Author: Siddhant Arora

We made the final decision to work on the scavenger hunt. Our scavenger hunt culminates in the completion of a puzzle that has parts of our making assignments. We decided to work on creating what this completed puzzle will look like.

The project has a overarching theme of a ‘land of memories’ for our J-term. The background of the puzzle is from Oscar’s ‘Land of Memories’.

The projects included add the picture as follows:

1. A woman on the beach: This takes inspiration from Shahram’s video on the pursuit of happiness. Many of the assignments are connected by this concept.
2. Goldfish: From Shahram’s Making #6. In the web series “Ted Lasso”, Ted (a football coach) asks his players to be like a goldfish whenever something disturbing happens, since goldfishes have a very short memory.
3. Underwater fishes: Shahram represented several happy emotions in this assignment.
4. Noodle bowl of hopes and dreams: The building blocks of happiness – love, adventure, recognition and food. (will be included with physical origami)
5. Space: Sid’s first assignment, signifies inter-personal space.
6. Cyborg woman in chains: From one of Sid’s AI futuristic assignments. She wasn’t ‘happy’ with the toaster, and now she must suffer. She didn’t give her toaster enough ‘inter-personal’ space.
7. Oscar’s Portal: wouldn’t you be happy if NYU had portal travel?
8. Oscar’s Desert: The destiny of everything.
9. Apple Fairy: Sara would kill us if this wasn’t there. Fairies are happy.

Tomorrow we will work on hints and clues + logistics.

AI sculptures are cool. Lost of decisions. Keeping a constant self-initiated research practice. Exploring new domains before they become mainstream. Leveraging new technology. AI good or bad? who knows yet.

May 22, 2023

The air is cold and the ground is rough. After a grueling day tied to the metal bird, surviving the royal guards and tasteless metal bird food, I have finally arrived in the city of Berlin. The native seem polite, but I must stay vigilant. Their tongue is different. Usually I would consult the whispering stone to help me navigate, but the stone is not able to use the energy here. I must wait till I am somewhere with energy the stone recognizes. There are traces of a troubled history here, I can smell it in the air.

Tomorrow I meet the sorcerer. He says he can ‘transform’ my mind. Only time will tell.

May –, 2023

I closed my eyes, and the world around me folded into itself. He was chanting his spell. At first it was nothing, then something, then everything. I tried to keep steady, but even a 1000 years of practice under Ares and Aphrodite couldn’t prepare me for the wave of energy that came over me. I felt it crawl on my skin, not just here or there, but everywhere. My body lit up, as if illuminated by a million suns, and I had to break focus since I could no longer bear.

I learned the power of the body and mind. It constantly feels, but only perceives when and what I want. I’ll continue to broaden myself through this practice, to feel, to focus and to flow.

Jun 4, 2023

I had visions of a distant future. It was not pretty. There was no sun, no sea, and no grass. Only subjugation by silicon. The visions did not come easy, they had to be cajoled out. The master taught me how to use why, and how why worked remains a mystery to me. The mind is like a maze, and just asking reveals answers. Sometimes they are right, other times you run out of time. Even wrong answers can lead to the right ones.

May 30, 2023

Let your lonesome lie asleep, for today we work as a guild. People are hard, apples are easy. But with patience, I learned that just as there are different kinds of apples, there are different kinds of artisans, and each can add their own to the guild’s endeavor. With a little magic of the ‘why’, we knit together our spells into one that the world awes. Small realizations add up to big internal changes.

Jun 1, 2023

The scrolls of wisdom hold knowledge immense. Art and Fear revealed the truth. “The perfect is the enemy of the good”, they said. However, it is hard to follow the truth. However, the best I can do is remember, and fail and try and remember again. I hope that one day, it becomes second nature to follow instinct and ruthlessly iterate over criticism rather than to lie listless in the war-room, paralyzed and unable to make a move.

Jun 5, 2023

The radical sylph Poon flew by and let pour a sacred rain. In the pools of water we saw a beckoning. A call to be free, to let go, to experience fully, and to not be afraid. To do all in your reach, to polarize if you can, and to be antifragile. It was a different form of dance, one that is more felt than seen. I learned today the power of symbols, and of discomfort and pure experience.

