Brian Ulrich - www.notifbutwhen.com - This is from a chapter, Dark Stores, that is part of a larger series entitled Copia. In this series, Ulrich is examining various aspects of American consumerism.
When I first received the assignment sheet for the first two observation papers, I was very confused. I understood why it would be beneficial to collect all of our garbage for a week because it would help each of us physically see how much garbage we accumulate by ourselves. I was more confused as to how I would form a relationship with a plant and write over two pages about it without discussing family, money, health, agriculture, the military, politics, sex sports or religion. However, after reading the first chapter of A Sand County Almanac, by Aldo Leopold, I got a better understanding of how I would do this. In this chapter, he starts to give things in nature feelings and personalities. He talks about skunk tracks that he observed in the woods. Although he never actually saw the skunk that made these tracks, he talks about what the skunk was doing and tries to get into the mind of the animal that made these marks in the ground. I started to realize that this is the way I should approach this plan paper as well. Instead of focusing on the literal plant, I would need to observe the surroundings of the plants, and what it experiences on a daily basis, and what it may have seen in the past. Although I have not chosen my plant yet, now when I am walking around campus, I am noticing plants more, and starting to give them personalities and think about what life would be like if I were a plant. I think that this project will help me to realize their importance in our society and learn to appreciate them and not take them for granted like I have in the past.
9/21/10 Jackie San Fillipo ADPIII Weekly Statements
Looking through Brian Ulrich’s Dark Stores collection got me to thinking about consumerism in America. They were disturbing and somewhat grotesque photographs in my mind: depicting long gone or brand new businesses. There are stores like this in every corner of the country. Businesses that put in vast amounts of time, resources, energy, and thought into something that they thought could make them money. In order to make theses places, the land is flattened with concrete, and made ready for building. The buildings use tons of energy to keep running, and are hailed as “fun places to go” such as the mall. What happens when these businesses fail? Just as I never thought about cell phones being recycled, I never thought of out-of-business buildings as waste. But that’s what Ulrich depicts them as: several places of wasted resources that are turning our country into a wasteland. Everything that was put into the area so that it could be a place of great profit making has failed, and so people solely abandon them, and do not think twice about the green grass that lay underneath that we will probably never get back. As artists and designers, we need to think about these things that destroy our planet. Like the problem we have with cell phones not getting recycled, we need to think of solutions that can go into buildings and urban development that will help to ease the destruction of our land.
A lot of issues have derived from consumerism in America. Slowly people start to realize how consumerism and the results of consumerism negatively impact our lives and surroundings. The extensive use of natural goods, overwhelming amounts of spending, and the scaling of everything to massive quantities and size leads to the United States as one of the greatest consumerist and materialistic countries in the world. As a country we over use everything, abusing the resources we have, while over producing unhealthy and unnatural products to replace the organic elements that cannot be as easily reproduced as artificial ones. This relates extremely well to the topics discussed in lecture regarding corn. Though corn is a natural growing food source, we no longer utilize in a manner that is healthy but instead drain corn for its cheap sugar replacement (high fructose corn syrup), and oil (relatively cheap in comparison to vegetable oil). Animals are now fed on corn-based diets, which introduce much, more saturated fat into the meat. The ability to make cheap products from corn leads to the implementation of its products into everyday society. Corn based products show up in everything from fast food to soft drinks, wax coating on vegetables to the meat we eat. Everything somehow incorporates corn and that is because its easily grown crop and cheap to produce. However, we must ask ourselves, to what extent does efficient production take precedence over sufficient nutrients. In a country with overwhelming consumerism, Americans choose the fast and cheap option over the healthy more expensive choices. This intern leads to a country of gluttonous, impatient buyers valuing cheap products over their own health.
It is obvious that what we choose to eat speaks of our ethics and of the roles that we hold as consumers in a rapid market economy. Excessive food waste is one of the largest problems that I have seen and experienced, yet I feel that this issue has been neglected in Lecture thus far. I believe that the assignment of collecting my garbage for a week has shown me that I buy far too many individually packaged ‘food’ items; but I feel that packaging is another complication in itself. Last year, eating most of my meals in a cafeteria-style environment, I saw just how much food was being wasted and discarded. This year, living in a vegan co-op, I am more aware of the kinds of foods I am eating and how much of them I am eating. We buy all of our food organic and in bulk, which not only cuts down on packaging but on over all consumption habits. I think that I personally need to become more aware of the packaging that my food comes in and of the situations in which I am choosing to consume. What I eat and how I eat has an impact on not only the Ann Arbor community but on the international global community that I am apart of. Choosing ethics over luxury food Items and by lessening my overall consumption of food and other products, I am trying to maintain a healthy relationship with the community, the earth, and myself. I live in a consumerist culture, and I feel that it is my responsibility to eat and drink ethically produced goods and to whenever possible lessen my dependency and overall consumption of goods.
