Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Auriah Cao
Whitney Gilchrist
Artist Statement
29 April 2017
The process of remediating my research essay was an arduous task filled with many
options that could easily represent or misrepresent my message. The goal of this presentation
was to get my audience to get out of their comfort zone and put themselves in another persons
shoes. The topic of critical consciousness can be described as both psychological and emotional.
The topic is psychological due to its study of human interactions and its attempt at manipulating
behavioral tendencies. It can be categorized as emotional as well because the topic thoroughly
discusses the struggles and hardships of those who are stigmatized in society; it really looks at
how the stigmatized are discriminated against and actions that can be taken to combat the social
injustices.
When choosing genres I wanted to express both the emotional and psychological aspects
of my topic. Some appropriate genres for this topic might include mediums such as academic
journals, documentaries, or dissertations. These genres focused too much on the logical appeal of
my topic. So I decided to really branch away from mediums relating to academics because I felt
the topic needed a more relatable and emotional approach. In the end I chose a PowerPoint, a
The PowerPoint was chosen because it gave me an easy outlet to outline all my main
points fast and efficiently. This medium easily helped express the rhetorical appeals pathos and
logos. I was able to divide both the scientific evidence and anecdotes into separate slides. This
really helped because I was able to present my facts and then afterwards raise a call to action.
The satirical science fair project was chosen because it was an easy way to express all the
information gathered. Science projects can be considered condensed scientific journals. They
present the reader with the essentials, which include what they observe, their predictions, their
experiment, and their results. This remediation really broke out of the genre because most critical
consciousness experiments are very inaccurate because they focus primarily on the subjects
opinion at the end of the experiment; these experiments can contain many outliers and can
sometimes be impossible to tell whether or not an individual's decision were based off of a
manipulated variable. Most results from a science experiment are usually cut and dry. What
made this remediation satirical was how I presented critical consciousness as definite results,
The last medium chosen for the project was an original music composition. This medium
is the most effective out of all of my three genres because it appeals mostly to pathos. From my
personal experiences people tend to talk and listen from their heart before they reason with logic.
For many, music is an escape from reality; music puts the listener in the shoes of the performer
and allows them to see life from another perspective. Music is the epitome of what critical
consciousness is about, seeing life from another persons perspective. The topic of critical
Cao 3
consciousness lies in the realm of science and psychology and bases its identity on facts and
statistics. By switching the genre to appeal to the arts, critical consciousness bases its credibility
In the end I felt my message was understood. But, if I could redo the project I would
replace the PowerPoint. The science project and song clearly represented two fields I was trying
to discuss. Although the PowerPoint did an amazing job of organizing my ideas, I felt that it
lacked symbolism and creativity. The audience targeted for this project were young college
students. I feel a call to action can be elicited more through emotions than by scientific evidence.
If I were alter the project, I would replace the PowerPoint with a medium such as a protest sign