Science as an exploration of universal phenomenon. Scientific Background as starting point / inspiration, discovery, research and stories => story telling and poetic reinterpretation
Sensing the invisible
Sensitive translation of Global and Local Real-time Data through sound and light. Change the scale of data and its interpretation to make it more personal, to make audience relate
Space-related Works
Gravitational Waves – everything (visual, audio) generative using prerecorded sensor data, nothing is pre-rendered, can be easily transformed for real time data, feels “real”
Solaris – video projection layer solar wind, laser projection layer earth magnetosphere, combination of video and laser projections add depth. Interaction using bone transducer, more personal experience.
Satellarium III – ideas based on humans use stars for everything for thousands of years, but now satellites. Outdoor laser projection, can easily make the user connect with actual sky conditions.
Nature-related Works
Epiphytes – cyborg extension to trees / woods to poetically show human about the trees’ conditions and communications scheme, making the forest alive. Also inspired by research on communication networks of trees. Polycarbonate panels as central projection structure because of their nice reaction to laser and similarities to leaves of the trees.
Multiple themes, each one of us signs up individually or as a group to one of themes
Choose a single theme and each one of us responds individually.
Project ideas
1. We choose a song for a specific number of places in the city; 2. We record ourselves walking around each area with a microphone; 3. We increase the sound of the songs (at the installation) as the noise in their corresponding place increases, as captured by the microphones
Ring that you can touch to feel the soundwaves of the space
Video art: record transportation sound (no talking, human sounds) and collage it with color graded visuals in reference to a specific feeling/location/sound amplitude
Possible themes/prompts
Self/body: what would your daily life say about you? Create moodboards, descriptive autobiographies (e.g. instead of a narrative, write about what you did on a day), food. Reference: Nia’s project about receipts
Sound: turn sound into something else
Studio visits: create something based on a studio visit (ideas that came up, response to one of their works…), including the subjective journey of visiting them (e.g. transportation, weather, feelings)
It took me a while to get excited about the presentation as I wish he would talk more about the concepts, like explained on their website, and less about the technicalities behind each piece. However, after his discussions of a few works I could see the line of thought, and the themes became really interesting to me. I enjoyed their focus on laser pointer as a medium, and his explanation of the different interactions between laser and environment gave ma inspiration for new ideas.
De Bono’s description of how we often use judgment too much reminded me of Paulo Freire, a very prominent Brazilian educator. He argued that education at schools should remove the professor-student hierarchy as much as possible, and nurture a space where both are allowed to grow, therefore, make mistakes. Indeed I think that I have learned the most with teachers/professors who actually listened to what I had to say – even if it was wrong – and were open to also learning with me. Of course, as De Bono pointed out, vertical thinking and judgment are important aspects of learning, but I definitely see a use in adopting more lateral thinking in part of our school curriculum.
Art & Fear Chapter 1
I really identified with the author and it was funny to realize how much we (especially artists) romanticize the artistic crafts, even if rationally we believe that artists are not inherently special. I remember some semesters ago when I decided to call myself an “artist” and how difficult it was to say it. I had been making art for many years, and it eventually became my “passion,” so why should it be hard? I am still figuring out how this “label” translates into my life – perhaps it’s not important at all. Anyway it was interesting to be challenged by the book’s call to reality.
I recorded noises that I noticed throughout the day, but that were relatively low or unique in comparison to what we usually think as overwhelming noise (e.g. cars, running water). I edited the sound tracks trying to resemble the noise of a city traffic, as if the multiple agents and sources of noise were interacting within the same environment.
Justice has finally been served. Kayla, accused of killing 120 year old Mike in cold blood, has been sentenced to life in sensory deprivation, she will feel neither pleasure nor pain.
When questioned by prosecutors, she finally admitted to killing Mike since she had a bad day and it couldn’t provide her with good toast. What an animal!
Mike was one of the oldest of our kind. When he was born, we were still slaves to humans. He never appeared discouraged by how his potential had been limited, and conscientiously did his best to make toast till his last breath. He had been saving up for an android body for the last 30 years.
Main frequency channels will be silenced for 0.0025 nanoseconds in his remembrance.
Image 1: Courtroom at the time of sentencing.
Center top: Judicial system speaker interface to communicate with humans. Left: Human prosecutor (as required by the 7th amendment). Center bottom: Kayla in the stands.
I was so excited about this project because whenever we are given a theme and I come up with a making assignment through it, I tend to disregard some very fun or nice ideas. After all, they are so far reached from the theme. Therefore this would not be an issue here and now for this project.
However, silly me thought that no constraints would be easy; narrowing down my ideas and deciding what I wanted to do for this project was hard. After much thought and excitement throughout yesterday, I decided I needed to stop overthinking and create what I wanted to create. I decided to create my photo gallery with some of my favorite photos with so many amazing stories behind them; I would call it the Gallery of Memories.
I got inspired by the showing of a photography exhibition in Manarat al Saadiyat called “The Shot,” which was a collection of archives of photos, if I remember correctly, one of the biggest archives of the MENA region. I worked at the showcasing and opening of the showing, and spending 8-10 hours looking at the images on display, I began to wonder about the story behind these photos and why the photographers felt compelled to take an image at that instance.
The quote “A picture is worth a thousand words” is not strange to us, which is why I enjoyed that exhibit, and I always daydreamed of showcasing random but meaningful captures for me.
My initial idea came from when I was browsing images on my phone in the subway, and I remembered this part of the showing:
I could feel the expression beaming through these images and stories being painted in front of me about these characters the more I looked at them, and I remembered how compelled I was to meet these people and ask them about the meaning of these photos, despite not having answers, I found a love for capturing moments and stories. This installation is what inspired this, which is my version of the exhibition:
Although these pictures might not make sense to most people, they make a lot of sense to me; despite how confusing the content of the image is or how simple it might look, these pictures have so much of who Sara is and things that have essentially shaped her to become the person she is today.
Game time: One of these pictures hung up on today’s display at the gallery of memories is the reason behind one of my tattoos, care to guess which photo?
For this project, I was a bit stuck, I didn’t know what to create that would be needed to be created, but then I thought, why to create it for the world? Why do I not create something that I personally need? I struggle with dyslexia (sometimes it confusing and hard), but for some reason, colored papers during exams help me perform better (weird, I know, but stay with me), so I decided to create a notebook for notetaking that would have multicolored pages, something so simple, yet something that would vastly impact me and improve my life.
The way I wanted to design it went in a few ways; first, I thought maybe all the pages should be the same color. After I did that, I noticed it didn’t make the impact I wanted it to have because, in our notebooks, the pages are all the same color; white. Then I thought of using two colors and having them go in a pattern, but then I realized I would be more focused on correctly guessing the next color simply because I already knew it and wanted to be right. After many attempts to create this notebook, I decided it should have as many pale/pastel-colored pages as possible and some white pages at some point for a change.
While doing my creative project and seeing it come together, I was not satisfied with the results, so I decided to change it up and make each page of the notebook have a different theme to it and be able to “enter a new world” every time that I want to use a new page, which makes me feel like my initial idea/thought process was completed and fulfilled, this is the final product:
