Forced connection: Food

This week, my team (Sabrina, Dave, me and Akshay) and I did forced connection again. We had to use a few of the food items given to create a new dish/ food item. Our team had many interesting ideas, and we chose "Masala chicken Twisties", something thats new and exotic.

We chose this because it might remind some people of home cooked food, but in the form of a bag of chips. And because masala is so yummy, we made it so that those just craving for a taste of masala chicken but are not actually hungry, we have this more convenient, less filling and greasy way to satisfy the craving for masala chicken.

Links to my teammate's blogs:
Sabrina - www.nursabrinahussain.blogspot.com
Dave - www.mikhdave.blogspot.com
Akshay - www.rakshay19.blogspot.com

Reflection on my creative thinking class.

This creative thinking class is something new for me, as I have never attended anything like it. The modules really challenges us to think out of the box and creatively with NO boundaries, and I have to say that this is my favorite class each week, albeit short. This is the class that takes my mind away from the stress of my other modules because I have never once thought that the class was boring, and this is definitely good! I have  learnt how to work with different types of people, and work as a team. Initially most of the teamwork started out more one sided, like, we would separate work and do all each with little discussion. As time went by, me and my usual were getting more and more active in discussions. Without my awesome teammates and lecturer, I wouldn't be having so much fun in lessons and group work! This will be a module that I will never forget, because of all the teamwork, fun challenges and lessons, and I will cherish everything I learnt and experienced from it.

Oxygen in a bottle

The class were assigned with group work this week. My team members are Sabrina, Akshay, Dave and me. We were all tasked with creating "Oxygen in a bottle". The description written on the board was about the Coca-cola company coming up with a new product, with oxygen as the product. From my team's point of view, we didn't see it as a Coca-cola related product, since its just the company that's manufacturing this product.

When we think of "Oxygen", we thought of light, fresh, cool, energizing and refreshing. 

The colours green and blue comes into mind immediately.

So with these penned down, we proceeded to the brainstorm about the design of the product. Since it's air, once the can is opened, its a given that the oxygen will leak out into the atmosphere. So, we put a disposable miniature mask connected to a straw, so the oxyen will only come out through suction. The container will be made of plastic so that it's see through. The product is targeted at the general public, so the product will be widely available chilled in vending machines everywhere, as long as they need something to cool or refresh them because, what's better than inhaling cool air on a hot day after feeling hot and out of breath after your exercise? 

Links to my teammates:

Sabrina - www.nursabrinahussain.blogspot.com

Dave - http://mikhdave.blogspot.sg/

Akshay - http://rakshay19.blogspot.sg/

Forced connection: Emotions and objects

The class was were given six words to make a forced connection with: Greedy, hardworking, brave, sad, creative and passionate. I chose the object "candle" and had to make a connection with the words given.

A sad candle has it's flames nearly extinguished and it's melting quickly sideways, showing that it's about to fall.

A passionate candle, in a shape of a heart representing the passion of love with it's flames burning brightly. 

A greedy candle is big and spread out that seems to engulf everything in it's path, with an evil grin in it's flames.

A brave candle stands tall, upright and shines gallantly alone in the dark with it's big bright flame that will never be extinguished.

A creative candle's wax drips around it in a swirling manner, and makes the candle look as though as it is stylish.

A hardworking candle is a big and thick candle that is durable and does it's job well untill it's last breath. 

Objects/items that relates to me

Here, I have drawn items that relates to me.

A big bow and lace: Represents my love for cute and girly things.

Flowers, feathers and a seashell: My love for nature, birds and the sea. 

Zigzag and swirly patterns: I like bohemian and Aztec patterns/prints.

Lotuses, a rabbit and the moon: It represents how much I love mythology and my Chinese roots.

4 Lessons in creativity - Julie Burstein

I watched Julie Burstein's video: 4 Lessons in creativity. The video teaches us about how to create during the challenge of self doubt and losses by embracing them, and here are what I learnt and my views on what I learnt.

