“Melting of the Minds” features a conversation between an erratic psychotic man bestowing  wisdom upon his eight year old daughter. The designs for the chairs focused more on their underlying aspects and similarities as a family rather than their individual characteristics.

The young girl’s chair is painted white and shaped like an egg to represent her innocence and purity; while the father’s chair features more broken lines and elements of being, in a sense, cracked.

The location for this piece was chosen because of its clean and polished looking aesthetic. The surfaces of the walls were selected to highlight the clean lines of the chair as well as provide sort of a “sanitarium” feel.

There is something inherently awkward about randomly assigned partnerships. Initially, when two students are tasked with working together on an assignment, they are equal. Tasks are fairly divided, and things seem to be going smoothly. But the inevitable happens, and slowly but surely the power dynamic between the two group members becomes more and more imbalanced. The dominant personality, the one with the greater drive, takes over. These two chairs seek to imitate this unbalanced relationship. By placing one chair at typical height, and the other at ground level and turned away, conversation between the people sitting there would become difficult and forced- the occupants could not possibly remain equals. Just by virtue of their positioning, the person in the higher chair would hold the power. And yet the chairs are structurally linked, so the partnership is kept intact despite the imbalance. Once these chairs are produced at their full scale, I intend to install them in the basement of Hunt library, in the workspaces where many groups complete their projects together.

These chairs and this location are the setting for a conversation between Albert Einstein and M. C. Escher on the subject of relativity and frames of reference. I have always loved Escher’s work, and been fascinated by special relativity, but I have only recently realized their connection. This piece reflects my own views on the many possible correct ways of looking at the world. Albert Einstein is famous for his equation e = mc^2, a description of the relation between mass and energy based on the constant speed of light in a vacuum, which is a prediction of his theory of special relativity. (It is important to note that the idea of general relativity, the fact that all inertial reference frames are equally valid, was introduces by Galileo, not Einstein.) M. C. Escher is well known for his drawings which play with relativity and multiple frames of reference, such as “Relativity” (the one with the staircases) and his tessellations, in which perspective can determine what forms are seen. To acknowledge both men’s creative accomplishments relating to relativity, my chairs are designed using the characters of Einstein’s equation in tessellating form, in which the E turned on its side is an M, there are two smaller Cs, two multiplication signs, and an equal sign. The colors are drawn from Escher’s typical tessellation color scheme of black, white, and red. The red is reserved for the two Es, as they coincide with the conversationalists’ last initials. E, M, and C also happen to be Escher’s full initials. The site is chosen for its directional ambiguity and for the fact that it is in Gates, a building infamous for its dearth of right angles, which are our culture’s favored source of referential frames.

My research included the book M. C. Escher: Visions of Symmetry by Doris Schattschneider, M. C. Escher by TASCHEN, and Einstein’s Dreams by Alex Lightman (and a thank you to Kaitlin for the referral).

For this piece, one stool will be placed in a room. As a participant enters the room, I will tell them there are two stools in the room that they must find. One of the stools does not exist. From there on, I will track the movement of the participant throughout the environment. The piece contains several conversations, one of which being the conversation between the participant and the environment. Once I have gathered enough data, I will create a visual representation of participants’ interaction with the physical stool and the environment.

“State-of-the-Art Virus” is a conversation between a doctor and the first computer-augmented human to contract a digital virus. From mechanical prosthetics to neural implants, I think that humans are heading towards a physical synthesis with the technology we’ve come to depend on. Yet, this synthesis opens us up to a slew of new ailments, which may one day result in such a thing as prescription antivirus. Additionally, there’s an interesting parallel in the fact that malware infections in medical equipment has become a big problem in recent years.

The doctor’s chair has a straight back and a professional appearance, with slight, soft curves to suggest an organic element. The patient’s chair is a corrupted version of the doctor’s chair, whose warped effect was inspired by a distorted cabinet designed by Italian designer Ferruccio Laviani. Due to it’s viral nature, the patent’s chair is not meant to be interacted with. In the final design, both chairs will have another pair of support beams closer to the bottom of the legs to increase stability.