During the lecture there was a picture of this gorilla head that had been cut off, because there is a plant in the forest that is used to make cell phones work. The workers are not paid well so they have trouble getting food to eat so they have been killing gorillas and eating them for meat. All that we as people have to do is recycle our old phones, and the material needed will be reused and we will not have to kill so many forests and the gorillas wont be killed as much. The reason I chose to write about this is because I have such a soft spot for animal. Every time that we have a reading that talk about the cruelty to the animals such as the video on the meatrix, it makes me want to make a difference to stop it. Another interesting thing is the reading about hope. This reading talked about how it is a bad thing to have hope. ALthoguh, I took the message as it is a bad thing to just rely on hope and not do anything. For example people want to stop the loss of the forests for paper, but when people do not recycle their used papers the loss of forest will still exist. WE need to not just hope for the loss of forests to stop, but actually get up and do something. We can hope for change as much as we want, but to actually get there we need to act.
As I looked through Brian Ulrich’s “Dark Stores” series, I was a little creeped out, for lack of a better phrase. The abandoned buildings were especially haunting. On one hand these places looked like skeletons. There were just the shells of gathering places and now there is nothing left of them. It was like I was looking at a graveyard. However, I started to gain much more hope towards the end of the series. I was looking at the stores that had been abandoned, and there were amazing things happening on these dead, lifeless properties. There was grass growing up through the concrete. It blew me away that the earth could so quickly reclaim these areas. I would interested to see follow up pictures of these locations. I wonder if, perhaps, the earth has further reclaimed what belongs to it. We, humans, can pave over anything, cut down many plants, and try to stifle nature with our parking garages, malls, and stores. However, once these places “die” it’s amazing to watch a blade of grass crack concrete. I was fascinated and amazed by this series.
Teresa Dennis ADP III 9/20 Weekly Statement 9/20/10 In This Steer’s Life, the separation of the farmer mindset and the mindset of having compassion for an animal is what seems to be the root of a problem in the meat industry. Because the farmers are thinking from an economical standpoint, they push the cows with steroids and un-natural feed to make them grow large in a shorter amount of time then in nature. Because of these additions to cows, the meat we eat, we, the consumers, are being affected. Girls are maturing at younger ages, sperm rates are down (addition of estrogen to help cows process corn), even fish are being effected by the cow’s steroid-fed wastes. Why then, have this even happened, why is this an ok thing to let happen? This article seems to point to the want to keep up with demand, and consumer voices to be the problem. The meat industry does not believe there is a problem, due to us as a consumer industry, not speaking up well enough to say what’s right. Everyone knows the treatments put into meat is not good, is un-natural, but, everyone continues to support the industry. More needs to be done to change this.
In A Sand County Almanac, the narrator loves nature. The first few sections up to September are all him talking about the nature that goes on around his house, the various things you can see at different times of day and how lovely they are. He tallies the amount of foliage you can see in the country near his house, and in the city, in different months, and he finds that he has near twice as many plants to look at throughout the year. Yes, these are all lovely thoughts, but does he really not think of anything else?
Collecting my garbage confused the heck out of me. I didn’t see why it would be necessary for me to do so. Then I realized that it would be good for me cause it would show how much I waste and how I should reconsider buying certain items. For example, I used chopsticks a LOT and I realized that instead of getting a whole bunch of disposable ones that I would instead buy really nice ones that will last for a really long time. At the same time though, I realized that I do recycle a lot of paper and plastic bottles. I don’t have too much in my garbage right now cause some of the stuff I had to document. I threw away a bowl of really nasty egg drop soup (or so the dining hall said) and I felt bad. As Joe said in lecture today that his mom would tell him to eat his food cause “there are starving kids in China.” There still are starving kids but a lot of them are in Africa now. Writing about a plant too was very “out there” for me too. I right away thought that I would have a good time doing it but then I saw that would couldn’t talk about religion or family. That really bummed me out. God and my family are very important to me and I was trying to think of how I could write about this plant…a plant, which to me God created. I am still having difficulties trying to figure out how to write it but I have hope that I will be able to. Also, it’s weird to write about the plant cause people just look at you as if you were mad. Then you just ignore them. Sometimes people even come up to me and ask if I am ok.