The first lesson refers to us and the Japanese art of making a clay pots, "Raku". After moulding and choosing the glaze, it has to be fired in the oven. After being fired in the kiln, cracks and imperfections appear on the pot and the pots were admired and treasured for their imperfections like the crackle pattern, which is stressful on the pots. Although it is difficult to let go of something you have painstakingly moulded, painted and baked, those are clay pots after all, and might shatter upon impact. I feel that this can be applied to a few aspects of life, like ourselves and the people around us.

Just like the art of Raku, we mould and paint our own personalities, life and futures. Imperfections in ourselves might appear after going through hardships and challenges in life, just like the imperfections appearing on the pot after going into the kiln, which is the first thing we will experience. After that, we might "shatter" any minute when met with hardships, like any clay pot would shatter upon impact - but sometimes it doesn't. But then is where you have to learn to let go and move on, even if we might really be "broken" Julie said "Creativity also grows from broken places.", and we have to embrace and accept our flaws and the things that has happened. You have to pick yourself up after some time of mourning and get on with life as a stronger and more experienced person that will be able to think deeper, wiser and more openly, that's when you will be all pieced back together, although different, but more beautiful than you were before with the new weathering and paint that explains your experiences to people.

 The second lesson is about being open. Being open and doing what you love will lead you to more opportunities in the future, and you might eventually end up doing something that you love instead, which is living for the sake of working instead of working for the sake of living.

The third lesson is embracing experiences, challenges and limitations. You need to be able to embrace them in order to do what you have in mind, do not let these challenges barrier you, as there are wider horizons outside of the tiny well you are inside of. The first step is to bring forth the determination, courage and strength to step out of your comfort zone and take small steps in learng from your limitations. Very soon, we'll be climbing out of our little "well" out into the big world.

The final lesson is about embracing loss. However, I did not fully comprehend what Julie was talking about.

The message in the video was very deep, although I may not be able to explain much in words and may not be able to fully comprehend some areas, I have definitely learnt a lot. Creativity is essential to everyone, even if you are not an artist and we can draw creativity from any kind of situations, like the cycle of creation and destruction, control and letting go, picking up and patching up.

The marshmallow challenge and 200 reasons.

Each group was provided a few sticks of uncooked spaghetti, tape, a roll of string and a piece of marshmallow. My group for the week consists of Akshay, Sabrina, Dave and me. We were given around 20 minutes and we made a marshmallow fort.

We were also asked to write 100 reasons "why" something happened based on scenarios the teacher gave us

Links to my teammate's blogs:
Sabrina - www.nursabrinahussain.blogspot.com
Dave - www.mikhdave.blogspot.com
Akshay - www.rakshay19.blogspot.com

Faces

We took a walk around the school premises to look for things that look like faces in objects and here are the 10 images I found!

A kind and gentle smile.

A shocked face full of terror!

A bashful smile 

A face screaming in terror

A smiley 

A happy phone booth!

A big smiley

A winking door!

I accidentally dropped my student pass, and coincidentially.... I got a happy face!

3 Artists who have broken the rules 2

Marc Quinn

He uses his own blood, faeces and ice to make sculptures. Quinn’s sculpture, paintings and drawings often deal with the distanced relationship we have with our bodies, highlighting how the conflict between the 'natural' and 'cultural' has a grip on the contemporary psyche. 

Quinn has also made a series of marble sculptures of people either born with limbs missing or who have had them amputated. Quinn's works are definitely unsual and not of the norm because of his choice of works and his choice of materials.

Kittiwat Unarrom 

Thai artist, Kittiwat Unarrom uses bread to create his realistic and gruesome looking sculptures. He wants to show the audience how transient bread and life is by baking human parts out of bread, and no matter how it looks, it is still bread despite looking otherwise. 

Kerry Howley

Her ideas of creating jewelery from human hair was inspired by people's aversion to cut hair. Hair is regarded as a important part of the body and is worn with pride, but once its connection to the body has been severed, it is viewed as disgusting. Through her art, she hoped that she could create a balance betwen aversion and attraction, and wanted to make cut hair appear attractive again. And it did make me feel that cut hair is now attractive, instead of disgusting, due to the necklaces she made.