As for the setting, I was looking for something minimalist, well lit, and sterile. Yet, I was captivated by the paint splatters in this alcove and the rust stains on the staircase, as they incorporate the chaotic entity of the virus into an otherwise clean environment. This location is meant to be a secluded corner of a hospital, where the doctor and patient anxiously discuss what can be done to combat this new ailment.

Goodbye Box

Ever have one of those weeks when you’re so frustrated that you just want to jump off a bridge? This past week I sure did. “The Embodiment of Frustration” is a piece that encompasses my struggle with negative feelings and emotions.

Overall, creating this piece was immensely therapeutic. The process began as I was leaving Doherty late Wednesday night. Upon exiting the building, I was greeted by cold autumn rain. I had no umbrella, hood, or plastic to cover my project. I was so beaten down by this point that I decided to accept the situation for what it was and trudge through the rain.

When I got back to my dorm, drenched from head to toe, I knew that I needed to find a creative outlet in order to feel better. I decided to express my frustrations in a physical way by writing horrible, disgusting thoughts onto lotus leaves made from cardboard and Masonite. I utilized the materials stylistically by writing my less-significant problems on cardboard leaves and more impactful issues on Masonite. After expressing over 75 negative thoughts, I broke each leaf in half and put them in the box. This box now embodied my negativity and emotions, but wouldn’t contain them completely because of the holes cut into the sides.

After creating this landscape, I created a series of photographs depicting environments I associate with the negative energies now represented by this box. The use of this object in each space allowed me to view my negativity from a different perspective. In an act of liberation, I ended the series by throwing my problems off a bridge. This brought about a feeling of liberation and closure.

“Building Bones” describes the natural components and behaviors in nature. Every creature is made of millions of little building blocks, often which are much simpler than the organism they create as a whole. Schools of fish swimming together create a parallel example. Each fish comes from a combination of little bones. When they swim together, they confuse predators and protect each other. Components in a creature work together like schools of little fish to function as well.

For my project, I created many variations of bones and pieced together the simple bones to create complex little creatures. Arranged in a fluid pattern, creatures create a larger fish as a whole. In my opinion, “landscapes” can also be alive, non-static, as long as it contains components that contribute the the picture as a whole.  The way my bone creaters move together suggest a constantly moving “landscape”, effected by outside forces.

“The Seedling” tells the tale of the life cycle of a world, beginning and ending with a small circular seed which represents the potential for life. As the world grows, ages and dies, it moves through several stages: the plant stage, the plant and people stage (people represented by their buildings and cities), the people stage (which could also be called post-plant), and the post-people stage. Plants and buildings evolve from page to page. Because civilization is part of the same continuum as nature, rather than being opposed to it, they are represented with artistic styles unified by their focus on the circle. The entire piece is constructed in the form of a semi-circular pop-up book. The repetition of circles is meant to metaphorically reference many round or cycling forms: planets, seeds, the universe, the cycle of seasons, the cycle of a day, and the cycle of life. Just like a planet, however, only half of the circle is ever in full light, though the half in shadow can be seen as each layer of paper casts its form on the layer beyond.

This piece uses 98 pieces. It is focused on the number seven, which was inspired by the Biblical story of creation in which the world was created in seven days. This world is not only born but also lives and dies in seven pages, the last page reverting it to its original seed-like form. Since the metaphorical circle is divided in two, seven is raised to the power of two and multiplied by two to obtain the total number of pieces. Also, if the pieces which form the title on the cover are not included, there are 77 pieces, which is literally two sevens written next to each other.

Paper was chosen mostly for its practical and aesthetic aspects–foldability and colors reminiscent of a flame flaring brighter and brighter before dying down again in the darkness of space–but also because of its tradition use in pop-up book format. This project is a book because books imply a sequential format, and it is difficult to view multiple pages at once, though the book can always be re-read (giving it a cyclical nature).

“The Seedling” is ultimately about hope. I offer hope that even after humanity is gone there will still be the potential for life, growth, and wonder in the universe.