Working backwards to get to know yourself and find out what you are drawn to.

Ask myself how I feel about things.

Absurd, combining 2 things that make sense alone but not together. Sporks?

50 Days of Absurdity

Fractals

References:

https://www.instagram.com/shoshibuya/?hl=en

https://github.com/juxtapix/DesigningTheAbsurd/wiki

https://maggiecoblentz.com/Stories

https://www.instagram.com/maxbittker/

http://www.jillmagid.com/projects/out-game-flowers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUVgGxS4u7M 

https://www.audemarspiguet.com/com/en/news/art/phoebe-hui-the-moon-is-leaving-us.html

https://leoneckert.com/

https://teenage.engineering/designs

https://hempuli.com/baba/

Today was my first peer feedback session this morning, and after I got myself caffeinated, I found it to be such a great way to start my day. I really enjoyed hearing the thoughts that the other students had about their own thesis topics, as well as some of the questions that they were thinking about as they were going through the process. It was also so cool to hear the super deep and philosophical ideas that my peers are thinking about!

It was also super helpful to get the chance to talk through my ideas, and get some new ideas and feedback about them. At the beginning of this semester I was super unsure about what to focus on for thesis, and the more I think about, the more I’m realizing that I should perhaps focus on a topic that I’ve been noodling on for years: radio waves. Since it’s been an idea that I’ve been wanting to dig in and understand more deeply for awhile now, I’m hoping I’ll be able to hold on to the passion and excitement.

I discovered during Crit Ex in the fall, capturing ideas in some sort of board like miro or figjam is really helpful for me, rather than capturing things in a google doc. Having the ability to harness the chaos that is my brain sometimes is really helpful. So, here’s a miro board with some notes and suggestions from the feedback session this morning: https://miro.com/app/board/uXjVPpm9y8k=/?share_link_id=789041394246

In my meeting with Sarah, she started by asking me about myself, my background, my creative practice, and why I came to the program. I told her about how joining this program was my way of finding how I could be creative again, after suppressing that feeling for so many years. I also told her about my photography, and how that is the only consistent creative outlet I have done over the years, but was starting to feel bored with it.

She asked me to share some work I’ve done in the past, whether it be my photography or work I’ve done for the program. I showed her this set of images from my Instagram:

I also told her about the project I did over the summer term, Ambient Watercolor. She asked me what is it that I liked about my summer project, and I told her that I enjoyed piecing together the different experiments I had done with generative art and motion recognition. From there, she gave me a lot of jumping points to think about from my existing work. She noticed that my photographs were all of people from behind and faceless, and saw the metaphor I hoped to express: the smallness of humans compared to the world. She then wondered how I could translate the feelings that I capture in my photos into an interactive piece similar to Ambient Watercolor.

My action items before the next time we meet are to:

• Apply the “Observe – Analyze – Interpret – Evaluate” method of my own work and work that inspires me
• Find a single theme among that work and find one word to describe them
• Create a dream review/write up about myself, how I want me work to come across and what I want people to be inspired by when they look at my work

Overall, I’m getting more excited about thesis. It’s looking like less of a daunting task, and more like something I get to do to express myself fully.

I thought I’d be picking a very specific topic that might exclude a lot of my work history, but she suggested starting with a lineage, a tree of my key moments in my art practice, and perhaps finding a manifesto or theme of my work, or where it is now. I did a similar map in 2020 that I need to dig up, and even at the time I remember thinking it felt like thesis work.

Also some envisioning type work, of what would my work look like if the whole world saw it. This is something I do routinely, and will be helpful to do it in this process. Doing this work for my art, in parallel with the commercialization work I’m doing with Future Labs / E Labs. Having a space just for the art is important, and the art practice is key to creating new ideas and staying out of the traps of the product mindset.

Some themes I heard in my discussion were emergent phenomenon, my prior work with generative containers, sound almost always being a part of the medium.

Overall review of the process, looked at what I wrote for my topic ideas last time. I was curious with classes or tutorials could be sources (like I’ve started the Nature of Code video series / book from Dan Shiffman).

I think picking something specific will be a challenge for me. I like entire ecosystems of ideas, and jumping from one related idea to the next (like “consciousness” or “biofeedback”

Some questions that came up today:

Is stimuli through feedback more impactful than stimuli through the natural world?

What happens in human consciousness when a biometric (like your heartbeat) is externalized (like as a sound)?

A more focused version:
What happens in consciousness when it perceives itself?

A question from my previous notes:
Can music alter consciousness?

And Hakani had a followup question, along the lines of:
What would a feedback system look like or impact an unconscious or inanimate being? (initial thoughts were an increase in electricity, and perhaps, eventually, leads to life energy itself)

Which makes me think, is feedback a core component of life systems? Audio feedback has a life of its own – if it’s too weak it dies off, if it’s too strong, it destroys the sound system. Hmm…

Hiya!

So I had my first 1-1 meeting with Sarah this morning and overall everything went very well! I began by introducing myself haha which then led to showing my website and previous art, which helped lead into my thesis discussion!

