S.C.A.M.P.E.R

The following week, we were introduced to S.C.A.M.P.E.R which is a thinking tool. SCAMPER basically stands for; S-substitute

                             C-combine

                         A-adapt

                           M-modify

                                      P-put to other use

                            E-eliminate

                          R-reverse

We were given 3 items to which we should choose which one of the items we want to apply 'SCAMPER' to. The items were broom, scissors and a kettle and my group decided to go with the broom. We started out by listing down all the possible problems that  people might face with using a broom. We decided to add functions like the stick of the broom is able to bend itself so that it will be easier to reach for the corners and that the stick's height could be adjustable to short or tall. We also added a spring to our broom so that we don't have to bend our backs to reach down for low areas. Actually, even though our broom is convenient for everyone to use, our main targeted audience are those who are suffering with back problems, by using our broom, this group of people won't face any problems with their backs anymore while sweeping. Another function that we installed to our broom is that it has static magnets and silicon. We added the static magnets as it would be easier now to pick up those strands of hair that does not seem to stick to the brooms and there always seem to be hair left after you're done sweeping but with our broom, this issue of hair will never be mentioned again. The silicon function is added to make 'sweeping' water possible so that it won't be such a hassle to mop off the water first before sweeping, with our broom, everything can be done all at once. We also designed the stick of the broom like a spine to again, the main targeted audience for this broom are those with back problems. The reason why we added Japanese to our poster as we felt like this is like a possible product Japan would make and our product is actually called Hage broom in Japanese, which means bold broom, if you have not already noticed, our broom is not like the ordinary broom that has 'hair'.

The Silky Bucket Chair

My classmates and I were given topics such as 1. Nature vs Man-made 2. Hard vs Soft and in each of our own groups, we had to brainstorm and come up with an idea, which afterwards, we had to present it like a product. So my team mates and I decided to go for the topic Hard vs Soft. After we we brainstormed all the possible ideas we could think off, we decided to settled on the combination of a chair, which is the hard element, and the soft element being hair. To make our product more appealing we added things on the poster, saying things like how the chair can be customized- that you could dye it in any way that you want, in any colour that you want. Imagine, having a deep dyed hair and being able to decorate your chair by accessorizing it with all the different hair accessories or even styling it with braids! To make it look like a real poster, we decided to put a "Mid-Autumn Sale" with a 40% discount. We also thought that it'd be funny to describe our chair as silky, like the well-known shampoo brand Sunsilk that is able to make your hair soft and silky.

Tim Urban's; Inside the mind of a master of a procrastinator

Everyone has probably procrastinate atleast once in their lives which is why I feel that everyone could probably relate to this video. The way Tim Urban illustrates his ideas and the way he explains it was hilarious and it was easy to comprehend what he was trying to say. Firstly, he explains how inside a procrastinator's brain there are 3 characters and they are;

1. Instant Gratification Monkey and 2. Rational Decision-Maker

3. The Panic Monster

All these 3 characters were made so that it's easier to take a look and understand the inside of a procrastinator's brain. These 3 characters functions differently and this is how they work:

1. The Instant Gratification Monkey

- likes to live in the moment, does not think of the future and forgets about the past.

- it also likes to only care about the FUN and EASY things.

- likes to be at, what he calls it to be " The Dark Playground ', where leisure activities happened when it is not supposed to.

2. Rational Decision-Maker 

- able to visualize the future, sees the bigger picture, makes long-term plans and wants to take all this into account and do anything that makes sense to be doing.

3. The Panic Monster

- wakes up every time a deadline is near or when there is scary consequences

- this panic monster scares the monkey and is the reason to why the monkey starts to do work

*This whole process might not be pretty but it works at the end of the day, you'll get things done because there is a deadline and this contains the effects of procrastination to short terms.

However, there is another type of procrastinators and this are the kinds that has No Deadlines.

- If the procrastinator's mechanism is The Panic Monster, then there is a problem. With no deadlines, the Panic Monster won't ever show up because it has no reason to. This then extents the effects of procrastination to forever. 

- These type of procrastination is usually suffered privately and can be the source of unhappiness and regrets. The frustration is not when they cannot chase their goals, but when they cannot even START to chase after them.

