Response to Readings: Invisible Cities

When reading Calvino's Invisible Cities, I interpreted the each city as a different way to interpret the world. It was an interesting way to see one city be a perspective that makes different cities. I really like the idea that if the cities were based on Venice, Italy even though you can read a city about a desert and water.
I was interested in Despina because it had another interpretation of two views that when looking at them create the image of different cities in the way that one can see the city from a desert or water perspective.

final project: zine with container

 

zine: for the zine i used executive paper and i did laserjet color copies. the covering of the zine is made out of synthetic leaves sewn together and to bind the two together i used hemp string.

items: for my items i chose a crystal quartz, sage that i wrapped in the same hemp string as the binding on the zine, a vial with incense pieces, a vial with live crickets and a wire ring.

container: for the container i chose to cast a box out of concrete using a mold made of legos. i used quickcrete and to get rid of some of the gravel i sifted it using a strainer.

concept: in my zine i wanted to depict a sort of abstracted palace or temple that was abandoned but not in ruins.  the first page is the view from the outside and each page represents a different room, the last page represents the final room where you find the container with all the items. the box is supposed to show the skill that the culture had in creating cast objects and the items in the box are supposed to be relics that held importance to the everyday lives of the people of the temple. for example, the ring (along with the box) was supposed to show that the people were craftspeople; the sage, incense and the quartz were supposed to show a sort of belief in metaphysics and the crickets were supposed to be set free in the box so that they could jump when the box was opened to show that it had been in that room of the temple for a long time. (but i figured it wouldn't be good for class).

story building exercise: mood,action,topic

mood: stressed
action: suppressing
topic: coping with stress

the small works i did for this assignment is a sort of narrative in which i embody stress as messy red lines that goes all around and out of its frame which represents the mind and is eventually suppressed by its frame and compacted into a little ball.

1st panel: the stress represented by the red lines is going all over the place un controlled and escaping its frame

2nd panel: the frame is starting to fight back and attempting to contain its stress

3rd & 4th panels: the frame begins to win and is able to cope with its stress and form it into a little orb

invisible cities: despina

for my invisible cities in depth i chose despina. this city is a white city with two views: one from the desert and one from the sea. a lot of the little details were lost during transport including small red windsocks and smaller sails

writing assignment: the street/ the garden

i want to live in a world where grass is growing on everything. the cars will be abandoned and turned into gardens. nature will make urbanity get lost. i want a place where nature won't be a hidden place. i want a place where the streets are unrecognizable. vines will be vines again and not just short videos. humans will no longer dictate the future of the planet but they will simply coexist with the earth while they live then dissolve back into earth when they die. finding food will be as easy as going to your closest tree and eating the fruits. urban development will disappear. roads will be abstracted by the forests. animals and humans can live in peace. nature and humans can live in peace. humans will become a part of nature again. living will be easy. nature will be happy. i will be happy.

the street: small work

this is my small works assignment for the street. i chose i-75; a street that i felt really captured our city because of all the stories every miami person has on the miami highways. in my piece i wanted to show that if you stayed long enough on the highway you would see the same exact story that a person has told because its always the same stories of people getting cut off or getting into dumb crashes. i feel like these stories are very common in our city and they are almost mundane because of how common they are. i wanted my work to show that its just a matter of time before another story emerges and if i would have stayed longer taking more photos i would have captured a miami traffic story.

the garden: small work

this is my small works for the garden. i wanted to do an installation with the things i found in the garden i went to that shaped the environment.