Category: 2024

Flora Fauna

I honestly don’t have much to say about this visit other than that they were really cool. We’ve seen so many artists at this point, and while their work was interesting, it was similar to what I’ve seen before in places like Dark Matter. I loved how professional their work was, and their vibe was really cool. Working in a place like that seems fun.

Final Presentation

Initially, my plan was to create a physical map featuring all the landmarks I visited in Berlin. However, I am not very good at Arts & Crafts and could not produce the results I had envisioned. Therefore, I opted to use StoryMapJS. This time, following the advice of Harshini, I chose not to focus excessively on the grade I might receive. Instead, I concentrated on enjoying the process of creating this story map and coming up with engaging titles and humorous descriptions. You can find the final presentation here.

Here are the explanations for the different titles and their descriptions:

2. Only place to call home.

Title: This is the only campus residence in NYU Berlin for J-term. Unlike a normal semester, there aren’t any other option.
Description: Based on the state that our common living room is in, I have to say it has taken a toll on me.

3. Academic Excellence and Beer Gardens — What more could you want?

Title: The restaurant right in front of campus, where the orientation was organized, has ample seating areas and alcohol options.
Description: One of the primary reasons to apply for a campus site in Europe is the Schengen Visa. Seeing that most students are extending their stay in Berlin to travel across Europe, it is hard to refute this fact.

4. I’ll lose weight some other time.

Title: I have been trying to get my body back in shape but with the order I had at this restaurant: Butter chicken, pineapple juice, spicy chicken wings, and Naan, I am a bit far from my goal.
Description: Related to the fact that there are a lot of Doner in Berlin and a Nepali guy eating Indian food doesn’t really scream variety. Spice is a staple in our cuisine.

5. My first photoshoot model

Title: I take a lot of pictures of the same objects from various angles to get that one perfect shot.
Description: Unlike this building, most usually have a rectangular shape. And from what I understood from our little conversation as part of Mariam and Fatima’s description, Linda likes squares.

6. One route, twice the stop.

Title: I travel the same route twice a day between campus and residence and therefore use this station often.
Description: Since I frequent this station, one would expect it to be a historical landmark of some sort.

7. BEST DINER IN THE CITY

Title: I get all my groceries from this place so most of what I eat comes from here.
Description: Once food digests, it becomes waste.

8. AVENGERS, ASSEMBLE!

Title: Related to the fact that we had to wait for everyone to gather in front of our meeting point. Also, a popular Marvel movie phrase.
Description: This is related to the meme about popular anime series Dragon Ball’s characters Goku and Veget looking for an empty space to fight. Since the FIELD studio was very empty, it fulfills their requirements.

9. NOT THE PERSON I THOUGHT HE WAS

Title: When I first looked at the graffiti, I thought it resembled a famous dictator.
Description: The graffiti turned out to be dedicated to a Ukrainian soldier who was shot dead in captivity by Russians after saying “Slava Ukraine”.

10. DON’T FORGET YOUR BOTTLE

Title: Considering the number of drunks at the park we were in. Also a reminder to myself before leaving for the airport.
Description: The food hunt, and the laughs we had courtesy of the drunks. Since we joked about Aaron paying for our food, the only thing that couldn’t make the day more perfect as him not doing so.

11. LEG DAY FOR EVERYONE

Title: For the fact that we had to stand for the entire visit, as well as outside Gazzo, the pizza restaurant.
Description: We wanted chairs to sit on.

12. GOOD FOOD, BETTER COMPANY

Title: The demonstration for the day was about building connection between two people and the food was great.
Description: We all remember the encounter we had.

13. NICE DOING BUSINESS WITH YOU

Title: Darko was very excited about being hired at Flora&Fauna.
Description: Related to the book we all received. I feel like they gave it to us also because there were a lot of them lying around and they wanted to get rid of some of them.

14. THE KISS OVER FOOD, ANYDAY

Title: We decided to see the socialist kiss at the East Side Gallery first, even though some of us were hungry.
Description: Choosing to see the kiss over the food (sort of) tells us where our priorities are.

15. MY FAVORITE WORK

Title: Self-explanatory. My favorite work from this class.
Description: The joke here is the sarcastic remark about there not being a joke. It is a straightforward title and I wanted to end the presentation with this creation I am most proud of.

1. And I am done.

Visit to FFV

I liked the visit to FFV a lot because I like light contrasts very much. Here was a photo I took in the dorms and it was my favorite:

So seeing their works sort of resonates with me and I like their concept, especially the garden project, where people can interact. It was like I was part of the magical world and it looked amazing.

Final

For my final project, I decided to make a prototype of a game using simple geometry.

