I realize that this is a bit of a weird question to allow me to rephrase it, “How does perceptive change one's understanding of the artwork?” MC Escher was a Dutch graphic artist who made mathematically inspired woodcuts, lithographs, and mezzotints. His artwork is famous for its optical illusions and his bizarre use of reflections. While his art is very popular, you may have seen it before but you didn’t realize it was MC Escher’s work, his life remains very vague. Many questions have arisen of what inspired him to create such dream- like works of art.

            A BBC Arts articles delves deeper into the mystery that is MC Escher. This article, titled “'Chaos is present everywhere': The mysterious world of MC Escher” by William Crook (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/1TXskHdW0Hrtng1bYgzRBRf/chaos-is-present-everywhere-the-mysterious-world-of-mc-escher) explains that the reason Escher wasn’t very famous was because he didn’t want to be. He kept to himself and wasn’t interested in fame and celebrity status. He enjoyed a conventional, bourgeois lifestyle. In fact, “When Mick Jagger wrote to him, asking if the Rolling Stones could use one of his pictures as an album cover, Escher turned him down. He’d never heard of the Stones. He’d never heard of Jagger. He objected to Jagger addressing him by his first name.” While Escher had a normal life with his wife and kids, he was shyer with his art. He developed his own style, free from any school or movement; he had more in common with medieval artists than with surrealist contemporaries.

            Again, MC Escher is famous for his optical illusionistic art that incorporates math, with the help of his friend Sir Roger Penrose. Sir Roger Penrose was a young student at Cambridge University when he was attending an academic conference in Amsterdam, at the same time Penrose saw Escher’s show, and loved it. The two became pen pals and Escher was inspired by Penrose’s math so much that he incorporated it into his artwork. There is no real concrete evidence as to how and why he came up with these ideas, but all we know is that MC Escher wanted to challenge our perspective. He wanted us to change the way we looked at things and the way we understood art. He wanted us to question and look at art upside down to see if we found another perspective. Everybody experiences art differently, some may look at it straight and collect the first thought that comes to their mind, while others may spend their time looking at the piece from every angle to see which one best fits them. MC Escher was one of the great artists that question our perceptions of reality.

Music is so diverse, it comes in many different genres; pop, hip-hop, rap, country, gospel, jazz, blues, etc.  There are songs in different languages, different styles (instrumental or lyrical) etc. There are billions of songs in the world, and the number keeps rising. We all have those staple songs that we go to when we want to feel a certain way, whether it’s sad or happy etc. Everybody has their own unique taste in music; the songs they like may not be as appealing to other people. Why is this? Why is it that music makes us feel certain emotions? What is it in music that elicits certain emotions in us? A song may make you feel happy, or sad, it may bring you comfort, it may make you cry.

            BBC started a series where they answered questions asked by their fans. Philip Le Riche asked “Why does music have a hotline to our emotions? What is the evolutionary advantage of this?” And David Robson, BBC Future feature writer answered in a page titled “Why music has a hotline to our emotions” (http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20150918-why-music-has-a-hotline-to-our-emotions). Robson explains that there is no concrete and scientific evidence as to why music is a hotline to our emotions because nobody as a good idea about how music affects us. There have been many theories however, surrounding our attraction to music. One theory is that music makes us more appealing, it makes us stand out from the crowd and more attractive. Another theory is that music makes us feel emotions because when we listen to music, it makes us feel like we are the only ones there, it makes us feel unique and it caters to our needs. A third theory is quite the opposite, where music makes us feel connect to other people, if we listen to music as a group, we would all feel connect to one another because of our bond with that one song. It argues that music creates “social glue” for a community. The final theory is that music is a part of culture; the page brings up the BaBinga people from Central Africa, they have elaborate dances for almost every activity. This shows that music is both cultural and allows a community to create bonds with each other because everyone would participate in the elaborate dances in the BaBinga tribe.

Before photographs and the ability to capture exactly a moment, artists would capture these moments through their art. They would paint things that they could see with their naked eye; landscapes, people, flowers, etc. However, once telescopes and microscopes were invented, people had a better understanding of how the world looks. So, do scientific advancements influence what art is created; do they influence what is painted and how it is painted?

