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My art assignment - Scramble Scrabble Dinner (The assignment)

TL;DR - People can surprise you. Fun games are fun games even without artistic context. You should totally do this assignment IT IS SO FUN.

Ever since I moved to this apartment 8 months ago, with my best friend, I wanted to do this assignment. The thought of us inviting all our friends for a cool dinner party seemed so appealing, even if I was hesitant about the artistic aspect of it. My roommate  and I decided to make it a 2-dinner event - the first dinner will be cooked mostly by us, and in it we will play the game, and the second dinner will be the actual scramble scrabble dinner. So each of us invited a few friends, and we made it happen. The first meal was fun, but truly the most amazing thing about it was the scramble scrabble game. As a person who came to this idea from an artistic point of view, I had my doubts about how people will react - some of the guests were art-oriented people, but a lot of them weren't, and I was worried that the game wouldn't work - that people won't cooperate, that they will always go for the obvious, that they will be bored and not get the concept or enjoy it. But it turns out, a fun game is a fun game, and it doesn't matter which approach you take towards it. Though I'm sure many of our guests did not come to the game from an art perspective as I did, they had fun with it anyway, and even without being aware of it, we as a collective made this banal process of dinner planning (that 3 days before, to me and my roommate, was really irksome) into a game that was fun and creative and hilarious and intriguing. Everyone was so open-minded, so ready to challenge themselves and each other with crazy combinations, it was just amazing. It took us about 3 month to find a suitable date for the second dinner, but eventually it happened. Probably since it has been so long since the game dinner happened, I started being doubtful again. That people won't think about their dishes, won't rise up to the challenge. Once again, I was pleasantly surprised. All our friends rose to the occasion with AMAZING dishes. Some super tasty, others more... experimental. Before I describe the words and the dishes (there were a lot of them :P), I'll say this - what I liked most about the dishes is the different ideas each of us had for the dish. If I had to think how I would go about making many of the dishes, I would probably make something really different than what my friends made, and I loved seeing how a word I thought was obvious for some specific use in the dish ended up having a completely different meaning than what I thought (For example, as a fan of spicy food, when the word 'fire' appeared in one of the dishes, I thought for sure it would be a spicy dish. But the fire ended up being part of the esthetic of the dish which was in fiery-red colors). The approach for the making of the dishes, too, was as light as the game itself. people took it to themselves to change and adjust and find their way to make the dish, and handled various cooking crisis situations in a much lighter way than a regular dinner party. The gamification of the event made it just a completely different experience than a regular dinner with friends. People surprised me. I liked it a lot. This experience was so great and I can't wait to find another chance to make another dinner with a different group of people and see the result.

Bar's words were: *Roast beef *Tartar *Rare *Kube *Dried figs *Pepper *Wine Bar made the most amazing roast beef I have eaten in my life, slow-cooked but rare in the center with kube on the side.

I made 3 dishes for this dinner, partly because some people had do cancel last minute, partly because I like to make it hard for myself sometimes. so the words for the first one were: *Rose *Pepper *Salad *Lemon *Honey *Figs *Sticky So I made a pretty decent warm salad of peppers and figs, fried in a sauce containing rose water, lemon and date honey (for the sake of our vegan guests).

My second dish was my favorite. it had the words: *Mushroom *Malawach *Sage *Labane (Strained yogurt) *Indian *Dahl I made an Indian dahl with an addition of mushrooms and sage, served with labane on sticks of malawach, it was so good I plan on making dahl a regular part of our cooking habits in this apartment.

My first choice of a dish, the only one I was originally planned to make, was my least favorite one. It had the words: *meringue *Orange *Angel *Saffron *Bay leafs *Bananas I tried to make a spicy banana pie with orange meringue shaped like an angel, but despite my greatest effort, it pretty much sucked, both in look and in taste. Though it was pretty hard for me to accept, I had fun planning and thinking how I should go about it.  

Emily and Yohay's words were: *Pizza *Beer *Pudding *Mustard. They made pizza on a sweet bread pudding with mustard. This was one of the more experimental dishes, and I have no other word to describe it other than 'interesting'. It wasn't bad, just to be clear. It was just a really unusual combination of flavors, and I thought it was really cool.

