I think the key message I want to express through my piece of artwork is my uniqueness; my own experiences, hobbies, and upbringing that shaped me into who I am today. This mixed media self portrait was more of a method for me to express myself and to show the audience some elements that define me.
During the creation of my artwork, the whole process was very new for me, and I had a lot of instances where I was experimenting with materials to use for my symbols and ways to actually create the symbols. Even from the very start, spray painting was a large challenge for me because at first I was very unsure of the colour scheme I was using and how I would use and control the colours, but as I worked on it more and more I was able to get an idea of what I wanted my final canvas to look like and I was able to get a canvas that I was really satisfied with.
In Unit One, we were tasked with creating a tissue box that aligned with an assigned design movement. I had Art Nouveau. We had to create a design, inkscape it, and then prototype it into a final project.
Something I did well in the project was prototype and the designs. All the design ideas were very intricate and aligned very well with the design movement art nouveau. I had very large improvements with my inkscaping skills, as all my lines were very smooth, the dimensions fit perfectly, and I was able to recreate my design very well.
Something I should improve on is my research and analysis parts of my process journal, because when I was creating my test part of the Box, I could have had a more detailed analysis on my box and my process of creating it. In addition, I could have provided a deeper analysis using critical thinking.
Kool Koor’s background in graffiti culture influenced the artistic style he has in studio right now: spontaneous bursts of art in flowing forms, and lines that give the impression of being fast, quick, like the lines drawn during graffiti in order to not get caught. His choice of colours is also highly impacted by his history in graffiti, as he prefers to choose vibrant colours similar to the ones commonly used for tagging and writing on walls.
2. Environmental Impact on Art Creation
I think different environments impact an artist’s creative process and choices because there are different limiting factors. that the environments bring. For example, in graffiti art, the limiting factor is time, as you are risking getting caught when doing art, therefore your process and technique will somewhat focus on how to create art and expression while making the time used as compressed as possible, whereas in a classroom, one can take more time to work on details and intricate techniques when creating art. Therefore, Kool Koor’s art is mostly quick, spontaneous, and smooth, like graffiti art, but he also takes time when deciding where to put his next stroke, and adds small details within his big canvas to add intricacy.
3. Personal Reflection on Aesthetic Development
I think that my origin of being born in Canada impact my aesthetics as I prefer art that is more western, but I also am able to appreciate Chinese/Southeast Asian artwork due to my parents and their more asian taste in artwork that is put in my house, therefore, western, abstract art and eastern, more intricate art can all be integrated into my art choices when I start my mixed media artwork. Through using symbols and art styles that help me express my own unique identity of growing up with drastically different cultures, I am able to exhibit my own cultures, hobbies, etc. such as using emojis to represent my hobbies and also the use of traditionally Chinese symbols to express the other side of myself and my ties with those symbols.
In this unit, the class utilized AI to enforce grammar knowledge by teaching the AI about grammar and language. We were tasked with the mission to teach an alien from an extraterrestrial land English, and eventually learn information about their purpose on Earth.
Throughout the unit, as my alien’s english improved, I learnt that grammar is crucial to learn and master during the beginning stages of learning a language, otherwise as you attempt to express an idea in the language, it might not make sense. In addition, I also was able to further enforce my understanding and mastery of grammar due to the fact that I had to specify parts of speech and grammar rules, allowing myself to also learn in the process.
Drawing towards the end, I was able to assess my alien’s ability in forming speech/text in English. Through this process, I was able to further analyze a paragraph my alien created, and provide an analysis on the quality and improvement points of the text my alien created.
The teaching phase of the project helped me the most and aided me in improving in my own grammar. I had to first fully understand the concept before being able to word the concept into something easily understood for the alien to digest, therefore the task required me to first get a good understanding on all concepts. As I was working through the concepts, this helped me catch which concepts I didn’t have a good understanding on. After realizing, I could do some research and enforce my understanding before continuing to teach.
During the exhibition tour, I was able to observe how art styles and techniques evolved over history as art had advanced with civilization, as the curation of the exhibits were put in estimated chronological order as the audience advanced in the exhibition, room to room. As I was looking through artworks, I was able to give my own interpretation on the artworks, and further advance the interpretation when communicating with peers about our own interpretations of the same artwork. The curation of the exhibit also helped my stream of thinking to advance bit by bit with artworks of the same time period and style to be put together, prompting the audience to pay more attention to detail as we walk through the exhibit. Contrast in sizes of paintings put beside each other also prompted the audience to look closer and analyze each artwork carefully. Occasionally, I would come across a piece of artwork in which my interpretation of the the art deeply resonated with me and my own values and beliefs. I believe through that resonation, some of the painting’s ideas and beliefs were subtly affecting and adding onto the beliefs of my own. By experiencing the whole exhibition step by step, I was able to obtain a deeper understanding overall of how art has contributed to the history of civilization by depicting various events, and how it has posed as a tunnel artists are able to use to express ideas, imagination, and opinions of the world through brush strokes.