I was in the metro, and I thought about all the events we’ve been through, and I found that the metro was something that linked all of them together. Not only classes and studio visits but also sightseeing and many other things. So I decided to use the metro as the scene and make an escape-room-ish game. The train has 6 sections, one for each lateral thinking technique, and the last one for a conclusion. Once the player enters these sections, the player will see a room. There are various pieces of artwork on the walls of the room (from visiting artists) and some of my own makings as well, and the player will see prompts in the escape room. The player will need to find the clues in the room and solve a puzzle related to the section’s corresponding lateral thinking technique. When the puzzle is solved, the player will see that they are in a metro section and they can advance to the next section. Once at the last section, the player will be in a special section where it showes my understanding of lateral thinking, and the game ends. While in the game, the background music is one of Merche’s tracks recorded during her performances, because I like her music the most of the three artists.

First section: Alternatives

There are five paintings in the room and a password door. The number of digits of the password was unknown. Near the door was my making to the alternative project, and thevpassword should be 1234 because the faces of the drawing was unspecified so it is open to interpretation and alternatives. The paintings are from The DAM Projects, by Robert.

Second section: Why

For the second section, the player will see a table with many things on it(I only put what mattered on there for simplicity of a demo), including a cellphone. There will be a back ground noice of a woodpecker. The player can only leave the room when the noice is stopped. The player will have to find the phone and shut it off because the woodpecker works off of electromagnetic waves. But when the player can see the phone they can also scroll though it, just for distraction.

Third section: Reversal

The room is empty. There is no way out except a cliff behind the player. Whenever the player looks at the cliff the screen will show a line telling the player if they jump they will die. But the player will need to jump to exit the section because in the line it also gives the hint that the house wants the player to get out.

Fourth section: Analogy

Once the player enters this section, a line will appear on the screen saying that cooperation is key. Then there will be 3 blocks with different names written on them. The player will need to use the blocks to reach second floor to get out of the section. I chose cooperation because it was my topic for the analogy exercise, and also cooperation is the process of building up off of different people’s ideas.

Fourth section: Random stimulation

For this part I generated random words and I got chopsticks and cards. Then I thought about how I can use these elements to create something related to ramdomness. I then thought about using chips because they are commonly used with cards. A random amount of chips will be on the table, and the player will draw five cards and try to use chopsticks to make mathematical symbols to make the five cards calculate to be the number of chips. Then if the player finishes he will get a flower and then will need to go up to a dummy saying “dance with me”. The player will dance and the scene evolves.

Last section:

In the last section, the player will be in a small room. If the player goes directly to the front, he can push the wall and walk until the wall cannot be pushed anymore. That is to say if only use vertical thinking, it might get you nowhere. If go left and push the wall, the player will also get nowhere because it is not guaranteed ghat lateral thinking will work if only going in one other direction or only use one technique. Only when the player goes right and pushes it to the top AND also pushes frontward to the top that the player will find the exit. That is to say a combination of lateral thinking and vertical thinking will most likely get you where you want.

Final Project – Yasmine

Idea:

The video is composed of different parts of our experience in this class, including the making projects, vistits, meditation and Berlin. The U2 was an important part of this experience, so each stop was used to show a different part of our journey in this class.

Implementation:

I recorded a video from our residence to campus in the U2 and using Davinci Resolve, I cut parts of the video and replaced them with pictures of some of the making projects, videos of the artists work (including a soundtrack from Otis). I added a recording of the professor guiding the meditation and then videos I took of Berlin and our class photos. The music at the beginning is a collage of the street musicians and the U-Bahn sounds that signaled the next stop.

Final Results:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ej7k-FAH_cuuYREq0nD46xdenf2NKo_z/view?usp=share_link

Thoughts on Flora Fauna

This is a very cool studio. Although I’m late for half an hour, I’m still impressed by the work they showed us. Out of some reason, their Utopian Garden projects (or not this one, but one of the works he showed us) reminds me of The Starry Night by Van Gogh) They are thoughtful and inspiring. Moreover, I really like the vibe of their studio.

PS: Their dog is SOOO cute!!

Ben – Final making

I decided to make a sound collage (containing both royalty free sound and sounds that I made myself) to express my feelings about art and how it has evolved throughout this course. Below is the soundscape and accompanying subtitles (I’m too much of a noob to make a video with actual subtitles). It’s a bit unstructured, partly because I am a complete beginner at this but also because I am still in the process of putting my thoughts together after these hectic 3 weeks.

  1. 0 – 10: Beginning: art = drawing, no idea
  2. 10 – 20: Artists: amazing but normal people
  3. 20 – 25: Going out of bounds: learning lateral thinking
  4. 25 – 37: New art: sounds, photography, words. A little bravery
  5. 37 – 45: Favorite art: grounded and clear (= water)
  6. Last bit: Judgement-free zone: freedom of creativity. Also me feeling more free to express myself with art.

From freesound.org: Keywords: paint, apprehension, mundane, (myself), photo, writing, water

Edit 1: almost forgot. This was made in Audacity.