These were my beginning sketches of the character I wanted to portray. Inspired by the web serial, Worm, I created an anti-hero, a vigilante. What I worked on for this project was her backstory. Before explaining how she got her powers, I need to set the scene- the universe really. In this world, there is an Evil God that hovers over the lives of humans. They call him, the God of Fate, the being who controls the golden threads of fate, the question of who dies and who lives is determined by it. For now, I only have one planet, but who knows! With the power of imagination, I could expand on that, which is what I did in creating this world of enhanced human beings (humans with superpowers). On this planet, we don’t call these people “superheroes” because of the fear and mistrust they evoke from citizens. This is also thanks to the cult that follows the God of Fate. They heed his “holy” decrees of creating beings to battle enhanced humans who do not follow his cult. Normal people don’t have any knowledge of this being at all, however, if they did know, one could only say that was also determined by fate itself. The reason being? Who knows? How could us tiny, insignificant ants know what an insurmountable, ubiquitous being was thinking! (Please understand that although I am the creator of this being, I must also hang my head low in order to be safe from its grasps) But I reckon he does this for entertainment, as many would imagine, being at the top is always described as lonely and boring, right? You could also imagine the amount of unrestrained spite this being has gathered (from across different worlds as well) when discovering this fact. That’s why there are two factions, Golden Fate, those who follow this being, and the opposing, Silver of Luck. Founded by the first characters I made for this series.

For more storytelling and worldbuilding (It’s also pretty embarrassing to read, this is always the case when threading the boundary between a nerd and a weeaboo):

Also, they aren’t aligned with some parts of the story now, but this was my early writing.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/10AT_QBQlHqACJqcfbmp64WZpKJhmXymgIkhcyeBoz-o/edit?usp=sharing

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mAHnrlZ-vb0pQ-X71FQLRFJ3wzq81_ezS3e3vqoSlsc/edit?usp=sharing

From the work, Growing Suspicion originates my love for drawing masks. How they are used to hide something yet, simultaneously, they represent so much more. At the end of the video, you actually see them appear pulling the golden thread, in search of this newborn power, Lisa, who wields her blood as her power. Never have they’ve ever sensed a power being unlocked in this manner, so they personally searched for this being themselves to guide it.

For the actual video:

Well… it’s more of an abstract music video. I got tunneled visioned and created a music video instead. I should have thought more about the time I had because I was staying up and rushing this, but it was still fun exploring After Effects’… effects – now that’s just really awkward to say. Because I’m pursuing game design this is still a good learning experience in creating animated shorts if I were ever to do that. What I wanted to portray in the video was, well, at the beginning, the death of her parents who were also enhanced beings. They were sought after Golden Fate and their bodies were taken away for experimentation. Of course, Lisa had no idea about these matters, only thinking the death of her parents was caused by misfortune, only to be later confronted by a beast-enhanced assassin of this organization. Being the cocky-mouthed bastard he was, this assassin spilled pretty much the whole can of beans about what happened to her parents as she was going to die anyway. One of her arms is detached for attempting to confront him and her head is taken away. What happens after is really abstract because to her it is what seems like a dream. In reality, her body and the detached arm sinks into the pool of blood that congregated around her and she later appears surfacing out of this pool later on her new body boiling for vengeance. Following the themes of the headless horsemen, she would seek for herself again – her head and vengeance for the lives of her closest family. There’s going to be a lot of character building before she gets to the stage of being an anti-hero… or is that something I should even pursue for her? This matter can only be decided by herself. Would her efforts be for naught? Or would she discover something else? As for the video, after knowing about the trademarked golden threads of fate, who else could it be besides from this being who granted her this power? Could he be doing this for his entertainment again? But why would he give such a power to this girl? When one realized this, they also acknowledge the monstrosity of power this being really held… to even give such fierce power to that girl, just how much power did he wield then? It shattered all hopes of whoever thought they had a chance against it – The God of Fate.

The Five Footers spotted at Washington Square Park

To get us going, we did group assignments for class and for homework. Here are some examples of our work:

Our paradise group clock

Our imaginary Utopia world

Our world drawn out

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Seminar Week 9 Collective Reading Response

Both French rapper and mother, Ana Tijoux, holds the same beliefs with music as she talks about how warped the industry has become in making their money through objectifying female artists instead of through the beauty of the actual music. In her article, La Cultura de la Basura, or garbage culture when translated, she says, “Every female singer must compete in an infinite game of provocation… who can show more and more… who is the most desirable, and who has the highest ability to annul the most beautiful femininity…” (Tijoux 2014, 6) Tijoux deprecates the music industry and music videos that only serve to make girls and women into objects of greed, and stresses the importance in discussing the impact it has on the younger generation. For them, opportunities have become severely unequal; the possibilities of work have dwindled as our society not only supports this but now expects this. In turn, Tijoux believes that it is the responsibility of the artist to step away from this cycle and take the initiative change things. She says, “Singers have the imperative task of bringing about a shift through our songs and lyrics. We have to bring the issue to the fore, awaken critical thought, remember with beautiful responsibility the reason for our voices.” (8)

