Author: Mirette Dahab

I liked their energy. their work is fascinating. liked their approach towards their projects. their space is also pretty cool. and most importantly, loved the dog.

for the past 6 months I’ve been collecting postcards from my travels around Europe so that I can save some of my favorite memories from the cities I’ve been to. After some brainstorming, I thought it would be cool to make some postcards from my memories in this class, but then I ran into some technical difficulties so I changed my project from postcards to stamps, after making stamps of all my favorite memories, i was still not satisfied with my outcome so I decided to go back to my original idea and make the postcards. now I had stamps so my postcards could be even better!

I put together some pictures for the postcards. each postcard is connected to the stamp on it, and has been addressed to a specific person. Majority of pictures are taken by me 🙂

here is a link to check out my postcards:

https://interacty.me/projects/5a8fbdb5dd138ab3

I’m going to be completely honest, I didn’t want to be here. I’ve been to Berlin before and I didn’t really like it much. I wanted to go to either London or Florence, both top on my travel bucket list, but I had to put 6 options, and couldn’t just put London and Florence, so I put Berlin because it was the “cheapest” option. I explicitly remember telling my mom “Oh there’s no way I’m getting Berlin, it’s my fifth choice”. I was devastated when I found out I had gotten the Berlin class. I remember calling my mom on the verge of tears, trying to make sense of the situation.

I regretted putting Berlin as an option altogether. For months, I tried to hype it up for myself, but I was never really excited about it. Then I found out that a friend was coming here too so I felt like “okay It might not be too bad afterall”. It was finally one step forward. However, 2 days before my flight to Berlin, I found out that my friend didn’t get her visa. Aaaand there it was, ten steps back. I was so miserable, I literally cried myself to sleep the first night. I remember telling myself that it’s only 19 days. My friends kept telling me to make the best out of it, but it seemed impossible. I absolutely and utterly hated it.

Then class started and I guess it wasn’t as bad as I expected. I got to know the girls I shared an apartment with a bit, they seemed nice but we weren’t close. Day by day the class started being more fun and we started warming up to each other. In class we were meeting all those great musicians that were living my dream of creating music professionally. And after class I was exploring the city, one restaurant at a time, but I spent most of my time that first week watching Bridgerton in bed.

It was the making projects that made me like the class a little bit better. I love creating stuff, but I’m never inspired enough nor have the time to create something, so this was perfect. From making sound collages to writing a poem, I slowly started opening up and channeling my inner artist. It may not seem like it, but through these makings I began warming up to Berlin and to the people here. 

The change was subtle but overnight I found myself having so much fun here. The girls and I started working together in the common area of our apartment every night, killing scary bugs and doing movie nights, watching movies whose names I do not even remember. Little by little these random moments turned into inside jokes and developed a bond between us. 

Then out of nowhere, Aaron sent out a link asking us to make paper clips. Make paper clips? How? Why? My curiosity got the better of me and I opened the link. And within a few minutes, I was running a multi billion business. I got so engrossed in my paper clip business that it started being a distraction.

Before I knew it, it was the last week of class and I found myself dreading leaving. I am still confused how and when the transition from counting down the days to not wanting to leave happened, but it left me feeling confused. How is it possible that I did a complete 180 in the span of a few days? Was it the artists? Or the meditation? The in-class activities perhaps? Finally knowing my way around the u-bahns? can’t forget about the junkies too, or possibly the pizzas? Nah, I don’t think so… Maybe it was Dark Matter? Is it the people we met? the flea markets? But also the ice-creams, perhaps all of the above?

We’re almost at the finish line, but I kinda don’t want this class to end. I don’t want to leave Berlin so soon. I miss home, but there’s so much I haven’t seen yet. so many people I haven’t met yet. So many places I haven’t tried yet. This class made me understand myself a bit better. It made me realize how happy I get when I am making, or even talking, about the things I love. It was a needed wake up call that doing the things you love is an active choice and every day spent not doing it is a wasted opportunity. It showed me that I can pursue whatever I love even if I don’t have the resources, education or support as long as I believe in myself, as cliché as it sounds. This class has changed the way I think and my outlook on life. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to say that this class was magical and completely fixed my life but I feel like I had some ~minor~ personal improvements since the beginning.

