Integrative Seminar 1
My name is Martina Gallo, I’m eighteen years old and haven’t decided on a major quite yet. My artistic interests include multiple subjects such as illustration, wood, graphic design, and interior design. Recently I have completed my Integrative Studio and Seminar classes, of which I had many projects that coincided with one another. One such assignment would be our research project, which started within my Studio class. The premise of this half of the project was based on the social-political issues of science fiction movie of our choosing. The Seminar portion of this project was to write a research paper on a topic related to the first project.
The first steps in the Studio portion of the project was to select and watch a science fiction movie from a suggested list, and find a few socio-political issues we felt we could discuss. We then discussed the nature of zines and how they are for the most part, commonly used to convey these themes cheaply in great numbers. Afterwards, we personally went out to various zine hubs around New York to get a sense of how a zine is constructed and designed. While working on our layout on our zines, we were challenged to use as little text as possible, to hopefully make full use of symbols and iconography in order to make it universally understood. In my project, I based my zine off of a science fiction movie called “Ex Machina”. I wanted to delve within the subject of power and wealth, and so I chose many designs related to the subject.
As for the Seminar portion of this project, it was to write a research paper on a topic related to the Studio portion. Initially, I wanted to remain with the same subject as the zine, but I couldn’t seem to get the subject down to a specific enough point, so I moved in another direction. My research paper ended up focusing on how people who are placed into the gifted program in the education system as children are affected. After getting the literary resources I needed and the approval of my professor, I moved forward with the paper and began to read many child development papers on the subject. Through this, I learned of many issues caused by the gifted program, as well as the positive effects, that i would have never known before this.
With the help of this research project, I’ve learned many artistic skills and tons of new information about the education of children. This project was quite helpful in many ways as it taught me about a new model of information distribution as well as preparing me for the next semester’s Seminar classes. I hope that the next semester is as informational and interactive as this project was, and I can see it generating an informative and interesting conversation in the near future.
