All posts by Rainie Xiaocen Jiao

Project#4 : the pitch

With the development of society, the speed of people’s lives are becoming more and more rapid. So in order to make people feel about their lives are beautiful and colorful, make people be more interested in their route, not just one place to another, our group is intending to make a new tool which helps you to know your surroundings well.Maybe just take a couple of minutes  detour. Speaking of aesthetic map, today, we are focusing on three key words to explore our aesthetic route, they’re natural, crowded and great structures.  So today’s detour starts at City Tech to the Jay St Metro Tech, the subway stop.

Going out of City Tech, usually, we take a right and directly go to the  subway stop, but today we turn a left to explore our happiest route. The crossroad between Jay St and Tillary St is kind of wide so that you have to pay attention on those two traffic lights because they turn really fast. There is a safety island right on the middle of the crossroad. You can stand on the smallest island in the world and watch the stream of traffic. You’ll feel peaceful in your heart. Then make one more left and walk straightly to the end of Cadman Plaza, after that, you’ll find the Cadman Plaza Park at your right hand where is a yellow ocean right now. When you walk in, you’ll hear a sound made by your steps and leaves fell from trees. Also there are some kids play at the park sometimes who offer you pure smiles counted as a bonus for you.

After Cadman Plaza Park,  walking along Cadman Plaza W St, you’ll find another park, the Columbus Park. Different from Cadman Park,  Several kinds of flowers are planted in the park. More interesting thing is, there is a market in front of the park. In the market, vegetables, cake and other daily supplies are sold. With the decoration of vintage Borough Hall Subway Station, the market makes the street more like a small town in the movie. Even though outside is cold, but those sellers still bring the most fresh stuffs to you. They make the street warm.

We are almost at the end of natural journey, next we’ll go and find some great buildings. New York City Housing Authority’s Twin Parks West Day Care Center should be on the detour list,  speaking the great of the Center, on the top of the building, there a golden woman standing there with a balance and a wand.  The style of the building is kind of a traditional government building, a triangle roof with six columns at the bottom. Standing at the corner of the street, watching the whole building, you’ll be attracted by building because it releases ancient but amazing charm.

As we keep walking along court St, we’ll welcome the most crowednoisy and fantastic Street, Court St.  Lots of stores are selling different kinds of stuffs, from cosmetics to shoes, from lollipop to beer. You can buy anything you want.  With the sunset, the neon lights like a guide to direct you the way to home.  At the end of Court St which is also Fulton St, after you enjoy your fantastic route, you might feel a little bit tired, don’t worry, next destination is your final stop, your lovely home. The only thing you have to do is taking the right train and have a rest.

In the end, to decelerate our aim once again, we are trying to find an effective way to make your way much happier. So depending on different person, they might have unique keywords. To make the way home more meaningful and beautiful, why don’t you find out the keywords firstly, go around and make a detour, or build an aesthetic map which could help you enjoy your route much effectively.

Project 4:Direction & Detour

After the lovely rain of yesterday, I have to say, today’s weather was awful! However, I still took the detour which was on my today’s schedule, even though it was only 25 F outside.

I planned to walk to Brooklyn War Memorial because it looks like a park on the map, or walk all the way down to Brooklyn bridge. Unfortunately, I approached  neither.  I went to the opposite direction on Tillary St, it was a quite neighborhood. So I went back to find a right direction.  I change my destination a little bit. I made a right on Flatbush Ave which is to the Manhattan bridge. I didn’t go any bridge in the end because I really cannot stand the fierce wind, so I went back to campus. Anyway,  I found a beautiful triangle shape of safe island around Nassau St.

I think I probably will redo the detour, tomorrow.  Wish tomorrow will be a nice weather!

“Wonder” Exhibition

IMG_3775

This work by Ming Yin Wong, is the most favorite one for me.  The  main character in this picture should be the women, she seems like to show peace, wisdom, or confidence. However when I moved  my eyes upper, I saw a plane fling and leaving a white line upon her.  I feel like ironic in this work.   The  sculpture is felt serious, but the plane left a funny impression for me, like a joke.  The whole picture tells me a story that the goddess of courage is encouraging people to fight enemies, at the same time, the plane’s flying and saying, “dont worry about me,I’m just a stranger.  ” They ‘ve made a contrast which is really interesting.

“Wonder ” Exhibition

Ming Yin Wong
Ming Yin Wong

This work by Ming Yin Wong, is the most favorite one for me.  The  main character in this picture should be the women, she seems like to show peace, wisdom, or confidence. However when I moved  my eyes upper, I saw a plane fling and leaving a white line upon her.  I feel like ironic in this work.   The  sculpture is felt serious, but the plane left a funny impression for me, like a joke.  The whole picture tells me a story that the goddess of courage is encouraging people to fight enemies, at the same time, the plane’s flying and saying, “dont worry about me,I’m just a stranger.  ” They ‘ve made a contrast which is really interesting.

