Manipulating Change

Manipulating Change: A Separate Blog on the Surrealist Game Led by Shawna Avila, Mariella Cantu and Yesenia Maldonado. Follow the link.

Would you Open the Door

This game is used with five or more players, each with pencil and paper. Players were asked to imagine there is a knock at the door, they open it and recognising the visitor they must make an immediate decision to either let the visitor in or close the the door. What they decided and why? Each player takes it in turn to announce the visitors name, and the others write either yes or no and a brief comment which must be the first thing that occurs to them. The visitor may be famous, living or dead; or someone known to all the players. Results are read out and compared. Group members were asked if they would open the door to Miley Cyrus,Theron Frances, George Bush, and Hitler.

Results :

Miley Cyrus- NO!, shes too young, cause her voice is annoying, because she brings the party to the USA.

T.Frances-Yes!, to help revise my paper, extra credit, yes for coffee and stories, No because I want to sleep (joke).

George Bush- No he seems really boring, yes to talk about stuff, I'd throw a shoe at him, He stole our money.

Hitler- No, he's an evil man, Yes to shave his mustache then kick him out, yes to explore his evil mind, yes to ask what barbershop he went to.

Most students contained a significant difference in opinion including a not like the person, wanted only extra credit, and some humours replies were made. This game is used to gather ideas towards a story line while comparing and contrasting differences through a group of students.

Definitions, Questions and Answers

this game is for two of more players the directions are:

a question is written down and the paper is folded and hidden from the second player, the second player then writes the answer with out seing the question, when both are revealed the results are amazing... some are funny and some make you think

the point of this game is to see with what the other player can come up with and these are the results: some a hilarious and others are some what confusing..

Q # 1 why go on living? A: the human torch was denied a bank loan

Q # 2 what is physical love? A: i dont know what to say

Q # 3 Do you manage your time? A: i spend time watching tv during the weekend

Q # 4 What is suicide? A: it is funny

Q # 5 Do you think you will Ace' this class? A: you do it sitting down

Q#6 What is military service? A: okay

Q #7 Why a nurse? A: because Mario doesnt like to eat Noodle Soup

Q #8 What is absence? A: is a nice day

group members. Jesus TIjerina and Vanessa Flores

Simulation

The idea for our simulation activity was to try and write in the style of an individual who is commonly looked at as pompous. The person who is being written about should be well known for the purpose of the audience. The audience can see who the author is writing as when they begin to notice word choice and meanings. The authors intentions are to relay a message that stereotypes and exposes their choice of character for the buffoons that they have shown themselves to be.

This, truly, can be considered an art form because of the skills needed to encompass a person that is only known by the front they present to the media. An attempt to understand an individual based on the persona that is provided by interviews, sound bites, and articles is clearly a biased one, but rounding that "character" out can engage an author to create. Art is often criticized and misunderstood, but as we have discovered, can be entertaining.

After reading a couple of examples of simulation to a class of our peers, our instruction was fairly simple. We asked for groups of students to try and find a controversial figure who is well known and who has proven themselves to be buffoonish. We asked our fellow students to chose an audience and write a letter to that audience, as the character of their choosing. Needless to say, we not only got a great response, but we all got a good laugh.





Group Members: Macario Lara, Sylvia Alboniga,
Jose Balderas, Alma Gonzalez, Abraham Garza

Oral Description of Objects Perceived By Touch

Group Members:

- Horacio Saenz III

- David Guzman

- David Valdez

- Alex Saucedo

- Florencio Gallegos

- Charlie Ledesma

In eight different steps, the students that participated in the project put their senses to the test to see if they could describe an object by simply touching it and not seeing it, and then decipher it by the descriptions provided.

1) Divide the class into three or four person groups

2) Each group chooses one or two persons to be the decipherer(s)

3) The decipherer is then separated from the rest of the group

4) One person in the group is then blind-folded and given an object

5) By only touching the object they must describe the qualities of it without saying what the object is (even if they already know)

6) The remaining group member then writes down the descriptions in detail

7) The description is then given to the decipherer , who should be unaware of what object his group had

8) With the description alone, he/she must construct (name/guess) what the object is

The object of the game is to test the connectivity of different senses. The person who is blindfolded has only his sense of touch to rely on to describe the object, and is limited to properties of the object (i.e. shape, texture, size). The decipherer is then forced to only read the descriptions and use his mind to decrypt what it is. There is a connection between to unconscious and conscious in some of our results.

One group described their object with the following properties:

- Rough surface

- Rock-like

- Has a hole

- Circular

- Smooth in the hole

- Pointy bumps

- It's hard

- It fits in the palm of your hand

In the end, the decipherer concluded that it was a roll of tape, when in reality it was a seashell.

A second group described their object with the following properties:

- Hard

- Cylindrical

- Metallic

- Empty

- Pushable

- Good Smelling

In this case, the decipherer concluded that it was a bottle of perfume, which was very close. The object was in fact a bottle of men's body spray.

