Bridge Reflection – Bridge 2:
In this particular project, I was paired up with Ruijia Diao. I and Ruijia decided processing the conversation on WeChat for the Studio part of the project. I started the first conversation by trying to throw a question like “what is your treasure from childhood?” by sending a picture of my dog doll I have been keeping for more than 15 years, and continued the conversation with images I captured at home for the most part, but some from outdoors. What I really liked about our conversations was that we were successful at keeping our conversations remained at certain elements, especially its color theme. Through a few exchanges, I could see how hues of our images gradually shifted as our conversations went on. It was astonishing to me how we were able to exchange information and contexts only through visuals, without any verbal communications.
For the Seminar side of the project, we weren’t able to process a verbal interview due to the time zone difference, which remains my only regret about this project. Since we decided to exchange our questions and answers completely in writing format, I had to revise a large part of her writing when I was to put them in my essay for the assignment, for both her grammar&vocabularies and contents that I didn’t quite grasp what she was intending to say.
Learning from Seminar & Studio:
-What part of Studio or Seminar was the most engaging for you? (When did you feel engaged and why?)
I felt engaged when we invited Sky Hopinka to have an opportunity to hear his real voice as an artist and to ask him questions. Until this moment my feelings about online lectures were vague and unsettling, yet this particular event involving an individual from outside of a class made me feel like the course was actually happening.
-What part of Studio or Seminar was challenging for you? (When did you feel challenged or distanced and why?)
I would say Bridge 3 in project in Studio was probably the most challenging group project I’ve ever done in my entire school life. Not only the fact that we were meeting on Zoom, but the concept of the project being a such personal subject that people can have diverse opinions really made the project difficult for me to discuss and compromise while we had debate as a group.
-What part of Studio or Seminar was confusing? (When did you feel confused and why?)
The direction of the courses was straight forward and thus I didn’t feel confused in neither of the lectures.
-What is one new thing you learned this semester?
This also connects to the 2nd question, but especially through Bridge 3 I realized that collaborative work can often be executed much more smoothly if I were able to compromise over a part of my idea and regard others’ ideas.