            To clarify with a situation, did the invention and further advancements of the telescope affect how the sky was painted in art during those time periods? Were there more stars painted because we now know that they are out there? With a microscope, were details of faces and bodies more realistic because the people finally understood what was going on in the tiny cells in our bodies? Changes in scientific tools helped people better understand the world and helped them realize what happens and why it happens. In an article by BigThink titled “Scientific Revolutions in Optics Made Vermeer a Revolutionary Painter” (http://bigthink.com/Picture-This/vermeers-revolution-in-seeing?hash=ce934b50-b1ed-4292-8616-2ea2c373cd39), historian-philosopher Laura J. Snyder explored how the camera obscura helped Johannes Vermeer create paintings using a new perspective in her book Eye of the Beholder: Johannes Vermeer, Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, and the Revolution in Seeing. She explained that the camera obscura, which was “a device known that concentrates colors to a chromatic intensity by narrowing the range of brightness, thus allowing the viewer to see colors even in shadows, while transforming a three-dimensional image into two dimensions, thus allowing the viewer to better perceive perspective.” Due to this camera, Vermeer was able to paint paintings that showed the different colors of shadows. Snyder explains this as “What Vermeer was painting was the way the eye actually sees, not the way the mind thinks it sees”. She means that “the mind thinks shadows are black and that lines shouldn’t somehow meet off in the distance, but as modern art had conditioned us to see and perspective has taught us, haystacks with purplish shadows and vanishing points do exist.”

The First Amendment to the United States Constitution states “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances”. Basically, we the people have the freedom of speech and press. However, when does free speech cross into hate speech?

            We had an activity in class where we evaluated three arguments, one of which was about the ethics of speech. The argument stated ‘The government should be empowered to punish people who express racist, sexist, or xenophobic sentiments publicly. Today's society has no place for those kinds of public expressions.” When asked what we thought about this, if we agreed with it or not, there were a variety of answers. Some people said that the right for someone to express their opinion has to be supported, even if their opinion is bigoted and ignorant.  While others disagreed, including myself to some extent. Our class discussion only scratched the surface of a much bigger and deeper ethical debate.

            In a BCC news article, titled ‘A Point of View: Why we should defend the right to be offensive’ (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-34613855) argues that free speech can uncomfortable, but it needs to be defended even when it gives offence to others. The article brings up the Racial and Religious Hatred Act of 2006, an act made by the Parliament of the United Kingdom. The act states that it is an offence to stir up hatred towards religious and racial groups. However, the term ‘stir up hatred’ is very transparent. Something someone considers hatred might not be considered hate by another. Who gets the final say in what is hate and what is not? Is it the judge? If so, that is the opinion of one person, thus being extremely biased and subjective. What about if it’s a majority vote? If so, then the population would need to be very diverse and well represented in order to objectively vote on the matter. What about if the person ‘stirring up hatred’ didn’t realize that they were? Are they still technically charged with a crime, even if they didn’t not intend to hate?

            In any law or act of this sort, there needs to be a clear cut set of rules and actions that are defined as hate. There needs to be no loophole or contradiction between any of these definitions of hate because then the argument becomes invalid because of said contradictions. Overall, I personally become very confused when I try to pick sides to ethical arguments, such as this one, because I feel like there are different situations that should require different punishments (in this case for example). I think this is common with ethical arguments because many people have trouble figuring out what side they choose, because everyone has personal biases. Whether because of culture, personal knowledge, opinions ect.

On May 9th visitors at the Yellowstone National Park brought a newborn bison calf to a park facility because they were concerned for the calf’s welfare. When park rangers tried to reunite the calf with its family, they could not get it back with the herd after several tries. "The bison calf was later euthanized because it was abandoned and causing a dangerous situation by continually approaching people and cars along the roadway," the park said in a statement. The reason that the park could not release the calf into the wild or care for it themselves is because the calf couldn’t be shipped out of the park for months because of a quarantine required to prevent the possible spread of brucellosis (a bacterial disease typically affecting cattle and buffalo and causing undulant fever in humans) and also, the park doesn’t have the resources to care for a calf that long. The visitors cited for touching park wildlife and fined $110.

