Arguing For A Genre

Arguing for Genre Title

Employing genre to categorize ideas is very useful. It helps us to better understand the style, tone or flavor of a piece of work, be it music, art, clothes, books, foods, and other products. On the other hand, creating a genre and labeling it is a somewhat more challenging task. For Assignment 4, my English 101 Class was instructed to identify a text or a piece of work and create a new genre title for it. For Assignment 5, the students were instructed to make an argument for the genre title he/she created in Assignment 4. For my text, I chose my own personal art designs. My designs consist of images of the universe that include planets such as the earth, moon, sun and stars. The planets are positioned to reflect balance and symmetry among the planets. The designs are actually clocks. The planets and stars are used as a back-ground for the clocks, and in some of the designs the planets (like Earth and Mars) are used as the face of the clocks. The message in the design is that time and the universe are intricately connected, to a degree, synonymous – you can’t have one without the other. The designs are pretty and intriguing. They cause the viewer to think about time, space, and being consciously a part of it. They also cause the viewer to think about where we (the human race) are physically in the universe and on Earth. This is important because, as far back as we have historically documented, mankind has questioned: Who are we? Where are we? What are we doing here? What’s is the purpose of our existence on this planet? When and where did this awesome creation of the universe begin, and will it every end?

The genre title that I chose for my designs is Universal Text. But, in retrospect, I think a better title would be Universal Art Clocks. This title for a genre categorizes the designs as art and clocks, each having something to do with the universe. In my search for art and texts that I could compare my designs to, I found very different types art and texts with universal themes, such as: books, t-shirts, posters and some clocks. My designs were similar to some of the posters that included images of planets and stars. Two major differences that I noticed were: 1.) A lot of the posters seem to be photographs of real planets and galaxies in the universe; where as my art is created using a software program like Micro Soft Word. 2.) I lot of the posters had images of people or other earthly items in the picture; where as I don’t use people or earthly items in my designs.

I argue that the best genre title for my designs is Universal Art Clocks. This genre title classifies and categorizes the text of my designs perfectly. If one was searching for art designs with clocks and a universal theme, using the search words Universal Art Clocks, it would take them to sites where my designs would be located.