My created object for class last Friday was an origami frog I created using the internet and a piece of computer paper. One of my group members, Sid, also brought something origami, so we started to think. Sid liked the origami connection and decided he wanted to something that would connect a lot of people. I thought it would be creative to have a central whiteboard or writing area of some sort where people can add there own thoughts and ideas based off of various cues we would put on the board, which would involve lots of random people.  As a group, we discussed how we could take pictures of said board and blog about things that people wrote. It is a creative idea in a very early stage, but I think that if people dedicate one moment of their lives to add a thought, this board can turn into something exciting.

Greg

When I was looking for an object, I had a hard time finding something I had made myself.  I realized that almost everything I use or have at college is not handmade let alone created by me.  This is a testament to where our society is today, but that is a topic for a different blog entry.  Finally I found a play-dough cup that I had made at a retreat three years ago.  I made this as a part of an activity to represent the cup of opportunity.  In college there are a ton of opportunities to take up, so it is always good to evaluate whether you drank from the cup or not.  Did you participate in an activity/group that made a difference on campus or in the community?  Have you pushed yourself?  Have you done the Tech traditions in the T-book?  Have you felt that sense of accomplishment from finishing something big?  Have you mad relationships?Are you doing what you love?  Are you loving what you do? Food for thought…

On Friday, our group decided to do a music video for our invention mob project.  When we looked at our objects that we brought in, we didn’t see a connection.  We had a song, a pair of sunglasses, a paper ninja star and a paper airplane.  The sunglasses reminded us of the life of a celebrity and with a song already created we just thought music video.  The two paper objects though were a bit more of a challenge to incorporate.  We considered using each of the objects in the video, but then we thought that would be random and confusing to the viewer.  We eventually took a different path and decided that we could do the majority of our video on paper.  We decided that we could film a piece of paper and have each of us drawing in a corner until we hit the center of the paper with a written common theme.

The song is a slow paced, softly spoken song that revolves around the main idea “where did you go.”  We decided to use this and open up the video with a guy being dumped by his girlfriend.  Saddened by this tragic event, he returns to his room and starts drawing on paper.  We then proceed to the main theme being written in the center and flashing to each corner with meaningful drawings.

When I was first assigned with this project, I was completely lost about what I should do. Then, my group was made of pure Asians. It is not like I am discriminating my identity. Personally, I wanted some native speakers to be involved in my group since I am aware of my linguistic weakness. I, however, soon realized that language would not be a big deal. I saw hope and pleasure while working with my fellow group.

Deciding what we are going to do was totally up to us. We first tried to come up with a good idea as a group. We started spitting out random topics, but we found that the scope of our conversation was too broad and vague and decided to find our common interest first so we could narrow down the range of our ideas. After a long list of ideas, we found out that we all had interest in architecture, building an edifice. Having no one majoring in that field, we confronted a huge problem how we would do it. How are we going to present this? What are we going to produce physically? How are we going to get help from others? We kept discussing and concluded to create a house integrated with our major departments. In my case, it would be electrical engineering. We liked the idea very much. I could feel catharsis of being at the center of “liquid network” as Steve Johnson describes in his lecture, “When ideas have sex.” Time almost ran out. We wrapped up the first day of meeting, adding each other on Facebook for further discussion about the project.

After the discussion, I could recall lesson of turning weakness into strength. Our initially assumed weakness of being pure Asian group may turn out to be our strength in terms of uniqueness. We would be able to come up with something novel and fresh, different from others’. I already look forward to meet my group again to work together.

The class of Friday September 2 was an unusual class. Our homework was to bring an object handcrafted by me. I brought a little wood case I did with my dad. Before going to the class I did not know what it was for.

Entering the classroom, Dr. Hunter told us that we were going to get out of the classroom environment to go and start our invention mob. Finally, I recognized that the handcrafted object’s purpose was to come up with an idea of the invention mob. My object did not serve to bring new ideas for the invention mob project.

My group spent quite a lot of time thinking about what our project could be about. It was extremely awkward because no one was giving ideas and everybody was looking at each other thinking “kill me right now.”

I spoke and asked my group members “what are you good at?”

One member of the group was good at Photoshop editing, one liked comic books and another one liked short stories. Combining these ideas and talents the group came up with the idea to create a photographic comic. The theme that was proposed by one of the group members was a detective/spy theme.

The project is planned to be made as collaborative as possible between the four of us in the group. Weiting will specialize on photo editing and the rest of us will focus on obtaining photos from friends and photos that match up the storyline for the comic. The distribution will definitely change as the project solidifies.

To make a good invention mob, our group will try to integrate as much people outside of the group. We are going to ask people outside of the project to give us ideas and even participate as characters in the comic.