*Tim Urban believes that non-procrastinators does not exist, it is just that some of us aren't a mess and has good relationship with deadlines. But the Instant Gratification Monkey is the sneakiest when there is no deadline. Hence, he ended off his talk by giving his audience a tip; to start thinking what we are really procrastinating about because everyone is surely procrastinating about something in their lives and we all have to stay aware of the Instant Gratification Monkey!!!!!

Daniel Leviton's: How to stay calm when you know you will be stressed

This video was at the recommendation list of videos that I should watch on Youtube and what made me clicked on it was the tittle. The tittle is- how to stay calm when you know you will be stressed, I can definitely relate to the tittle because it is something that I have and will go through, which is stress. So I thought that this video could help me learn a few tips and actually be a beneficial video. These are some of the things that I've learnt from this video;

• How our brain performs under stress; under stress, our brains releases cortisol that raises our heart rate, modulates adrenaline levels and it clouds our thinking.

Perspective Hindsight: ( pre-mortem)

- is to look ahead and try to figure out all the things that could go wrong, and then try to figure out what can be done to prevent such things from happening, or to minimize the damage.

Things we could do in form of pre-mortem:

• Designate a place for things that are easily lost in your house area. The reason so is that our brain has this thing called the hippocampus that keeps track of the locations of important things. So if you are the kind of person that tends to be more forgetful and clumsy, this could hep.
• Have to recognize that under stress, you are not going to be at your best and should put systems in place.

When your brain releases cortisol, a whole bunch of systems shuts down. This is because, when faced to face with predators, digestive system, or your libido, immune system is not needed as your body is expanding metabolism on those things and you don't react quickly, you'll get attacked and none of those things matter. Unfortunately, one of the things that goes missing is rational, logical thinking.Hence, we need to train ourselves to think ahead in this kinds of situations.

* Important point here is to recognize that we are flawed. We are all going to fail now and then. The idea is to think ahead to what those failures might be, to put systems in place that will help to prevent them from happening. 

What is Empathy?

This is a video of a group of kids, ranging from the age of probably 6 to 17, talk about what empathy is to them and these are some of their answers:

• It is how you feel about somebody
• When you put yourself in their shoes
• When someone is having a bad day, you help them because you know what they are feeling
• A girl shared her story about how she befriended a girl who everyone is calling a 'tomboy' and had no friends
• A boy said that it made him feel proud to know that he was able to make someone feel better
• It is important to have someone look out for you
• You could tell how someone is feeling through their faces, their eyes and their body language
• When someone is struggling you should help them move forward and not let them get stuck in the same place

It was very heart-warming to see how empathetic these kids are at such an age, they notice things and understand them.

Video Review: The happy secret to better work

Summary of Shawn Achors's: The happy secret to better work

Shawn Achor talked about positive psychology and how normal is merely average. Positive psychology posits that if we study what is merely average, we will remain merely average.

He used this graph as an example, to show that what some of us do is we want to get rid of those who are not the average. Instead of removing these outliers, why not study them? Instead of moving these people to average, we should move the entire average up in our companies and schools worldwide.

He also mentioned that what we are finding is not necessarily the reality that shapes us, but the lens through which our brain views the world that shapes our reality. If we can CHANGE the lens, not only can we change happiness but we can change every single educational and business outcome at the same time.

We think that our external world is the prediction of our happiness levels but 90% of our long-term happiness is predicted by how our brain processes the world. If we can change our formula for happiness and success, we can change the way that we can then affect reality.

Reversing the formula for happiness and success: ( absence of disease is not health)

• The norm way of thinking would be: work harder = more successful

                                                                 more successful = happier

• Problem is, it is scientifically broken and backwards. Every time our brain has success, we change the goalpost of what success looks like. For e.g, "good grades -> better grades" "good school -> better schools"
• Even if happiness is on the opposite side of success; your brain will never get there. We have socially pushed happiness over the cognitive horizon because we thought that we have to be successful first then happiness comes afterwards. But this is not how our brain works, in works in the opposite order.
• If we are able to reverse the formula, becoming more positive in the present and work more intelligently, we can start to see what our brains are capable of. As dopamine floods into our system when we are positive, it turns on all learning centers in our brain; allowing us to adapt to the world in a different way.

