Ideation & Prototyping

Week 1

Reading Reflection

I totally agree with how the author sees the role of artists. As I have also thought about the question: “Why are arts important? Why does humanity need art?”, and the answer I got for myself is that art is the thing humans created for other people to simply enjoy their existence. Unlike other kinds of human creations, such as science and literature, which are always created for some purpose, art can be created without a purpose. However, while art reflects the artists’ view of the world, it can unintentionally change people in society. People in different eras produce different kinds of art, which reflects back on people and reshapes the next generation. This article further explores this idea and talks about how these art happen - by the artists diving deep into their inner selves and exploring the "darker forces" of themselves and society, and points out how American society should better deal with arts, especially those that are rather “harsh” to face, as these kinds of art can change the future of America. That idea resonates with how I see the role of art, so I was truly happy to read this article. By the way, I love the tone of the article, as I can tell the author is an artist themselves. :)

I like this article because it discusses the definition of art and creativity in a rather philosophical way: what is the boundary of it, and in fact, is there any boundary at all? I do agree that, as human lives, art and creations will be produced, and I also agree that if one sees things in a broad and penetrating perspective, everything can be seen as, or perceived as, some kind of art. However, that also makes me think about the question: then what about the “art” themselves? Or in other words, the “art art”? When everything is defined as art, where will the traditional, classic kind of art go? Can this possibly make them lose their purpose to exist?

I generally do not like articles that are mostly about the author teaching how they think people should be doing things, but I generally agree with how the author thinks about what makes a good design. However, I still disagree with some aspects of this article, as to me, many factors of a “good design” can be quite subjective. Although design is often considered something to serve people instead of self-expression, I still think the same design can be a good design in some people’s eyes and a bad design in others. Therefore, I do not think it is a good idea to set a standard for all designs. In addition, I do feel the difference in tone between the previous two articles, which talk about art, and this article, which talks about design. I can see that there is a huge gap between the mindset of artists and that of designers, and I find that rather interesting.

Week 2

Reading Reflection

I really appreciate I Walk Into A White Room (Chapter 1) from The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp, because it somewhat helped me recover from the anxiety of “I am losing my creativity”. Growing up, I have never stopped creating. I have been writing fictional stories and drawings since I was a child, and I started to do more kinds of creations as I grew up and became more professional. However, as I grew up, I have always felt that I am not as creative as I used to be when I was a child. Therefore, that kind of anxiety has been attacking me every time I try to create something, and the anxiety sometimes makes it harder for me to focus on creating. As a result, there is now a downward spiral of “the more anxiety I have, the harder it is for me to create, and the less I create, the more anxious I am”. Therefore, I think I am one of the people who need to see this article the most. The fact that creativity can be learned gives me a huge amount of encouragement to keep on going with my creativity journey, and after I read this article, like the author said, I now have the courage to face “a blank page or an empty canvas or a white room” again.

50 Shades

I created 56 different renderings of Tanuki (raccoon dogs).

I am a fan of Tanuki, and I have always been collecting different things made with Tanuki. The pictures and videos of real-life Tanukis are mostly taken by me when I go to different zoos in Japan and China, and all the physically-made Tanukis are either ones I made or ones I collected over time. I took some behind-the-scenes pictures, and I will attach them below.

A group picture for the Tanuki family

“Watercolor” material: strawberry lemonate

Week 3

Reading Reflection

Bill Buxton, Sketching User Experiences 

This article introduced something very challenging to me. I am the kind of creator who always wants to make every piece of my work perfect, even at the beginning stage. The result of this can be that I sometimes get too anxious to start my work, thinking it will not be perfect. Therefore, the idea of “making imperfect, quick, and messy sketchings that can be thrown away at any time” is a very unfamiliar way of doing things that can, however, be very helpful for people like me. I think I will practice making sketches and learn to embrace imperfection.

Bill Gaver, Technology Affordances 

I have learned the concept of technology affordances before, but this article helps me to understand how to actually achieve technology affordance, so I really appreciate reading it. One concern I have after reading this article is that the same element can sometimes mean different affordances based on the variety of backgrounds of users. Therefore, I feel like it can be hard for designers to make designs that satisfy everyone in terms of affordances.

Bret Victor, A Brief Rant on the Future of Interaction Design

I really like this article. I love it when the author says, “Visions give people a direction and inspire people to act, and a group of inspired people is the most powerful force in the world”. I also think that the imagination of the future - which not only includes actual visions of the future, but also includes artistic works like sci-fi fiction - can heavily direct the way people actually build the future, sometimes even without their consciousness. Therefore, the way the author points out how people should envision the future in a more hands-on, realistic perspective can really change the way people later build the future. Besides, to me, personally, I do prefer the author’s perspective of the future much more than the example they showed at the beginning. :)

Endangered Animal

For this project, I decided to make a kiwi bird from recycled daily containers made from plastic.

Kiwi birds are often found in New Zealand. They are the only Apterygiformes (meaning birds without wings) that are alive today, and four of the five known species of Kiwi are listed as vulnerable, meaning that they are threatened with extinction unless the circumstances that are threatening their survival and reproduction improve.

The main factor that is threatening the kiwi population is the settlement of humans from other continents to New Zealand, which caused both the introduction of alien predators of kiwis and the overconstruction of cities and the destruction of kiwi (and other local birds)’s native habitats. Nowadays, people are working hard on restoring different species of kiwi and protecting kiwis in captive facilities. However, as of 2018, over 70% of all kiwis are still unprotected and living wild in the city, co-living with all the human beings.

Plastic is one of the most used materials in people’s daily lives, but plastic that is not properly recycled - and instead, gets thrown away in the city - can often cause negative effects to the environment and the lives of wild animals, like kiwi. Therefore, I used different kinds of plastic that people often dispose, to imply how human beings’ daily disposal can harm the kiwi’s living environment. I created the body of the bird using a plastic tape dispenser and a water bottle, and I cut plastic bags into strips and glued them onto the body as the bird’s fur. I used disposable plastic utensils for the bird’s mouth and foot.

By doing this project, I hope to raise people’s awareness of protecting the environment through their daily trash disposal, for a better living for the wild animals.