7/9- FINAL DAY

Ilene

"To start off today Laila gave us a quiz on what we had learned. Some questions did strike me as a bit inappropriate, possibly offensive, and a slightly absurd... but I won't delve into that too much. After the quiz we gathered up all of our project. Then we put on some finishing touches: covering all sides of the small blocks, touching up the big blocks, and finally putting it all together to see how it looked. That took up about half the class time. After that there was not much else to do, me and Bora buisied ourselves on our computers while Alia and Fatma were constructing a book. At the time I had no idea what it was and thought it was some independent project(for fun) of Fatma's. However, once it was done they explained it to us, and informed us it would be in the show. I really liked it and felt bad I didn't help, but as said I did not know what it was, and when I did go over they seemed to have it all under control. The actual crit was much smaller than I thought it would be and much less intense. Overall we got positive feedback, but not much in the way of constructive criticism, which personally I always like, at least just a bit. The girls brought us gifts and we all hugged and got teary eyed and did all that girly crap that girls do. It was a nice fair-well. I am sad that we did not do more with the girls outside of class, but overall it was fun and a worthwhile experience."

7/8- last full day of class

Ilene

"Last day working in class... first run on the small blocks, not so successful, however we'll try again with the help of Josh and hopefully it will work better. Right now we are just kind of waiting I suppose for Josh to help us with the blocks. Alia brought the constructed head block today which looks great, seeing them all together in a 3d format makes the large scale of our project seem even more impressive. I am so ready for this project to be finished though, so we can enjoy Dubai without worrying about getting these projects done. We are having lunch delivered today as well as exchanging gifts...what an exciting day! Oh yea, I just shot a screen of my cowgirl..she's really creepy looking and ghostlike."

"On another note, Emily, Maya, and I just went to the coffee bean to go get food. Emily and I both were wearing short sleeve shirts, this is quite a difference from our first day in class when Laila stressed the inappropriateness of wearing such scandalous clothing(while she was wearing a rather low cut shirt). Even after 3 weeks here I am still not sure about things like haggling, dress code, proper conversation ect. I feel like most people I ask have different answers, though I suppose it is similar in the states(as far as the different views on such topics). It's going to be kind of weird going home and hanging out with my friends who swear make obscene jokes..and never make me tea."

Okay, well these pictures are not from today...but they are some more examples of us working and the progress we are making:

Silk screening and preparing our boards...

Oh, I forgot we all had pizza at lunch, we tried to kinda tried to serve the Emeraties but they would have non of that

7/7- more class time

Bora

Ilene
"One more day of class until the crit..eep. Anyways we've all made some good progress. Right now Fatma and Alia and printing on Alia's panels. Bora has pretty much finished all of hers( with the exception of her transparency), and I am almost done(also with the exception of a transparency, Alia sounded like she wanted us all to have them so I changed my plans a bit to include one). We all got a lot done today so I am not too worried about getting everything finished, as far as the rotating body parts go. However, we have not yet started screen printing on the wood blocks, we will need to get those all done tomorrow if we plan to use them. Since we will be using the same screens though, once we get started on the blocks, I'm hoping that they will not take too long... if it does I think our project will still look good without it."

7/6- working on our projects

Bora

Ilene

"We spent another day doing work all day. We really need the time. Fatma has been helping Alia, Bora, and myself in-since she does not have her own series of panels to do. She helped me a lot with my transfers, which may be the death of me...personally I prefer good ol' winter green oil. Anyways back to what we are all doing. Alia just got her transparency printed. It's looking good. Bora has been putting transfers on wood all day, they are looking good as well. As said Fatma has pretty much been helping everyone, as well as painting blocks that we can screen print on. I think all our transparencies are printed as well as a few of our screens. After some frustrating tried I finally got the whole transfer thing and I took my boards home to work on. So as far as those go I am about halfway done and I should finish during class tomorrow. Oh, also(on a not so work-related note) for lunch Rhotha brought us mannaeesh(sp?) for lunch. It may have possibly been my favorite food this whole trip(along with what Amal brought the other day)."

7/5

Bora

We were on the yesterday's newspaper!

Our group project is on the process.

Ilene

"We spent all of today in class working on our project. Much of it was individual work but we did discuss some things in a group. I think all our different parts will look unique, fitting for the fact that we are each different, but there will be an over lying unity. The project will have both obvious and metaphoric symbolism of each of us. Bora and Alia are both doing transparencies and screen printing while I am doing a transfer and paint(or screen printing). However the basic composition will be similar. We also need to get working on the wood blocks for the smaller piece, however we have not yet got those, so we won't be able to start until we do...once we do, it should go by fairly fast though. In terms of cultural differences, we had an interesting moment yesterday when Josh asked how we were going to construct our larger blocks. Before I could suggest using wood glue, Bora jumped in offering to do it(at MICA that would be perfectly normal). However, rather than being thanked and moving on(like what would happen at MICA) Alia, Fatma, and Josh just kind of laughed. We were told they could find someone to do it, which was kind of a relief that we had less work, but such a weird difference from the "do everything and do it yourself" attitude back home. So all we really have to do is decorate the wood with our images."

7/2 visiting the Sheikh

Ilene

"So today we visited the minister of education(Sheikh Nahyan Bin Mubarak Al Nahyan). We were unfortunately quite late so we were not able to stay too long. However it was still a great experience. It was interesting looking around the room and seeing the twenty or so men, some dressed in traditional western men's attire, and some in traditional arab men's attire. Just like us and the Zayed girls we've all come together and really are not too different. The man sitting near Bern explained to us about the food and his initial experiences with the culture, and just listening to him, as well as the man who spoke to us at UAEU it seems that their exploring and accepting other cultures really helped them to get to where they are today. Having so many ex-patriots I think Dubai rally is a good place to experience people learning and accepting other cultures to better themselves."

http://www.gulfnews.com/Nation/Education/10225494.html

Fatma

here is how our day went in pictures

7/1- trip to art galleries/business district

Ilene

"So we spent a bit of time in class doing odds and ends, we probably we not as group oriented as we should have been but Alia was not here and Fatma was busy working on a print for the Sheik. Hopefully we will have a lot of time in the next week to

work on our project. After some independent working time we went to the business district to visit art galleries(curious right?). Anyways that was fun, One of the galleries was more modern and had a lot of spray painted stuff, that was probably my favorite. The mix of different galleries was certainly interesting though, we saw all sorts of art, including very old islamic art/design(at furjan). Then we all went off and got iced coffee, that was fun... I think Fatma and I spent more time talking then than in our group. After that we went to the woman's club where students talked about their experiences traveling and working with people from other places. They all pretty much revolved around our mission statement of taking in other cultures and learning about the world around you in order to better yourself and broaden your work."
(pictures still on my camera, i'll post them once i get them off).

Fatma

Tour at the Farjam Collection










Gallaries @ DIFC




Bora

The Farjam Collection

"The Farjam Collection is one of the finest privately-owned Islamic art collections in the world today. Spanning almost the entire history of Islam, it brings together items produced throughout the vast region between Andalusia and Mughal India. Its treasures include Qur’anic manuscripts, miniatures and illustrated books on science, mathematics and poetry, as well as finely-decorated metalwork, lacquer, glasswork, tiles, glazed pottery, woodwork, textiles, coins, jewellery, carpets and art from the 13th century AH.

Illustrative of Farhad Farjam’s interests wide ranging affinities and tastes, the collection also includes works by major masters such as Picasso, Chagall, Dali, Braque, Renoir, Matisse, Miro, Leger, and Giacometti, as well as modern and contemporary artists including Warhol, Basquiat, de Kooning, Calder, Moshiri, Ehsai, Tanavoli, Al Rais, and Moustafa."



http://www.farjamcollection.com/

6/30

Fatma

Meeting Mohammad Harib

It’s always good to see a local talent shining and soaring in the sky of success. Hearing about his life and story success wasn’t new to me. He’s already almost a celebrity in the UAE and almost everyone knows his story. It was still inspiring to hear it all again and to see his work again. It reinforces the fact that he’s good and he’s making it in the professional life successfully.


Freej's official website:
http://www.freej.ae/
Lammtara "Mohammad's Identity brand ":
http://www.lammtarapictures.com/index.html


In terms of the project, we finalized the idea and worked on mock up pieces to demonstrate how the actual pieces would look like and function. The project will still take an interactive approach. It will have two pieces, one with the flip-able tiles with figures from different culture represented by the figures of the group’s own members. The media we though we should use is Transfers and have the background done with screen-printing and hand drawing and painting. The piece second will be the puzzle on the cubes, which will have 6 different sides. 3 sides representing one culture of our three different cultures on each sides. The Emirate, The American and the Korean. The other 3 sides would have a fusion of illustrations and images of our 3 different cultures creating some sort of surreally interesting images. After presenting out finalized idea. We started to take pictures for the flip rotating piece and some girls started doing transfers. So far I think we are going in a good direction. Hopefully we’ll stay on the right track !

Ilene

"We finalised and shared our project concepts today. I am very pleased with how well our group works together and how agreeable everything is, especially after seeing the other groups. I suppose it might just be luck but we all seem to have similar visions, as well as similar work ethics(even though we are from different backgrounds..woo mission statement). Today we took pictures of each other in clothes that represent us and our culture. I was very excited to see Alia's outfit since I only see her in her abiya. It was very pretty, and so much more colorful than anything I had."

