The image is real to people who have grown up with this image, before the internet people who played video game get their sources magazine or cover art  to show them what the game could be  about.  The image that was shown on my last blog was a popular among the video game player  as they were  deceived by the cover of the game.

The people that would not care are the younger generation, mainly kids that have access to the internet.  The internet  can provided them with all the information needed to know about the game, so instead of being able to look at the image they are looking up different media to get a sense of what the game is about.  Another reason that they would not care is that the character of the art does not match the modern image of that game with the same name today.  They are being fed with a different image for a different generation.

it doesn’t give me any feeling about the game as the image comes up as a joke, and I didn’t know that the cover look like that when the game came out, I was just able to come across the image when I research the character name. today  the picture is considered to be a joke since the image have  nothing to do with the game.  The developers of the image know that the cover was considered  to be a joke today, so they paid homage to the cover by creating a cover for their recent game with the same style and misleading image.

The Things We See Hides The Truth

the cover art for the first Mega Man game

 

What we see in this video game cover shows what games should be all about: they advertise to people the games with their cover.  Back then we wouldn’t be able to know what the games is about because the internet didn’t exist at that time and so the only way of trying to figure out what the game was about was by looking at the box art and that gave us an  idea of what the game could be about.

The one media that I decided to pick to discuss about is the art cover of one Nintendo game called Mega Man.  Mega Man was brought out in America in the 1987.  The game came out in the Japanese market first and when they brought it out to the  American market,  they completely changed the cover of the game to appeal to this specific market.

Fact  - From what we see from the cover it should show what we get to see with what we are able to see in the game.  We see that this  is a futuristic game and we would believe that the hero of our game would be the one on the cover - an old person wearing blue and yellow and uses a gun as his main weapon.

Inference – if you have played the game then you would know that the biggest change that you would see is the character, as we see in the actual game,  the character is blue, instead of  blue and yellow.  Another thing that we would find out when we play the game is that the character does not use a gun.  The gun did not even exist in the game and the character uses an armed cannon.  Basically the art cover is a complete lie because what we see on the cover art does not exist in the game itself at all.

Judgments – from what we can see on the cover art, the game seems to be a shooting game and since this is an old Nintendo game it’s going to be a 2D side scrolling game.  With the gold saucers in the background,  the game can also be a plat former.  We can hopefully see all the things we see on the cover in the actual game itself.

Photos to Look Good

Christine Rosen argues in “The Image Culture” that in digital media and photo imagery people are given the power to alter any type of pictures.  Her writing Rosen talks about how anyone can use this program and exploit it to their liking as she describes it in her writing “(like inexpensive cameras and picture-editing software) that give almost everyone the power to create, distort, and transmit images”.  Everyone can alter any picture, including me.  I had the experience of altering images myself when I took pictures for a group of people and altered  the picture to make them look as good as possible.  My friend was so impressed with my work that she wanted to learn how to do it herself. 

With technology becoming more and more advanced, it makes photography more accessible to everyday people as well.  Before the invention of cameras, we looked at images through paintings and sculptures.  As cameras became popular, paintings and sculptures were replaced with photos and artists seemed to move on to create more abstract works.  Images through the lens made a great advancement through black and white.  Even though at that time there were no computers, photographers were still able to alter images.   It might not be as easy as using Photoshop but it was still doable.  People then started catching on and realized that pictures can be altered and they cannot always believe what they see.  However, they allow themselves to be thrown into believing the images are real.  When I was a child, I would think most of the pictures I see represented what things really looked like.  As I grew older, I came to the realization that most pictures I see everywhere were altered and modified.  Some people enjoy looking at real and altered pictures to see if they are fake or not.  I like looking at these pictures as well but not for the purpose of looking at them to determine if they are fake or not.  When I look at these photos, I like to find out the techniques that are put to use to alter  the photos.  I have done a lot of alteration in the pictures I took, yet I have not been able to alter them to such degrees that subjects in the photo look completely different.  People may see a fake photo but they should not simply determine if they have been altered or not.  Instead, they should try to understand the photos themselves and how are they able to make them look completely different from the original images.

Looiking Back at Yourself

 

Hot Tub Time Machine: cast looking at their young self in the mirror 

“We look at the present through a rear-view mirror.  We march backwards into the future.  Suburbia lives imaginatively in bonanza-land.”  i always thought that quote to be realistic in my point of view as, I believe that everyone would have an experience of the what if moment where we look back in our past that was good in our lives.  People would look back at what they did that would seem fun, and they would go through that experience by going to a place that would remind them of that moment by going skiing or other recreational activities that would remind them of the things done in the past.  People would have to wonder also of the things they have done in the past that what would happen if the choices they made in the past were different than the things they have done.

