One thing that stood out to me was how long each piece was. It amazed me that something so abstract and without a storyline could keep my attention for so long. It was like getting lost in a world of colors, shapes, and feelings.
Since his work is very abstract, it was interesting to hear about all the different interpretations and emotions that viewers of his art were experiencing. Each person viewing his art comes out with something different to say about it.
Seeing how the art has changed over the years was another thing that struck me about the visit. As he moved from one piece to the next, I could see how his style changed but the general feel stayed the same.
It was also interesting seeing his projection work. It made me think about how art when mixed with other senses may leave a stronger impression\ on the viewer.
I would have liked to see him speak more about his creative process of actually coming up with these works.
One of the things that occurred to me during my last make assignment was using futuristic augmented reality glasses to navigate around the city. Hence, I used photoshop to create the following picture in which AR glasses are used for navigation.
I enjoyed the outside projection in the environment, especially in the rain as it added a very interesting element to the projection that was not initially planned.
The projection onto the cloth was interesting as I never thought of it as a medium of creativity in that way
At one point in the videos I thought one of the audios resembled the U-Bahn at the station
Once your attention would start to drift, the visuals would change along with the audio to catch your attention once again.
I liked this visit. The pace was slow at some points, but overall what he was saying was interesting. I liked how he showed us his watercolour paintings. I thought this really showed a part of his process, and it was interesting to see that he uses this medium as a preparation/ inspiration to do digital art. I also liked how he shared some of the problems he faced during his installations. I wished he talked more about how he dealt with the lack of equipment or the restrictions he faced. I wished he talked more about how he came up with his designs when he could not visit the actual location. He did mention it, but I wanted to hear more about it. I liked seeing his progression over the years.
Why are we narcissists but don’t like narcissists?
Because we don’t like seeing our reflection on others?
what about your reflection in the water?
Because water is trippy
Why is it trippy?
It just is.
We initially decided to do our “Why” question as a pair to generate more ideas and move more into lateral thinking. Working on our own resulted in a more vertical way of thinking and we wanted to stay away from that. We did several iterations of the “Why” questions with different topics, but we only chose one at the end.
For our topic, we chose graffiti because it is something that we have been seeing around on a daily basis. From there, we somehow branched into narcissism, reflections, and water. We started with one idea, but we ended up combining several of the topics that were mentioned in the questions.
We brainstormed the projects we could make with the topic of narcissism, and what’s more narcissistic than portraying ourselves. We went around the city to find reflective surfaces such as windows and fountains to portray our narcissism. Then, we ended up with three different surfaces and reflections, one in the fountain, one in a window, and one in a building.
When discussing the “reflection” part, we explored different reflective surfaces, and water got our attention since we even mentioned it while doing the questions. We then realized that this should be the central image since it goes back to narcissism as the origin. Since this world comes from the story of Narcissus that drowned while admiring his reflection. Good news is, we did not drown (because we are not actual narcissists).
Our initial fountain was not as reflective as we expected it to be, therefore, we walked around the city, beside the Brandenburg Gate and Friedrichstrasse to explore other fountains and options. At the end of the day, we went back to our initial fountain to where our idea was inspired (the sun was at a better angle then so it was more reflective).
Photos only reflect one part of our narcissism, and we decided to take this matter into our hands. What’s more narcissistic than photos of ourselves? Photos of ourselves merged together and “edited” to show our best self. We then went back to the concept of graffiti and decided to draw over our pictures and around in order to better represent our project.
When I was thinking about physical borders yesterday, one topic that came into my mind was our very university: NYU, which is set across borders — strictly speaking, 15 of them. To connect all of them, why don’t we erect a portal at each campus? I am tired of flying on intercontinental flights ten times a year😉.
This drawing of the portal was made by Canva. I used a model of the iconic Washington Square Arch as the main structure. The departure times were also chosen in a way assuming that portal crossing is instantaneous. The users would not end up at their destination during early morning or late night.
In addition, there has always been a superstition (though not true) that someone walking under the Washington Square Arch would fail courses and not graduate. In this way however it also prevents anybody to walk literally “under” it 😹.
By the way, the portal site at NYU Abu Dhabi, as you can see from the picture, is located at the construction site at the west of our campus. Since I don’t really know what project is currently going on there, so why not let it be a portal?
These are the notes that I took during and after the talk:
He uses random drawings to clear the mind before a project.
Exploring lights and colors, merging his understanding as a biology student (evolution, decay, rebirth, and growth) into his creation.
Find the personal pathway with any available tech, not being restricted by their conventional uses.
Enjoying what I am doing now as we’re not constrained by deadline, budget and industry.
Hybrid Films – non-traditional form of presentation. Integrating films with multiple media other than screens. Ideas not restricted by scale. e.g. LED on Buildings / walls, projections…
Merging with Reality. e.g. natural history museum – film includes abstract elements from fossils, plant, animals….
Audience is much more intelligent than you think. Just tell the story in your way, stay true to it. It can translate to others.
Work in contrasting locations open new inspirations.
Museums are collection and condensation spots of human knowledge. Easily resonate and create abstract representation of ideas.
Projection Sculptures – creation of both projection and objects. Need both to work. Revitalize old structures, like adding soul to them
Hysteresis – Covid, Feeling Torn, Feeling Tension Use AI to fuse renaissance style into dancer movements. AI is trained to be good at recognizing patterns (e.g. recognizing muscles – renaissance style) actively that regular filters can never do.
Openness to interpretation of audience ideas may help, but the backbone should still be yours.
They are very useful for me as I can really resonate with and admire his work. I would love to create a piece that engages everybody, remain in their minds unconsciously, and closely related to the local environment. Especially after visiting the Großer Wasserspeicher, I really would like to aim for a project that utilizes the whole space with sound and light that people can interact with. It would be best if it can connect to the complex history and symmetric, circular topography of the place that gives echos.
The chapter made me wonder what is the role of ego in all of the construction and reconstruction of mind patterns. The tendency of the brain to retrieve information that is similar to what has been stored before explains things like confirmation bias. But why is it so hard to accept that our previous pattern (e.g. opinion) is not useful or trustworthy anymore? Why is it hard to accept how limited our brain system can be? Perhaps it would be interesting to expand the discussion to the limitations of our personality in itself.
The questions made me think of ways to represent or see myself beyond “hair,” or perhaps away from any bodily, aesthetic or figurative expression. This collage is a representation of myself based on photos, artworks, songs and quotes that are dear to me. It is a self portrait that tries to abstract from my corporeal existence.
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Why do I have hair? – biological/evolutionary level: my hairy ancestors were less prone to damage on their heads, skin cancer etc. so they were able to live longer/better and reproduce
But there are many bald people doing fine today. Why do you choose to keep your hair? – I find it pretty.
Why? – I like how I look, I’m used to my hair, and I find other people with similar hair, pretty.
You could get used to no hair and you also find some bald people pretty. – I’m scared that I’ll look terrible without hair and it would take me a while to get used to bald.
Why couldn’t you wait for how long it takes? – Because it’d hurt my self esteem.
Why? – Because I base how I feel partially on how pretty I think I am.
Why? – I don’t know…
This exercise felt a bit weird because my mind is always two questions ahead of my writing, so here are other topics I thought I would boil down to after asking Why: body neutrality, social acceptance, stereotypical femininity, my hair is a source of compliments many times (?).
