Category: Creative Projects (Page 1 of 3)

conception to perception video

What is art?

Art is…

Xin: Art is a part of our daily lives, from paintings hanging in exhibitions to random and intentional street movements. Art is about expression and perspective. It’s the connection between the artist and the audience.

Yinglin: Art is something that takes many forms. Through movements, dancers express their emotions and messages. Through paintings, artists encapsulate the world around them into a still image. Through clothing, art represents cultures and customs. Art helps people to express their sorrows, happiness, and feelings.

Ellie: Art is the expression of anything felt or thought by an artist. It can be a documentation of history from the perspective of someone who lived through or studied a time period. It can be an action or performance to share the physical or emotional journey an artist went through. It can be a prediction of someone’s hopes and dreams for the future or their expectations for what is to come. Art is made to share or memorialize a moment in time, how it makes people feel, and how it makes them change. It can persuade people and make them aware of one artist’s thoughts or feelings. It is a release of what happens inside the artist, or around them.

Vera: Art is a means for us to empathize with each other, to see one another beyond the surface level but rather explore our deepest emotions, concerns, and ties to our communities and our humanity. It’s also a very self-reflective process as well, requiring you to ruminate and delve deep into the exploration of your own emotions and beliefs and how they can take on a physical form. I came into this class with a pretty straightforward and simple understanding of art as just a painting, drawing sculpture, or something of that nature. Still, throughout this class, I’ve come to realize it holds so much more meaning beyond its physical nature. The stories that produced those pieces, the emotional landscape that resides within, and the perspective they convey. These are all what make art, art.

Art is connecting different canvases to create a unified piece of art that conveys the artist’s perspective. Through the different stages of art, the artist develops, forms, and completes their artistic vision. The artist creates a rough sketch of his roaming ideas from the developing stage using a pencil on canvas. At first, the artist views the art and conveys their emotions and message onto the empty canvas. During the curation stage, the art piece communicates with its surrounding pieces in the environment. The colorful acrylics correspond with the colorful walls of the exhibition. In the exhibition, the piece is able to connect and immerse its viewers in the world of the artists’. The viewers physically view the art, absorbing the strokes and shapes and envisioning the process and meaning of the piece. In the end, the whole picture is formed as the viewer immersed in the painting is art itself but also the purpose of art. 

Link to Project Video

Over time, I have noticed that the moments in our lives begin to become fewer and fewer as we age. My parents would initiate moments by asking about my day, what I learned at school, and if I had behaved. These are moments I still remember to this day, moments such as when I knew the answer to a question because of a video game, and when I lied about getting a green happy face sticker when I got a red, mad face sticker for my behavior chart that day. I remember moments with friends in middle school when we hung out around Brooklyn and ate pizza all the time. I remember moments with my brother when I gave in to his begging and played hide and seek with him around our apartment when there was no place to hide.

Now, moments like these can be far and few between. We trade these moments in favor of responsibility, discipline, and focusing ourselves on everything from education to jobs to applications for career-building opportunities.

We then often find ourselves wondering where happiness has gone. Where the feeling of fulfillment had escaped too. Are we satisfied just by studying and education? Or by chasing our career goals? Perhaps we do find moments in our places of study, or in the places we work. However, it isn’t usual to see family here, a pivotal holder of moments.

Having a younger sibling, surely, helps others to notice the importance of moments. All they care about at such a young age is moments. They want to spend moments with others, creating the most enjoyable moments they can. It’s a harsh realization for some, once they realize they avoided moments with their younger siblings for goals that served only themselves. They even display moments when they are alone and with their own thoughts. It is a struggle for many who have grown and feel the weight of the world on their shoulders, to have moments with themselves, especially when those moments can be difficult to handle. These moments are perhaps, the most important in our lives, because we discover ourselves, just as our younger siblings discovered their favorite things through playing with toys on their own.

