Author: Ahsen Saaim

I always thought of art as forms of self-expression so you can expect how shocked I was to read that “equating art with self-expression reveals more a contemporary bias in our thinking that’s an underlying trait of the medium.” I paused for a moment and realized how little I know about the history of art. Although self-expression is unquestionably a fundamental component of artistic creation, it is important to understand that art has a far wider range of meanings and objectives. A catalyst for change, a means of cultural preservation, and a source of inspiration for both individuals and communities, art is a reflection of society. By capturing the essence of a culture it enables people to discover their ancestry, enjoy diversity, and revel in the depth of human experience found in all civilizations. We can genuinely appreciate art’s transforming and transcending qualities if we accept all of its many meanings and intentions. What art means to communities changes with space and time, and we needn’t narrow our vision to serving our ‘current’ community’s standards and ideals for art, but instead look back at past artistic ventures and peer forward to future creative experiments.

The author loosely states that the standardization of vertical thinking over-time can fester an environment that scorns mistakes. I wholeheartedly agree with this, especially since I’ve seen things turn out like this several times in high school. Back in high school students would regularly just memorize answers or learn tricks to skip to the answer easily (me included) rather than understanding the underlying principles of what test questions were asking. Students resorting to bypassing understanding indicates a system that values immediate results rather than fostering deep comprehension. The strict reputation of your school, where mistakes were not tolerated, likely contributed to this culture of focusing on exam scores rather than nurturing knowledge acquisition. Even teachers would teach and encourage students to find loopholes rather than exploring and understanding. This emphasis on exam performance as the ultimate goal perpetuates a cycle of surface-level learning and stifles critical thinking. I believe my experience aligns closely with the author’s statement about the harmful effects of standardizing vertical thinking. When individuals are conditioned to prioritize avoiding mistakes over genuine understanding, they miss out on the opportunity for growth, creativity, and innovation that comes from embracing and learning from errors.

The only thought going through my head while working on my last assignment was how empty my stomach was. And the only thing that could satisfy my screaming craving was a fat juicy doner kebab. And so I decided to create something revolving around my love for this delicacy.

While working I also remembered all the amazing graffiti art baked into Berlin, so I decided to combine these two objects. My final result is a doner kebab in a graffiti style that I created on photoshop.

I enjoyed his work very much and a lot of what he showed is something I want to pursue in the future. Each and every project he played was unique in their design, sound, intentions, and emotions they elicit from the audience. I was surprised at how long each piece was, and that it kept my attention the entire time.

Immersive, fresh, all encompassing, unpredictable, subtle, blaring, hypnotizing, fluid

I felt like I was being sucked into the art, like it was slowly wrapping around me

I had a hard time thinking of a why question that related to my original topic; plants. So I instead looked at my surrounding and decided to use the first why question that pops in my mind. I looked at my laptop and noticed the Nvidia sticker. My first thought was “why is the Nvidia logo the way it is?” Then I decided to make a logo that I thought would be more accurate for the brand.

I agree with the authors that our mind is exceptionally skilled at pattern recognition. This extends beyond visual and auditory stimuli to more abstract fields such as mathematics and logic. Problem-solving and critical thinking require the capacity to spot patterns in mathematical sequences, solve riddles, and deduce logical correlations. Our minds can generalize from past experiences, apply gained knowledge to new contexts, and predict future events by recognizing patterns. Thus, pattern identification is a powerful cognitive skill that improves our comprehension of the world and our capacity to navigate and interact with it efficiently. I wish the author would have expanded more on these aspects of pattern recognition.

I agree with the other that lateral thing and vertical thinking need to be used in combination with each other for efficient propagation of the creative process. Lateral thinking in isolation may help open up unforseen possibilities but also takes time. Exploring unconventional ideas and establishing unexpected connections may take a significant amount of time and effort, which may be unrealistic in situations that require quick decisions or stringent deadlines (which normally is the case in real life). Another effect we might see with the rise of lateral thinking is a subsequent rise in unrealistic or unworkable ideas. Because lateral thinking encourages people to explore other views and unconventional ideas, there is a risk that they will generate ideas that are neither realistic or useful in real-world circumstances. This is all not to say that lateral thinking is impractical, but only that it needs to be used in combination with vertical thinking to bear fruit, as mentioned

I enjoyed listening to his strong opinions on art and expression. I could feel his passion through his eccentric descriptions of his albums and essays. I especially enjoyed his work in progress — perfume. I never thought about incorporating smell into a project so seeing Markus thoroughly research his personal interests and incorporate them into his professional work inspires me to do the same. I also agree with his strong emphasis on artists needing a special star value to make it in the world. With the globe more connected than ever, competition is like never before, so not having all our eggs in one basket is paramount.

I wish he showed us more of his music production process, but I understand it wouldn’t have been possible with the time constraints. I would have loved to watch him working on Ableton Trial 11 since I’ve I have a new found interest in music production.

My given-topic last class was plants. Below are the alternatives I jotted down today.

I decided make this assignment on food, more specifically burger because that is what I am craving right now. I started imagining a burger restaurant I would create if I ever were to, and thought about the brand image and aesthetic. I want my restaurant to have unique and recognizable colors and have an ‘in your face’ design. After deciding on the general idea, I began creating a brochure menu for my restaurant using indesign and illustrator.

This is a bougie restaurant so you won’t know the prices till the bill arrives (>‿･ )

For this assignment I wanted to create an audio-reactive playahead. This means the intensity of the audio will control the speed of the video playback. To stay in line with my topic, I chose to have timelapses of flowers blooming as the center piece of my project. I used the youtube video below for the video clips. I later used premiere pro to removed some scenes of the video to work better in my final product.

Next I searched for the right music. The main requirement is for the beat to have clear kicks. I decided to go with a song I’ve been listening to a lot recently; Trance by Metro Boomin. But this song was too long, so used Audacity to section out the portions I need and loop them. Below is the edited audio clip.

Next I finally worked on my beat detection components on touchdesigner so that it detects the kicks in my audio above and speeds up the flower video by skipping cue points. And when the kicks don’t hit, the video rewinds (by decreasing the cue point value). I tinkered around with the speed up and rewind values until I settled on results I was satisfied with. Below is the entire touchdesigner map with the imported audio and video. Technically this file could work with any audio and video clip imported.

Below is the final video that I exported from touchdesigner.