During last weeks lecture, I had researched more things about the food that we consume and amazingly corn has a huge role in the production of other goods. I didn't know that the production of corn had such a huge impact on the things that we use everyday. I was kind of shocked by it, but I'm not quite sure whether it’s a bad or good reaction. Our last lecture was quite interesting, I gave me a different perception on the way I spend my money on food. While viewing the different families and the amount of food they are subjected too, I grew angry at the distinctions between Americans and Foreign families. Although it is nice to have fast food ready whenever it meets your time in need, but I feel cheated in terms of my health. America is indeed one of the richer countries, but in terms of health, I would like to experience life elsewhere. I notice that the other countries had more naturally produced foods and that will help the body to live longer.
I enjoyed learning about the responses of my peers to the questions about the environment in relation to the technical questions, although it is very sad that many of us didn't know that the plant type was Poison Ivy. But that particular part of the lecture just shows how the impact of the era in society has on a certain group of individuals, but there were also some people who could adhere to the questions relating to the environment. I would say that based on the way your were raised as well as the resources that are contributed to ones’ environment, I takes apart of not knowing what is an economic symbol and what is a technological symbol. To a certain extent we all should be knowledgeable in both areas. Overall, I did learn more about the environment, and the foods we consume, also where the water that goes to my house comes from. It was all a good learning experience for the week, and I hope to enhance my knowledge more so in the environmental area in this class.
Lyle A. Murphy ADP III -Section 3 Weekly Statement 9/21/10
Brian Ulrich eerily raises questions about consumerism through his photography. It’s unsettling in how he can take a photo of basic things we see everyday but through the lens of his camera make us question what we are looking at. This piece does the same. It’s a basic photo of a rundown sign but the way it is shot draws attention to it. This gives it a power to raise questions in our mind about what the message is. In this case the message is a dark, and pitiful look and the weathering of time on people and the lives they lead. In a buy-buy-buy society that only see’s the short-term it is hard to look ahead to imagine what our actions might cause. The worn-down erosion of this sign captures that. It shows the exciting life of the city but the eventual depravity once the glamour is gone.
In his other projects like Copia he does the same again and again with frightening images that I see day to day as normal. It’s sometimes hard to look through new perspectives at the way we live our lives. Sometimes when we think we have choices we really don’t because we are so heavily influenced by advertisers and society and not by our own common sense and reason. It’s good to step back and weigh our actions before we commit to buying or acting irresponsibly.
Going back to previous reading such as A Steer’s Life and the website The Meatrix our lives are sometimes desensitized from realizing that much of we buy can have negative effects. Whether it is on the environment or other lives it is our actions that cause such things. By being aware and empathetic we can change our habits and behaviors to have less severe repercussions. We can shop smarter and buy safer to accomplish these things.
Brian Ulrich’s photographic chapter Dark Stories stirs up something that feels wrong. The images are all so void of life. In some of the pictures he captures time in such an empty fashion, as if life had just fallen off the face of the earth. It strikes me as a peak into the future, a hint towards what’s going to come of all our consumerism. The places that are followed are deemed in an evil manner, as if to say they’re not meant to exist. When places that are normally associated with the gathering of people pretty much everyday are seen without a presence, the building seems to take on an entity. This entity also associates itself with generally the same stores. For example, Circuit City hit a huge bump in the road and one after the other stores started vanishing. I’ve almost completely grown accustomed to seeing abandoned Circuit City stores, which goes to show how consumerism has such a strong hold on what infrastructures are built and what needs to be torn up to yield space for a new mall. Although it’s lifeless, it develops a character worth noting. It’s seen it’s hay day of people bustling in and out, filled with the sound of shoppers doing what they do best, spending their money. But now, these abandoned places of consumerism stand defenseless against the will of mother nature. They are slowly but surely being broken down and no matter how indestructible their foundations seem to be, they don’t withstand the changes of the economy and society and are sooner or later corrupted and engulfed by the weeds and grass which grow through it’s cracks. I still am bothered by the fact that these buildings decay at a snails pace and aren’t ripped up to make way for a farm or something along those lines.