Mindmap time 2!

This is my second time doing a mind map with my team. With the same members, Dave, Olivia, Sabrina and me :)

This time round, we were assigned "Creativity & Innovation". So we discussed amongst ourselves and came up with 4 main branches: Expression and Imagination which was under creativity, Ideation and creation which was under innovation. This time, we decided to do things more differently, we each decided to take a segment and think about it ourselves, since it was a faster way - or so we thought... 

The splitting of the topics didn't work very well as Dave did not understand what his section meant and didn't ask. I can't blame him for that because it's not his fault. But I felt a little weird because he couldn't explain what he wrote. It was because we weren't communicating as a group, and everyone went to do their own things. It has became some sort of "individual group work" this time round, but I am glad that it's over.

Overall we did good but I think we could have done better. :)

Some blood was shed for the greater good. (Eeerrr hahaha it's just marker) 

Links to my teammates:

Sabrina - www.nursabrinahussain.blogspot.com

Dave - http://mikhdave.blogspot.sg/

Olivia - http://oliviastefanie.tumblr.com/

3 artists/designers who have broken the rules

Vivienne Westwood

Vivienne Westwood is and always has been my favourite fashion designer. Known for introducing Modern punk fashion into mainstream fashion. Daring and challenging, she is the kind of designer I want to be.

Punk emerged in London in the 1970s as an anarchaic and aggressive movement. The clothes suited the lifestyle of those with limited cash due to unemployment and generally, low income school leavers or students. Imagine how the public looked at these people, due to their piercings in other places other than acceptable areas, resale clothes which were cut up and redecorated. I would think the impression they left was not very good. I myself went thru a punk phase when it came to fashion, and the reactions I got wasn't very good especially here in Singapore. So I think how Vivienne Westwood managed to make punk fashion mainstream was very admirable as it was not something someone would usually do. 

She has appeared on the cover of "Tatler" magazine dressed as Margaret Thatcher (who was then the president), wearing a suit that was ordered for Thatcher which had not been delivered yet. And this infuriated Thatcher.

Pablo Picasso

Yes, Picasso is mainstream. But he DID break the rules after all. Drawing people in cubism was something he introduced. Afterall before Picasso introduced cubism, the artists in his period drew realistically, unlike Picasso wih dissected and misplaced parts of the human face in his works to a point where it looks almost  grosteque in my opinion.

Hirohiko Araki

Hirohiko Araki is definitely my FAVOURTE comic artist in terms of drawing style and fashion sense. His drawings breaks the "unspoken rules" of mainstream natural beauty - slim body and natural hair. His artworks are full of muscles, colors, patterns and ridiculous yet gorgeous poses, colored lips, exotic hairstyles, regardless of gender. And he draws some very very weird interesting hairstyles too!

As much as the poses are weird and not what's "acceptable", Hirohiko makes it work well and look so good and possible with his characters! Because normally people wouldn't make such exaggerated poses and look good at the same time.

Mindmap time 1!!

Me and 3 of my classmates Dave, Sabrina and Olivia were assigned to make a mind map together. We had to write and brainstorm about 100 ways to do something. Out of the several topics, we chose "Squeezing a lemon", "Crossing the road" and "Killing a cockroach". It was really fun as usual, but the team did not communicate very well because my teammates were more quiet and did not really talk. We still exchanged ideas, however. :) 

This is my part of the paper where I wrote most of the ideas I could think of. And I can assure you that everyone was racking their brains as hard as they could!! 

Group selfie!!

This is me hard at work, writing on how to cross the road.

Overall, it was a fun experience, and I hope we could do something like this again. I mean, sure, it wasn't the easiest thing since everybody didn't communicate much but it's not bad to work in a group. I learnt that many heads are better than just 1. I really can't imagine writing out 100 ways to do something by myself without getting fustrated. I had fun and I hope my teammates did too :)

Links to my teammates:

Sabrina - www.nursabrinahussain.blogspot.com

Dave - http://mikhdave.blogspot.sg/

Olivia - http://oliviastefanie.tumblr.com/