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Final

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Assessment #3 Concept and experiment

Our group chose “desire” as our topic for assessment #3. At the beginning of our discussion, we started with the desire for luxury goods and shopping. Then we developed our idea in ‘desire of girls’ since three of us are girls. One of our ideas is the desire for eating, and I think it is interesting because eating is an activity of daily living in order to survive. But eating became an ordinary desire for girls who usually struggle to lose weight and avoid to eat foods they like. 

In our country, we have been taught ‘girls have to be skinny and tiny’ since we were small, and most of the girls were pursuing skinny and weak body shape. They count calories and eat little throughout the day to maintain the skinny body shape as well as the ‘perfect body’. 

In this assessment, we are trying to show our point of view and how do we view at foods. When we look at foods, restricted signs or calories will appear next to the food, like telling us to stop. 

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Week 10 Activity

“Find a signal and interrupt it. ”

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Process

First, I cut part of the photo, and then cut them into squares.

then, reassemble them in the different order. 

Do the same processes on the others. 

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Assessment #2

Conceptual Statement

Human activity is one of the significant effects on ecosystems. The accumulative effect of human existence and operate within the ecosystem are influencing the earth. Ecosystem provides different goods and products for people to depend on, such as food, construction material, and plants. On the other hand, ecosystem also provides services which generally improving the condition and location for us, such as, cleaning air and water, the maintenance of oxygen in the atmosphere and hydrological cycles. However, these goods and services tend to be taken for granted by the human. And human uses goods from ecosystem to damage the ecosystem and nature. As the human population is substantially increased and the consumption growth, the demand for natural resources imposed on ecosystems and nature. Yet natural resources are limited and vulnerable.

In this assessment, I am exploring the relationship between nature and artifice, produce and consume. And also highlight problems of the ecosystem, such as environmental pollution and climate change. And this assessment is inspire by Agnes Denes’s work, Wheatfield. She worked on the idea confrontation between nature and artifice. She planted a field of golden wheat on two acres of a landfill near Wall Street and the World Trade Center in Manhattan which known as one of the well-known business districts in the United States, and planting and harvesting this field of wheat on land worth $4.5 billion created a powerful paradox. Since she views wheatfield as a symbol and universal concept which represented food, energy, commerce, world trade, and economics. Planting this wheatfield in a famous business district referred to mismanagement, waste, world hunger and ecological concerns. It called attention to our misplaced priorities.

Thus, I took her idea of exploring the confrontation the relationship human(artifice) and environment(nature). For this assessment, I combined and blurred two images together by using the mosaic at the middle of two images. I cut the image into many smaller squares and relocated them in different parts of the image. By using mosaic, the elements and details of the photo remain rather than blurring the details of the photos.

For the first image, I’ve combined images of exhaust gases and a person deep breathing in a park. I reassembled the piece of exhaust gases into the park area which represented the problem of air pollution. Greenhouse gases were emitted everywhere, such as cars and factories. As the air that we breathe in every day is polluted, we can barely breathe in the fresh air in the city area. Since greenhouse gases emission may lead to other environmental problems, such as melting of glaciers which leads to the rising sea levels. This is a chain of problems. Thus, I placed this image as the top.

For the second image, I’ve combined images of the North Pole and Bondi beach. The North Pole has been viewed as a natural part of the world, while Bondi is a developed and partly man-made area. I’ve reassembled the melted glaciers into the sea of Bondi. Hopefully, the problem of rising sea level and melting iceberg can be presented by combining these photos. Moreover, this is a chain of problems. Greenhouse effect leads to the melting of glaciers which leads to the rising sea levels. Therefore, it also raises the problem of the greenhouse effect.

For the third image, I’ve combined images of Bondi beach and landfill. Since I chose a photo of Bondi which packed with people and they were wearing colorful swimming suit or clothes. It reminds me of the image of the landfill which full of colorful plastic bags. Indeed, plastic can be seen in our everyday life, and most of the items that we consume are made of plastic. And hopefully, this image represented the problems of overuse of plastic and the almost filled landfill. An anonymous artist group, Luzinterruptus said ‘recycling isn’t enough to tackle this problem. that’s why the French government, among others, has taken measures to reduce its consumption as much as possible by outlawing the usage of plastic bags at stores which are being replaced by paper bags or bags made of biodegradable material.’

Bibliography

N.L. Christensen, A.M. Bartuska, J.H. Brown, S. Carpenter, C. D’Antonio, R. Francis, J.F. Franklin, J.A. MacMahon, R.F. Noss, D.J. Parsons, C.H. Peterson, M.G. Turner, & R.G. Woodmansee, ‘The Report of the Ecological Society of America Committee on the Scientific Basis for Ecosystem Management’, Ecological Applications, vol. 6, no. 3, 1996, p.665-691.