Lindsay Avino
ReplyDeleteADP III
Response for 9/21
When I first received the assignment sheet for the first two observation papers, I was very confused. I understood why it would be beneficial to collect all of our garbage for a week because it would help each of us physically see how much garbage we accumulate by ourselves. I was more confused as to how I would form a relationship with a plant and write over two pages about it without discussing family, money, health, agriculture, the military, politics, sex sports or religion. However, after reading the first chapter of A Sand County Almanac, by Aldo Leopold, I got a better understanding of how I would do this. In this chapter, he starts to give things in nature feelings and personalities. He talks about skunk tracks that he observed in the woods. Although he never actually saw the skunk that made these tracks, he talks about what the skunk was doing and tries to get into the mind of the animal that made these marks in the ground. I started to realize that this is the way I should approach this plan paper as well. Instead of focusing on the literal plant, I would need to observe the surroundings of the plants, and what it experiences on a daily basis, and what it may have seen in the past. Although I have not chosen my plant yet, now when I am walking around campus, I am noticing plants more, and starting to give them personalities and think about what life would be like if I were a plant. I think that this project will help me to realize their importance in our society and learn to appreciate them and not take them for granted like I have in the past.
9/21/10
ReplyDeleteJackie San Fillipo
ADPIII
Weekly Statements
Looking through Brian Ulrich’s Dark Stores collection got me to thinking about consumerism in America. They were disturbing and somewhat grotesque photographs in my mind: depicting long gone or brand new businesses. There are stores like this in every corner of the country. Businesses that put in vast amounts of time, resources, energy, and thought into something that they thought could make them money. In order to make theses places, the land is flattened with concrete, and made ready for building. The buildings use tons of energy to keep running, and are hailed as “fun places to go” such as the mall. What happens when these businesses fail? Just as I never thought about cell phones being recycled, I never thought of out-of-business buildings as waste. But that’s what Ulrich depicts them as: several places of wasted resources that are turning our country into a wasteland. Everything that was put into the area so that it could be a place of great profit making has failed, and so people solely abandon them, and do not think twice about the green grass that lay underneath that we will probably never get back. As artists and designers, we need to think about these things that destroy our planet. Like the problem we have with cell phones not getting recycled, we need to think of solutions that can go into buildings and urban development that will help to ease the destruction of our land.
A lot of issues have derived from consumerism in America. Slowly people start to realize how consumerism and the results of consumerism negatively impact our lives and surroundings. The extensive use of natural goods, overwhelming amounts of spending, and the scaling of everything to massive quantities and size leads to the United States as one of the greatest consumerist and materialistic countries in the world. As a country we over use everything, abusing the resources we have, while over producing unhealthy and unnatural products to replace the organic elements that cannot be as easily reproduced as artificial ones. This relates extremely well to the topics discussed in lecture regarding corn. Though corn is a natural growing food source, we no longer utilize in a manner that is healthy but instead drain corn for its cheap sugar replacement (high fructose corn syrup), and oil (relatively cheap in comparison to vegetable oil). Animals are now fed on corn-based diets, which introduce much, more saturated fat into the meat. The ability to make cheap products from corn leads to the implementation of its products into everyday society. Corn based products show up in everything from fast food to soft drinks, wax coating on vegetables to the meat we eat. Everything somehow incorporates corn and that is because its easily grown crop and cheap to produce. However, we must ask ourselves, to what extent does efficient production take precedence over sufficient nutrients. In a country with overwhelming consumerism, Americans choose the fast and cheap option over the healthy more expensive choices. This intern leads to a country of gluttonous, impatient buyers valuing cheap products over their own health.
ReplyDeleteCaitlin Murphy
ReplyDelete21 September 2010
Weekly Statement
It is obvious that what we choose to eat speaks of our ethics and of the roles that we hold as consumers in a rapid market economy. Excessive food waste is one of the largest problems that I have seen and experienced, yet I feel that this issue has been neglected in Lecture thus far. I believe that the assignment of collecting my garbage for a week has shown me that I buy far too many individually packaged ‘food’ items; but I feel that packaging is another complication in itself. Last year, eating most of my meals in a cafeteria-style environment, I saw just how much food was being wasted and discarded. This year, living in a vegan co-op, I am more aware of the kinds of foods I am eating and how much of them I am eating. We buy all of our food organic and in bulk, which not only cuts down on packaging but on over all consumption habits.
I think that I personally need to become more aware of the packaging that my food comes in and of the situations in which I am choosing to consume. What I eat and how I eat has an impact on not only the Ann Arbor community but on the international global community that I am apart of. Choosing ethics over luxury food Items and by lessening my overall consumption of food and other products, I am trying to maintain a healthy relationship with the community, the earth, and myself. I live in a consumerist culture, and I feel that it is my responsibility to eat and drink ethically produced goods and to whenever possible lessen my dependency and overall consumption of goods.
