Communications Lab S20

This surreal picture mainly describes a world that is upside down, and almost everyone takes it for granted and sightlessly living their lives in that world. But still, we can see that there is a girl who looks like an outsider of the whole world, standing in the real world and walking towards the La Bocca della Verità step by step.

I created this piece of art mainly for the purpose of depicting this scenario is to reveal that in our world, truth is sometimes held by the minority, and whether the other choose to bow down before the external things, like money, rumor, media, the authority, etc. we should always try to be the one who always fight for truth.

To be more detailed, in this picture, I use a picture of the city street, make it upside down to show that there is a huge mistake in building and regulating the whole world.  I put a picture of the crowd on the street and add a filter to make the color to be only black and white, indicating that the crowd is blindly obeying the false regulations in that upside-down world and taking it for granted without raising any question. As for the girl, she is the only one who is clearly following her own heart and fighting for the truth. At the end of the road, it is the La Bocca della Verità, which was used in the movie, Roman Holiday, and then became a famous scenic spot in Italy, I use this as a symbol of the truth since it is said that it will bite the person’s hand if he or she is lying to it.

Here is the link to my project: http://imanas.shanghai.nyu.edu/~tz1422/CollageArt_Tina/

倒立的世界中  人们倒着行走  只有坚信初心的你  正在一步步走向唯一正立的真理之口

Creating your own Manifesto? When the first time I knew this project, I completely have no idea. Previously, the requirement asked me to focus on my feelings and points of view on creating art pieces. I do not have many experiences on that, but that makes me recall one song, a popular Chinese song, whose name can be translated as Two Normal Young People, 两个普普通通的青年, this song has nothing impressive but its lyrics. “In front of arts, everyone is equal, there is no rule that professionals understand arts better than normal people”, that is exactly how I view arts. Everyone can create their own art, and art is used for expressing our own feeling and resonating with others. Maybe we, as normal people, cannot appreciate arts as the experts, but we do have the ability and the right to express how we appreciate those pieces of arts. And I believe, a truly excellent song can make even ones who have never been to the concert or to have an MP3 or to listen to any song resonate with the song, recalling his or her memories of the happiest or most disappointing or any other emotional feeling but impressive moment. And it is the same with other kinds of artworks. That is why I wrote my first blog post. “Be the artist of your own life!”

But later, since the professor allowed us to focus on any topic we like, I chose another one. Among all the movies and TV series I have watched, there is one type of them that impresses me the most. That is the spirit of holding their initial belief firmly and defending their commitment. They are lawyers who always commit themselves in finding the truth; they are journalists who never make groundless accusations; they are teachers who always take care of all students and teach them how to live a life; they are doctors who always treat all patients equally and never bow to the rich; actually they are people in our daily life. They struggled, they hesitated, they suffered, but they still hold their belief tightly. I love all of these kinds of stories and I believe the spirit they show to me is really critical for people, like me. The reason why I state so is that I am currently a university student. University is a pure environment for people to study further, to learn skills and bits of knowledge, and to dream a dream. However, the moment we graduate is the time for us to step out of this comfort zone, this Eden of dream-makers, and to step into the society where we will face continuous obstacles. We all have dreamed many dreams, but society is where we can finally make them true. I do not want to let my dream die, but I know that there will be a lot of struggles that I have to suffer in the pursuit of my dreams. Therefore, I made this manifesto to recall myself all the time of holding my initial belief, and to call for all students like me to believe yourselves and pursue your dreams!

In making this manifesto, I first collected information from a variety of movies and TV series, and I chose two quotes from the movie, 无问西东, some quotes from TV series, for example, a Korean TV series, Pinocchio, and a sentence in Kahlil Gibran‘s poem at last. And here is the link for my project. http://imanas.shanghai.nyu.edu/~tz1422/Manifesto_Tina/

Everyone can be an artist.

This is your own life.

Love what you like and be the artist of your life.

Although life is hard, treasure every moment, and always be passionate.

Never worry about having no inspiration when creating.

Just try and please do not stay at the starting point.

Keep your eyes open and actively feel the world.

Keep your mind sharp and critically think about the world.

Inspiration is always there, unnoticeably, waiting for you.

Life is short, so do it now.