Amy Nelsen

 
 
   
 


Point A and 1/2

When working to accomplish a task, people rarely "start from scratch." Rather, they get from Point A to Point B by depending on a series of predeterimed assumptions and "facts". Once an idea or fact has been solidified in culture, people rarely question why it came into being, who thought of it, and what made it acceptable. Afterall, who decided that the letter A should look like:

A?



Or that a minute would be sixty-seconds long, or that what we consider science is valid, while those strange incidences in Scandinavia and Africa--black rains, lake monsters, ghost sightings--are, not only invalid, but the fuel of the foolish?

For whatever reason they were created, these ideas have become the building blocks of daily life, giving us a leg-up to that lofty Point B. These are blackboxes. Over the course of this semester, my projects focused on two things: the validity of certain blackboxes and what goes on inside them. That is, what happens at Point A and 1/2?

   
           

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