Happiness Advantage:

• Can only occur if we can raise somebody's level of positivity into the present.
• It is proven that our brain is 31% more productive at positive platforms than at neutral or stressed.

Ways to create lasting positive changes:

• 3 gratitudes
• Journaling
• Exercise
• Meditation
• Random acts of kindness

What is Lateral Thinking?

Edward de Bono - Lateral Thinking

Creating is important but where does it come from?

• Sometimes we think that it is a natural talent, that some people are born with it
• But creating is actually a skill which everyone can learn
• It is true however that some people might have better creativity than others

Lateral Thinking

• The brain forms patterns, routines, ways of doing and looking at things.
• When you move across the tracks, hindsight, it is perfectly logical, based on the understanding of the brain as a pattern making system which makes asymmetrical patterns.

Tools that can be taught :

1. Challenge - where we challenge the existing concept/idea
2. Concept extraction - where we find a concept and find new ways out of it
3. Provocation - we set a provocation and move forward from that to a new idea
4. Random entry - where we enter a different point

These are all logically based on the behaviour of asymmetrical patterns.

*It is not a matter of sitting around and waiting for new ideas to happen, we can take steps just like math.

*Lateral Thinking can be used and applied deliberately, the more you practice, the better you get. It is not a complex matter.

*Learning lateral thinking goes way beyond traditional brainstorming which is a weak process, not wrong as it is in the right direction, but just by suspending judgement, it is not enough. We should treat the idea of creativity, the ability to produce ideas, as a formal skill, which can be learned, used and practice deliberately. It is completely different from just sitting and hopping that someone, somewhere, has an idea which is not the case, you have to sit down and really generate those ideas.

Video Review: Fashion and Creativity

Summary of Isaac Mizrahi's: Fashion and Creativity

In this video, Isaac talked about a number of things and they are:

• As a fashion designer, Isaac finds clothes that looks slightly mistaken as interesting. He would go around following people because they are wearing something nice.
• He loves movies and is is often from movies that he gets his inspiration from. For example, if he had to design something from the 80's, he would watch movies and notice things like how the lights make the colours almost impossible to create and how women are portrayed in these movies.
• He also mention how he won't consider himself as someone who does things well but instead, as someone who just does a lot of things.
• "Style makes you fee great because it takes your mind off the fact that you're going to die", is a quote by Isaac Mizrahi.
• Another fact about Isaac is that he loves to cook and he would sometimes look at clothes the same way he would look at food.

Video Review: The first secret of design is, noticing

Summary of Tony Fadell's: The first secret of design is, noticing

Tony Fadell discussed how human beings get used to everyday things really fast. He also discussed how humans have very limited brain power which is why we turn everyday things into habits, so that we free new space to learn new things.

Habituation 

• Is a basic way of how we humans learn
• It is not always a bad thing. For example, driving for the first time is always very stressful as we need to fully concentrate but it gets easier with time because we get used to it.
• If we don't habituate things, we would notice every little detail, every single time and it will be exhausting.
• However, if habituation stops us from noticing the problems around us and is stopping us from fixing it, then it is bad.

As a product designer himself, he, and every other designer, has to try to see the world as it really is and NOT the way we think it is. This is because it is easy to solve a problem that everyone sees but harder to solve a problem that no one sees.

- To see things differently is not a natural talent, it is not what people are born with, it is something that has to be worked on.

Seeing the invisible problem and not just the obvious one that is important.

Tips; ( to fight habituation )

1.  Look broader
2.  Look closer
3.  Think younger

What is Analogical Thinking?

What is Analogical Thinking? and How is it beneficial?

      1.Allows us to experience the interconnectedness of ideas

      2.Great way to learn difficult concepts more effectively
      - we as learners, cannot just learn isolated facts the way they're presented to us and be expected to learn or use that BUT we have to construct our own learning by making association to other things, by relating things that is important to us, bridging and restructuring in our heads.
 
      3. A skill- get better with practice

      4. Enhances creative output
     - we use analogies, relate a subject matter to other things that we are familiar with because it motivates us as it is something that we are interested about.

Video Review: Where good ideas come from

Summary of Steven Johnson's: Where good ideas come from

Steven Johnson was on a quest, he wanted to investigate what kinds of environment leads to innovation/creativity. So he went on at looked at coffee houses, biological environments and to labs. He went and observe these places and this was what he found out.