I really liked the studio visit today. I find Marco’s work very interesting. Growing up I was extremely fascinated with sound waves, vibrations, patterns and ranges. I wanted to become an acoustics engineer, so I find it completely fascinating that Marco’s works focus entirely on sound waves not music and how he can use them to send messages and represent data. I love the fact that he was courageous enough to delve deep into the world of biology even though he does not have any experience in it. I also really liked his mindset towards rejections.

I found his art very mesmerizing. I love how his videos leave so much for the imagination and yet direct your thoughts in specific directions. It was very interesting seeing how his art has developed over time and across different mediums.

Feed The Guest

Process:

Using the random word generation technique we came up with two random words, banana and box. Then through that we used generating alternatives to come up with food and maze. 

We initially thought of a cooking game where the partners got random ingredients and they had to create things and share ingredients to combine the final results of each player. To make this applicable to a classroom setting we decided to make cards to represent the ingredients.

Idea:

The game is meant to bring two people together through cooking, since making a meal is a great way to bond with someone. The idea is that two college students with barely anything in their fridges have an unexpected guest coming over and they have 3 mins to put together something to serve for the guest, Having almost no ingredients to work with, the real challenge is being able to creatively make some presentable food for the guest under the time crunch. 

Implementation:

We brainstormed some crazy food ingredients, designed some cards on canva and printed them to be randomly chosen from. 

The rules are as follows:

Each person gets 3 random ingredients which represent the stuff in their fridge

They have 3 mins to make something for the guest using all the ingredients they have

Final Results:

This chapter was very informative about how the fear of others’ opinions can affect the art making process. Many great ideas are lost and abandoned because of small comments here and there made by others which I find really stupid because one person’s opinion doesn’t define an artist’s worth. It is as important for an artist to learn how to deal with other people’s comments as learning how to do their artwork. The author touched upon this a bit but I believe different people should have different strategies of coping and preparing for the criticism they will inevitably face that work best for them. I think that giving yourself the time to mentally prepare and fully finish your piece like Andrew Wyeth’s example is a good way to learn how to accept your work and be confident about it so that your artwork is not affected by it. I personally find that this is a good method to overcome criticism and be less self conscious about your work.
It’s scary how much control the audience has on someone’s self worth and art making process. The examples given in the chapter show how cruel people can be sometimes and I’m not going to lie if I were performing a piano piece and got a zero on a scale of 0-100 because the person thought I could not play, I would give up playing the piano in a heartbeat. When it comes to art, criticism can either make you or break you, so it is important to learn how to embrace it and deal with it without having it affect your work because we live in a cruel world and apart from your close family and friends no one is going to go out of their way to be nice to you or sugarcoat their comments.

The words: Organ and Shop

I decided to have a peek into the world of organ shopping and see what it looks like to order organs online. Below is a screenshot from an amazon page to buy fresh organs online.

I was impressed that they managed to use generative AI in a way that actually looks pretty cool and they’re not trying to hide it. I like how they tailor their designs for each client and yet maintain a nice overall style. cool people, liked their vibe.

One thing the author mentioned that I really liked is that sometimes it’s the myth of the extraordinary that limits us, I’ve never thought of it that way. After reading this chapter and introspecting on the lessons passed by the author, I realized that It’s almost always our own self criticism and the expectations we set for ourselves that limit us and paralyze the art making process, if we were to quiet the doubts in our heads and the thoughts that tell us that our art will never live up, we’d be able to make amazing work. I also really liked the story about the clay making groups, it really put into perspective what happens when we hyperfixate on things. This reminds me of my freshman year when I was doing the first year writing seminar. The essays I spent the most time perfecting always got the lowest grades whereas the ones I procrastinated and had very little time to work on got the best grades. It’s because I didn’t have time to overthink every single detail to the point that I turned it into chaos. That being said, I’m not saying that rushing through things is the answer, but rather letting go of the idea that everything needs to be perfected and just trying.