T.C. Brown, J.C. Bergstrom, & J. B. Loomis, ‘Defining, Valuing, and Providing Ecosystem Goods and Services’, Natural Resources Journal, vol. 47, no. 2, 2007, p.329-376.

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Luzinterruptus, The Plastic We Live With

Luzinterruptu, an anonymous artistic group focusing on urban interventions, has completed a public art installation titled ‘the plastic we live with’ during the FAB festival in Bordeaux, France. This installation highlights the threat of plastic waste. 

It looked as though the plastic was about to explode out of the building. 

‘plastic is a recurrent subject in our work and in life since practically everything we consume is made with this material’, explains luzinterruptus. ‘recycling isn’t enough to tackle this problem. that’s why the French government, among others, has taken measures to reduce its consumption as much as possible by outlawing the usage of plastic bags at stores which are being replaced by paper bags or bags made of biodegradable material.’

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Agnes Denes , Wheatfield, 1982

Agnes Denes is a giant among land artists. Her most well-known project is probably the 1982 piece "Wheatfield -- A Confrontation," in which she planted a field of golden wheat on two acres of a landfill near Wall Street and the World Trade Center in Manhattan. She weeded, irrigated and cultivated the mini oasis, bringing the essence of rural America into the throngs of America's urban epicenter. 

I like the idea of the confrontation between nature and artifice. 

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Assessment #2 Inspiration

Thomas Lang (Photographer, Paris) -

“ According to the Gestalt Theory, also known as the Theory of Form, the human perception processes information as a set of elements and not as an addition or subtraction of elements. The whole is beyond the sum of its parts and keeps its shadows and ghosts. Gestalt is a German word that means shape, in the sense of taking shape, being built up. Before taking shape, the image is deconstructed to break representations of the reality, to explore the many facets of people and places, to give another dimension to the subject, and to allow a new reading. Everybody could create his own image by reading between the lines, between the connections, and between the lacks…” 

I like the idea of distorting a photo into many smaller and detailed parts. It looks like a mosaic style and it allows the artist to relocate to different parts of the photo. 

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Last Sculpture - David Moreno

He is using metal and/or metal strings to create little house structures, and connect them together. It looks like a floating city, also a small ecology and environment.

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Concept Statement and Final Work

Concept Statement

Exploring the idea of the relationship between human, environment, and the ecology. Specifically, the ecology inside the city.

From the research, the benefit of urban farming or rooftop farming is strongly suggested and recommended by different sources. Rooftop farming is beneficial for the sustainable development for numbers of reasons. It contributes to the reduction and filtering of polluted air particles and gases. moreover, it may also help reduce the distribution of dust in the air and the production of smog, which leads to decreasing greenhouse emissions in urban areas.

Due to the development of technology and the society, human need more and more improvement. At the same time, the amount of waste, construction, pollution, and buildings is increasing, while the amount of green area is decreasing. The importance of green land was suddenly evoked by the human during this rapid development, and rooftop farming became an action to slow down this undesirable situation. The human was acting as a producer of pollution, the one who was relieving this situation, consuming the crops that produced on the roof. It is hilarious that human was rescuing the earth while they were damaging at the same time.

So I put the advantages of rooftop farming at the bottom of the poster, and point out the role or the negativity within the city to present the contradictory of the human and the environment.

Today’s ecology is built on the roof surrounded by the other buildings. The questions are raised for everyone “What would be the future’s ecology? What’s next?”

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Poster Style Research

Annie Sprinkle, Anatomy of a Pin-up

This pin-up style allows me to explain the specific object or item. The main object can be obviously seen when it surrounded by the text in black and the white background. 

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Roof garden would be the second idea for exploring the relationship between human, environment, and ecology. Especially I would like to focus on the relationship between human, environment, and ecology in today’s city, and the current situation. 

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Developing idea

Exploring the relationship between human, environment, and ecology. The first idea is the skyline of the city. Since the skyline of the city is usually go with the natural environment, for instance, the sky at the back and the reflection on the sea in front. It is an ordinary example that showed the relationship between the man-made and industrial city and natural environment.

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Helmut Smits- 

Helmut Smits is a multidisciplinary visual artist based in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. Straightforward, critical and witty, Smits is a ceaseless producer of ideas that comment on society and situations in a frank and often humorous way.

- I like how simple but conceptual of his work. It usually about the relationship object, human and environment. and it changes the way we think of the function of objects and applies on the relationship between human and environment. 

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Research Topic for Assessment Task #1

“Art and design often explore relationships between humans and non-humans, the environment and ecology. How can contemporary art and design propose new possibilities for imagining the ‘human’ and the environment?”

From week 3 class, 

Ecology, typically defined, means several things:

The branch of biology that deals with the relations of organisms to one another and to their physical surroundings;

The study of the interaction of people with their environment; The political movement that seeks to protect the environment, esp. from pollution.