Coffee Houses

• He actually started off the talk by showing a picture of a coffee house because he wanted to discuss about how coffee houses played a big role in enlightenment not only because of what people drink BUT because of the architectural of the space.
• It is a place where people, regardless of who or what they are, get together and converse.

The Liquid Network

• A place where people gather
• A lot of different eyes,ideas.backgrounds jostling with one another.

He also talked about how metaphors or language,rich vocabularies to describe moments of inspiration, steers us away from certain concepts of idea creation. How these vocabularies gives us the basic assumption that an idea is a single thing; something that happens in a wonderful illuminating moment. These are some of the examples of vocabularies:

• Flash
• Stroke
• Epiphany
• Eureka
• Lightbulb

 Idea is a Network

An idea is not something that happens only in a single moment but in truth, we actually get ideas from other people and we stitch them together to create something new.

The Slow Hunch

Ideas have very long incubation period, ideas linger around sometimes for decades in the back of our minds.

To conclude, he ended off the talk with a reminder that we should all spend as much time or in fact, more time connecting ideas than just protecting them.

Video Review: How to get your ideas to spread

Summary on Seth Godin's: How to get your ideas to spread

Seth Godin started off his talk by mentioning how we are all living in a century of idea diffusion and that the essence of idea diffusion is being remarkable. He also said that people who are able to spread ideas, regardless of what it is, WINS.
He also discussed about how TV and mass media made it easy to spread ideas in a certain way and that is 'The TV-Industrial Complex', this is how it works:

The TV-Industrial Complex

1. Buy Ads
2. Get more distribution
3. Sell more products
4. Make a profit

The TV-Industrial Complex is a repetitive cycle and it it got cancelled recently because people realized that it is not working like how it used to. People are starting to understand that it is not about interrupting people with big full page ads that helps ideas get spread around but it is about marketing to people who CARE. By doing so, when this group of people listen, they will then hopefully talk about it to their friends and soon enough, the word would have gotten around the entire curve.

What is the curve? - Its is basically people being grouped into sections and the groups are as follows:

• One of the reasons to why The TV-Industrial Complex got cancelled is because they targeted it to the middle; the Early and Late Majority. They believe in making average product for average people and this is called being safe, which is risky in today's world. 
• Compared to the Early and Late Majority who often ignores all these choices because they don't have time, The Innovators and The Early Adopters are the ones that cares about what you are marketing. 

OTAKU

• Seth Godin shared with his audience a Japanese word-Otaku, which is a word to describe a desire of someone who is obsessed about trying things.
• He also mentioned that to make a product that does not have a constituency within an Otaku is almost impossible. Instead, find people who really cares about what you have to say because afterwards, they are the ones who are going to talk about it with their peers.

To Conclude, in order to get your ideas to spread, share it with those who care, figure out the group of people that is going to decide whether your idea/product is remarkable and if it is worth making a remark about.

Video Review: How your brain works

Summary of Brain Tricks - This is how our brain works

https://youtu.be/HFnoU1a3pvs

From this video, I have learnt that our brain process information in 2 ways and this detects much of our perception and reaction in life.

System 1- Fast Thinking

• First reaction; generates ideas without knowingly
• Without images, our brain quickly generates based on previous experience
• Acts automatically
• Process quickly based on the available information
• Works out an answer as quickly as possible which is beneficial in everyday life

System 2- Slow Thinking

• Slow thinking causes our muscle to tense, pupils to dilate, heart rate to increase
• An activity in the video proves that when we are fully engage in slow thinking, tho pupils did dilate, we often become effectively blind. This means that we become less aware of our surroundings.
• After System 1 has absorbed all the available information seen, System 2 will then start to composite after the facts and choose whether to believe our intuition or instinct.
• It would be exhausting if every activity required full mental effort but System 2 helps us to understand that not all of our first impressions are correct.

To Find Out More:

-'Thinking Fast and Slow' by Daniel Kahneman discusses more regarding fast and slow thinking.

Practice makes Perfect

I was scrolling through Twitter one day and I came across this picture, which is done by Jose A Lopez Vergara. There is a distinct difference between the two artworks and the time frame was 13 years. The artist took 13 years of hard work to get to where he is now, a successful artist who conducts art workshops. I really feel like this is a great motivation for any art students or artists to be. This shows that as long you have passion in what you are doing, with time and practice, it will all be worth it.