A moment in the universe will span our entire lifespan. And yet, a moment in our lifespan is nothing within the timeline of the universe. But the moments that can be had are all different in nearly infinite ways, both subtle and large. With this, there can never truly be a dull moment. That is why we often have favorite moments in our lives, a select few memories we hold dear because it was far more special than the rest. Whether it be because we felt something we never felt before or felt something we never felt so strongly before, or because it was an experience we never experienced before, it just happens to have a bigger impact on us than anything before. Our lifetimes are the culmination of these moments, influencing us and guiding us, and we must do everything we can to ensure we continue to experience those moments.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/HcdgpGoVgAEqVwMc7

Nothing is ours to keep foreverForever, we borrow time

We borrow trends

Fashion trends

Fashion becomes food

Decorated china and green leaves sprinkled on noodles

We eat food

And then it is gone

But our bodies are fueled

Fueled with energy

We play sports

We dream of filled arenas or running far

We build teams and make friends

We bring those friends home

Home to our families

Keys are a sacred thing

Because there is only one set to our heart

They say that art is complicated

But it’s not complicated

Art is human

And humans are simple

We wear, we eat, we play, and we come home

We are all the same and yet so very different

And that is what makes us human.

Our project is meant to make you feel a bit uncomfortable, perhaps even offended. We chase, aspire to be unique and different, but we all end up being almost exactly identical. Identical. From the late 16th century, from medieval Latin identicus, from late Latin identitas (see identity). Identity. How can we create our identity in a world where we are identical? It is in what we share that makes us different.

My fashion is art. My food is art. My sport is art. My home is art. We find art in each of the things that we do and it is this definition and this perspective that makes us unique. Everyone either put on their glasses, ate their food, threw their ball, or took out their keys.

Yet no two people in the video wore the same shoes or threw the same ball.

In these small differences among these sweeping similarities, we find humanity. We find humanity in the art of life. We find art in experience and in identity. And the circle continues. We are all different but also the same. Are you offended yet?

Does our identity lie in the glasses we wear, created by some other person we have never met? Does our identity lie with the food we consume created by someone else? Does our identity lie in the sport we play created by the James Naismiths of the world? Does our identity lie in the home of the people we must make time to see? Are you offended yet?

Some version of you existed some time ago. Another version of you will exist in the future. We will overcome problems that have already been solved and others will come to the same solutions another day in the future, as though everything you did never truly mattered in the first place. And that is why history repeats itself. Are you offended yet?

Another version of our project existed some time ago. A project on “home.” Now, the context is different and the message is unique. Do they have a right to coexist?

And so the only thing left to do is to march on to the drum of life, living in false hope and a false reality of believing that we can actually create something new and something different even though we cannot. Are you offended yet?

What does the red string theory mean to you?

Cailyn: I believe in the power of free will. Everyone is born into different environments and circumstances, but one thing we all have in common is that we’re naturally equipped with the knowledge to choose and it’s our right to choose. Every day we are faced with choices, yes or no, stay or go, and so on. Every choice, no matter how big or small, has an impact on your life. As much as we may account these choices to someone else or an otherworldly being, we aren’t controlled by them. We have no chosen path until we individually choose one. Our choices determine our outcomes and consequences, which determine our morals, which determine our journey, our future, and the kind of people we are. 

Gab: I believe that the red string theory provides grounds for an interesting discussion on why things are the way that they are, but should not be taken very literally. We are faced with many important decisions to make throughout our lives, and by relying on destiny to have these choices already sorted for us might remove the significance of each consequence. Free will would also be contradictory to a heavy belief in the red string theory since the former suggests that each individual action leads to a different possible outcome and the latter states that our futures have already been set. While it is a fascinating subject to consider, I personally do not believe that it should be taken very seriously as it could also be used to deflect blame for irresponsible and harmful actions. To argue that it was “meant to be” should not mask the active steps it took to reach those circumstances. 