I proposed my two ideas which both involve bringing illustrations to life. My first being an extension of my “More than a Color” black history pop art series, where I plan to create a large holographic installation with sound that could potentially go on tour! Think of it like walking through a hall of illustrated faces of historical African American Figures, and I plan to end the exhibit on a more personal note which I won’t reveal quite yet. 🙂

The second idea would be a combination of my love for art, nature and sound. I thought it would be fun to create what I like to call a “Swamp Forest.” A combination between a Rainforest and a Swamp. The user would have the ability to navigate through these two ecosystems on their computer screen and would have the ability to explore the swamp, rainforest as well as the wildlife that resides in each area! Educational but fun! 🙂

At this point my main goal is to make a choice haha! Sarah was able to give me some wonderful ideas that would help me to figure out which idea along with some wonderful inspirations I should go with which included:

• Spend 2-3 days really *inhabiting* one project, then 2-3 days inhabiting another. This should help you get a feel for which you really hope to do during this time. What are your references, the initial steps for each?  What are possible outcomes for both? What would doing that project help you focus on (conceptually, or technically)? What would do each project “set you up” for in the future?
• It would be great for you to write a “dream review” of your project. From the perspective of a journalist or critic, imagine the very best manifestation of your work (can be vague at this point) – just to get a sense of how you want this to feel, what context it belongs in.
• Work on your starter bibliography – this is basically a collection of references (books, articles, similar work).

Overall had a great time and am super excited to get started! 🙂

Hello friends!

I just had my first meeting with Sarah. Feeling really excited because she gave me some great tips, resources and assignments on how to continue my thought process. I was feeling a little bit like I didn’t know where to go next.

I definitely want to a game, and here are some general words around the themes: agency, empathy, collaboration vs competition, emotions, beliefs, experience

I also want to make something that can be experienced online by many people but also be able to be experienced in a physical space with the people around you.

Here are the assignments:
1. Review 3-5 games that do something similar but articulating what it doesn’t do (in terms of what you want to make)
What do you “like” vs “dislike,” what is “it” vs “not it”?
2. Construct a few low tech/ low fi games, such as rule based games
– mafia – gamified version of trying to figure out who’s lying
– green light red light – one rule
– musical chairs
3. Think of moments in the real world that are the kind of moments you want to create in the game
4. Imagine that you are writing a review (you are an xyz reviewer, critic) and write a dream 200-500 word review of your own project after it’s done.

Also, it’s been very fun reading everyone’s posts 🙂

I am writing a reflection of the first 1-1 meeting I had with Sarah for thesis.

I came out of the first class and into the 1-1 really anxious because I had no real thoughts or hunches about what I might want to make or research. As a really goal/scope oriented person, I’ve never really given myself the opportunity to think through personal projects or delving much deeper into what I’m interested in. A lot of the work I do and honestly work that I’m proud of has a lot of professional purpose, so I feel a little eager (maybe overeager?) for this thesis to maybe take a step outside of that.

Sarah and I had a great conversation where I basically just rambled about my journey towards my current professional role, my enrollment with NYU IMA, the projects I’ve done so far, and what I might want to do in the near future.

Professionally, I have a Literature and History degree from University of Michigan, an Entertainment Design degree from Art Center College of Design, I’ve worked at Disney Imagineering as a concept artist, at an ad agency/design studio doing movie poster designs, and currently (and most happily), as a designer turned strategic planner for NASA’s JPL.

I enrolled with NYU because I wanted some hands on learning with programming languages and physical computing, as a large part of my work can be understanding technical workflow and environments and I felt like it would help me be better at my job without straying too far from my background in design and art.

The projects I’ve done so far in NYU that we talked about are my “make yourself as you find yourself” using sounds for Interface Lab, the Connections Lab “build your bouquet,” and the “we are a school of wandering fish” project for Radical Connections (blog post incoming).

Some connections Sarah made about all my projects was the act of “composing” or bringing things together.

Sarah assigned some loose assignments to trigger thinking:

Assignment 1: Write a blurb about a fake talk you’re giving, or a fake review of a nonexistent project you made.

Assignment 2: Using some of the references we talked through, what do you like/dislike about these projects?

Assignment 3: Imagine/find other projects that do something similar to projects you did, like “make yourself as you find yourself,” “arranging things,” or “wandering things.” If your project is a series, what is a more refined version of it?

Assignment 4: Think about whether what you want to make is a parallel practice to what you do professionally, or if it’s directly related to the work, or if it’s something that people in that field might be interested in learning something from my work, even tangentially.

Some other key words we talked through/I thought of later:

visible puns, planned obsolescence, systems design, purpose/process/progress, subversive wearables, utilitarian and tactical, strategic to tactical, connection, digging deeper, the “how” and the “why” instead of the “what”, examination/deconstruction/subversion, composition and arrangement.

During this meeting, Sarah and I talked about what types of projects./artworks I did during my bachelor’s. As well as talking about overall my interests. My first idea was to create a pixel game that incorporated the Low Res Program (teachers, maybe some students). Maybe something similar to the “Shovel Knight Dig” game.

Game Programs: 

Aesprite – create sprites

GDevelop 5 – create sprites and construct the game.

 

Sarah gave me ideas on one of my interests in fashion and opened new ideas that I could collaborate with fashion and pixel art.

I walked away from the first class session with a lot of thoughts in my head about thesis — equal parts excitement and “I’M NOT READY!” It was really helpful to have a generative session of brain dumping and mulling. I definitely plan to continue this type of mulling and reflecting, as I don’t quite feel like I’ve landed on anything solid yet for a direction. I thought that the paired feedback was also great — in talking with Nicole, it was helpful to speak to someone who is not in my head, but does have some familiarity with the body of work that I have done. I look forward to more sessions of ideation.