The Exquisite Corpse

The Exquisite Corpse.
Our Team presented the Surrealist Game The Exquisite Corpse which allows one to freely create a part of a body without knowing what the other players are going to draw next. We provided the following directions and you will be able to find copies of the final Exquisite Corpse (images) at the bottom.
A).- Get into groups of four.
B).- Fold your paper: Hamburger style (in half) and then Hotdog style (in quarters).
C).- Open and label sections 1 thru 4 (Very tiny).
D).- Drawing: 1) Head 2)Chest and Arms 3) Hips/Stomach 4)Feet
E).- When Drawing NEVER look at your parties drawing.
-Draw however YOU want that part to look: Ugly, skinny, sexy, fat .... etc.
-Boy, girl, animal it doesn't matter.
F).- When your group is done, finally take a look at it together and name your corpse.
Team Members: Horacio Gutierrez, Krystal Hernandez, Marlene Reyna and Eloisa Garza

Chinese Whispers Surrealist Games

Chinese Whispers or Telephone

Where did this surrealist game come from?what are its origins? The name Chinese whispers reffers to the way that the chinese language sounds to some people. The name came from this; since they did not understand the lanugage they called it chinese and it stuck with it ever since. As to its origins; it is unclear where it originated from since there are various variety and different names for this game.

The various names of this game: Chinese whispers, telephone, the broken telephone, Whisper down the lane, gossip, Arab phone, and stille post or silent post.

A Brief explanation of our artwork:

In here we can see on top of this collage that there are words all jumbled and mixed up. This was made to represent the mixed language that people hear and the dificulty of the whisper being heard and what other words might replace words that were previously said. The words that are not in the mix up but on the sides represent the ones that the original message sound like and are more clear to the person who is hearing this message. We can see different facial expressions; this is because with each message a different thing was understood; with this body language which is a form of language just like speaking is people might also mis interpret words and sentences. For example if someone tells you "Your car is on fire" but they say it with a smile and very calmly and you cannot hear that person very well it will be very confusing to believe that it actually is on fire. The human psyche and the human mind dwell on the unconsious. Thoughts lurking in the back of everyones head; not only thoughts but also imagery and so forth. Another thing that can be seen from this collage is that all the participants are women. We did not do this on paper but women seemed to portray more facial expressions than men when we looked in magazines for samples to make the collage.

Words have an effect on people: words are associated with emotion and body language therefore to speak one has to move their lips and that movement is considered a type of body language.
Different messages convey a different type of overall thought process; our thought process intakes the information and analyses it and from it we can formulate a response. It is only human to formulate a response and also to ask questions. This game brings out epistemologies aout the brain; how it forms words, speech, writing and so forth.
In the first subject we see authority and from body language we see the hand gesture as if expelling something out of the hand even though nothing is coming out but it is clear that her mouth is open and it is in the form of an “o” with a heated facial expression. Then we see the words ‘you owe me money’ which is the initial message. From this we go on to the second subject which looks frustrated and again we see body language with the hand on the head and rubbing the hair as if thinking “what do I do” people do not even have to speak to pick up a message this is how body language can sometimes change the meaning of a message by saying something but displaying something else; this is how some analysis can also foretell if someone is lying by using the opposite of this theory. The message goes on to be displayed throughout the project and from the second subject we see that they send a different message. Another factor that can change a message is perception, tone of voice, or even stress or thoughts that are filling ones head. This is why In the project we input all those words on top of everyone symbolizing all the words and thoughts that people might have running inside of their head; these thoughts might also distortion the message by maybe not picking up parts of the words and replacing them with what one is thinking or the closest word that might come to mind. And in the final subject we see the word “you look like honey” and we can clearly see a smile on the woman’s face and she looks radiant with joy. Was it the message? Where there other factors affecting the way she in took the message? So many questions can arise out of simple communication. But communication is simple one might say. It is simple but it is as simple as the auditor makes it to be. We have a theory that goes like this: most people can hear but can they listen? So do people listen or hear? There is a difference in the two or also we might look but not see taking into consideration the amount of attention we give a certain subject.

In the project we took into account various factors that might hinder our experiment. There might be a purposeful instigator that will contort the message and change it to his advantage. And we have our doubts; we believe there was one and that the message did change drastically because of him or her.
The results of our project were these:

Initial message: “Three blind mice like to eat rice on a day that is nice.”
Subject #0: Three blind mice like to eat rice on a day that is nice.
Subject # 1-Three blind mice like to eat rice when its nice.
Subject #2” three blind mice like to eat rice when the day are nice”
Subject #3” three blind mice like to eat rice at night”
Subject #4”three black mice eat rice and whisper”
Subject #5” three black mice eat rice when they whisper”
Subject #6” three blind mice eat rice something whisper”
Subject #7” three blind mice and someone whispering”
Subject #8 “Blind mice something about whispering”
Subject #9 “three blind mice and something about whispering.”
Subject #10 “three blind mice something about them whispering”
Subject #11 “three blind mice are always whispering”
Subject # 12 “three blind mice are always whispering”
Subject #13 -25 states ”Apple Bottom Jeans”
Final message “Apple bottom jeans”

Statistics

Initial message: “Three blind mice like to eat rice on a day that is nice.”
Final message “Apple bottom jeans”

Constant (11,12) and (13,15)
Change(1,11)