Weil states that, “Work makes us experience in the most exhausting manner the phenomenon of finality rebounding like a ball… ” (Weil 2002, 179)

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Photo of Influence, spreading happiness by beautifully made paper flowers

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After team-building excersies, we got into the flesh of the project – deciding on what we, as a group, wanted to do and forming a manifesto for that. Because the project was a site-specific installation, we researched about the square and found an abundance of dark history that we would have never known if we had not purposely searched up about this place. We related this to the importance of knowing all sides of something, not only focusing on the good, but also the bad. When exploring the square, we saw a man selling anti-trump buttons and we were inspired to do something similar. From then on, our theme would be exposing George Washington, a legendary figure in history, and thus, showing the public the bigger picture – not that it’s important to know the secrets of powerful figures, but that in a political sense, there is not perfect glorious figure, that they are humans just like us.

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Manifesto Investigation

Chosen Manifesto: An Incomplete Manifesto for Growth by Bruce Mau

Chosen Primary Resource: “Bruce Mau Commencement Speech”

 

Bruce Mau not only wrote a manifesto on human growth, he is also a graphic designer, architect and entrepreneur. As art students we depend heavily on design, especially since our corresponding studio project is based around graphic design.  When we saw that Bruce Mau was such a famous designer we knew that he would be a great source of inspiration reading his manifesto only made us more sure. Unlike many of the manifestos, Mau has a more universally applicable message. He talks to the individual but in a way that many individuals can relate to. We felt that the best way to better understand where Mau was coming from would be to find a primary source directly from him. We found a commencement speech and knew it would be the perfect way to connect Mau to his manifesto and then for us to be able to connect ourselves to our manifesto.

Manifesto Draft

• We are here to expose the hidden life of George Washington
• Exposing these truths will shed a new light on how we perceive and think about history and the people we assume are good
• George Washington was not the man we thought we knew, we must inform people the man he really is
• The first president should be someone we know 100% it’s only fair and we have the right probably
• George Washington, like many other presidents, have their ups and downs because he’s human
• Society erased these truths, we must go against that
• We have to be open-minded about his past life
• History textbooks in school erased his life and only focused on the good concepts, it is our duty to be the better textbook to the public
• Create a new perspective on history

Our Collective Manifesto 

On the day we were performing our project, we all dressed up in black to look punk in order to match our poster themes. We chose this theme because punk has a history of being rebellious against authority. Nicole brought chokers for me and Leach. Alyssa went through an edgy phase so she was prepared.

Our soup poster – this was when we couldn’t decide on a theme and just stacked everything in this one poster.

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Final products

one of the posters contained an informative back side.

our map for locating our installation

we made a lot of stickers, however not all are showcased because we handed them out

people liked it a lot because it was almost like a collectable (like some trading-card game)

 

an example of one of our smaller patches (made out of felt and embroided on)

I stuck one of my bag with one of Alyssa’s saftey pins

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I’ve done plenty of graphic design projects in high school, but I wasn’t the greatest at it. I would design on illustrator, but for this project, I worked on both illustrator for getting transparent pictures and editing in photoshop. It was really fun experimenting with the filters and I learned a lot of how to transform objects into looking punk like. The only thing I regret is making more posters because after getting the hang of everything, many other ideas popped up. Working in a group to install something we each made as a collective was a really fun experience because I believe our final product was amazing. In the first place, putting something together as a group has an accomplishing feeling to it. Especially because our location was by Aweiwei’s installation, Good Fences Make Good Neighbors, since we were both being critical of a person in power.

 

 

 

Arch in Washington, Good Fences Make Good Neighbors

• It’s 3D, so it looks more like a cage (which I related to a birdcage)
• The middle portion is a solid opening unlike the whole fence (it makes an organic shape) and makes it interactive in this way
  • It’s situated right under the arch and sort of becomes the arch
  • There are some lights on the sides so it must look really shiny at night
  • Some sick folk music playing and it’s pretty lit

   

The Fences on the building in Cooper Union

• There’s (what I assume to be fences) blocking the windows

• The fences certainly make it harder to look out the window, but I think it represents blocking out hope because when I think of looking out the window, I think of looking far away and wishing for something

 