Keywords

Detailed

Realistic

Perseverance

Motivation

Hard-work

Skilled

Doodle

Sketch

Abstract

Practice

Questions

• How many times does one have to stumble and fall before firmly getting back up again?
• How much motivation does it take to keep trying when it takes awhile before you start seeing the improvements?
• Does it not get frustrating when you keep failing?
• Does one need to attend extra classes and get extra help to improve?
• When you are surrounded by talented people who are more skilled than you, is this motivation or demoralizing?
• Do you not get insecure with you work when everyone else around you is evidently doing so much better than you?
• Just because some of us take a longer time to reach our goal, it does not mean we are failures right? It's the effort that count does it not?
• Sometimes when the process gets tough till you are at the of giving up, what do you do then to stop yourself from falling?
• Is passion alone enough to get one through the pain and slow progress?
• Is it necessary to spend a huge amount of money on buying the most expensive art supplies to guarantee a well done work? 

Save The Boy

Situation: The story of Szema Kong, the boy who saved a child from drowning in an urn and later became a famous scholar and Prime Minister of the Sung Dynasty.

Task: What if the urn is made of metal? What would you do to save the child?

The objective of this activity is to let our creativity flow and let our imagination let loose so there is no right or wrong answer, the crazier the ideas, the better! These are some of the things that I came up with on how to save the boy from drowning in the metal urn.

• Get help from Superman: he could break the urn apart.
• Add more water to the urn, then create a wave, so that the boy can surf his way out.
• Find someone who has the ability to teleport into the urn and save the boy.
• Or we could turn back time to when before the boy got stuck in the urn.
• With the craze of PokemonGo that is happening right now, the boy could be saved with a pokeball.
• Protect the boy with a heat protection shield then heat the metal urn so it could expand enough to let the boy out.

The Bee

Situation: Imagine being in a room; the window at the back of the room is open. In front of the window there is a table with a vase, in which a fresh rose stands. A painting of flowers hangs on the opposite wall. A bee flies into the room through the open window, straight to the painting and not the rose. WHY????

My class and I were given a task to brainstorm all possible ideas as to why the bee acted the way it did and this is what I came up with.

• The bee could be greedy and wanted to feed on the bouquet of flowers instead of the single rose.
• It could also be that the bee was more attracted to the vibrant colors of the painting.
• Perhaps the bee has it's own preference of flowers and it happens to be that rose is not one of them.
• Or maybe the rose was just smaller in size compared to the painting that the bee completely did not notice it.

Hence, I feel like this activity shows that even insects can be deceived by things such as colors.

  

Future World

The ArtScience Museum held an exhibition called Future World which I went to with my friends. The whole concept of Future World is to cut any boundaries there is between art and technology. The picture above is a picture of one of the exhibits that was there. This is basically a cube of lights hanging from the ceiling above that you can walk through. This picture is taken when I was inside the cube and this is what it looks like, you can also see a path for walking in the picture. Every few minutes or so, the lights will change into different colours and with different speed. Every time the lights change its colours with high speed, it felt like I was being transported, like being in a time machine. It is amazing to be able to see the other works of art that includes technology with it. There were other more mesmerizing works held in the exhibition. Hence, this only proves that our revolution is revolving, there has been a lot of technological advancement over the years and this exhibition is just one of the many. Maybe that is the message that the director wanted to convey with the exhibition with a suiting name as well; Future World. Perhaps, this was only a sneak peek to the other creations that awaits us in the future.

Algahest

I visited the Singapore Art Museum the other day with my classmates for a school trip. There were a lot of interesting artworks held in the museum but this was my favorite. This artwork is called Algahest which is an acrylic on canvas, moveable acrylic window enclosing sand, water and air. This artwork is by Pratchaya Phinthong and it represents a planet named Kepler-22b. The reason this is my favorite artwork is because I also get to learn something new and that is, Kepler-22b is a potential candidate for habitation by human civilisations of the  future. Also when the moveable window that consists of water, sand and air, is rotated, a painting of the planet can be seen.

No boundaries when it comes to Art

   Art in Island is an interactive art gallery located in the Philippines that allows guests to be part of optical illusions. It is seen as if the audience is a part of the artwork. I shall analyse this picture using the 2 X 10 technique.

