We choose our emotions through different art mediums said Gregg Bordowitz, the final speaker of the Visiting Artist Lecture Series at the Meadows Museum.

Bordowitz is a professor at the Art Institute of Chicago, a writer, and a film and video maker who explored the concept of belief and volition at Thursday night’s lecture.

“I believe still that art can change the world,” said Bordowitz. He repeated the statement twice to argue that belief is a sensation and that it is not attached to valuable facts in the world.

Bordowitz also discussed the way the technological world affects the way our emotions are dealt with. If we are not depressed, we are in a state of elation, Bordowitz said.

The iPod, according to Bordowitz, is a kind of stimulation device. We can choose what we are feeling through our iPods, by the song we decide becomes the soundtrack of our life.

Because the world is technologically driven, “emotions do not originate in you or end in you,” concluded Bordowitz.

Bordowitz continued his lecture on emotions by demonstrating that emotions are a movement from a process to a state. Bordowitz started to bang his hand on the podium.

“How long do I have to do this until it became annoying,” asked Bordowitz.

When he stopped, the sensation we felt, according to Bordowitz, was relief.

He referred to the Scottish philosopher David Hume. Bordowitz is a fan of Hume’s theory that repetition is what causes relations.

Bordowitz explained Hume’s theory by using the sun as an example. Human reasoning can conclude that the sun will rise every morning because it is a repeated action, said Bordowitz.

Bordowitz raised many questions during the lecture about how we feel emotions, how we determine moods and how to find meaning in substance.

He shared his experience of living in Vienna through a picture slideshow with images of statues on the sides of walls and sarcophagi. The images were of skulls, plague and people.

The photographs were not professional and many were blurry. He said that the slideshow became a record of his compulsions because he could not get the right picture of the same subject.

The use of flash changed the picture; it created a different scene than the photographs without flash.

He added music to the picture slideshow. He played some early John Cage music that sounded like screeching violins that flew apart with sudden violence. Nevertheless, the music was perfect for the slideshow. “It was a happy accident,” said Bordowitz.

The lecture attracted many cinematography students. Nathan Harris, a third-year cinema student, said that the lecture left him asking questions.

“The lecture was interesting. It wasn’t very simple, but it wasn’t very clear,” Harris said.

Edward Bailey, a fourth-year cinema student, left the lecture very pleased.

“[Bordowitz] said everything I was thinking. It’s good to hear a lecture like this,” said Bailey. “I need repetition to ground my thoughts, and that is what I can take from this lecture.”