As a collective, we observed that Good Fences Make Good Neighbors at Washington Square Park, looked more like a cage rather than a fence. The organic shape in the center of the piece also ruins the illusion of a fence. In fact, one of us noted that these fences wouldn’t make particularly good fences (if they were to be setup as it). The hole in center makes the piece more interactive, allowing people to freely pass through, although a bit restrained. Perhaps this represents immigrants still managing to sneak over. That even though we put up laws against refugees and immigrants, there will still be people against it and that’s something to be hopeful for. The on-site-construction in Cooper Union had the fences merge smoothly with the architecture. It wasn’t full on locking up the place, just covering the holes, but people probably wouldn’t be able to pass through (unless they squeezed through the gap). However, the piece is placed up on building, blocking out, what one of us noted, hope. The piece in Washington appeared more hopeful than the one at Cooper Union because the fences at Cooper Union were full on lockdown, whereas the single one at Washington Square had a hole in the center. The visual themes the two constructions shared was both being fences and situated under arches, already existing before the fences. Both were also unified in this minimalistic aesthetic using metal as a way to make viewers understand the overall concept of being trapped or imprisoned.

 

 

Progress photos

So when I first made the base of the eyewear, I realized an extra slip of foam sheet against the face would be useful, so I remade the box and added a layer of vinyl. This process involved a lot, and I mean A LOT, of slicing.

Attaching the velcro straps with tape and a supportive layer of vinyl sheet.

Preparing the side pieces in order to attach the magnifying sheet.

Calen’s, my partner for this Bridge, in progress body extension. It’s almost like an elephant trunk. You have to look at the mirror on bottom end while holding this straight up in order to see the mirror on the top, showing you the view outside of the tunnel.

This is our exhibition setup

On Calen’s final piece, she added cardboard supports so the trunk wouldn’t be so wobbly.

Eleven Integrative Journal Entries (Wow!!) I tried to spice it up a bit, but writing when you’re super tired really gets you into weird headspaces//

My project has come a long way after originally writing what I would use for constructing the body extension. I had planned to use chipboard-

, but I ended up using foam sheet and vinyl sheet (actually I ended up using lots of sheet related things, which shows how I preferred flexibility and malleability of materials).

My earlier prototype design is pretty similar, only tweaking how the straps were fastened on rather than making a little hole and tying a knot so the strap wouldn’t be able to fall out (similar to goggles). But as I explored with materials, the way I built the body extension began to change because I wanted a cleaner minimalistic design, I bought white sheets instead of my original idea which called for black material in order to create contrast. I wanted my piece to look more futuristic because of Virtual Reality technology, which is what I began to replicate in some way. In the first place, I imagined the design to look almost like a pair of binoculars.

 

From the readings of this class and of my Space/Materiality class, I’ve learned that western society has a huge emphasis on visuals and what we see and how we describe things in the concept of time because, in some civilizations, time doesn’t exist in their culture. But times are changing again and there’s a shift to include other senses. Something like augmented reality may seem like it’d only rely on sight, but with the advent of new media technologies, that is also bound to change. My partner and I used this and connected this to the fact that there are people who see things or read news while scrolling down their feed and that’s all there is to it. They may only take in news from one source (which is most likely unreliable) and use that to dictate their knowledge. Basically what they see is what they know.

“However, communication is a multisensory experience, including not only the ears and eyes but all sensory apparati (Porcello, et al., 2010, p. 60). What helped my understanding of what the role of non-visual communication could be was the addition of technology, or at least it piqued my interest especially the virtual reality section. When I first experienced VR, the movement controls were really wonky. Some games would have the player teleport from one spot to another with a cursor on a screen connected to one of their hand controllers. Now more technologically advanced VR games allow the player to move by just motioning their hands the same way they’d walk in real life. You’d think that playing VR games would require only visual attention like normal video games (besides the use body motions when using a keyboard or mouse), but because of the connotation of “virtual” many of your senses, smell excluded (perhaps in the future this may be implemented somehow, but currently there is haptic research relating to binding touch and kinesthetics into encounters with images (p. 58)) , will be used. Media theorists also recognize the potential that new media technologies carry to destabilize presumptions of ocularcentrism, as modes of interaction with media increasingly rely on body, voice, hand, or other body-and-sense interfaces (Hansen 2006). I don’t believe there are solely non-visual mediums, but the future of VR shows how the other senses can be conjoined with visual presentation.”

– Week 4 Reading Response

Postcard copy-17869qi

(Curatorial Statement and Artist Labels)

Calen and I tried spicing up our curatorial statement (fun assignment for Integrative Seminar in order to liven things up!)

Working together with something to create a whole exhibition was an enjoyable experience. If this was my only art class, I would have definitely planned out with my partner more to a create a more exhilarating experience for the audience, but I wouldn’t say this experience was useless It’s always fun building new stuff (especially things I’ve never done before, even though it’s extremely stressful juggling other classes) and seeing how far I can push myself and what can I make besides doodling on sketchbooks. But for the most part, I think I was just excited doing something almost game design related instead of all these foundation courses (cries, but not really because all experiences are valuable). For the next project, we’ll be working in groups of four, so I wonder how that’s going to go (laughs nervously). I hope our communication will be on point.