I always look back in the days where everything in my life were much more simpler.  As we go on in to the future I become more envious of what has happened in the past that I would try to recreate the experience.  In my own experience I had a special memory with my friends when we were young where we would go bike riding all the way around Westlake park every month, but as time passes by we grew apart and the months of bike riding ended as my friends that accompanied me bike riding either went and did something else or move out of town.  As I go on towards in my life I would always call up one or the other to catch up and have a bike ride back to the lake as a way to catch up and to see what my friends were doing.  Sometime I would think what would happen if I have done something differently, would I still have my friends going bike riding every month, would I have them as friends or would I have found different friends to hang out with, or would I just not have friends at all.  As people move on towards the future people tend to still live in the past by doing activities that would remind them of the past

Face to Face Communication on Facebook

The social network has become a pop culture revolution, this social media has made people more or less connected with each other since the people who use social network such as facebook or twitter. Usually people would communicate through social network rather than a conversation face to face. I believe that communication through social network makes us less social as some people would describe their lives in a blog or social journals. With social journals they have their lives posted online which communicate to the friends or readers about their day. I had an experience where my friend has a twitter, and when I called him to talk he would then ask me, “have you read my blog” or “go read my blog”. I have always hated it when he tells me to go read his blog because it makes me care less about his life if I’m not hearing it from him personally. I feel less connected to him if since I’m not hearing his voice. The other problem I have with social network is that knowing everything about my friends’ life without them telling me makes me feel like I’m spying on them or stalking them, so when I see them in person I would know everything that’s going on in their lives. I would always think that they would question me on how I know so much about them. Eventually though, I got used to the idea of people using social network such as facebook or twitter and even though I may not like the ideas of how social networking works, I would always suggest to some of my friends to humor me about what they did last weekend. I just have to get used to the fact that we are living in an age where people are comfortable sharing their lives to the millions of readers online.

My Cave and My Friend

Plato’s analogy of the cave can be related to everyone in many different ways, such example is my own experience toward another person.  A few years back, I firmly believed that I can help people out by trying my best to encourage them reach their goal.  When I was still in community college and fresh out of high school, I always had the dream that I would continue my schooling with one of my close friends, Mr. K.  Mr. K had shown interest in attending collage but did not have as strong the desire to go as I did.  I thought  that hleping him out would help him get his act together.  What had ended up happening was that I would give Mr. K rides from his house to school.  As time passed, he ended up quitting going to classes, and for years I had put my own education to a slower pace in order to get him to go.  However, the results would always be fruitless.  I had always thought that I could get him to go to school but later on i realized that the end result will always be the same and that I cannot change him and the only person that would change him would be himself.  In the end, I had no choice but to quit on him and shifted the focus more on my own studies. I would only hope that in the future Mr. K will change his way of thinking.  

I can relate several of Plato’s symbols in his allegory cave to my experience with my friend.  Starting off with the idea of the cave, I think that I was the one in that cave since I was so confident in getting Mr. K back to school but ended up failing, and my shadow would be my ego as it got the best of me saying that I can be the one that can get him back to school and so I became my own prisoner.  The puppeteer would be myself since I let myself be convinced that I can help my friend out.  When I was exposed to the things that I’ve been doing I realized that all those efforts I have put into helping him never worked, and this path I took prevented me from going  forward with my own life.  I was blinded by the fact that I could make a difference in Mr. K’s  life and by giving up on him brought me sadness and pain knowing that nothing will change¸ leaving him to his self-destruction.  Knowing gave me a sense of freedom, and the things Mr. K did give me was the realization of things I should not do in life and I would try to avoid what he has done so I can move on.  In the end I have to return knowing the fact that my friend would always be the same and the only way for him to change is by helping him help his own self.

What Students Learnd from their Piers

“living in an underground den, which has a mouth open towards the light and reaching all along the den here they have been from their childhood, and have their legs and necks chained so that they cannot move, and can only see before them, being prevented by the chains from turning around their needs.”  In Plato’s words he is trying to word out that ever since our childhood we are grounded down in terms of the things we want to learn and we were only taught what was provided.  One idea that came across can be used to describe how elementary school kids would go to school and the teachers would teach them the things that lead them to believe to be true.  Teachers would be teaching the history about Thanksgiving and the students were taught at a young age to believe the American colonists aided the Native Americans and celebrated that day as a reminder of how Native Americans helped out the American colonists.  As students grow older and move on to the next grade such as middle school and high school, the restriction of them learning has been lifted and they are now able to learn that what they were told were not completely true.  The students would figure out that the things that they have learned from elementary school was a lie and what they learn from middle school was harder to believe because what they learned from elementary does not match up to the things they learned in middle school.  Plato explained that “At first, when any of them is liberated and compelled suddenly to stand up and turn his neck around and walk and look towards the light, he will suffer sharp pains; the glare will distress him…” when people learn the truth about things they would find it harder to believe that it would be true like when a friend had died, it would be hard to believe that that person is dead because they have just seen him alive the other day.  Just like in school when the whole truth is revealed to students about Thanksgiving and how the American colonists fought and killed Native Americans to gain control their land and forced them into the reservations.  Students are surprised that the truth could be different from what they have learned in elementary and find it difficult to take in, because they were taught something different.  Eventually students will find out that most of Americans’ history are violent and later on accept that those are the actual facts.  It would be a shock to them at first but as they quickly learn they are enlightened and are able to see a clearer picture, and later they would no longer be surprised by what have happened but would be more open to gain a deeper understanding in the things around them.