Confidence Trick

A confidence trick or confidence game (also known as a bunko, con, flim flam, gaffle, grift, hustle, scam,scheme, swindle or bamboozle) is an attempt to defraud a person or group by gaining their confidence. The victim is known as the mark, the trickster is called a confidence man, con man, confidence trickster, grifter, orcon artist, and any accomplices are known as plants. Confidence men or women exploit characteristics of the human psyche such as greed, both dishonesty and honesty, vanity, compassion, credulity, irresponsibility,naïveté, and the thought of trying to get something of value for nothing or for something far less valuable.

This is just a definition but it relates to something someone at the writing center said to me about my work making me a "visual con artist." This idea had prompted me to look into some ideas about deception and the concept of truth in general. This also connects with some earlier ideas I've worked with involving relativity.

Unidentified Notes

I wrote this in my notebook and don't remember where I got it from:

"They come for the shock value (freak show) but they stay because there's more to it than they expected."

I think this applies to my work a lot. I think a lot of what I make has an initial shock value but thats not exactly why I make it. I like people to be initially interested maybe for that reason, but then be surprised that the idea behind the piece is actually well thought out and more than existed at first look. This causes me to over think a lot of my work but I think I am generally happy with the meticulous way I do my work.

Jeff Wall

Jeff Wall

I really like this image, especially in regards to the last post I made about disorder and chaos. The idea that disorder is a force that occurs, that must be worked against. This photograph starts to touch on some of those ideas, something I am probably going to try to work with in the future.

Taking notes from my Bio textbook

"Disorder spreads through the universe and life alone battles against it"

Entropy: a measurement of randomness and disorder in a system (entropy always increases, a tendency that can be overcome by adding E)

*Disorder and chaos exist and thrive only when effort is put into reversing this trend can a change be made.