Author: Linda Dong

The visual/audio spectacles and the heavily contextual public performances go towards different directions but she somehow was able to make me believe that they are from the same artists. Hate to frame it this way, but I can definitely see more commercial value in Merche’s works than other ones. I really wanted to ask if she uploads her sound to a sound library but somehow that idea just slips away 🙂 I think her stuff reminds me more of a usual, contemporary performance that I would go and watch with friends. Really enjoy how all of them have such a solid foundation of research which i think is the soul of all their arts.  

I combined my responses for Lateral Thinking and Art & Fear.

I enjoyed reading about the art & fear chapter. It feels like a handbook for young artists that is intended to guide you through your career, or in general for everyone who are interested in creating without consuming yourself. Some of my take-away can be found below:

1. Do not equate the product of your art as your whole person
2. “learning to accept yourself, which makes your work personal, and in following your own voice, which makes your work distinctive.”
3. For makers, process matters, for viewers, result matters

Art comes from pain, politics, and struggles. In an ideal society (regardless of the regime), do we still have art? The arts that stay in my mind are always somehow related to tragedy, even the most loving and wholesome piece of art has an underlying tone of the fear of losing, social oppression, or emptiness. 

Value the process = being effective and not being right 

Sometimes it’s harder to hold it back than to let it flow. Delay in judgment is a tool to help you hold. It’s like eating slower helps you digesting better or walking slower may leads you to discover new things. Pacing yourself off can lead to better creations. I find the part on ‘practical application’ particularly helpful.

I feel like both the readings kind of shift away from the traditional definition of art-making. I’m not saying that they are not about art, rather, everything they talk about can be apply to the way people see the world in general. Maybe that’s why art therapy is so popular. 

I was trying to relate the digger to the why question. The result of our why turns out to be a loop, and what is always looping: song!

I used the sound of:

1. Jason playing with a pen when we are discussing the project
2. Shoveling dirt
3. Vacuum
4. Lazer cutting
5. construction site noise
6. Drone sound
7. Drilling sound

The story is that we start from a tool that is widely used (a pen) to the shovel, then to vacuum and then progresses to laser, which is more hardcore. Eventually, we end with a drone sound, indicating the end of the digging process.

I’ve never made anything like this and this is way harder than I expected. 

My ‘why’ starts from why do people travel to a reflection on loneliness and the need to express. I decided to create a dice called DICEtination. Travelling is never about the result, but the process. Your destination is in fact not a location, but where your heart lands in the process. Dicetination leads those who might find no more joy in traveling to a new way of looking at your trip.

Why do people want to travel? 

Maybe because they are curious in things that they haven’t seen before 

Why are they curious things that they haven’t seen before 

Because curiosity is a human nature and we’re all driven by curiosity 

Why are we all driven by curiosity 

because that’s the way we getting in touch with the world

Why do we need to get in touch with the world

because we don’t want to be alone 

why do we not want to be alone 

because being alone is very scary , 

why being alone is very scary 

because you won’t be heard when you are alone 

why do you want to be heard

because I have things to say 

why do you have things to say 

Because I because my brain functions normally and I generate thoughts based on what I observe, 

why do you observe 

because I have eyes 

why do you have eyes 

because I’m a human being and yeah, 

why are you a human being 

because I was part of a collective mind and during incarnation, my individuality was separated and put into this body And my mind plus my body equals to a human being

Why are you a human being? Why are you not a tree? 

I don’t know why. 

I like how eloquent she was when talking about her works. The execution perfectly matched the conceptualization. She reaches a good balance between keeping the texture of human relations with the use of technology. And her way of thinking aligns pretty well with the forms she chose: experimental art. Would love to hear her talk a bit more about how the element of feminism plays out in her work.

