Hannah

Week Twelve

Here are the cookies I made in class! here is the recipe if anyone wants some peanut butter chocolate chip cookies!

3/4 cup peanut butter

1 cup brown sugar

1 egg

1 tsp baking soda

1 cup chocolate chips

bake at 350 for 8-12 minutes!!! very easy and very good!!!

Thankyou to you all for a wonderful semester! It was so wonderful to be taught by you, Diane and to see all of the great works you all created at home. I hope we will be able to work together in person ASAP!!! wishing you all a fantastic summer!

Week Ten

Pisanki is a very important part of my life. It is my favourite tradition and it allows me to connect with my family and my background. I wanted to document the long process of pisanki, dying each colour, spreading out the wax, drawing your design and eventually coming to a fully filled egg. I wanted to document every part of the process so that the brunt of the photos was the process and the last few being the cooking of the egg – how something that takes so long to create can be destroyed in a second. I don’t think using photos as a medium to show this was the most successful choice but I am very interested in furthering this idea in the future.

Week Nine

Notes and proposal

Week Eight

Week Seven

Creating this video, I wanted to create something that made the audience feel unsettled, the way I do on zoom. I associate zoom class with closed spaces, anxiety and feeling like I am constantly in my head. Whereas on campus school, brings me happiness and i feel much more at ease. I brainstormed places where I feel the most comfortable and happy, the majority of which were outdoors. I wished to use these outdoor spaces and distort them in some way to show the disconnect between on campus and online learning. I used different pieces of plastics, red black and nude nylon tights and bounce sheets over top of my lens as filters, to create and layer discomfort, unease and distortion. I choose to keep the videos almost completely still because I often panic about how I am perceived over zoom, I try to stay completely still. I though a lot about layering different audios and tried a few things but ended up liking the mash up of all the original audios instead. It reminded me of class when a prof asks a question and no one really answers online, leaving long bouts of silence. There is some static and noise that reminded me of when some people have their mics on accidentally. I choose to pan away from the scenes and have different videos leave at different times to mimic the end of a zoom call, students leaving at their own paces.

Week Six

Notes and proposal

Week Five

One who destroys the land destroys oneself. This mantra shows the importance of responsibility and intentional cohabitation. The act of placing my hand on the snow is intentional. If I press for too long or too hard the heat from my hand will melt the snow too much and the cold of the snow will harm me. But if I achieve a balance by understanding our limits, there is beauty in our cohabitation. My print will disappear, it is fleeting and it is not about me and my mark on the land, it is about intentionally understanding I am responsible for my actions regarding the land. I can make the land better or I can scar. If I scar the land I scar myself.

Week Four notes

Proposal

Week three notes

When approaching this exercise, I took a similar route to Nina Katchadourian’s Book Stacks project. I read the article a few times, first picking out short phrases i enjoyed or that stuck out, then picking out words. I organized these all in a list and was able to pick my final selections from there. I was having so much fun with this exercise I couldn’t decide which phrase to use for my final, so I made a few banners.

While watching the interview with Hiba Abdallah, i was very intrigued by the way she viewed words as a material to make art. She stated “words can be so pointed yet so poetically vague”. This really resonates with me, as a big fan of text in art. I had this phrase in mind while creating my banners.

The first banner i created was the first phrase i connected using the article. It is a tad hard to read since my pea brain didn’t realize that banners should be readable both in photos and in person. If I were to explore banners as a mode of communication in the future I would definitely increase the size. It says “disinterested engagement, until our eyes bleed”. While creating this banner, I thought of the banner as a mode of communication itself. It is used for celebration in most forms. I wanted to create a phrase that you wouldn’t celebrate. First of all, you wouldn’t celebrate disinterested engagement, and never your eyes bleeding. This too is how i feel about online school in a way, I find it really difficult to fully engage and connect over the online format, and i feel like i am staring at screens until my eyes bleed. I laid out this banner just kind of sprawled out on the ground to show that the banner itself is disinterested in its only engagement, hanging in its traditional form.