Class reading,What If You Could Choose…the Most Beautiful? Summary & Reflection

Summary

The article, “What If You Could Choose Between the Fastest Route and the Most Beautiful? ” from The Atlantic, city lab, prospects that GPS might not the first consideration for navigating in the future by a citizen participated experiment. A group researchers from Yahoo! gave more than 3000 citizens in London two street-view pictures  to choose which view is more beautiful. The result showed that with a huge number of people to pick up a satisfied way, they usually could get a general agreement. When researchers narrowed down the participants, they got a detailed result. Further more, to fit other worldwide counties, researchers achieve their goal by using Flickr which also owned by Yahoo! as a metadata. This experiment was tested successfully in Boston. In the end, the author encourage people to take an extra couple of minutes for a detour to enjoy your urban experience.

Reflection

For me, I think it will depend on some objective conditions, but there is no doubt that I will choose a beautiful route to my destination. The differences are, if I’m alone, I’d like to choose a quite route, except for night. Quite route helps me pay attention to observe the environment and thinking; if I’m with friends, I like like to choose a noisy route or a route that has some famous buildings or landmarks because we can share opinions.  Sometimes, I’m tired of long distance like route from home to school, so in this condition I’d like the shortest route, just the blue sky, still beautiful.

Glossary: Squishy

Squishy( adjective): 1 being soft, yielding, damp

2 not firm, steady, or fixed ( Definition comes from merriam-webster)

From: “Some people might not be charmed by an experiment that relies on squishy concepts like beauty and happiness.” In this sentence, squishy should mean not steady because it says that people might not be attracted by this results of an experiment which means the result is not steady. People might have different ideas.

In addition, I’ve found another meaning of squishy, to describe a really cute old people, typically little old man, or someone of a huggable nature. From Urban Dictionary. Obviously, those are not best explanations in this condition.

 

Project 2: Reflection

Time goes fast, we’ve already finished two projects for this semester. In this project, I’ve learned about juxtaposition, we walked around our campus to find our juxtapositions. Also  Colson Whitehead’s book “City Limits” has give us some ideas of juxtapositions. I like the way we’ve learn by walking around city first. I feel like this is useful to help me understand the project. For this project, I think I need to prove comment skills. By ‘peer to peer review’ part, I’ve read a lot of amazing works from our classmates. I feel like that they are all good so that I cannot leave a comment objectively.  Their works help me to get the points of our projects which are pretty useful.  I’ll still work on my works of project 1 and 2 to make them  much better. One more thing is I”m trying to post every work on time and be in class on time.

Project 2 Final

What is a city? In my opinion, the city is the place that contains multiple areas, such as political areas, residential areas, financial centers and etc. New York city is the place like this.  To know more about this fantastic city, I take a walk around our campus. At very beginning, I felt like only Manhattan can represent New York City because the first impression he gave me was sleepless, amazing, ambition, but far away. When I close to this city, I realize that New York City not only has a shiny surface, but also has a lovely and busy place called Brooklyn.

As I taking a walk, I was thinking about the juxtaposition. Where can be the best place to represent juxtaposition? This took a long time for me to make a decision because every place has its mission to stand on his way.  I’ve walked several place from our campus to the Brooklyn Bridge Park, even further the Brooklyn Bridge. However, on a morning when I passed by the supreme and family court, I found my answer finally.

My positions are located between Brooklyn Bridge Park and the Supreme and Family court. Brooklyn Bridge Park, a place that people would like to share happiness with family and friends where locates under the Brooklyn Bridge. Sitting on the stone beach, I’ve viewed the great scene of Manhattan Island. It was not that big as today. With the development of the society, the park extends with those piers. Back to the park, I had a really relax the afternoon at the park. Everyone enjoyed their coffee or their afternoon-topic. The Sun shines on the river brilliantly. People seat on benches or play near the river. Such a relaxed picture.

Usually, I pass by the Supreme and family court is on my way school or home. Maybe because of the rush hour in the morning, people stand outside of the court always look like seriously. Obviously, court house is a serious place, but compares with Brooklyn Bridge Park where just locates 10 blocks away, the atmosphere is totally different. At the family court people usually worried about support or their children belong to, not share their happiness which is sad. The sun like a fire shines on them with abandonment.  They fan their folders, open their mouths with helpless and anxious. They have stories that cannot tell.

However, not everyone from court house hates the city,  still have a happy ending for some family. They went out of the lobby with smile and hug, like the people who seat on benches at Brooklyn Bridge Park or enjoy the Sun.

Colson Whitehead, the writer of ‘City Limits’in the book, he found out New York City is different by feeling it. I cannot oppose his opinion that  we could feel the city because we are in it.  The city can go on without us, but that city doesn’t belong to us, doesn’t it? At the same time, same place, but different events are happening which are building your own New York City.

Brooklyn Bridge Park
Brooklyn Bridge Park

Project #2 Reflection

Project 2 is about sound and vision. We were using our five senses to express our feelings of listening a song. Different songs express different emotions.

The first step, we listened a song and draw our feelings. I feel like this is an interesting way to develop my creative skill. The sound I’ve heard was sent to my mind, then my mind figured the sound and sent a picture to my hands. The pic can be full of curve lines or straight lines or even a monster.  The next step, according to the pic I’ve created to rebuilt the song(s). For this project, I’ve also learned about the Ps and popcorn maker. Even though I still feel confuse about some parts, it still a fantastic learning experience.