I was thinking a lot about stereotype when I was reading this chapter. Using the terms mentioned, stereotype can be explained as a pattern of impression towards a group of people that come from established codes. Code can be universal or culturally significant, meaning that people growing up in different environment may have different systems of code. Our reliances on these systems and limited attention span cater us towards accepting information that can quickly fall into a pattern. By introducing randomness, breaking the patterns, abandoning the short cuts, there is a chance that we glimpse into the truth. Humor was used in critical moments, such as war time, to fight against the social strutucture where lateral thinking is highly discouraged. However, humor is just a product of lateral thinking, not an all-purpose solution. It may also fall into the trap of pattern thinking system. 

I think what’s the most impotant are to pratice lateral thinking individually and also try to foster an environment that encourage lateral thinking. As mentioned earlier, it is not enough to simply ackolwgede the existence of lateral thinking. Active practices are necessary to fight back the lure of easy, effetive, and default vertical thinking.

Find the final product here

5 explanations:

1.Trying to make your boring life interesting by adding cute details

2.Political statement against the cleanness of the metro or the way the metro is designed

3.Anti-consumerism

4.Judging our over-reliance on technology and not focusing on the real world

5.Complimenting on the inventory of icons as modern design element, how they simplify our life

5 alternatives on point 4:

1.Photography: printing out large scale of screenshots from google map and take pictures with the screenshots instead of the actual place when they go and visit.

2.Installation: create a space that is super dark with only dim light from different devices spread across the space. As the devices are shut down one by one, more liveness are brought into the space.

3.Performance art: live a day or a week without any technology.

4.Film: A story about someone being absorbed into their laptop. 

5.Collage: Use cut outs of different icons to compose a scene of nature

I feel like his music is something that I would usually listen to so it’s great to have him there with us. What he says about having a limit in a way leads to more creativity & embracing the healthy fear of losing inspiration is pretty helpful for creators. I wish he could show us the process of creating a piece tho.

Lateral thinking is about deconstructing what you have to embrace what is new. Practically speaking, it’s about generating new ideas while at the same time breaking old ideas. Similar to what Kermit the frog suggested, breaking the conventionals and embracing the unconventionals could lead to a better result in terms of creativity. Two other important things also came up in this chapter: Vertical and lateral thinking are complimentary & lateral thinking needs to be practiced. The meditation from yesterday re-emphasized the idea of how minds are uncontrollable. It might be easy to think about one alternative, but not ten. Being able to combine lateral thinking and vertical thinking constantly is a skill, a way that mind works, and an attitude to life.

Take a quick look at the picture below: do you notice anything different from what you remember seeing in a Google Maps screenshot?

For this very first project, Linda and Yasmine, two newcomers to Berlin, transformed their 28 circles (14 each) on this map in various forms. Digital maps are essential for newcomers to a city. Their design, with icons simplifying real-life objects, follows a universal principle that resonates with people globally. We use maps so extensively that we often overlook the details. By altering the icons and text on this map screenshot, we place the unfamiliar in a familiar context. This reflects our experience of seeing Berlin as a new city we’ve never visited before but quickly adapt to. Moreover, placing the circle icons on the stations conveys a sense of agency and ownership of the city, which can be temporarily experienced by visitors during their short stay.

Our drawings

Abstraction and Representation

Linda’s abstract drawings reminded us of the tracks and metros of Berlin, so we decided to create a project related to the Berlin metro. We chose to redesign the stops we take to get from our residence to our university building, using inspiration from Yasmine’s drawings to name them. The names of the stops were based on Linda’s and Yasmine’s interpretation of the drawings, what they reminded us of, or what they looked like.

For example: 

Original name of the icons	Translate it to German
palm treemonkey/rat second grade popsicle no more school Christmas gift Abu Dhabi Little man	Palme Affe/Ratte zweite Klasse Eis am Stiel keine Schule mehr Weihnachtsgeschenk Abu Dhabi Kleiner Mann

Implementation

We edited an image from Google Maps that outlined the path to our university using the metro. We changed the names of the stations and used some of Linda’s drawings to create icons placed alongside the map to help interpret it. We translated the names of our made-up stations into German and replaced the real station names with them.

Bringing it to Life

To rename the stations at the metro, we stuck our icons onto random places at the stations.