Tashas Automatist Exercise

Looking at these four squares, I don’t see really any correlation between them. The first square has small, neat shapes in a line. The second box has a large OUCH inside a pointy bubble. This square was a response to a time when we felt great pain. The large OUCH makes it really easy to understand what that square was about. The third box has a list of things that don’t really seem to be linked with each other at all. The words are “horse”, “ocean”, “hammer”, “checkers” and “rattlesnake.” Hammer and rattlesnake make me automatically think of pain, while with the other words, pain could be apart of them but its not necessarily the first thing I think of. The last square is just a picture of the world with stars. At first I don’t remember what the fourth box was supposed to have in it. This picture of the world did not really tell me anything. Then, I remember that we were supposed to have all the medicine we’ve had in that box.

When I first saw my sheet of four squares I looked and saw that the first one was very similar to what I had written. That made me think about how there is a standard image that comes to most peoples minds when hearing a certain word. To me these four squares don’t really make a story unless I really force one, and even then the story doesn’t make sense. Instead I saw them telling a story separately. The title of this exercise is “Get out of your media-polluted brain exercise.” This title makes me sad because though we want to say we aren’t polluted by the media, subconsciously we really are. The fact that the first square on this sheet is so similar to mine, to me, really emphasizes Lasn’s point of a Consumer society. We drew these shapes as a response to something and some peoples responses were very similar. The 4^th square, which I know was a response to all the medicine we’ve had in our life, could either go against or for Lasn’s point. If the person who drew it had the intention of it mean they’ve had every medicine in the world, it shows how we don’t with for our bodies to heal naturally, but we rely on medication that relieves pain quickly so we can go about our consumer filled days. If they didn’t, what did they mean by the world being their medicine. Do they mean what is natural in the world or do they mean what they buy to make them feel better?

When I first saw that Lasn used the word cult to describe American culture I thought he was pushing it a bit to far, but I am beginning to see where he is getting this idea. I see cults as dangerous and full of brainwashing and killing. When thinking of the American culture as an actual cult I begin to see similarities. There are many killings over power and greed because many people are told to strive for the top and will do anything. I see how people are subconsciously brainwashed just by the 1^st box of this exercise. Me and another person had the same responses because of the connections the media has made and forced into our minds. By replaying adds over and over on TV, in magazines, on billboards, etc we automatically begin to make the same relationships between ideas just because it is always in our face. We might not know we are being “brainwashed” but that’s where the harm is coming from. Its hard to resist when we don’t know its happening in the first place.