Flatland is a book about a world that lives within a two dimensional reality. In the book there is an unknown place called space land. At one point in the book a sphere comes into Flatland and pulls a square out of it and into space land to show him the higher dimensions. This was a very interesting perspective for me because it appeared as one step down from Billy Pilgrim's experience in traveling to the next highest dimension being Tralfamadore. I think reading both of these books at the same time gave me a deeper understanding of the two because the idea of going from Flatland to Spaceland gave me a better idea of what it would be like to go from Spaceland to Tralfamadore.
Artist Statement.
My piece symbolizes the different layers of each dimension. It is a display of how each dimension is a layer in reality built up from previous dimensions. For example we can understand how the people in a lower dimension live such as flatland but we cannot understand how the people in a higher dimension live. The concluding shape created is known as the flower of life. I feel like these shapes are a form of communication from higher dimensions given to us to achieve higher understanding. When you truly go into depth with this shape many different patterns and hidden messages are revealed on reality and what it is composed of. This is only a hypothetical theory but when a sphere enters flatland the Flatlanders see a circle. What if this shape entering our dimension is only a small factor of what it truly is due to the fact that our senses are preventing us from seeing what it actually is? Another perspective on dimensions this can be incorporated into is that each dimension is a level in consciousness. In that viewpoint it would make a lot of sense that this is a shape coming from a higher dimension. This shape that showed up in many ancient cultures around the world around the same time in history even though they had no way of communicating it to each other from across the world. This shows that they were all very connected into the collective consciousness and at a very high state of awareness in order to access this shape.
Reflection
Reading a book in math was very interesting for me because it showed how math can be incorporated into my life in very different and abstract ways. I have thought a lot about higher dimensions before but never about lower and it gave me a very interesting outlook on what a higher dimension might look like through the analogy of our reality compared to a flatlanders. I think reading Slaughterhouse Five at the same time made this experience very interesting because we were looking at two opposites on each end of the spectrum. This gave me a deeper viewpoint on dimensions. My original idea was to have multiple layers on clear plastic sheets that have different geometric patterns on each layer and when piled on top of each other would create a final image. I ended up deciding I wanted my final image to be the flower of life. The reason I did this was to emphasize all of the hidden shapes within this one pattern and to use this is that our reality is composed of geometry working together to create the world we are living within. My project started small scale where it was a small booklet and my final draft was much larger and framed to display on the wall. This helped me understand the different aspects of each dimension and how higher dimensions require structures from lower dimensions to exist. Flatland is a lower shape before the image is completed and Tralfamadore is standing at the viewpoint of seeing the entire picture.
Time and Space Project
Project description The final experience for our exhibition had a very different feel to the other exhibitions taking place at the school. It had three different rooms all of which tied into a story the people experiencing the exhibition had the job to solve. There was definitely an effect of sensory overload and art was everywhere you could look. Experiencing the exhibition for me personally had a very rewarding feeling to be able to see all of our work come together. I was in the art committee so my job was to work on the artwork that would be incorporated into the exhibition. I helped create the car by doing a paper mache of the hood and providing the doors. I worked on making the tree, and I did a mural in the last room of the flower of life, I also painted the eyes onto the podium holding the projector. Project Reflection
I feel like before the Meow Wolf trip the class wasn't very motivated for this project but being able to experience it helped us become more eager to create something similar. Another big thing that I think Meow Wolf helped with was coming up with our story. Before I went there I had no clue what the idea around our exhibition could be and I don’t think any of my classmates did either. We were lacking the inspiration to come up with a story and Meow Wolf gave us that inspiration.
A really big PAPER skill we tied into this project in the last month of the project was perseverance. There were many times where it didn’t seem like the project was going to come together and despite that we kept working as hard as we could because we wanted to be able to accomplish something that looked like it could not be done. And that is exactly what we did. This taught me that if you care about something enough and really put your passion into it it can manifest into something beautiful. I feel like going into the project I was prepared to do my best and I was thinking big and was really excited to express different philosophical concepts through such an interesting art style. I feel like “doing your best” is a very subjective idea and it means very different things to different people. And maybe my art wasn’t in every single room, and maybe my peers weren’t always happy with the way I was working, but I truly do think I did my best. I helped peers who were overwhelmed and couldn’t handle the stress, and I did whatever I could to take on some of their weight so they could feel a little lighter, I tried to be as understanding as possible even in the midst of chaos and I cared about putting myself into this project and to me that is my best.
A really big takeaway I got from this project was the ways that math and philosophy work together and the beauty behind the philosophy of math. I have never been much of a mathematician but this project gave me a very profound respect for math. For my personal mini project before we jumped into the bigger exhibition I studied sacred geometry and it blew my mind in how beautifully it depicts the entire universe so accurately in just a few images.
This project showed me that I can go big in project based learning. I feel like the projects I had done at animas before this one were all based around playing it safe and staying inside the lines. And though I may get a good grade on one of those projects, it doesn’t feel like it’s worth my time because of the lack of passion put into it. This project taught me that if we step outside the lines and think big not only will the results be rewarding but the act of creating the project itself will be rewarding too. This project has taught me to aim for in project based learning.