Category: capstone2020

 
The chief purpose of the project is to create a swing set as an art installation that would encourage people to be silent and meditate as they sit and swing. It will provoke people to sit and think about the meaning of their life. I chose the universe as the background of my subject is not just because the universe is the beginning and end of our cognition, but also after experiencing a busy life in the past few years and plagued by the epidemic in 2020, I think people need a space which is interactive to meditate, to remember the beauty of childhood, and to enjoy the current life, and the best of the future.The audio and video installation on the swing would be the provocation as it would ask philosophical questions that people do not get to be asked normally.

 
The chief purpose of my project is to present my idea of a utopian future in which robots do all work. It explores what could drive humans without work. Also, it explores what humans do with their time in three different time periods: the industrial revolution, the modern-day, and in this utopian future. The time periods are presented to help the audience better understand the stark differences between them and the potential for the future. Many dramatic things were happening in regards to labor during the industrial revolution, including machines replacing humans to some degree. My utopian idea is addressing the common perception that machinery taking over jobs is a bad thing and it challenges pessimistic views of the future.
I chose the diorama form because these kinds of ideas are, in my experience, usually presented in written form. Presenting this project in diorama form speaks to an audience in a different way. A diorama is a more concrete, immersive and clear presentation of my idea. Although similar ideas to mine exist, my idea is in a new form and puts certain issues such as humans’ new purpose at the forefront. The diorama form was cemented in museums soon after the industrial revolution so that adds to my longing to include that time period. I would like people to have a more optimistic view of the future and understand several ways in which machines can continue to improve our lives.

 
Distinct from traditional mapping/cartography which intends to represent a territory as close to reality as possible, subjective mapping aims at producing a map using one’s own physical sense, emotion and memories that are not necessarily objective. Subjective mapping can be understood as the cognitive process that one reproduces his/her “story of experiences” at a specific location through making a map of the place (Nomadways). In creating such a map, one “stores and expresses his/her emotions into minimalist shapes”.
The physical territory of the IMA spaces, added with personal annotations, is a community-created subjective map. The idea of this project is born from the context that our school is moving to a new campus in the Shanghai Qiantan area, and the current building will no longer be accessible by the NYU Shanghai community.
This project is aimed at creating a digital heritage of the current campus with students’ memory attachments, so that we can go back and revisit our alma mater when we are not able to do so physically in the future. Given the COVID-19 situation, the goal of this project can be extended to provide a community space for students, fellows and faculties to bond with each other while the campus is inaccessible. The project utilizes 1) Mozilla Hubs as the frontend and backend to host both the virtual space of the Pudong campus as well as personal memory pins in various forms, and 2) Spoke by Mozilla to create the 3D model of the campus itself. Given time constraints, this project focuses on objectively mapping the 8th floor of the Pudong campus and intends to create a subjective map of spaces related to IMA. The project will allow users to immerse themselves in the building, interact with other online users, and to drop down “pins of memory” at any location.
In a broader sense, this project will enable the current and future NYU Shanghai community to have an accessible space to document their individual attachments about the Pudong campus. Furthermore, it can also be a place for people to share their attachments, and thus enhance connections within the community.

 
This paper presents a combination of the research paper I wrote for my original capstone idea and the project statement of what ended up being my final Capstone. With the outbreak of Covid-19, I saw myself forced to leave the project that I had been working on behind due to the lack of resources I had available coming back home to Madrid. Consequently, I embarked on the journey on finding a new concept, which proved to be very difficult for me as I was so troubled by the circumstances surrounding me and the people I care for. After reading many books on creativity, I eventually realized that I had been spending too much energy trying to think of ideas that would please others, and forgot that if I wanted to create an honest piece of work, I most importantly had to listen to my own needs. This paper will explain the process I underwent in order to reconnect with my creative voice and to find a new direction in which to focus my work on.

 
Lashi Conservation Park is a photo book project that walks on the popular horseback riding trips which take tourists up to the source of the Lashi Lake (拉市海) in the mountains. Lashi Lake is located in Lijiang, Yunnan, China. It was a pathway in the ancient Tea Horse Road before the twentieth century, the trading route between Tibet and China. However, the designation of Lijiang as World Culture Heritage in 1997 gradually turned the whole town to a tourist destination, which drastically reformed its landscape and demographics. Lashi Lake now operates more around tourism and its infrastructure than it used to be. Similar to many other famous sites for sightseeing in China, it also has been decorated with “scenic spots” for tourists to take photos for social media posting, which are the sculptures, props, and advertising billboards. To an extent, social media-induced tourism dominates the landscape, rendering the landscape secondary as the backdrop for tourist photography. Therefore, the local and historical context of Lashi is silenced and alienated. The further recontextualization of the tourist imaging on social media forces the landscape to acquire new meanings as embellished souvenirs. Collectively, the online circulation and repopulation of such maintain and reproduce the imagination of a tourist attraction.
The book aims to explore the visual language of the vernacular forms of tourism architecture, investigating the social media tourist’s experience through the photographic delineation of a foreign land. The linguistics of such can be shared and implemented to different places, forming a bizarre visual unity, a sense of “touristy.” Contrasted with more everyday visual encounters in the same region, together, they constitute the hyperreality of Lashi Lake, a sense of deracination from the typology of the land. By taking a camera with me everywhere I go, in a sense, I am also a tourist, eager to take photos when I feel conflicted or don’t know what to respond to what I see. As someone who has family ties to this village, who can’t speak her native Nakhi language, is the action of photo-making and photo documentation of this politicized landscape a form of reconciliation with my identity? Or does the intrusive camera further deepen the gap between me and my people, distancing myself from the water and soil of Lashi.