Jiazhen Mao, Ruijia Mei, Ahmed Saeed, Yixuan Shan, Chen Sun
This interactive piece is designed to bring people’s awareness toward noises around us. As the title says, noise does make sense to our lives. For most of the time those noises have been filtered out by our focusing system, but it should not stand that they are meaningless. You might find it a bit hard to focus on what you are hearing when too much sounds are going on in the surrounding, but as you follow the visual leads and try to manipulate those noises yourselves, you will gradually enter a new world of sensation where you’ve never experienced.
From the 2020-2021 course:
DATT 3700 Collaborative Project Development
More than ever, society is looking to the social sciences and humanities to help understand and mitigate global challenges in the face of change. The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) created an initiative entitled Imagining Canada’s Future, which challenges Canada’s social scientists and humanities researchers to address emerging economic, societal and knowledge needs in order to help guide decision-making across all sectors towards a better future. In response to one of two selected probes, students will create artworks that will raise awareness to their selected theme.
The themes for this course will be:
1) Environment: Living Within Earth’s Carrying Capacity
Humankind is putting an unsustainable strain on the Earth’s capacity to support life. We are at, or near, the tipping point for several ecosystem services. Fundamental changes in our economic and political systems and our way of life may be needed over the next two or three generations if humans are to live within the carrying capacity of the planet.
2) The Pervasive Contamination of the ‘Natural’
Everything is contaminated. What is safe? Trash is obvious, but microplastic contamination of marine fish stocks is not, nor is the chemical contamination of groundwater resulting from our modern reliance on pharmaceuticals. We will be challenged to thrive in a world where contamination is pervasive at all scales and in all environments.
Students were challenged to reflect on and consider the bigger problems contributing to the above issues by following a problem analysis methodology, and then create an artwork that addresses the identified problem. The created artworks may incite awareness in their viewer, speculate about possible futures (dystopic/utopic), or provide solutions.
Return to the Digital Media END OF YEAR EXHIBITION 2020 • 2021