Cloaca Professional by Wim Delvoye (2010)

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Here are some of the resources that were talked about yesterday! 

• Rupert Sheldrake

For the midterm I would like to focus on plastic waste, but especially waste from labelling. As we are in the time of quarantine, I have been ordering a lot of foods and supplies through internet delivery and whenever I receive a delivery I notice that I am overloaded with too much unnecessary waste of the boxes, tape and labels.

Here are some of the resources that were talked about today! 

• ARTSMESH

COVID-19 Data Visualization Through Sound

For our midterm project, Shreya and I have decided to work together to create a compelling collection of wearables using dehydrated fungi and repurposing fresh flowers.

Last quarter, I was thinking a lot about air and its qualities. Thinking about plants communicating through the release of volatile organic compounds (VOC) and sending cryptic messages by the grace of the winds felt very surreal for me.

        What are microplastics? According to the National Ocean Service, microplastics, in a nutshell, are “small plastic pieces less than five millimeters long which can be harmful to our ocean and aquatic life.” Generated from health and beauty products such as certain cleansers and toothpastes, microplastics come from our daily life and could potentially have a huge impact on our environment. Generally speaking, microplastics are tiny plastic detritus that can be easily ignored by the people.

During Week 5, we listened to our classmates’ midterm presentations for both Monday and Wednesday classes. It was really interesting to see the diverse range of projects within the biotech design realm presented. It truly shows how explorative the department of Design Media Arts can be, and I’m very excited to see everyone’s final projects.

This week the class was presenting midterm proposals for their project ideas based on what we have been learning in class. Seeing everyone’s proposals really opened up how diverse our ideas can be in response to what each of us found interesting from the course. Some subjects that people covered were plastics, recycling waste in fashion, using fungi/mycelium, the pollution problem, etc.

Looking back, my midterm presentation depicted a limited view of mycelium as a medium. That is not to say that I did not find an expansive web of information about the fungal network itself--I did, all the detailed research and resulting facts were there.

I thought Jimmy’s midterm presentation was really interesting because he talked about genetics in a different way than what I was looking at when I was doing research for my midterm. I was especially intrigued by the typography and DNA art he showed on one of his slides. I looked into it further and found that the piece is called TypoGrAphiC and was created by Dev Ethan Valladares in 2017.

This week, I had the opportunity to dig deeper into a component of art and design that much of my work revolves around, but yet I have never really given much deeper thought to; paint! After having the opportunity to explore the Rare Books and Special Collection of the UCLA Biomedical Library, I was intrigued to learn more about my favorite part of the tour, which was the books of nature prints.

I was really excited to hear everyone’s midterm presentations this week as I got to know the different topics each and every student cares about. Everyone’s presentation inspired me and I can’t wait to see everyone’s final product because there were many wide varieties of projects with thought-provoking ideas.

As I dug deeper into research on cleaner cosmetic industry in South Korea and United States, I found that the consumers are the leading reason for what companies will sell. With my journey as a Korean-American growing up in California, I was always split between the different products in the two countries. I wanted to bring in my personal experience into this project.