  

                                                                 Keywords                                                                    

Fun

Interesting

Interactive

Creative

Extraordinary

Illusion

Photogenic

3 Dimensional

Eye-catching

One of a kind

Questions

• When creating the artworks, does it take twice the effort compared to just painting a 2D artwork?
• Is placing the artworks in correct perspective difficult? Considering how it would turn out in photos with a 3D effect, positioning of the artworks must be accurate
• Since this allow the guests to be up close with the the artwork, does the guests sometimes take advantage and damage the artwork?
• What is done to ensure that the artworks are still in good condition despite it being open without any barrier.
• Is this form of art more appreciated compared to the norm?
• Is this usually held in an exhibition for only a certain period of time or is it permanently in museums?
• What other kinds of art exhibitions allows the guests to be interactive with the artwork?
• Is it true that people are able to study the artwork better when they are able to observe it closely?
• Is done in every other country as well?
• Is optical illusion art more enjoyed by people at any age? or only the young enjoys it more? seeing how this requires one to take pictures with the artwork to be able to see the illusions of the artwork.

Art is for Everyone

Located in Spain, Prado Museum is the first art exhibition for the visually impaired. The paintings held in the exhibition are by masters like El Greco and Fracisco Goya. As can be seen from the pictures,the paintings have more volume and texture to allow those with limited vision, to feel the paintings and create their own mental image of the paintings which is done with a technique of relief painting. This is a great approach which I feel should be practiced more by countries all around the world. Art should be for everyone to enjoy,regardless of who you are; regardless of your disability. This exhibition is for those who have lost their sense of sight and this art exhibition is making use of the other 4 senses that we have for them to enjoy art. I wonder what other kinds of ideas will there be created for other kinds of disability. For instance, those who have lost their sense of hearing, what ideas can man think off that would allow these people to enjoy music then? Nonetheless, it is amazing to see people coming up with such ideas that will benefit others, this shows that people with disability are just like any of us;-that they enjoy the same things that we do and should not be seen as social outcasts.

Save the Earth

This are all pictures of global warming that is constantly happening in our Earth. The first picture is an artwork of an ice berg that is slowly melting away, this will then cause the water level to rise, causing danger to lower level land. The 2nd picture is what can only be deforestation, where a fallen lone tree can be seen in a clear green land. Next, is a picture of what I feel is trying to show the air pollution that is due to for example, burning down of trees and factory's smoke. The last picture is an artwork showing water pollution where our clear blue sea is being polluted by ship's oil. All these pictures are what I like to call "beautiful tregedy". It is beautiful in a way that it is effective in trying to show it's purpose but it is a tragedy as this is reality, this is what is currently happening to the earth without us even realising and the sad thing about it is that all of these are often caused by human activities.

Vandalism or Art?

As can be seen from this picture, there is a painting on a 3 storey building. The painting is of a girl looking as if she is watering the tree that is placed at the corner of the building. The colours used in colouring the girl are all very vibrant, a contrast to the suroounding of the building, which is very dull. Hence, the painting of the girl stands out from the surroundings. But the real question is, do people see this as a form of art or vandalism? In this modern day that we live in, this form of art is more appreciated as people now are more aware and understanding to what art is. However, the older generation, may not quite be as accepting towards this form of art. The generation that they live in is more cultured and they don't really see the point of painting on buildings when there is  papers.  As an art student, I am glad to see that art is more acknowledged than it was before as this gives every art enthusiast an opportunity to explore and discover art at a whole new level, without any boundaries.

2 X 10

This is yet another method on how to start analyzing a picture that was introduced to my class and I. This method is called 2 x 10 where you have to ask 10 sets of questions regarding what you see in the picture and another 10 sets of words that you feel stands out from the picture. The picture above is an example that my group mates and I did in class. We were given a photograph of a group of guys with punk hair and we were suppose to analyse them with the 2 X 10 method.