This banner reads “Interpersonal Dissimulation”. This banner follows the theme of celebrating something that wouldn’t usually be celebrated. While putting these words together, i looked up both their definitions just to make sure i was understanding the words completely. Interpersonal refers to communication between people and dissimulation refers to concealment of ones thoughts, feelings or character. Together, i interpret the words as a poor form of communication. Communication with deceit, lies, hypocrisy and decay. I took this photo on a door that we keep in my backyard. the paint is chipping and the wood decaying so i saw it as a perfect location to enforce the idea of conversational decay.

The last banner I made reads “interrupted intellectual space”. When i think of intellectual space, I think of a peaceful environment where one can properly think or feel at ease. For me, my intellectual space is interrupted by technology and screens. I cut out my triangles from a magazine page that included some sort of technological motherboard to represent technology interrupting that space. I placed this banner on a tree to show that when my intellectual space is interrupted, i remedy that by going outside, taking a walk in the forest or just completely immersing myself with nature.

Week Two Notes

Week Two exercise

Week One Notes

While creating my own book stacks, I followed Katchadourians process. I am currently living at home so I have access to quite a few books. I started by going through my parents bookshelf and removing every title that seemed even a little bit interesting. I then compiled all those titles in a long list.

After making the list, I placed each book title on a post it note to be able to easily play around with the names and see what worked best.

My final step, just as Katchadourian’s was to finally place the books together. I first tried to place the books in bankers box’s. I filled the remaining area by upside down books. I found this to be an interesting way to display the books but U had a bit of trouble reading them. I remembered Katchadourian speaking about the importance of the physical qualities of the book and their readability. I decided to go a different route, similar to Katchadourian by stacking the books, and having a completely black background so the books have complete attention.

I really enjoyed this method of poetry of a sort, I am a big fan of making collages and creating these book stacks was like enacting a different way to collage. I am finding it tough to title these works since I naturally want to use one of the book titles, but I also want to allow the books to connect with the others and inform each other rather than focus on an individual book title.

2 thoughts on “Hannah

  1. Hi Hannah!
    Week 1:
    Katchadourian notes complete and epic in length and reflectiveness, 3 Book stack images complete and thoughtful, in terms of language and composition
    Week 2:
    Notes on two text works complete and extensive, it’s so great to see your thoughtful engagement with the materials, evidence of curiosity and openness, and high level of understanding of critical ideas at play.

    Week 3:
    Text banner exercise and description – great reflections (even on where it fails to be legible, etc.) but I am so glad to see so much effort, testing possible iterations and materials and contexts. I like the fact that my eyes do bleed sort of! Could be pushed even further to make it hard and uncomfortable to read – keep thinking of how the exact materials, colours, forms and placement all collaborate to create meaning. Every choice matters.

    Week 4:
    Nature video very thoughtful, and simple – reducing your subject to its essence in a very intentional way. And I like the reciprocity at play – where you are implicated in the gesture as well as the land/snow. Could be explored in all kinds of ways to make a series? And this could complexify the ideas too, with more room for surprises and tension too.

    All your excercises show evidence of historical precedents for the work and strong understanding of conceptual ideas at play. Thanks for your open mind! Keep working on making the pieces technically strong – talk to Nathan and take even better pictures and videos.

    Keep up the experimentation (not knowing what will happen) and adventurousness (creating tension, discomfort, and surprise) – and consider even more ambitious gestures moving forward in your work.

    Thank you for your attendance and engagement in class discussions and activities.

    If you would like to talk with me about your work in progress, readings, exercises, one-on-one comments on your work, and grades – send me an email in the morning to book a 15 minute appointment during the optional in person hours: Thursdays 2:30 – 4:30
    And you can show up to a zoom meeting with Nathan anytime during these hours to ask your questions, and get tech support for using software and finishing your projects:
    Mondays and Thursdays 1-4pm

  2. Hi Hannah,
    Thanks so much for the dedicated work looking and reflecting so deeply on the readings and lecture materials, I’m impressed to see the imaginative leaps you make from the assignments – and both your semi-abstract zoom video- using nylon hacks to the lenses, and your Ukranian eggs intervention worked out so well, I think you should show it next year for Zavitz or in JAS. Thanks for your participation in class too – and contributions to all the exercises, baking, discussions etc. it’s wonderful to have you in the class and I hope we’ll see you again in Experimental 3!
    Diane

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