Anna: I believe in the red string theory. It gives a sense of solace knowing that the person who I am meant to be with is set and that I will meet them when the right time comes. As a person who is extremely impatient, I often stress about minor details such as who I am destined to be with or when I will meet them. However, reminding myself of the red string theory or listening to Taylor Swift’s invisible string reminds me to not stress over things I do not have control over. With that being said, I think it’s important to mention that my belief in the red string theory doesn’t revolve around the belief that god has tied an actual red string around people. My belief in the red string theory is more loose and involves believing in what it stands for. The belief that everything happens for a reason, and everything that is meant for me will come in due time. 

Claire: I believe in the red string theory, but more specifically I believe in destiny and fate. It brings comfort to me as every decision that I make is one that was predestined. It was the right choice and as someone who constantly thinks about what could’ve happened if I had made a different choice, this theory gives me a reminder that everything’s meant to happen for a reason. Another part of this theory that really draws me in is the idea of the right person, right time. Even if you were in the same place as the person you are meant to be with, you do not meet yet because it isn’t the right time. Everytime a person comes into your life, that was the exact moment that you were supposed to meet and every time someone leaves your life, that was just how it was supposed to be. This makes the people in my life more special to me because we were supposed to meet and we were supposed to be together in this life. 

Whether bound by a string of fate and destiny,

Or bound by a string of choices and decision

We are all where we’re meant to be

Link to podcast

 Temporal Tangents: The Arranged Marriage Manifesto

In a world where the symphony of modern relationships often incorporates dissonance, Daniel Iqbal, Steven Wang, Ahbab Junayed, and Arindam Chowdhury stand as skeptics of the ancient art – the art of Arranged Marriage. Welcome to a podcast that transcends the conventional narratives of love, introducing “Temporal Tangents” Herein lies our manifesto, a testament to the transformative power of conversation especially in the realm of unique topics.

I. The Renaissance of Connection

The prospect of Arranged Marriage sees beyond the fleeting whims of romance and seeks the profound connection that lies beneath the surface. Whether it be through means of compatibility or other intangible factors, we open the conversations towards new perspectives that incorporate the individuality of arranged marriage.

II. The Weaving of Tradition

In an era obsessed with breaking traditions, we speculate on the wisdom of generations past. Our podcast delves into the intricate patterns of tradition, celebrating the enduring values that bind individuals, families, and communities together while paying close attention to the drawbacks that may serve as a barrier for many individuals.

III. Love as a Collaborative Masterpiece

Temporal Tangents envisions love as a collaborative masterpiece, sculpted by the hands of families and individuals alike. The podcast invites its listeners to explore the nuances of collaboration, where the potential downsides of sculpted marriage may not outweigh the net positives of an individual’s free will.

IV. A Symphony of Compatibility

We challenge the notion that compatibility should be left to chance. While embracing the orchestration of compatibility through meticulous planning and consideration. Arraigned Marriage fosters a harmony that is finely tuned, where the intertwining of individuals comes from the shared values and perceptions of their free will.

V. Empowering Choice Through Dialogue

Temporal Tangents does not advocate for coercion or disregard personal agency. Rather, we believe in empowering individuals to actively participate in open and honest dialogues that transcend the superficial. Arranged marriages, when approached with mutual respect and understanding can be better understood by the general public as a tradition widely popular in South Asian culture.

VI. Navigating the Modern Landscape

Our manifesto recognizes the challenges of navigating arranged marriages in a modern context. We acknowledge the need for adaptation while staying true to the essence of arranged marriages. We explore how this ancient practice can evolve to accommodate the changing dynamics of the modern world.

In conclusion, Temporal Tangents stands as a beacon of insight, shedding light on the profound beauty and potential dialogue within the realm of arranged marriages. Join us on this journey of exploration and discovery, as we unravel the layers of tradition, love, and partnership that create the concept of arranged marriage.

Women in today’s world

https://drive.google.com/file/d/11O12OR9jc9gGhr8rkdAjfPqasWN_GpH9/view?usp=sharing

by Yinglin C., Ellie G., Vera G., Xin L.

Watch here.