Hyper realistic Paintings

These are hyperrealistic paintings of urban nightscapes by Alexandra Pacula. The paintings are all done in this sort of fast brush strokes. I think the artist uses this method of painting to give off the impression that everything in the city is fast phased. The fast brush strokes look like lights dashing past each other. If the purpose of the artist is to show the audience how things are like in the city then it is very effective because his painting does show exactly that. The background of the picture shows the different timings of the day;evening, morning and night, as if trying to show that the "city never sleeps". The reason why there is even such a saying is because the city is where all the main attractions of the country is for example, shopping malls and the city is also where people mostly go to for work. Hence why the city is defined as the most busiest of place.

See.Think.Wonder

Our lecturer introduced us to another method on how to analyse things and that method is the See, Think and Wonder.

 This is how this method works:

• SEE

      -Describe what you observe in the picture. Observe everything that is happening in the picture, look at details-the background etc.

• THINK

      -Interpret what is happening in the picture.Explain the part of the picture that made you think that way.

• WONDER

      -Imagine being able to relate to the subject in the picture, what ideas or issues does it raise in your head? or if the picture is yours, what you have done differently? 

I feel like this is another great guide for those of us who have no idea how or where to start. This See, Think and Wonder is a good start for analyzing.

Analogical Thinking

•this is a picture of beautiful vibrant flowers which I took when i was in chinese garden the other day.
•nowadays, flowers are used as an accessory;flower crowns. It is usually worn in ocassions where girls want to look exceptionally elegant fr example;during weddings, flower crowns is used by the bride or bridesmaids to stand out and look beautiful among the rest. Flower crowns are like crown/tiara which is what a queen or a princess wears.
•Besides flowers, what other forms of nature will humans adapt to form other kinds of accessory?

Hand Paint

These wonderful works are created by photographer, Ray Massey, together with hand painting artists, Annie Ralli and Annie Miller. Looking at these pictures made me realize that the quote, "your body is a canvas" is not exaggerated at all. Instead of painting on paper, these creative artists decided to paint on a pair of hands. I think the last picture of a mosque painted on hands in a praying state goes well together and that the overall picture is very effective. Same goes for the rest of the paintings, this way of potraying the images gives it a more 3D effect. 

Nature is Art

From these pictures, I can see that the artist uses flowers to create designs for dresses. The flowers compliment the dresses really well, it gives the dresses more of an elegant look. Using flower petals is a great way to design dresses as it pulls off the look of a skirt. It amazes me how we can use nature/living things to ornament our artwork. In this case, the flowers are used perhaps, for fashion studies. If leafs were to be used instead of flower petals, I think all of the dresses will have a more edgier look. Hence, besides nature, we could probably think of other materials that we could use to create artwork, an everyday item for example.This shows that it is not necessary for anyone to purchase such high end materials to create art, sometimes it just takes enough creativity to think outside of the box.

Think Outside of the Box

On the third week of school, my classmates and I were given a list of items and we had to choose one of the items as our main topic . My group decided to go with chopsticks, we then had to think of different ways of using chopsticks besides the norm, which is eating. I was really surprised by some of the ideas that my group mates came up with. Our ideas ranges from fashion, using chopsticks as a hair accessory, to furniture designs, where multiple chopsticks could be used to build book shelves. One of my group mates also mentioned about this famous Jackie Chan Chopstick portrait where about 64,000 chopsticks were tied into different bundle sizes with strings, and then hung to a steel frame. I really feel like this is a good exercise to help us with our creative thinking as we have to think of something new, something that was never done before so there is no right or wrong answer, it is just the case of how creative we can be.

3D Street Art

3D arts on the streets, playing with everyone's imagination. People are actually having so much fun taking pictures of themselves together with the 3D artworks, which looks really realistic in the photos. These artworks actually helps people to be creative and imaginative as they pretend that they are in the artwork. While others view this as a form of art, some considers this as an act of vandalism. People can actually be fined in some countries for doing such work on the streets. Similarly to graffiti, it is viewed negatively because of some people who abused the use of it.

Finger Painting

The artist, Judith Braun creates her artworks by using only her fingers which are covered in charcoal dust. From landscapes to abstract patterns, the artworks appears to be more soulful-looking compared to paintings by brushes. The artworks that have long drapes of the fingers look a lot like hands reaching out. I think creating an art piece with just the use of our fingers is actually a good way for those who are aiming for a more emotional or deep themed for their artwork because it helps to portray the emotions much more easier. Hence, does this mean that creating art with different body parts channel different kinds of emotions?