Author: Ben Nguyen

I decided to make a sound collage (containing both royalty free sound and sounds that I made myself) to express my feelings about art and how it has evolved throughout this course. Below is the soundscape and accompanying subtitles (I’m too much of a noob to make a video with actual subtitles). It’s a bit unstructured, partly because I am a complete beginner at this but also because I am still in the process of putting my thoughts together after these hectic 3 weeks.

1. 0 – 10: Beginning: art = drawing, no idea
2. 10 – 20: Artists: amazing but normal people
3. 20 – 25: Going out of bounds: learning lateral thinking
4. 25 – 37: New art: sounds, photography, words. A little bravery
5. 37 – 45: Favorite art: grounded and clear (= water)
6. Last bit: Judgement-free zone: freedom of creativity. Also me feeling more free to express myself with art.

From freesound.org: Keywords: paint, apprehension, mundane, (myself), photo, writing, water

Edit 1: almost forgot. This was made in Audacity.

Very clear niche that is extensively explored upon. It’s interesting that they focused a lot on the emotions of the people who viewed the exhibits, so we got to see both how the artists feel and how the audience (‘outsiders’) feel. The stage performance part is interesting since they are the only artist we have that work with stage production, so it’s cool to hear about unique difficulties. Kinda cool that we have 2 artists in a row that has done something related to ‘life’: Marco with the larger biodiversity and sustainability, and Flora Fauna with human emotions and lives.

It has truly been a rollercoaster the past 2.5 weeks: I went from having no idea about art, to making art for the first time in a while, to learning about the sheer diversity of art making, and to make art semi regularly. It does feel like I have learned a lot about the creative process and industry as a whole, as well as the possibilities of art and art making.

In the beginning, art to me is one thing: drawing. If I sit down and think about it then I will probably include things like music and film too, but the default is always drawing. That is why my first 2 making projects were sketches: I simply did not even entertain the possibility that I could make other stuff. What helped me to start branching out were seeing the work of others, learning lateral thinking techniques (especially asking why and challenging default assumptions), as well as meeting the artists.

From the third making I definitely wanted to branch out and set a goal of using a different medium for each making. That is why none of my next making projects were sketches, and I tried to venture away from the default assumptions of art the more I make (started with sketches, then making stuff using Word, then photography, then word collage, then surveys). The professor did encourage me to implement a bit more variety directly, but I also got this sense of adventuring from the various lateral thinking exercises we did (and Aaron kept telling us to think outside the box).

As mentioned above, part of this courage came from seeing my classmates’ work, but I also got inspired the artists that came to us (and ones that we came to). It was pretty eye opening to see that all these people that have made extremely interesting and diverse art stuff are very normal, down-to-earth people. I had this assumption in my head that artists have to be a little cray cray (which especially applied to Mariana when I went to her website), but she was a very chill person. Each artist gave me a little more courage to branch out and try something new, since the barrier between me and art person in my mind was gradually being dispelled.

The classes did help, but it feels like they went by a little too quickly for things to truly sink in. Artist visits are more visceral in the sense that I get to see things first hand, whereas class stuff is more theoretical and takes a bit of application for me to understand. They are still of great help in helping me kick start a making project, just not as much as I have hoped for. Hopefully with a bit more time and a bit of making in my own time these lessons can sink in a bit more.

Overall, I have thoroughly enjoyed this class. I have a newfound appreciation for art and art making, as well as artists as a whole (turns out they are not just creature of inspirations, I mean some poured literal years of research into each of their work). I cannot think of anything cool to say so I will end it here. (Also shoutout to Aaron for being awesome!)

He is a great blend between artist and science communicator. It’s interesting that he makes a clear distinction between working with sound and doing music, since I used to equate sound plus art to music, but in the context of his work it is clearly not music. I like that he shows how art can be very concrete and grounded, since a lot of the artists that we have met tend to have works that are a bit abstract, whereas with Marco he can clearly point to a work and show where the inspiration is, what the creation process looks like, what research goes in, what message in entails. In that sense he feels much closer to a scientist. Hopefully I can come across his works one day.

