Samia Salim

Life The final session of our course focused on creating crafts using crayons, yarn, and paper. We were given complete freedom to choose any action or task we desired from it. I have titled this session "Life". The object I utilize is a water bottle containing water. I simply removed the sticker from the bottle and threaded it, leaving a small gap. The water circulates internally, whereas the yarn situated externally on the bottle represents the ups and downs experienced in actual existence. I also created a drawing using only two colors. The blue color represents a vibrant and lively existence, while the maroon color represents a situation associated with death. I delineate the two entities by employing a strand of yarn, serving as a metaphorical demarcation between existence and mortality.  

THE MANGLE IN PRACTICE Science,Society and Becoming New Ontologies In The Mangle of Practice, the author presents an ontological vision of the world and our place in it, recognizing both humans and nonhumans as open-endedly becoming. The author contrasts the work of Piet Mondrian and Willem de Kooning, who use their paintings as philosophical objects that point towards different conceptions of being in the world. Mondrian's geometrical abstracts consist of geometric forms, such as rectangles, and vertical and horizontal lines. He focused on creating a harmonious composition using these shapes and lines, aiming to express a kind of harmony similar to ancient religions and Greek ideas. He reduced the shapes, lines, and colors in his works to their essential forms, using only essential colors (red, blue, yellow) and adding black and white when necessary. Mondrian's compositions were based on universal principles of balance and harmony, and he aimed to create a language without n...

Vibrant Matter : A Political Ecology of Things by  Jane Bennett The  Agency of Assemblages Thing-power, a concept that emphasizes the efficacy of objects over human meanings and purposes, can be a starting point for thinking beyond the life-matter binary. However, it tends to overstate the thinginess or fixed stability of materiality, which is more fitting to theorize a materiality that is as much force as an entity, energy as matter, and intensity as extension. The term "outside" may be more apt, as it refers to vibrant materials rather than passive objects or stable entities. The concept of "thing" also has latent individualism, which leads to an atomistic understanding of agency. An actant never acts alone, and its efficacy depends on the collaboration, cooperation, or interactive interference of many bodies and forces. This concept of agency changes when nonhuman things are viewed as actors and humans as vital materialities. In this chapter, the author exami...

Our class starts with a presentation on the topic of "The RSVP Cycles: Creative Processes in the Human Environment" by Lawrence Halprin. Emily and I presented it. I'll describe this presentation on a different blog. As ususal we choose 7 different words from the reading. They are  Preconceived  Balance  Emerged  Believe  Goals  Process    Score And then I choose 3 words out of those 7, and they are: Preconceived  Emerged Score It was time to turn these three words into verbs. To opiniate To develop To produce The whole class was divided into 2 groups at this time of our class. There were four of us in our group. We are being tasked with choosing a place and analyzing the rhythm of that specific place A delicate site drawing with blind eyes. We chose a lift to perform this task. We entered the lift and observed it for 5 minutes, inhaling everything. And then we closed our eyes for 2 minutes and made a sketch out of it. As it is a lift. It was ...

New Ontologies As we approach the beginning of our class we have started with a presentation on the reading “New Ontologies”. After that presentation, we gave our input, and understanding on this topic. I’ll be describing my understanding of the reading in another blog. It was a helpful session for us to learn and think from different perspectives.  For this section of the class, we choose 7 words as usual from the readings. Which are: - [ ] Fundamental  - [ ] Destination  - [ ] Excavate  - [ ] Repair - [ ] Ontology  - [ ] Abstract  - [ ] Contemporary  Time for a blind drawing. This time it was our classroom that we were given to observe for 3 minutes and then do the drawing for 5 minutes. The only rule was we could not stop drawing in that specific 5 minutes. During the 3-minute observation, we had to look for all those small details and we were tasked to put as many as details we could put in our drawing.  During the sketch, I memorized everythi...

  The RSVP Cycle:Creative Processes in the Human Environment  By Lawrence Halprin  My understanding from this reading:  •The RSVP Cycles: Creative Processes in the Human Environment by Lawrence Halprin explores scoring as a way to make processes visible and enable participation.   •The RSVP score makes elements of the creative process visible and seeks to aid communication within artistic collaborations.   •Scores are symbolizations of processes that extend over time, and they are used in various fields of human endeavor, such as dance and theater.   •The book explores street scores, ecological scoring, city scores, and community scores, focusing on the importance of scoring in understanding creative processes and enabling participation.  •The author concludes that the two RSVP cycles are necessary to encompass all human and creative processes.   •The inner cycle is the separate self, while the outer cycle is the colle...

 Rhythmanalysis Space, Time and Everyday Life HENRI LEFEBVRE  At its most basic, rhythm is a repeating pattern or beat that makes you feel like you're moving and flowing. It's not just in dance and music; it's in many parts of our daily lives as well. Rhythm is a part of everything we do, from the natural rhythm of our breath and heartbeat to the patterns in language and speech. Even though rhythm is all around us, it is often overlooked or undervalued in the fields of knowledge and creation. People are always looking for new things and focusing on progress, which has made rhythm less important as a basic part of the human experience. But this rejection of rhythm is exactly what could lead to a deep critique of modern thought and its tendency to make things into things that can be bought and sold. By rethinking and reclaiming the power of rhythm, we can learn more about how things change, move, and move around, and we can question the idea that progress should happen in a...

Vibrant Matter : A Political Ecology of Things by  Jane Bennett The Force of Things Following Michel Foucault's passing in 1984, research on the body and social production turned to the study of biopower dynamics. Research revealed the impact of cultural activities on the "natural" and the constructive and destructive potential of nonhuman materials, exposing both macropolitical and micropolitical strategies. The continuity between humans and other beings is emphasized by Spinoza's idea of vitality in bodies, which focuses on an object's moment of independence and how it affects other bodies. Thing-Power I: Debris The author encountered a collection of objects in Baltimore, revealing their power and uniqueness. They realized that nonhuman bodies could create effects and repulsion, and that American materialism, which consumes more products, is antimateriality. The author also discovered a leachate seep in a garbage hill, demonstrating the power of inanimate th...