Sam Goldman
ReplyDeleteADP III
9/20
Weekly Response 9/15
During the lecture there was a picture of this gorilla head that had been cut off, because there is a plant in the forest that is used to make cell phones work. The workers are not paid well so they have trouble getting food to eat so they have been killing gorillas and eating them for meat. All that we as people have to do is recycle our old phones, and the material needed will be reused and we will not have to kill so many forests and the gorillas wont be killed as much. The reason I chose to write about this is because I have such a soft spot for animal. Every time that we have a reading that talk about the cruelty to the animals such as the video on the meatrix, it makes me want to make a difference to stop it. Another interesting thing is the reading about hope. This reading talked about how it is a bad thing to have hope. ALthoguh, I took the message as it is a bad thing to just rely on hope and not do anything. For example people want to stop the loss of the forests for paper, but when people do not recycle their used papers the loss of forest will still exist. WE need to not just hope for the loss of forests to stop, but actually get up and do something. We can hope for change as much as we want, but to actually get there we need to act.
Katie Klimkowski
ReplyDeleteADP III
weekly statement 9/20/10
As I looked through Brian Ulrich’s “Dark Stores” series, I was a little creeped out, for lack of a better phrase. The abandoned buildings were especially haunting. On one hand these places looked like skeletons. There were just the shells of gathering places and now there is nothing left of them. It was like I was looking at a graveyard. However, I started to gain much more hope towards the end of the series. I was looking at the stores that had been abandoned, and there were amazing things happening on these dead, lifeless properties. There was grass growing up through the concrete. It blew me away that the earth could so quickly reclaim these areas. I would interested to see follow up pictures of these locations. I wonder if, perhaps, the earth has further reclaimed what belongs to it. We, humans, can pave over anything, cut down many plants, and try to stifle nature with our parking garages, malls, and stores. However, once these places “die” it’s amazing to watch a blade of grass crack concrete. I was fascinated and amazed by this series.
Teresa Dennis
ReplyDeleteADP III 9/20
Weekly Statement 9/20/10
In This Steer’s Life, the separation of the farmer mindset and the mindset of having compassion for an animal is what seems to be the root of a problem in the meat industry. Because the farmers are thinking from an economical standpoint, they push the cows with steroids and un-natural feed to make them grow large in a shorter amount of time then in nature. Because of these additions to cows, the meat we eat, we, the consumers, are being affected. Girls are maturing at younger ages, sperm rates are down (addition of estrogen to help cows process corn), even fish are being effected by the cow’s steroid-fed wastes.
Why then, have this even happened, why is this an ok thing to let happen? This article seems to point to the want to keep up with demand, and consumer voices to be the problem. The meat industry does not believe there is a problem, due to us as a consumer industry, not speaking up well enough to say what’s right. Everyone knows the treatments put into meat is not good, is un-natural, but, everyone continues to support the industry. More needs to be done to change this.
In A Sand County Almanac, the narrator loves nature. The first few sections up to September are all him talking about the nature that goes on around his house, the various things you can see at different times of day and how lovely they are. He tallies the amount of foliage you can see in the country near his house, and in the city, in different months, and he finds that he has near twice as many plants to look at throughout the year. Yes, these are all lovely thoughts, but does he really not think of anything else?
Rebecca Aguilar
ReplyDeleteCollecting my garbage confused the heck out of me. I didn’t see why it would be necessary for me to do so. Then I realized that it would be good for me cause it would show how much I waste and how I should reconsider buying certain items. For example, I used chopsticks a LOT and I realized that instead of getting a whole bunch of disposable ones that I would instead buy really nice ones that will last for a really long time. At the same time though, I realized that I do recycle a lot of paper and plastic bottles. I don’t have too much in my garbage right now cause some of the stuff I had to document. I threw away a bowl of really nasty egg drop soup (or so the dining hall said) and I felt bad. As Joe said in lecture today that his mom would tell him to eat his food cause “there are starving kids in China.” There still are starving kids but a lot of them are in Africa now.
Writing about a plant too was very “out there” for me too. I right away thought that I would have a good time doing it but then I saw that would couldn’t talk about religion or family. That really bummed me out. God and my family are very important to me and I was trying to think of how I could write about this plant…a plant, which to me God created. I am still having difficulties trying to figure out how to write it but I have hope that I will be able to. Also, it’s weird to write about the plant cause people just look at you as if you were mad. Then you just ignore them. Sometimes people even come up to me and ask if I am ok.
