My name is Keshia Tarralyn Krista So, I am 18 years old and I am from Jakarta, Indonesia. I am a first-year student at Parsons School of Design and I will be majoring in Interior design. What I am most interested in is the fact that a certain space can be a reflection of our personality, and this is why I would like to be an interior designer.
What we did for bridge 4 for both seminar and studio was redesign a controversial monument in New York by being as creative and experimental as possible. What initiated this project was the thought of changing and or enhancing a monument that is controversial and unwanted so that it could blend in with the environment, attract more people and be more useful and impactful. For this project, my group was assigned to redesign the Father Duffy monument which is located in Duffy Square, Times Square. Father Duffy monument is considered controversial because of its vintage look by being bronze in color which makes it not blend in Times Square. Times Square is a very vivid place with lots of lights and large billboards and by being an old monument, people who actually come to Duffy square do not realize the presence of the monument because the big lights at Times Square are more attractive. This is a concern because people do not respect and know the meaning behind the monument.
To reconstruct this monument for studio and seminar, we first visited the monument to get a hang of what it looks like in real life in order to, later on, do a research about it and reconstruct it. During the visit, we took notes on the characteristics of the environment for seminar class, which later on we wrote an essay that talks about our group member’s differences and similarities in perspective about that place. For studio, we did a map to understand the surroundings and the history better. The next step for seminar was I researched the statue to get an idea of primary, secondary and tertiary sources to get an idea of what references are in a research. The previous assignments in seminar, like the multiple perspectives essay on combining our group members’ perspectives, was a practice to our intro to research because I learned how to organize sources and work with different information. In the research phase, we observed the physical appearance considered as the primary source. Then we went on to researching the secondary source and tertiary source and organized the sources in Cornell notes and made an annotated bibliography. During the research step, there was a question I wanted an answer to, which was, why the statue is there and its relevance now in the modern world. This question was answered in my research process because our research findings helped us answer unfamiliar questions and helped us get an idea of what we want to really do to father Duffy square in studio class. After researching and getting to know the history and why it’s there, we decided to completely change the structure and form of it to blend with the environment but still have it in the same place because the statue being there has a really important history. During the research, I made a connection between seminar and studio where I saw the monument then researched it to get more information about it. For the writing process, I learned to write and organize pieces of information related to Father Duffy which was useful for our ideation process in studio class. Overall, I made a connection between studio and seminar class by applying the research to our ideation of the newly designed monument.
The overall process was; We explored father Duffy monument which we then made an essay about our group’s perspectives and then researched about it in detail; about its appearance, history, meaning, and goal which was used to make our annotated bibliography. From the research steps in seminar, we then made a new monument in a form of a large LED screen in the middle of times square that would present things about father Duffy, and on the edge, there is an elevator that people could enter to see a whole view of times square and get a full view of the large LED screen.
The project communicates the ideation of our ideas and how we can make our thoughts and our different perspectives come together and make one new idea and make a new creative monument. The research helped me understand more about the monument and what we would want to change. Because of the research, I was able to get an idea of the new monument in order to suit the environment and the modern world now. After the research, I knew what to write about after looking at the sources and research materials.
The most successful part of this project was overall our idea because it totally changes the monument in a good way to blend with the surrounding, also we managed to make our ideas into reality through teamwork and different opinions and perspectives which built our communication and thinking skills. In this project, what was interesting was how in seminar we learned how to gather information and organize them in a way to get the main idea that will help our studio class.
This project pushed me to be more creative and to not be afraid of thinking and making mistakes. I also learned a lot of things related to the research process which will be useful later on in my life, especially as a student at Parsons. This project which allows me to really explore my artistic skills which tell me that I am in the right track to being the artist I want, who is not afraid to take chances and mistakes because it is what makes us better. The most important research step for me is to find the right resources to, later on, incorporate in the project and writing. Furthermore, in seminar the reading that engaged me was the talking notes reading, especially the one titled “Witness to What Was, Skeptic of What’s New” about disappearing New York because it made me realize that gradual changes actually make a city totally different while we do not realize it happening. The Memoir writing assignment was fun because it made me look back to my childhood and what I have gone through to finally realize my passion for art. It was also a free writing which made me express my ideas and thoughts without any boundaries. In integratives 2, I would like to know more about myself as an artist and what I can do to contribute to society by doing what I love. For this bridge 4, our studio assignment to research a monument lead us to research about the monument itself in seminar class, and the research in seminar class lead us to make something better to answer the unresolved questions and problems about the monument.
STUDIO FINAL
SEMINAR
