1. Immediate Context: “Necessary Edges: Arts, Empathy, and Education” was published in January of 2014 through an new online news/blog site created through a partnership of two established companies. The website, WorldPost, has head many well known contributors including Tesla founder, Elon Musk. The writer of this article, Yo-Yo Ma, is a Harvard educated man and a successful musician whose been awarded multiple Grammys.
2. Imposed Context: I am going into this article after just writing a paper supporting the usefulness of art. Therefore I will probably agree with most of Ma’s views. My purpose for reading this article is to see how Ma views the role of art in todays world.
3. Internal Context: The purpose of this article is to show that todays world has gone too far to the science end of the science-art spectrum. To obtain the worlds full potential, and avoid uncertain doom, we must try to live further in the middle of this spectrum achieving a balance, or equilibrium.
4. Interface: A surface forming a common boundary of two bodies, spaces, or phases.
5. Meridians: A set of pathways in the body along which vital energy is said to flow.
6. Virtuosos: A person highly skilled in music or another artistic pursuit.

Before:

1:Another example, is from the TED Talk, “How Painting can transform communities”, with Haas and Hahn. These two individual sent a positive message through their city wide mural whose message reached much farther than the town itself.

2:The EA argues that art is just for an individual, however that just isn’t true.

After:

1:Another example, is from the TED Talk, “How Painting can transform communities”, with Haas and Hahn. Their work resulted in the headline from The Guardian “ Notorious slum becomes open-air gallery”(Haas 1:57). These two individuals were able to send a positive message through their city wide mural whose message reached much farther than the town itself.

2:The EA argues that art is just for an individual, “Artists, meanwhile, paint the beautiful landscape in front of them while the rest of the world burns”(Southan 437). The EA argues that artists don’t care about others and don’t benefit them, however this just isn’t true.

Notes:

These two quotations are the beginning of my large revision process. My free draft had evidence but no supporting quotes. This made it easy to go in and find quotes that would solidify my evidence and overall strengthen my paper. This is the main step in my revision process. To add quotes I used the ‘sandwich’ technique from “They Say, I Say”. This means a introduced my quote, put in the quote, and then followed up my quote and connected it to my essay. Using this technique I have been able to increase the quality of my essay.

Before:

Introduction:

We find it everywhere. From the streets we walk to the web we surf, art is all around us. In fact, it is hard to imagine a world without any art at all. However, is art actually useful, or is it a waste of time? An organization called Effective Altruism would argue that art is a self-indulgent waste of time. Fuelled by a motto of happiness and long life, the EA ( Effective Altruists ) would say there are much better ways to spend your time. But are they right? For an example, friends Haas and Hahn were able to change whole communities using nothing but art. So back to the question, is art a waste of time? Absolutely not, and those who say it is don’t really understand the power of art. Art can inspire, teach, or bring change. It is a tool available to all of mankind. To argue art is a waste of time would be just as absurd as calling math or science a waste of time. Art is just as capable of purpose as the actions of the EA.

Body Paragraph 1:

Art is capable of being a powerful form of communication. Art, whether it be a form of writing, a painting, or a play. Is capable of sending messages various crowds of people. For an example, the Catholic church had numerous paintings commissioned in order to spread biblical stories. Another example, is from the TED Talk with Haas and Hahn. These two individual sent a positive message through their city wide mural whose message reached much farther than the town itself. These two examples both display two key points about arts potential  in communication. First, art is capable of sending a message. And second, communication from art can be extremely influential and widespread. The message art sends can reach people all across the world and even from different time periods. Overall, art is one of the best long-term forms of communication.

After:

We find it everywhere. From the streets we walk to the web we surf, art is all around us; from the city streets, to the music in our phones. In fact, it is hard to imagine a world without any art at all. However, is art actually worth our time? An organization called Effective Altruism would argue that art is a self-indulgent waste of time. Fueled by a motto of happiness and long life, the EA ( Effective Altruists ) would say that getting a high paying money and donating a large amount of your income would be a much better use of your time. But are they right? For an example, friends Haas and Hahn were able to change whole communities using nothing but art. So back to the question, is art a waste of time? Absolutely not, and those who say it is don’t really understand the power of art. I believe art can inspire, teach, or bring change. It is a tool available to all of mankind. To argue art is a waste of time would be just as absurd as calling math or science a waste of time. Art is just as capable of purpose as the actions of the EA.

Body Paragraph 1:

Art is capable of being a powerful form of communication. Art, whether it be a form of writing, a painting, or a play, is capable of sending messages to various crowds of people. For an example, the Catholic church had numerous paintings commissioned in order to spread biblical stories. Another example, is from the TED Talk, “How Painting can transform communities”, with Haas and Hahn. These two individual sent a positive message through their city wide mural whose message reached much farther than the town itself. These two examples both display two key points about arts potential  in communication. First, art is capable of sending a message. And second, communication from art can be extremely influential and widespread. The message art sends can reach people all across the world and even from different time periods. Overall, art is one of the best long-term forms of communication; it is able to reach across the globe and can travel through thousands of years.