For Unit 1, we started off the PE year with Table Tennis. During the unit, the class worked on improving serves, forehand and backhand strokes, and adding spins to the strokes. During the unit, I feel that I’ve done good at serving, and I have improved a lot with my backhand, as I’ve been using it a lot (e.g. receiving serves, because I’m left-handed). Something I think I should improve on is the angle of my paddle when I’m receiving balls from the other side and additionally, trying to control my power more when I stroke a ball. Overall, this unit was a great learning experience, and I’ve improved on a lot of skills during the unit.
For my sketchbook cover, I decided to create a collage from newspapers and magazines. Throughout my cover, I utilized symbols (pictures, comic strips, etc) to represent who I am and to represent the environment I’m living in. For example, the person peeking from the window represents the social environment right now where everyone wants to know about everything regarding other people (e.g. friends, classmates, celebrities, etc.), and the bee on the flower represents a school environment, where students are like bees, taking pollen (knowledge) from teachers, experiences, etc. and as they go back to their own hive, they create their own honey, as in their own understanding in various concepts collected. The trolley car problem and the word “dilemma” and “philosophy” represents my love and interest for philosophic concepts, especially ethical dilemmas, and the problem also poses as something the audience may also think about. The different words I additionally pasted on my cover are words that I think describe myself in an abstract way, or they describe my interests in life (e.g. NYT represents my love of getting to know about current event and the news ). Lastly, the Calvin and Hobbes comic strip shows how even though I’m still in eighth grade, I still have the heart of a child. A design strategy I tried to use throughout my cover was to have organized words at the top of the cover so the audience naturally reads from left to right, up and down, and it slowly will make my whole cover’s design unfold bit by bit, and the bottom part has all words tilted up towards the middle and a bit layered over each other, so the reader can still quite methodically go through all the elements that make up my cover. It may look a bit messy and abstract, but it’s still well organized and gives a sense of balance, which can help the reader find focus points better. To create a sense of unity, I chose the same colour scheme for the whole cover, black and white, to correspond with the newspaper cutouts. Except for the Chinese and Canadian flags, because I wanted them to pop out to the audience as being Chinese Born Canadian is a big factor that has made up and has really influenced who I am today.
The game I created with my team was fairly easy. We had one bag of 20 marbles with 5 blue marbles (lose) 8 red marbles (small prize) and 7 yellow marbles (big prize). If you get the red marble, you get to choose from haribo, white rabbit, and a peach rock candy. If you get yellow, you can choose from all the snacks mentioned above and also from a stick of hi-chew and one of those really expensive lollipops. We created this because we thought in order to get kids to play our game, we should make our probabilities higher, make the game simple and fast to play (taking advantage of their human nature) and make that the main selling point (75%).
During the creation of the game, there were no conflicts, as we all agreed upon the same idea, and we had really well organization from the start, so everyone had a clear idea on what we were supposed to do, which resulted in the game coming together really well at the end.
Something that went well during the probability fair was that we bought the PERFECT amount of prizes, in that we kind of naturally ran out of prizes at the end except for the lollipops. Something we should improve on is maybe create a table that has shifts for everyone so everyone could have a chance to go outside, look around, and finish the probability passport.
I kept track of the wins and losses, but as excel wasn’t doing a really good work, it’s highly inaccurate, so I will estimate. Our probability of winning was 75% and losing rate of 25% (theoretically). In total, we gave out about 150 prizes with around 210 people visiting our booth (estimating). Comparing the theoretical probability to the experimental probability, they were very close, with around 150 prizes being 75% of 200 customers, therefore, the big number theory did come into play to allow the experimental probability the draw closer to the theoretical probability as the trials (customers) grew.
During the unit, I have discovered that Pleasant Pond has turned green due to HABs, or Harmful Algal Blooms. HABs are layers of algae and other simple photosynthetic organisms that grow rapidly and form a dense mass over bodies of water, bringing harm and toxins to the other organisms living in the same body of water. Matter cycling (water, nitrogen, carbon cycles) play a crucial role within the pond ecosystem and in photosynthesis and algal blooms. The cycling helps circulating water from the pond, circulating energy within the whole ecosystem, and from the circulation, provides Photosynthesis plays an important role in the carbon cycle, absorbing and converting CO2 into organic compounds, and helps plants serve as producers of food chains.
The hands-on experiences, games and experiments (such as the mini-ecosystem, starch experiment, etc) all helped me get a deeper understanding of the unit. While not only discussing how some phenomena happen due to the different cycles and other biotic/abiotic factors, there were many games that helped us become “immersed” in different experiences, getting to know how everything works step by step. Experiments such as the leaf-starch experiment helped show and prove the way leaves store their energy (glucose) after photosynthesis, and even if it didn’t go as planned, the reflection gave practice on analyzing different quantitative and qualitative observations. The mini-ecosystem was one of the most meaningful, and it helped the team create and observe an ecosystem from “god’s view”, a great opportunity to learn first handedly how different factors in an ecosystem work together to create a balanced environment.