Nya Jordan
ReplyDeleteADP III
September 20, 2010
Weekly Response
During last weeks lecture, I had researched more things about the food that we consume and amazingly corn has a huge role in the production of other goods. I didn't know that the production of corn had such a huge impact on the things that we use everyday. I was kind of shocked by it, but I'm not quite sure whether it’s a bad or good reaction. Our last lecture was quite interesting, I gave me a different perception on the way I spend my money on food. While viewing the different families and the amount of food they are subjected too, I grew angry at the distinctions between Americans and Foreign families. Although it is nice to have fast food ready whenever it meets your time in need, but I feel cheated in terms of my health. America is indeed one of the richer countries, but in terms of health, I would like to experience life elsewhere. I notice that the other countries had more naturally produced foods and that will help the body to live longer.
I enjoyed learning about the responses of my peers to the questions about the environment in relation to the technical questions, although it is very sad that many of us didn't know that the plant type was Poison Ivy. But that particular part of the lecture just shows how the impact of the era in society has on a certain group of individuals, but there were also some people who could adhere to the questions relating to the environment. I would say that based on the way your were raised as well as the resources that are contributed to ones’ environment, I takes apart of not knowing what is an economic symbol and what is a technological symbol. To a certain extent we all should be knowledgeable in both areas. Overall, I did learn more about the environment, and the foods we consume, also where the water that goes to my house comes from. It was all a good learning experience for the week, and I hope to enhance my knowledge more so in the environmental area in this class.
Lyle A. Murphy
ReplyDeleteADP III -Section 3
Weekly Statement 9/21/10
Brian Ulrich eerily raises questions about consumerism through his photography. It’s unsettling in how he can take a photo of basic things we see everyday but through the lens of his camera make us question what we are looking at. This piece does the same. It’s a basic photo of a rundown sign but the way it is shot draws attention to it. This gives it a power to raise questions in our mind about what the message is. In this case the message is a dark, and pitiful look and the weathering of time on people and the lives they lead. In a buy-buy-buy society that only see’s the short-term it is hard to look ahead to imagine what our actions might cause. The worn-down erosion of this sign captures that. It shows the exciting life of the city but the eventual depravity once the glamour is gone.
In his other projects like Copia he does the same again and again with frightening images that I see day to day as normal. It’s sometimes hard to look through new perspectives at the way we live our lives. Sometimes when we think we have choices we really don’t because we are so heavily influenced by advertisers and society and not by our own common sense and reason. It’s good to step back and weigh our actions before we commit to buying or acting irresponsibly.
Going back to previous reading such as A Steer’s Life and the website The Meatrix our lives are sometimes desensitized from realizing that much of we buy can have negative effects. Whether it is on the environment or other lives it is our actions that cause such things. By being aware and empathetic we can change our habits and behaviors to have less severe repercussions. We can shop smarter and buy safer to accomplish these things.
Ben Paskus
ReplyDeleteWeekly Statement 9/21
Adp section 3
Brian Ulrich’s photographic chapter Dark Stories stirs up something that feels wrong. The images are all so void of life. In some of the pictures he captures time in such an empty fashion, as if life had just fallen off the face of the earth. It strikes me as a peak into the future, a hint towards what’s going to come of all our consumerism. The places that are followed are deemed in an evil manner, as if to say they’re not meant to exist. When places that are normally associated with the gathering of people pretty much everyday are seen without a presence, the building seems to take on an entity. This entity also associates itself with generally the same stores. For example, Circuit City hit a huge bump in the road and one after the other stores started vanishing. I’ve almost completely grown accustomed to seeing abandoned Circuit City stores, which goes to show how consumerism has such a strong hold on what infrastructures are built and what needs to be torn up to yield space for a new mall. Although it’s lifeless, it develops a character worth noting. It’s seen it’s hay day of people bustling in and out, filled with the sound of shoppers doing what they do best, spending their money. But now, these abandoned places of consumerism stand defenseless against the will of mother nature. They are slowly but surely being broken down and no matter how indestructible their foundations seem to be, they don’t withstand the changes of the economy and society and are sooner or later corrupted and engulfed by the weeds and grass which grow through it’s cracks. I still am bothered by the fact that these buildings decay at a snails pace and aren’t ripped up to make way for a farm or something along those lines.