Jun 7, 2023

It’s time to leave. The lessons I learned leave with me. It has been the most uncomfortable pleasure. Did I transform? Only time will tell.

The author describes levels of consciousness. Higher levels of consciousness are associated with higher control over consciousness. This in turn allows us to exert greater control over our urges, whether biological or societal.

At first I thought the book was going to be a proponent of ancient arts, advocating that the Buddhists, the Taoists and the like know something that we do not know. However, the reading took a pleasant turn when the author took a different approach to increasing levels of consciousness. He argued that the conditions required for reading high states of consciousness, the states where it is easier to get into ‘flow’ (a sense of complete immersion into the task at hand), changes with time. The practices that worked for the Buddhist founders may not work (in the same way that it did for them) for someone in our generation.

The reading goes on to describe the conditions of flow. The most important take-away for me from this section was the notion of ‘adequate effort’ (my own term here). If the task at hand is too easy, we get bored. If it is too challenging, we get anxious. It is in the middle ground that flow is achieved.

Computational modelling data suggests that an error rate of ~15% is ideal for learning. This should coincide well with where the flow state is.

Connecting sound with other senses. Using body as a conductor of sound. exploring senses, deep listening, feeling completely, co2 makes you sick, putting yourself out there. Improvise.

There are a number of connections that can be drawn between the chapter and the studio or class visits we’ve had. It has become observationally clear that most (if not all) artist have to work with the fear of others. And each artist has a different way of ensuring that this fear does not interfere with their work.

The fears related to understanding, acceptance, and approval are deeply interlaced.

The first fear the chapter discussed is understanding. The premise was less about whether the audience understands your work, but rather whether the audience understands YOU and accepts you as one of their own (a fear much that exists everywhere, not just in art). Creating authentic artwork involves exposing your weird-ness to the world, and as such opens the doors for alienation by the world. I love the examples the authors provide, such as the example of being picked last for a game, as such fears are easy to understand.

The talk on understanding reminded me of Ming Poon’s class visit. He in his work, also seems to abandon the idea of ‘fitting in’ the world. He let’s his ideas and thoughts, benign or radical, out for the world to experience without fear of being ostracized or alienated by society and norms around him.

In regards to acceptance and approval, the chapter reminded me of Robert Seidel saying, “Do not underestimate your audience”. In a time of rapid change in regards to the technology and mediums of expression available to artists, sticking to the norms and playing it safe would be a disservice to our artistic potential. We must trust our work, let it speak for itself, and let it be judged honestly. The alternative is mediocrity or worse, inauthenticity. This is bound to cause dissatisfaction with our artistic work.

Anti Fragile. activism, audience focused art. Community behind him, but he has to be the polarizer since he can escape. June 4, a different meaning to powerful movements.

Audience is present
audience is intelligent
non participation is participation — collaboration>participation
change is collective action.

The audience is everything.

I was stuck when I noted down the two words generated for me: Sheep & Cruelty.

My mind first went to the obvious candidates for topics:

1. Animal cruelty
2. Sheep being mean.
3. Animal Rights
4. Ethics?

Eventually, through a process of generating alternatives we arrived here:

1. Following something/someone like sheep.
2. Cruelty -> Suffering -> A long winded discussion on suffering as a necessity for consciousness with a friend -> AI conciousness

My first thought was a clan of AI powered beings following a human like sheep. But we need things to be more exciting.

This led to a number of humans following an AI like sheep. They don’t believe the AI is malevolent, but that since it is super-intelligent, it must know what is best for them.

I threw in some sheep, cause why not. I drew a part of the image and superimposed it on a background created using stable diffusion.

You might find some references to previous totalitarian regimes in the drawing:

Scrap to art. Recycling. Making from what you have. lots of lateral thinking. Chill working environment. Electronics. A combination of various skills and learning as you go to make whatever you want. Interactive Retro style.

Very interesting work. Harshini was relatable and charming. Projections. Progression from one medium to another. Mixing of media. Video Jockey?! Living in Berlin…..