\n "Body of Work" is a series of sculptures that come together to make a self-portrait. Over the course of a year, I explored one aspect of how I experience my body in each ITP course I took and created a body part sculpture or manifestation based on my reflection. In that time I created \u201cA Nervous System (Brain)\u201d, \u201cThoughts for Food (Stomach)\u201d, \u201cBun in the Washing Machine (Womb)\u201d, and \u201cInterface (Face)\u201d.<\/p>\n
These sculptures cover a variety of themes including my anxiety, femininity, and my love of play and are expressions of trying to reconnect with my body. I thought a lot about my body as an interface, as inputs and outputs. Between these individual items are recurring visual symbols of spirals, mirror and reflection, color, illustration, and light. These elements have been deployed as a sometimes humorous deflection from serious topics.<\/p>\n
The act of creating these artifacts was a very embodied practice because they were mostly all crafted by hand. Exploring different materials and electronic mediums is also important to my process.<\/p>\n
The series invites the viewer to touch, listen, see, and engage with my embodiment. I curated a body scan meditation to go along with the items to prompt the viewer to touch base with their own relationship with their body. Spoiler alert: our relationships with our bodies can be complicated and are constant work.<\/p>\n
Through this project I learned some key things:
\nMaking can be therapy
\nFeel as much as you can (this can be hard!)
\nYour mind affects your body (so be careful with those feelings sometimes)
\nLeave space for rest and reflection
\nShare yourself and skills with people
\nFollow your intuitions, they can lead you to interesting places
\nAnd always embrace the cringe\n <\/p>\n
\n This self portrait is a series of sculptures and artifacts that were created in an attempt to get in touch with my body. The series includes:<\/p>\n
A printed circuit board sculpture in the shape of a brain that was designed in EAGLE with custom drawn silk screen imagery. The electronics were populated by hand and circuit prototypes were milled in the ITP shop using a Bantam Othermill. The system runs off of an Arduino Nano 33 IoT and uses an IR sensor to detect presence. The neurons and thoughts spiral faster the longer someone stands in front of it.<\/p>\n
A hand-made pop-up book that is a journey to my stomach where all my anxieties and favorite foods live. Each mechanism was carefully prototyped (sometimes more than once) and illustrated. The book is bound in mat board and survived three exhibition days of user testing, even with kids reading aloud my biggest fears!<\/p>\n
A hyper-feminine washing machine curiosity portal. This kinetic sculpture is activated by a stepper motor and bearing system. The enclosure is built with wood and hand painted. The washing machine is \u201cwashing\u201d many stereotypically feminine items: acrylic nails, glitter, butterflies, small felt underwear. The door opens to reveal sparkly tampons, pulsating light, and mirrored wall.<\/p>\n
A digital synthesizer module utilizing a Teensy 4.1 and Audio Shield. The module is a step sequencer which plays back different samples that I recorded from my own body: swallow, slurp, snort, snot, etc. The clock speed can be set by a potentiometer or by an incoming CV signal from the brain sculpture. The electronics are installed on a custom face-plate which resembles my own face and enclosed in an acrylic box.<\/p>\n
A 3D scan of my head done by NYU\u2019s LaGuardia Studio. I used this asset to create a projection of my head bouncing around in a box using Unity (similar to the projections made by luxury car doors or DVD screen saver) and a 3D-printed bust.<\/p>\n
Various doodles I made of myself over the course of the year.<\/p>\n
100+ forms which I crowd-sourced from the viewers of my piece asking them to check in with their own bodies through a guided body-scan meditation.\n <\/p>\n
\n These are some of the things I read while working on my thesis project:<\/p>\n
Your Body is Not Your Body, short story compilation
\nThe Wisdom of Your Body, Hillary L McBride, PhD
\nThe Defecating Duck, or, the Ambiguous Origins of Artificial Life, Jessica Riskin
\nPortraiture, Shearer West<\/p>\n
These are some of the artists and works that influenced this project:<\/p>\n
Tim Hawkinson, Emoter
\nKelly Heaton
\nSarah Petkus, She Bon
\nBrian Oakes
\nLaura Callaghan
\nNeri Oxman
\nMilford Graves, A Mind-Body Deal
\nAnd many others!\n <\/p>\n
\n For more information on process and inspirations, feel free to check out my blog.
\nhttps:\/\/www.priyankamakin.com\/blog\/category\/itp:%20thesis\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A healthy relationship with your body is constant work.
\nCan making art help us reconnect with our bodies and strengthen our sense of self? Can recognizing how we actually see ourselves improve our self image? Can human features or natural processes be approximated using technology or mechanism?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":6207,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[7,16,19,23],"class_list":["post-1533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-38","tag-art","tag-health","tag-installation","tag-narrative-storytelling"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/itp.nyu.edu\/thesis\/archive\/2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1533","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/itp.nyu.edu\/thesis\/archive\/2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/itp.nyu.edu\/thesis\/archive\/2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itp.nyu.edu\/thesis\/archive\/2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itp.nyu.edu\/thesis\/archive\/2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1533"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/itp.nyu.edu\/thesis\/archive\/2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1533\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5066,"href":"https:\/\/itp.nyu.edu\/thesis\/archive\/2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1533\/revisions\/5066"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itp.nyu.edu\/thesis\/archive\/2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6207"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/itp.nyu.edu\/thesis\/archive\/2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itp.nyu.edu\/thesis\/archive\/2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itp.nyu.edu\/thesis\/archive\/2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}