Ksenia's words were: *Cider *Beer *Pomagranate *Jam *Date honey Ksenia made cocktails in jars with these ingridients, that were super fun to start the evening with.

Ayelet's words were: *Ktita (shnitzel in Hebrew) *Fries *Chickpeas *Lemon *Chicken *Drawing. She made a really good vegetarian chickpea shnitzel with lemon and a side of fries, and drew a chicken on the plate with ketchup.

Shlomi and Lior's words were: *Honey *Musley *Nuts *Diner *Rum *Rose Shlomi and Lior made musley with honey-roasted nuts, and run with rose-colored berries on top, served with an American flag to represent the American diner.

My roommate Anna's words were: *Tiramisu *Roll *Gold *Nuts *Bubble Anna made a lovely tiramisu that was better planned than executed, so the roll ended up being the shape of all the personal cups of tiramisu combined, and the bubbles ended up being a side of soap bubbles rather than a big caramel bubble that was planned but unfortunately did not come out as planned (Than is, it came out in pieces).

Shani's words were: *Dumplings *fire *Garlic *Chinese *Vegetable *Curry Shani made wonderful hand-made vegetarian dumplings with fiery-red vegetable filling.

Lillia's words were: *Olives *Flathead grey mullet *Latke (Potato pancake) *Sea food *Soda *Chia I Couldn't eat Lilia's dish of mussels, because I eat kosher and seafood isn't really that, but It was very well liked among our other guests.

[dafidaf]

'Tirtze mimeni', it translates to 'want from me'.

My art assignment - Surface Test

I sort of did this art assignment by accident. I was doing a course around central Tel-Aviv, in one of the sky scrapers. As a  street art enthusiast, I found that from the 34th floor I can very easily see where there is street art in the area ,and I saw this abandoned warehouse that seemed to have some street art not far away, so after the course I went there to check it out. The moment I went in i realized I struck gold - the warehouse was huge with dozens of murals and graffiti tags and other wonderful pieces. The building itself, too, was interesting, since it was abandoned and decaying but still had signs of people visiting, both in the graffiti and in objects that were all around and suggested recent visitors. The space resonated with me so much, I knew I had to do this assignment there, and capture a piece of the space to take with me. The next day I came back with an A4 paper I got before I left the course, found a piece of unknown thing (I suspect it was a really old piece of tire) around the warehouse that acted as a surprisingly decent crayon, and did the rubbing of the floor, just in front of the main mural. The rubbing’s on its way to you, btw :). Thanks for helping me document this visit in an unusual way.

[dafidaf]

My art assignment - Surface Test

I sort of did this art assignment by accident. I was doing a course around central Tel-Aviv, in one of the sky scrapers. As a  street art enthusiast, I found that from the 34th floor I can very easily see where there is street art in the area ,and I saw this abandoned warehouse that seemed to have some street art not far away, so after the course I went there to check it out. The moment I went in i realized I struck gold - the warehouse was huge with dozens of murals and graffiti tags and other wonderful pieces. The building itself, too, was interesting, since it was abandoned and decaying but still had signs of people visiting, both in the graffiti and in objects that were all around and suggested recent visitors. The space resonated with me so much, I knew I had to do this assignment there, and capture a piece of the space to take with me. The next day I came back with an A4 paper I got before I left the course, found a piece of unknown thing (I suspect it was a really old piece of tire) around the warehouse that acted as a surprisingly decent crayon, and did the rubbing of the floor, just in front of the main mural. The rubbing’s on its way to you, btw :). Thanks for helping me document this visit in an unusual way.

