Audrey's Portfolio

• Audience Insight: What key message do you want your audience to understand about you as they view your artwork? How did you communicate this message?

I wanted my audience to understand my interests, hobbies and my personality; my interests on sea animals, hobby on reading, and my chaotic yet organized mind. I communicated my message by using symbolism for example I had some sea creatures in my background representing my interest; the paper and pages in the background represents my hobbies on creative writing and reading; finally the string weaving in-between the background represents a organized flow within the messy background or my mind.

• Risk and Experimentation: During the creation of your artwork, how did you take risks and experiment in order to effectively express your intended message?

During the creation of my work I experimented with working with string and scrap paper to create an emphasizing background. The threads represented a organized flow within the messy background, and working with string was a challenge as it was har to keep it from moving around and tight.

1. Cultural Influence on Aesthetic Choices

After meeting Kool Koor and learning about his artistic journey, how do you think his background in the graffiti culture of the Bronx influenced his aesthetic choices in the techniques and styles he demonstrated? 

When working on the streets the Artist would have to consider the time of the work, the probability of it being covered/tagged after a while, and the general feel of graffiti is more rebellious and free. The graffiti culture impacted Kool Koor’s style, for example his ‘DNA drawing’ is waves that look like seaweed, and the same element is seen also within his mural and graffiti. The element is an example of Kool Koor’s style following him from the start, the graffiti culture in Bronx. Koor’s mural displayed some of the brush work seen in his recent studio work. In the 1980’s, the lines and shape of his font style in his graffiti artwork was more geometric with sharp angles. Now his DNA resembles this style, but they twist and curve creating a more organic feel.

2. Environmental Impact on Art Creation

Considering Kool Koor’s shift from street art to studio work, how do you think different environments (like the streets versus a classroom) impact an artist’s creative process and choices? In what ways did you feel these environmental influences while trying out his painting style?

When transitioning to studio work the environment the artist works in changes drastically as working on the streets you have to consider the time of the work, the probability of it being covered/tagged, and the feel of the work is more rebellious and free. On the other hand studio work is in a more chill environment with more materials to work with and more time to go back to the painting/work. This transition could impact the artist style, for example Kool Koor’s graffiti is vastly different in both details and style compared to his mural, the graffiti is him just tagging his name while the mural he took his time to make a background and change the font a little. His current style is softer and more detailed, because he has more time in the studio verses the fast pace of street art.

3. Personal Reflection on Aesthetic Development

What aspects of your culture or environment do you think will influence your future artistic choices for your self-portrait mixed media artwork? How can you incorporate elements from your own background into your artwork to express your unique identity?

For example book pages, it represent reading and creative writing, or a escape to a new area without stress, without homework or boredom, for me it’s like a new world in my head that I could mold at will. Another example is blue or whales/jellyfishes, it represents the sea, or a place of calmness and curiosity, for me the sea is a place of peacefulness and also a place full of new life.

Hypothesis & Baseline

By using ‘One-Sec’ I can use my computer less and finish my homework within the extra time, and with less homework to do last moment I can sleep earlier.

Features

Functionality Analysis
One-Sec advertised comprehensive app and website blocking capabilities, but testing revealed significant limitations. The app only functions on websites through browser extensions, with no actual app-blocking functionality despite advertising this feature. Users must manually input each website URL to block, and the blocking mechanism can be immediately bypassed without any waiting period, undermining its effectiveness as a focus tool.

Design Analysis
One-Sec employs a freemium business model that creates a misleading user experience, using deceptive advertising by promoting features that require paid upgrades. This design choice prioritizes revenue generation over user success, as the free version lacks the tools necessary to achieve the wellness goals the app claims to support. From a behavioral design perspective, including an instant override option contradicts established principles of habit interruption and suggests poor understanding of behavioral psychology, as it removes the friction needed to break habitual usage patterns. This design approach may actually reinforce the problematic usage patterns the app claims to address.

Review

Based on my baseline data of 9 hours daily screen time and consistently finishing homework at the last minute, One-Sec failed to support my hypothesis that reduced computer usage would improve homework completion and sleep schedule. My initial prediction was that the app would help reduce screen time from 9 to 7 hours daily, enabling earlier homework completion and a 9-10pm bedtime instead of 10-11pm. However, the app’s inability to block mobile apps, combined with easily bypassed website restrictions, meant my screen time remained largely unchanged. Without effective blocking mechanisms, I continued experiencing the same patterns of procrastination and late-night homework completion that I aimed to address.

Supported writing by AI

During this unit we explored how AI can assist learning by having the AI role-play as an alien that ‘completely doesn’t understand English’ and us as a linguist teaching the AI English, strengthening our understanding of the parts of speech, sentence structures, and definition of words.

Something went smooth was teaching the AI parts of speech and sentence structure, as the AI took the information I gave it smoother than it did with definitions.
Something that I could improve on is phrasing my wording on explanation and poster we made about our alien during the final classes, I could of double check what I wrote.

In health we learned about the difference between the Teen brain and a Adult brain, where the teen brain is the most active at the amygdala resulting in a more active response of FFF (fight, flight, or freeze response) than adults. In addition the Teen brain’s prefrontal cortex isn’t fully developed, this results in teens reacting way more to a stressful situation than an adult or child.

On the other hand the pre-frontal cortex is undeveloped resulting in rash and illogical decisions.

To demonstrate what we learned our group created a video demonstrating the main character bob over reacting to common stressors like how most teenagers would do (but over exaggerated), and why the reactions occur.

The song cover on the notebook cover I created was greatly inspired by Chinese culture. For example the buildings are the ones you see in ancient china where they built the houses out of wood. With red lighting and a dark background. The cover also has ghosts and spirts in the distance of the road hinting at some Chinese horror.
The purple streak inside the song cover is a sword, while bowtie and part of a skateboard is above the song cover all referencing to a anime.  Across from the skateboard and bowtie is a tail of a dragon, referencing a book. Below the song cover is an Eevee with a controller in it’s mouth representing a Switch and one of it’s game.
This represents myself because I love listening to songs so I made a song cover for the base of my notebook cover. On top of the base I added some anime and book references because I also love to watch anime and read books.

Our game had a spin wheel as the first part our our game, depending on which part you spun to we had 4 games accordingly. the fourth game had a 50% chance on the wheel and the game was to guess the number on dice inside the cup. the third game was a dice drop or disc drop with dices instead of a disc, it had a 20% chance on the wheel. the second game was a card flip with a 20% on the wheel. the first game had 10% chance on the wheel and was a lottery with 10% of getting a prize from the 100 tickets.

the process of making the games were smooth as we had separate jobs and work to be done. something that went well in the probability fair was there were our stand was popular in the afternoon as most of our prizes were gone as we gave prizes for participation. another thing that went well was our dice drop and wheel didn’t break as they were the more fragile games.