There is much controversy around the topic of euthanizing or ‘putting down’ an animal, especially if it is healthy. Those who believe that it is in the best interest of an animal to be put down would be following a consequentialistic or utilitarianistic ethical standpoint because they would think that the rightness or wrongness of an action is determined by the amount of pleasure or happiness it creates compared to the amount of harm and pain inflicted. They are looking at the outcome, rather than the action, whatever action results in the best outcome for everyone. However, one problem that can arise with this is ‘best outcome for whom?’ For example, if a dog was healthy but a family just could not care for it anymore and they wanted to euthanize it, would that be acceptable in a consequentialistic sense? Putting down an animal that is healthy is not the best outcome for the animal, but it is for the family. I guess then in this case, majority rules in a way, it is better to please 100 people than 10. Conversely, the opposite theory would be Deontology, where one needs to do the morally correct action, regardless of the consequences. These people would look more at what they are doing in okay rather than if the outcome if acceptable. In this case, a person would not euthanize the animal, even if it affects the family badly because the act of euthanizing a healthy animal is considered immoral.

Journalistic objectivity is a principle of journalistic professionalism. It requires journalists to be objective, accurate and investigative in the way they presents information and relays facts to the public; rather than subjective and biased. But the question is should journalists have the ability to take sides in their piece? After all, they are doing all this research to compose an article, somewhere along the way; they must have formed an opinion on the matter or have chosen a side. This is where ethics and morality comes in; would journalists be fooling the public in some way if they published articles that favored the side that the journalists themselves support?

There are many arguments for journalistic objectivity, one of them being that journalists represent the company they write for. For example, if Fox News publishes an article that is pro- Donald Trump, many people are going to see it as if Fox News supports Donald Trump (they probably do but that’s beside the point), rather than just the journalist supporting Donald Trump themselves. What journalists write and what gets published is reflected on the company as a whole, not just the person writing the article. This leads to problems because if a journalist writes a piece that conflicts with the company’s existing values and morals, and gets published, it can cause controversy around the company because people will say that they are being a hypocrite by showing themselves one thing but publishing an article or something that directly clashes with their already publicized perspective. Rather than getting mad at the journalist, society will get mad at the company for approving this is be published and represented as the thoughts of the company as a whole.

But, should journalists have the freedom to put their own two cents into a piece so that it has sustenance, and is not just pages of straight facts. In my opinion, I believe that journalists should have the right to be subjective in their work and write about what they want to write, but they should do it through a private platform such as a blog, not on a public, social level such as a magazine; especially if it conflicts with the view set by the company they work for. A different side to this argument is seen in an article written by Giles Fraser for The Guardian. His article argues that if journalists don’t show their emotions in work, they are not giving the public the whole picture. It argues that writing, especially journalism is about emotion and portraying that emotion through words, so that the reader can also feel the same emotion. I think untimely it’s up to the reader if they want to read subjective work or work that is objective.

            I watched a movie several years ago called “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” which is a 2004 American romantic science-fiction comedy-drama movie. The summary of this movie is as follows: After a painful breakup, Clementine undergoes a procedure to erase memories of her former boyfriend Joel from her mind. When Joel discovers that Clementine is going to extremes to forget their relationship, he undergoes the same procedure and slowly begins to forget the woman that he loved. This movie explores the implications of trying to erase memories, even ones that seem bad in the moment. In the movie, while Joel is getting his memories erased, he relives them and realizes that he doesn’t want to completely forget Clementine; he wants some memories to remember her by. I came across a very interesting article when I was looking for more information on this movie (http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-06/02/restoring-memories). It is about in 2014, when scientists reported that they’d successfully manipulated mice’s memories, or at least the emotions associated with those memories. We form the informational part of our memories—the facts and events—in the hippocampus of our brain. The emotions connected to them—how we feel about those facts and events—are stored in the amygdale. Scientists messed with these mice’s amygdale and basically reversed how they “felt” about prior lab experiences, changing an unpleasant event into a pleasant one, and vice versa. Then, the scientists were quick to point out that while this could be useful in erasing a person’s negative emotions about something in their past (PTSD, for example), it would be a bad idea to actually make them forget that these events had happened because they would be losing important memories.

            The main reason people would want to erase any bad memories is because they don’t want to remember any tough time in their lives. However, it is these tough times that help us grow, we experience these hardships and learn from them. If we were to completely erase it, we would be creating holes in our growth. For example, on an extreme level, let’s say that you wanted to erase all your memories of high school because they were the worst four years of your life; okay so you do, wouldn’t you then also lose all your knowledge that you gained from school those years? You would forget geometry, algebra, biology etc. Wouldn’t this then be a regression? Also, let’s say you need to later remember something that happened during high school, you wouldn’t be able to. Memories are the building blocks to our knowledge; you need to be very careful when trying to move even one, because everything could be disturbed.