Why do people play games?
To decide a winner
Why decide a winner?
Usually to go first
Why do people want to go first?
Going first is usually an advantage
Two Player Versus Games

• Tic Tac Toe
• Rock Paper Scissors
• Connect 4
• Chess
  Two Player Cooperative Experiences
• Cooking
• Solving Problems
• Stretching
  Versus games tend to be more engaging so we decided to make a versus game
  that’s really simple like Tic Tac Toe. It would be something you can play on paper
  with pencil.
  We decided to make an easy to draw 4×4 dot grid.
  We started with a “Why” ideation process but we couldn’t really balance the
  game this way.

We realized being able to use diagonal lines was too strong so we limited it to
just one usage to balance it out. It’s still unfair, but so is Tic Tac Toe.
Cliche units:

• Turn based
• Square – rectangular grid:
• this can be changed by having more ‘maps’ (i.e., more layouts to
  play on). Live service game?
• it’s a 2 players
  Throughout this process we found out its harder to reinvent a simple game like
  Tic Tac Toe than it is to remake a more complicated game.
  A few factors go into why its much more difficult to make a simple game.
  The first reason is making it easy to recreate on paper. People don’t want to draw
  complex layouts for a basic game.
  The second factor us the complexity of the rules. What can a person do or not
  do? It needs to be limiting, just like Tic Tac Toe.
  The final grid layout was 4×4 and you have to reach the other side without being
  cut off. If you’re cut off and unable to reach the otherside, you have to head back
  to your original dot.
  We also made a rule where you can only make one diagonal traversal in the
  whole game.
  Overall, our game is imperfect but we put a lot of thought behind how to recreate
  a game of a similar nature to Tic Tac Toe. It was basically like trying to reinvent
  the wheel, it was pretty darn impossible.

The part about changing the environment physically to more easily enter flow (such as wearing uniforms in football) reminds of the simple advice of not working in the bedroom. It is the same principle: you gotta put yourself in ‘work mode’ somehow, and getting out of the leisure space is probably a good first step.

Though the author showed a bit of disdain towards the rationalization of flow, in psychology we learned a simple fact: the brain gets used to new stimulus pretty quickly, and that is part of the reason why we are so curious about everything. We are continuously chasing the high of first times. This is also applicable to the flow chart in the reading: as people surpass challenges many times, they have to seek new challenges in order to find that enjoyment again. Its sounds a little depressing, that we are always chasing something impossible in a sense, but this principle is core to human growth and is a big part of why we are practically every where on Earth today.

I love how he is presenting all these amazing work in the most monotone voice ever (no hate to him, I just think it is kinda funny). Overall, I like how he has found a way to bring his aesthetic (which is abtract interconnected lines/shapes) into a lot of his work without them being too similar. I also like that he is very meticulous in most of his work, but he has shown willingness to go with the flow like in the Florida exhibition. I really like his work and would definitely like to go to an exhibition in person.

My two words are: restaurant and artist. The most obvious choice would be to do something related to chef, since you can argue that a chef is kind of an artist working in a restaurant. But that is a bit lame. So I decided to experiment with a survey that gives you a song and restaurant type recommendation after you answer a few questions.

Survey link here: https://nyu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_08HvTzaNknQ482a

There is a bit of a twist to this one, mainly because I am parodying the personality quizzes that are rampant online. The twist is as below:

The results are random! No matter what you pick, the survey will randomly show you one of 4 possible answers, which include being adventurous or not, and being sociable or not when out.

Relating back to the class, it seems that the default is acceptance: we don’t really argue whether someone’s creation in any of the making activities is really art or not. We simply treat it as a ‘making’, and that’s it. I find this really nice as someone wholly unfamiliar with art and art making, since I don’t have to worry about whether what I am doing even qualifies as art, because if it doesn’t, I would assume an automatic 0 and some ridicule.

Approval is a different story though. Aside from the grades, which actually only account for the level of effort and not likeability, there are some levels of peer approval going on whenever our making is shown in class: a few great ones get some clapping, mediocre ones get a passing glance. We are not trying to sell our work or something, so this doesn’t matter that much in the long run, but I just want to say that what is in this reading chapter is very much applicable to what we are doing in the class.

I like the emphasis on making in this reading. As a non-art person, I am usually very averse to making art, since the few times I tried to do it in the past was met with harsh words. The structure of this class seems to follow this reading quite nicely: we just make stuff first, then we use those experience making to do a final project (our magnum opus if you will). It definitely feels like simply making stuff and exploring different mediums have made me more open to the idea of me making some sort of art, whereas before I couldn’t even imagine the possibility.