Author: Darko Skulikj

Very very very cool. I absolutely looved Harshini’s works. She seemed very confident about her work and at the same time passionate and full of knowledge. The exhibitions and festivals she is planning seem so so cool and at the same well-thought-through. I also loved the tips she gave us about college life and life after NYU. It was nice to see the development from a first-year undergraduate student to a full blown Digital Artist. Very Valuable Visit!

Hallo! Heute will Ich in Deutsch schreiben. I’m just kidding, of course I will write my post in English, but do you see how I used to make provocative arrangement of information (in this case writing in German – to get some of your attention? Well, the first reading from the book about Lateral Thinking is about suspension of Judgment, or at the same time we can say, a delay of judgement. This opens up new horizons for creativity but one of the positives of this method is that the idea will survive longer and breed more ideas.

On the other side, in the Art & Fear book we meet with some important explanations about the Nature of The Problem and we are introduced with various topics which teach us what it takes to be an artist and what artists are all about as well as some things about artmaking. Overall these topics can be applied more in the present as compared to the past, as the chapter says it was much easier to draw animals on cave walls than it probably is to write this sentence but my favorite point from all of these is that artmaking involves skills that can be learned. This aligns with all my views about art and life too, I believe that you can learn any skill, make anything your brain thinks of, no limits, you just got to have the dedication to pursue it.

For this assignment, I chose to think outside of the box and instead of making two different projects I combined the concepts of Reversal and Analogy and created one thing. Let’s dive deep into it.\

For the reversal exercise, I came up with these concepts:

The swimming instructor is measuring my swimming time – I am measuring my swimming instructor’s coaching time

I’m pouring hot water from a pot to a glass – I am pouring hot water from a glass to a pot

I am playing basketball with a bouncy ball – The bouncy ball gets flat and I can’t play

I want to make a peanut – butter sandwich – The peanut butter jar breaks

I’m throwing a football at my friend – My friend is throwing a football at me

After doing the reversal method I chose to go with the 4th option (

I want to make a peanut – butter sandwich – The peanut butter jar breaks) because it seemed very fun and different from what I have done before.

Step 2: Analogy – How to make a peanut butter sandwich (If the jar breaks)

Open the fridge – Get Peanut Butter – Slice a Piece of Bread – Spread Peanut Butter – The Jar slips

OR: We can do the opposite

The jar slips – Open the fridge- Get a new jar of Peanut Butter – Slice a piece of bread – Spread peanut butter

So In order to combine these I decided to make a short comic representing both situations:

Thank you!

After a few musicians we finally got to something different, a new field to explore and new types of artists to meet. Today we had a visit from Mr. Ming who really intrigued me but not for the reason you would think. Although I must say his performances are actually very nice and impressive, and I fully vibe with the, let’s just take a risk and see what happens, what really got me interested is the psychology and the thought process which Mr. Ming goes through. He was very passionate about showing us his works and I really liked the little talk he gave us about embracing failiure and taking chances. Overall a very very valuable visit!

Merche was cool….like really cool. Again she is an experimental artist, I will admit that type of music really doesn’t interest me (it’s not really music for cooking haha) but the artists behind it are always so so creative. On that note I really liked some of Merche’s projects, specifically the one she did back home. It really embraced different cultures while at the same time adding a personal experimental touch to it. At the same time I think that the way she designs her experimental instruments is actually wild. Like so much thought and time go into it it is actually very impressive. I remember her telling us about these circles that she put spikes on to hurt her because that is how she get’s into her act. WILD!

Group Design Exercise

Group: Hubert, Darko, Mariam

Step 1: Design a Tunnel Digger

Step 2: Start Asking “Why?”

Step 3: Turn the Ideas Generated in Step 2 into Something

“Why” Questions

Why are we digging?

To create tunnels for trains.

Why are we creating tunnels for trains?

It shortens route length, allows trains to pass through natural obstacles like mountains, and provides a means of crossing busy street areas without damaging or interfering with neighborhoods.

Why are street areas so busy?

Street areas are busy because they are hubs for transportation, shopping, dining, and socializing, attracting high foot and vehicle traffic.

Why do people flock to hubs for transportation, shopping, dining, and socializing?