Notes:

First off let me say editing may paragraphs was much more challenging then I first imagined. I had a sense of pride over my first draft, so to change it was quite a task. However I was able to bring myself to begin my edits. The Little Seagull Handbook reiterated what my peers said; I should work on how the sentences really contribute to my main point. In my head my sentences connected, but the reader could not see this connection. This meant rewording sentences to make more sense to the reader. Another suggestion my peers gave was adding evidence and giving context on Southan’s article. However, I am going to address these issues later in my revision process because I want to see where different quote and the context on Southan will fit the best and make the most sense.

As a begin to revise my first paper, my main goal it to argue the value and purpose of art in a clear and concise way. By using evidence from the text, my ideas should be well formed and supported. Having an idea of my main goal will help me begin to make smaller revisions in order to achieve it.

The First step I would like to take is to look over my notes from the original reading of the text. By going back through my notes I will be able to find quotes that stuck out to me. I will then be able to use these quotes as evidence in my essay in order to strengthen my main ideas. I see this step as my largest challenge because the size of the text makes it harder to quickly find specific quotes however, my summary and notes on eportfolio should help me go back and find ideas from the text.

Second, I am going to better describe the Peter Singer analogy in a way the reader will truly understand its purpose in my essay. Right now it feels as though it doesn’t truly fit in. In order to better utilize the analogy I will first go back an look at my notes to brush up on its argument. Next, I will write the analogy and my main argument on paper and brainstorm connections between the two. After that I should have a better idea on how to incorporate it into my essay.

Lastly, I am going to go through my essay and make sure all my connections, ideas, and sentences make sense and serve a purpose to my argument. My main tool here is going to be my peer reviews. My peers gave excellent feedback on sentences that didn’t quite fit in or sound right. By looking at their advice I should be able to correct most of these awkward sentences. I will then finish it up by proofreading multiple times and make sure my ideas don’t just make sense to me, but my audience as well.

During the revision process I may get stuck or run out of ideas. If that happens I have multiple tools to get me going again. The little seagull handbook is an excellent resource help me through the revision process. Another excellent source of help would be going to my teacher or peers. Overall, I am confident that I have the tools I need to revise and strengthen my essay.

Using the three main categories of ideas, evidence, and organization, I was able to give helpful feed back on my peer’s essays. First, for the idea category, I suggested my peer strengthen her thesis statement. While she had a general main idea, it wasn’t as concise as a thesis should be. Second, for the evidence category, I suggested that my peer should use less of the text because it started to become more of a summary than actual evidence. Lastly, for the category of organization, I suggested that my peer make a new paragraph because she tried to fit two big ideas into one paragraph. I felt like separating these ideas into two paragraphs would help it flow better.

I felt that being able to focus on global edits rather than local edits really helped me to understand my peer’s thoughts. Instead of being invested in superficial writing errors like grammar, I was able to really get into the message of the essay. This allowed me to understand my peer’s main ideas and in turn give big picture feedback instead of smaller feedback that could probably be easily caught by a quick proofread.

Being able to critique my peer’s writing was an interesting experience. In the process I was able to tell that many of my peers have views on art as me. It also felt like by critiquing their writing I will be more prepared to critique my own writing. I have also been able to look at the pros and cons of my peers writing and keep that in mind during my writing process. For an example I know that I need to make sure I’m writing about my opinion and not the opinions of the texts. I found that some of the writing I critiqued focused only on what the text was saying. I also was reminded to have a hook, summary, and thesis in my introduction. Overall, I felt like the critiquing process gave my peers and me some valuable feedback for our essays.

The Ted Talk I chose to summarize was “How painting can transform communities”. What Haas and Hahn argued in their TED Talk was that art can change people. Now they specifically used painting communities as an example. They start by acknowledging that cities across the world have problems from crime to poverty. As a result these cities get judge and judgment causes the people to react a certain way. This is a tragedy, but Haas and Hahn explain how these communities can goes through massive change. They use multiple examples to examine how art, more specifically painting these cities, can bring the community together and change their image in a positive way. During they’re trips, Haas and Hahn were able to use art to bring people together, change negative views, and build communities. Overall, Haas and Hahn demonstrate how they believe art is important.

Southan’s article “Is Art a Waste of Time”, mostly touches on the beliefs of the Effective Altruism organization. The EAs ( Effective altruists ) believe art has little to no place in todays world. They argue art is usually a self-indulgent act and therefore a waste of time. In the EA’s eyes, all time should be spent doing the greatest amount of good possible. The usually means getting the best job you can, and donating as much money as possible to charity. Any activities like hobbies and games are morally wrong because people are dying as you waste time. Art would most likely fall under this category because you aren’t making money and you aren’t saving lives. Therefore, in the EA’s world, art is not only a waste of time, but also morally wrong.

I say art has importance in our world. Art has a very big importance. It can change perspectives, inspire others, and better lives. All of this is perfectly shown in the TED Talk I summarized above. While the EA may say art is a waste of time, I say that they don’t truly understand the power of art. Art is so diverse, filled with countless different forms, that it can reach anyone and everyone. A few of the many things art is capable of is communication, bonding, inspiring, teaching, reminding, helping, etc. This is why art is absolutely not a waste of time. If anything art is a necessity and plays a huge role in the human race. Overall I think the TED Talk perfectly rebuttals the EA’s argument of art being wasteful.