PENTATHLON

Semester 3

As an experiential component of College Park Arts Scholars, I attended a selection of five art events during my third semester. These events ranged in art mediums and each sparked dialogue among my peers.

PENTATHLON 1: MARYLAND NIGHT LIVE

Event Logistics 9.19.22, Theater Performance (UMD), NextNow Fest

Pentathlon category #presentation

For my first pentathlon event, I decided to go to Maryland Night Live, a comedy show inspired by Saturday Night live. This performance was done very professionally, and I felt immersed in the experience. This can be attributed to the fact that there was a live orchestra playing in between segments that matches the spirit of comedy. Even though this orchestra wasn't center stage in this show, their music was influential in that it portrayed excitement and professionalism. Witnessing people play instruments versus merely hearing them on a speaker brings two starkly different emotions.
As for the skits themselves, I enjoyed laughing with everyone else. Watching a comedy show is a performance that is meant to be socially experienced, and laughing in a full theater with ambient lighting influenced the way that the show was inviting and alluring. I’ve used the adjective of “immersive” several times, and this comedy show can be relevant to my major in that I’m an Immersive Media Design major. Even though I am leaning towards the art track, this show made me realize that a live orchestra being present can heavily influence an audience member’s enjoyment of the show, even if it’s a work of art. I was thinking as to how I can incorporate live music even when creating an immersive work, or within a virtual reality headset. Can the user look around an imaginary room, and see imaginary people playing instruments and feel the same immersion as how I felt during this comedy performance? These questions will continue to rack my mind as I keep studying.

PENTATHLON 2: EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE

Event Logistics: 10.2.22, Amazon Movie, at home

Pentathlon category #film

For my second pentathlon, I decided to watch the movie "Everything Everywhere All At Once" through Amazon. This was my third time watching it, and each time I watched it, the movie had a deeper profound effect on me. The movie is about a huge mother daughter fight, which carries the weight of themes such as generational trauma and suicide. The first time I watched it, a lot of the plot itself went over my head because there was so much happening at once, but I still was able to appreciate the messages in the film and the fact that the main character was casted as an older asian woman, which is rare to see in blockbuster Hollywood films.

Everything Everywhere All At Once is my favorite movie of al time and it is a cinematic masterpiece. The movie's main "villain" is not a character, but rather the philosophy that nothing in life matters, in a pessimistic light. The mother (Evelyn)'s daughter, Joy, tries to convince Evelyn of this but gets fought back through the hope that Evelyn offers, despite their differences. The best way I would describe this movie is a beautiful mess, since everything that happens is so chaotic - the writers took the most imaginative universes and threw questions of "what if?" into all of them. The movie makes tons of risky choices and it somehow all works together, even when the silly aspects feel to absurd - the movie isn't afraid to push its limits of absurdity, and it encouraged me to take more creative risks in the future as I can only learn/grow from them.

What's even more inspiring about this film is that even though so many dubbed it as the best movie of 2022, the producers made the movie on a low budget, without going to film school, and simply made the movie based off of free online tutorials. I've watched quite a few Youtube videos saying you don't need art school to be a great artist, and seeing this movie solidified this.

PENTATHLON 3: Technica

Event Logistics: 10.15.22, Technica, UMD Hotel

Pentathlon category #presentation

This weekend, I went to Technica, a the world's largest hackathon for underrepresented genders. Throughout the day, my team and I went to workshops regarding the crossover between coding and art, such as UI/UX web development, as well as making art with code. This was overall an enriching experience for me, and most of my experience can be credited to the opening keynote speech at the ceremony. The speaker, Elaine Montilla, is the chief technology officer at Pearson and gave an inspiring speech whose words I will carry with me through Art Scholars and my artistic career. Though several of the lessons she told the audience I already knew, they were a reminder I very well needed. "Make fear your best friend" ~ Though Montilla used the example of the fear of public speaking, this one was particularly an important takeaway for me as it relates to the art world. Failure is very easy in the art world, and one can only experiment and fail with art or drawing to be great at it. In nature, art is an experimentive field, which means failure is highly likely. Though these words can be applied to most careers, they can be specific to artists in the art process itself. In other words, this speech was the push I needed to feel confident again in my artistic process.

Moving on to the workshops we attended, I more deeply understood the various connections between coding and art. Even though my major - Immersive Media Design - establishes this connection early on in the major, going to these workshops in a collaborative environment deepened my understanding as well as heightened my curiosity on this connection ~ art and color theory plays a huge role on what viewers like to see when clicking on a website as well as what is what layout is most convenient to use/look at.

PENTATHLON 4: Art Therapy Ted Talk

Event Logistics: 11/13/22, "Art Therapy: A world beyond creative expression" on Youtube

Pentathlon category: #presentation

Before watching this ted talk, my knowledge regarding art therapy was severely limited. I knew it was a way to release one's emotions or traumas using art, but the question of how it works was left unanswered. Upon watching this Ted Talk, I learned about the speaker's experience in college and how she didn't realize her true passion of art therapy at first, instead pursuing computer science. I feel like too many students are in this exact position currently where they are afraid to embrace their passion of art due to the field's lack of prestige as compared to other fields on the media.

As I continued to watch the video, I asked myself the following questions: How can art therapy be transferred into a virtual reality space? How would the addition of immersion influence the viewer, or troubled people seeking help in a clinical field? Recently, I submitted a secondary application to the Immersive Media Design major, and they required me to write a statement of purpose - what I wish to accomplish within the field. I answered something along the lines of art therapy, though I didn't define it exactly as "art therapy" - I described it as, how can an immersive artistic space be therapeutic to viewers - having an additional passion for psychology, this is a field I would very much love to contribute to with my intersections of technology and media. Though I directed this statement in a non-clinical sense, I think everyone can use art therapy to their advantage and use it to take a break from the stresses of daily life - stepping into an alternate world, into a place where corporations are no longer battling for your attention. There is a risk of addiction, so I think there needs to be extra caution being exercised in the art therapy field.

PENTATHLON 5: Hues and Cues Board Game

Event Logistics: 11/16/22, Belair Lounge, Board Game "Hues and Cues"

Pentathlon category #ArtScholars

In this event, I played a board game called “Hues and Cues”. The game consists of getting a card, picking a shade (out of four) and giving a clue for that color that does not involve saying the color itself, or the color of anything in the room. The other players must place their playing piece on a color within a color grid, and those with the closest to the actual color gets the most points. Playing this game involved creativity and analysis of the world around us.

This game also helped me gain insight on how different people see the world differently in terms of visual perception. This experience reminded me of when I took an anthropology class at Montgomery College, and how this particular native tribe could distinguish between varying and extremely subtle colors of green (because they had separate names for it) but could not distinguish between blue and green. The American test group had the opposite experience. Recognizing that people have different perceptions of the world and how these could be impacted by external factors of identity (race, gender, ethnicity, etc.) would be a very fascinating research topic and would be something I would like looking into.

However, as I progress in my artistic career, I wish to provide immersive experiences that would impact everyone regardless of how they perceive the world or better yet, provide experiences with an added layer of knowledge that certain groups perceive the world differently.