[dafidaf]

My Art assignment - Boundaries

I hope I can make this not too science-y and confusing... This picture is part of an experiment I conducted at the lab a few months ago. On the two plates we can see two sets of cells - on the right, normal growing cells, and on the left - cancer cells. The difference between the plates is due to a change in a single gene known to promote cancer. One of the ways in which cells inhibit their own division is through contact inhibition - this means that once cells contact each other on the plate, they will stop dividing, which creates a single layer of cells on the plate. This serves as an invisible boundary between every cell and its neighboring cells, making sure cells don’t divide when there’s a lack of space. It’s not a boundary that can be seen - it is expressed as specific cellular processes that are propagated due to this contact, and prevent cellular division. Contact inhibition is lost in cancer cells, thus cells can layer over each other to form tumors.Cancer cells lose this invisible boundary - the contact between the cells is still there, but the cellular processes are different, and so they don’t act as a boundary anymore and allow cellular division. In the case of these plates, changing this gene induced the loss of contact inhibition and the division of the cells. Despite the fact that this boundary is completely abstract and can’t actually be seen, the moment it’s gone, it is very clear, visually, that it’s missing.

[Dafna, She/Her]

[dafidaf]

What does it mean to be human? [Big history project]

I have this ever growing wrinkle on my forehead. I noticed it a couple of years ago, and every once in a while it stares at me so bluntly that for a second there is nothing on my face but that wrinkle. It’s like a constant reminder of time passing by, only in a somewhat scarier way than, well, actually noticing time passing by. Like looking at my parents or grandparents faces and all of a sudden realizing how old they’ve become when I hadn’t noticed. Or watching my nephews turn from fetuses to babies and then to toddles and then to actual tiny humans with whom I have actual human interactions. We’re forced to watch and be aware of the wonderful and terrible process of decay and growth. It’s probably something we’ve noticed from the dawn of our time as a species – noticing how wild fruit ripen and then rotten. How our crops go through the cycle of withering and re-growing. How the machines we built slowly become obsolete – from camera obscura to daguerreotype, from daguerreotype to film photography, from film photography to digital photography and who knows what next. We also notice it from almost as soon as we’re born – the first time we see trees in the fall. The first time we see a flower withers. When we fall in love, and then fall out of love. When we lose someone who meant something to us. There’s so much beauty about this process, seeing how nature works in its purest, most ruthless form. Everything decays. It decays so that new things can grow. Conservation of mass and energy. The most basic thing in the universe. In that one wrinkle. I think, in a way, being aware of it is something that makes us human. Only something though, not The thing. Because that definition is still not inclusive enough in my opinion. And I think it’s kind of a losing battle to define ‘human’ in the first place. It’s like the fact that there’s still no actual clear definition of ‘life’. There are a few conditions that you have to have to qualify, but when you try to include all ‘life’ in this definition, you find that it’s more complicated than that. When you look at a specific thing, you can usually tell if it’s alive. But you can’t really find a definition so accurate that it will include all living things, and only them. And defining ‘human’ is just as elusive for me. But at the same time trying to do something regarding your odds of success is also a very human thing to do.

[dafidaf]

25/5/15

Spring is still at full swing, at least as far as the flowers on campus are concerned.

[dafidaf]

24/5/15

‘From left or from right, our soldiers keep us safe from all directions’

Spotted on the central bus station.

[dafidaf]

23/5/15

Eurovision is amazing. Watching it while following the hashtag on twitter is actually even better.

[dafidaf]

22/5/15

Because it’s not enough that we live together in Jerusalem, Noa came to my parents house and we baked Lotus cookies.

[dafidaf]

21/5/15

Someone I work with from the technion had her PhD presentation today. This is the view from outside their lab.

[dafidaf]

20/5/15

I’ve been working on this new assay at the lab for the past 3 weeks. It’s finally done, and I may not have gotten the answer I wanted, but I did get an answer, which is always good.

[dafidaf]

19/5/15

I was in a Backstreet boys concert today, which basically means I was 12 for an evening. It was incredible :D.

[dafidaf]

18/5/15

Ask? for peach [In memory of Ehud goldwaser and Eldad regev]

Spotted on Eshkol st. (I think.)

[dafidaf]

17/5/15

This is what King George looked like today. WTF. This whole ‘Jerusalem day caught me by surprise even though I’ve been living here for 5 years.

[dafidaf]

16/5/15

Cooking while listening to Amanda fucking Palmer. Because what other way is there to cook?

[dafidaf]

15/5/15

Mornings with Itamar are just the best <3.

[dafidaf]

14/5/15

Spotted on Shmuel hanagid st.