People flock to these hubs for convenience, access to a variety of services and goods, and opportunities for social interaction.

Why do people seek convenience and variety in services and goods?

People seek convenience and variety to save time, meet diverse needs, and enhance their quality of life.

Why is saving time important to people?

Saving time is important because it allows people to focus on other activities they value, such as hobbies, family time, or relaxation.

Having selected the last answer of the Why questions, I came up with a soundscape which represents the time of life. Everything starts slow and then bang all of a sudden the clock starts ticking quicker and quicker, the sounds of traffic and cars passing by quickly and in the end the siren of the ambulance representing death.

After making my work I decided to check up on my other team members to see what they came up with. Meriam came up with a poem and Hubert came up with a maze game. Bingo! We all had the same thing in mind, a maze game with a soundtrack of Mariam’s poem and Darko’s soundtrack for the sound effects. We quickly got down to work and sketched out this piece:

Draft 1 (Hubert’s Game)

Draft 2:

Final Piece:

The gift/key represents Mariam’s poem referring to the fifth of time. The lines represent the maze and the audio changing, as well as the alarm and ambulance representing Darko’s audio. All together is tied back to the poem representing how time on this earth is limited.

For this assignment I decided to start off with a thing I love and that is Basketball. So I asked myself, why do I want to play Basketball so much?

• Because I’ve been playing it my whole life.
• But why have I been playing it my whole life?
• Well because I enjoy it.
• Why do you enjoy it?
• Because its fun.
• Why is it fun?
• Something about pushing myself and using my strength and mind together.
• But why are you pushing yourself?
• Because I am young and I want to test the limits of my body
• But why do you want to test the limits?
• Because you only live once…..

Even though I did not choose the last option I decided to make a little soundscape of how it feels to play Street Basketball and added a little funny element to it, with a coach yelling at the players that they are Trash! (bad). Enjoy

I would like to say this reading was kind of all over the place. Some advanced thinking mechanisms were discussed but I will explain how I “dumbed it down” in my mind :).

I started thinking differently about the mind, the brain, kind of like a program with thousands of lines of code. Among these lines we have functions which represent some patterns in our lives. Now what I found the problem to be in these is that the variables of these functions were mostly stored locally. That contributes to us thinking more vertically than to think laterally. The quick fix? Global variables 🙂 Sounds simple right? Well, not really. Storing some values globally will gives us more opportunities to be creative, but we will have to make this functions (patterns) ourselves. We also need to salvage existing functions (patterns) and create new ones, as much as we can.

This is how I understood this reading, instead of just thinking vertically and just saying what the reading is about, I decided to dissect it and connect it to programming, and this actually made me break it down and swallow it much easier.

Well….this is weird…is what I said when Mariana started showing us her projects. Not in a bad way don’t get me wrong, but what she showed us was very unusual and interesting to me, something I have never seen before. So she got my attention. Even though I agree with her that her music is not exactly the type of music you would put on whilst cooking, I was extremely interested about her creative process. Her works just scream CREATIVITY. It was very interesting to see how she modified pianos and also made her own instruments just to show what she feels and to express herself. I also liked her project where she had people singing in her mouth so we can basically hear from inside the body (not very sanitary though :). Overall I think this was a valuable visit!

For this assignment I analyzed the Collage me and Mariam made and came up with these topics:

• A basketball player dunking over waves
• Eyes looking at you in every step of your journey
• Life is full of ups and downs, and you should go in as hard as you can
• Life Is a game, score the basket and win the crown
• Rise over the waves and become the best version of yourself while everybody is watching

Out of all of this topics I chose the last one as the most interesting one (Rise over the waves and become the best version of yourself while everybody is watching) and these are my concepts for it:

• A motivational video with people looking right at you to tell you that everybody is watching and it’s your turn to rise up
• A drawing of people standing all around you in a circle while you are struggling in life
• A collage of how social media and phones are watching you while you are committed to achieving your goals
• A picture (taken by a camera) on the roof of a building watching all over the city (It gets lonely at the top)
• A painting of the ocean full of fish and you rising above it

Out of these concepts, I chose the first one (A motivational video with people looking right at you to tell you that everybody is watching and it’s your turn to rise up) and made this video:

I really hope you like it!