’s claim that we don’t think but do what we’re told because each square was unique to the artist, we proved Lasn’s theory that our unaware choices are manipulated in that these supposed unrelated squares were used to prove that we, as a society, function on routine. Generally speaking, these squares have to speak to consumerism in that they directly depict and speak to products manufactures in the world. There are hammers, bottles, and words such as horeshoe, torch, blanket, and candy that are trinkets to symbolize the world of goods in which we live in. From an artistic standpoint, this exercise made me realize how much these trinkets are relevant in society because I was able to draw images of goods without looking or even thinking really of what they looked like—their images were embedded in my brain and came as a form of second nature (must like the nature I use to get to my classes everyday, dress myself with clothes from different drawers, etc.)

While this exercise was supposed to remove us from our “media-polluted brain,” the only way that I was able to draw these images was referring to that part of my brain that contained the knowledge of the media and modern society.