Meanwhile, the first task to complete the invention mob is that each of us has to chat with friends. During the chat we are going to give our friends the four possible characters in the comic.

1. Detective
2. Detective’s partner
3. Criminal
4. Lab Scientist

Afterwards he or she would have to come up with a mini-skit. The purpose of the mini-skits is to pile up different ideas from everyone and make an amalgam of all the ideas that will build up the plot of the comic book.

So far the invention mob project seems to be extremely interesting and exciting. I cannot wait to see its final outcome!

This past friday for English 1101 we broke up into groups to work on a group project. The project is different from most projects as it is very undefined as to what we have to do. My group elected to use the object that we brought to class to make a story. We then decided to get input from fellow classmates and other people our age. The idea is that we will get everyone to write a story and then we will make our own story by combining everyone’s stories. The main problem I encountered after class was dismissed was getting someone to write a story on the three random items that we had brought to class. They usually looked at me like I was crazy and said you want me to write a story about what?!!? I am looking forward to seeing what kind of story comes out of this project. It should be a good one.

On Friday, for our project, we decided that we would create a multimedia project involving both video and music. Our thoughts were that we would create a video using footage either of close-up views of natural objects and scenes, or views of society in motion, such as filming the movement of people across the campus. As soon as the video was created with time-lapse photography, we planned to make music for it and set it as a background to the video, to give it a sense of an atmosphere.

Last Friday, we were told to create a project in groups. The project is supposed to be the quintessence based on the individual work of each group member as well as the collaborative work of the group as a whole. We were given enough space to think about it. It can be anything creative. When we just got the requirement, none of us had any ideas. Creative? What can be a creative reflection of five people? After a while, we followed the process below to take the first step.

We spent five minutes thinking about the project individually since everyone held a different point of view towards creativity. Then we began to collect all the ideas. We started with interests. We found three of us were sort of interested in architecture, or modeling. That was a good start. And then we discussed about the theme of the project passionately. It was not so easy to find a proper theme because we did not have a clear idea yet. Someone thought we should consider electronic equipments as two majored in electronic engineering. But this idea was soon crossed out. Even those two people did not want to do electronic equipments. Then we talked about modeling Georgia Tech campus (which was passed over because of lack of creativity), buildings (which were even less creative), some new spaceships (which was not so practical)… Although we did not get a specific topic at the end of the class, we found that thoughts could collide in such an interesting way. We shared ideas with each other, feeling happy to tell others our own thought and surprised about their point of views at the same time. Collabrative work should be like this, giving out and soaking up. I know we can do a good job at the end. We are keeping moving.

On Friday, we embarked upon a mission to create. We were given minimal guidelines and full reign to go wherever our minds take us. For me, this is a blessing. All too often I feel constrained by the ropes tethering me down on an assignment. I shift my thinking and go more for the left-brained approach in the hopes of receiving the highest marks. I am genuinely excited to be able to expand my creativity and work into the classroom one of my passions, video productions.

From the first day of class when we were introduced to Ze Frank’s blog, I knew that when we created our own project I wanted produce to short film. I do not claim to be excellent by any means, however I love making something from nothing and being able to watch an end product. I approached my group and immediately shared my enthusiasm for video productions. They welcomed my passion with open arms as we walked to a new location to brainstorm.

Before we were even sitting in high-top chairs at the Clough Commons, I could feel the brain juice pumping. It was awesome to be in a new environment. The feng shui of the collaboration room was perfect. Almost right away Christine jumped in with an excellent idea to make a documentary of the North Avenue dinning hall for our project. It was perfect. The North Avenue dinning hall is a melting pot for people, ideas and cultures. We are currently leaning towards doing a 24-hours in the North Avenue dinning hall sort of theme. We will ask the employees how they feel about the dinning hall. Do they like their job? Are the students pleasant? We will also interview the students and see how they feel not only about the food but how/if the dinning hall has shaped their experience at Tech this year. North Ave is the new, cool, hip place on campus. People are naturally attracted to it. We are going to find out more.

On Friday we were given a very broad assignment in which we had the freedom to go in really any direction we wanted. At first it was difficult for our group to get the ideas flowing, and the objects we had all brought in did not seem to helping. Eventually we decided to think to the bigger picture of our first few weeks at Tech. All of us in the group had certainly noticed the somewhat strange relationships between the sexes here in our first couple weeks of classes. We decided it would be a great idea to do certain experiments in order to analyze the odd, and sometimes awkward, relationship between men and women at Tech. These experiments will include things that will put ourselves and complete strangers in different situations to see how the opposite gender reacts. Our ultimate goal is to get a better understanding of the relationship between the sexes at Tech and maybe even give some advice of our own on how to best handle it.