"Also today the creator of Freej came to talk to us. It was very inspirational. I also found it interesting that him, like the people from dxb left their homes to go to college in the states. I think the ability to take time to study with another culture is a good way to help yourself grow. I wanted to come to Dubai to help both myself and my art improve because in the states I grow used to certain things, but coming here has really opened my mind to new cultures, new techniques, and a new way of doing things. I feel like studying in another country gives you opportunities to learn more than if you just stay in the same place."

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/405590/freej_cartoon_trailer/

Bora

"Since our group proposed the idea for the project, we stepped further to create the work in the process. Throughout the presentation, we showed how we are going to create images on the block by making quick models of blocks and drawing images on the blocks. Also, we showed how the blocks are putting together in order to interact our images. We are going to making two different pieces, but they are related to each other. A life size scale blocks, we are going to have four parts and four sides of images of ourselves, representing different people from different cultures, Emirate, Korea, US. On the background, images of each culture will be a screen printing, image transferring, drawing, or painting. On a cube, created by 81 blocks, 6 images will be printed, and each side will be different images. Three of each culture and three of cultures merging together will be created. I found images of Korea for the background of myself. I will be screen printing the image. Also, I will use several images to transfer images on the blocks.

Mohammad Harib
His presentation was really inspiring. Hearing about his background, life and experience from the work he’s creating helped me understand the culture and art of UAE. Before I saw him, I saw his animation characters in several places like Dubai mall and thought that they were very interested to see because his animation is about Emirate’s culture, and it seemed so popular in UAE. Then I found out that is the first animation film in the Middle East throughout his presentation. I could hear his passion and dedication about his works and I really appreciated the fact that he came to the university to give us presentation."

6/29

Ilene

"Today we finally discussed what our final project would be. We had to think of something that would illustrate our vision of the statement "All humans are equal" and "People should all share their lives and gain experience through interacting with each other and learning more about each other while keeping an open mind" We all had similar ideas of how to illustrate this. Both Fatma and I envisioned a design that showed a merging of multiple cultures. When Alia got here she told us she had blocks we could work on, which when the project is finalized, the viewer can actually touch, showing the interactive nature of this program. We will each make our own designs illustrating our own culture, and then swap them and merge our cultures. In the end we will have a piece showing the unique qualities of one culture, and then what happens when they are mixed. On top of that the viewer can mix and make cultural designs for themselves and see what type of images they get.”

“We also went to dxb lab today to learn about some of the structures they had made and were working on. It was interesting because much of their work revolved around principles similar to that of our mission statement. The main idea of our statement is that people should embrace the unique qualities of their own culture, yet respect and learn from other people’s culture. The people who talked to us were not from Dubai. They had both studied in California, and they were both raised in Germany. If they did not have open minds to other cultures they would not have learned what they learned and they would not have been where they were. On top of that, a main theme of theirs was mixing building styles. In the examples they showed us they used a modern western style using old Arabic styles for inspiration and as building blocks.”

Fatma

on the way to the firm

combination of two images I took on the way back

Today we did more discussions on ideas and ways to approach the project. Within the group we thought of doing an interactive instillation. The viewer takes part of creating the artwork at that moment of time during the show by juxtaposing and putting together parts of images of our different cultures with their own way or perception of how it should be creating a new mixture of culture. Then we presented our idea and got some good feedback and other related ideas that were interesting like having a doll paper like instillation where the audience can play dress up with figures that look either western or eastern and have attire of different cultures on them to create a culturally mixed interactive piece. Another interesting idea that Bernard tossed at us is to have a flip animated thing like the opening of the series Ugly Betty

We though what if we had self portraits of each one of the group Emirate American and Korean on tiles or blocks and each part of the portrait is sectioned In a way when it gets flipped for example the Korean person’s eye is put together with the American nose put together with the Emirate lips.
Although they are all good ideas, I feel we’ve been doing a lot of talking and so little doing. We should find time to make the artwork instead of wasting time talking about how it should be and save the time while doing the process.

Later today we went to an architectural firm. It was really good and inspiring despite the fact that I’m not an interior or architecture student, I still found the collaborative spirit of the firm to be great and inspiring.

Bora

"Our group discussed for the project that we are going to create within a week and half. As our mission statement is “All humans are equal”, we want to create artworks by merging multiple cultures into one. Since our group is created with three different cultures, Emirate, US, and Korea, our works will show six different images, which three reflect each culture and other three images merge together. The six images will be on blocks of a cube that can be rotated around, and a viewer can play and rotate the blocks to create images that the viewer wants to see. It will be nice to interact between artists and viewers, which arts can be seen from different perspectives. We are going to work from scraps of images from each culture and discuss how we are going to create images coming together.

We visited an architecture firm, dxb, in Dubai today. We met two architects, who both are Germans and graduated from an architecture school in California. We could see how they are working in Dubai, where many different cultures are coming together so quickly, and from their different background cultures, they design buildings to be their own style with the respect of UAE culture and people and understanding of the environment. I really like their designs, which are very minimalist and stand out by their unique designs."