(2019.07.28 ~ 29) walking around the city with butterflies in my belly

07.28

I was always huge fan of this event called Lucky Jewel. It is run by my good friends from Chicago and I am participating as an artist for it this time. Planning on making two robotic sculptures and order to make them, I need some help with the coding and trouble shootings. Since I am not in the school anymore, there were no one to help me but I found about class called "Making Things Move" in NYC register. NYC register is a hacker/maker space in Atlantic Terminal and they sometimes hold a classes for people who are just started to code or are interested in arudino. I sent them email about if they can help with my project and they said they can. Being in classroom and looking at presentations to learn... was something that truly missed. However, I know that this nostalgia won't last. Though I enjoyed following along the class and made some good progress, I didn't like the atmosphere of the students in there, which ended up not saying a thing to them. This particular guy who has groggy voice and talked super slow with very condescending attitude would interrupt the instructor every 10 minute and the subjects of the questions were irrelevant to the class. The class went over basic arduino stuffs including motors like: stepping motor, potentiometer, hello world, and etc. I needed to stay after the class to ask questions that I needed help with. They helped me a bit but mostly it was stuffs that I needed to experiment with. I will go back for open hours.

Came back to my house and chilled for a moment chatting with Wi. I always love talking to her because of her accepting and funny characteristics. We talked about our general life and potential schools - she wants to go to graduate school as sound major but exclusive Europe since they have much cheaper tuition. American school tuitions are out of world amount of money but since I went to all the schools here and I also like the city so much, I am leaning towards to at least do post-bacc in New York. But I don't know, my plans has been changing every moments... but one thing that I am sticking with is that the fact that I want to pursue my artistic/physical computing career. I am most confident when I make works and exhibit them. I love when my works circulates within the conversations of care and critical thinking. I barely feel that art making drains me spiritually when the other jobs do -- like modeling or something that is more temporary, those make me feel like I am going off the direction that I want to head. However, works besides making art would give me the opportunity of connect with wider range of people and also offer a fresh fulfilling mood boost very quickly. It is very different from when I show and make sculptures. With those, I am deep down satisfied... incredible adrenaline boost, makes me feel like I can do whatever and there is endless interests that I want to research that i feel like it is need to be heard from the world. Finding a balance from those two is I would have to work on.

Me and Philip went to Dimes restaurant. We both craved meat and ordered pulled pork for him and steak for myself. The food was incredible just like how they looked. We ate the whole dish so fast with continuous complement on fried mushroom that was side dish of pulled pork.

Philip and I were planning to go to this screening by IFIAAR at cactus house. The screening was compilation of animal videos that were sent by human witnesser in their day to day lives It was divided by two parts and intermission in between. We drank the honey nectar tequila punch that was provided for the audience and right before the second part started, Allegra joined us. The screening was over and us three went to Seward park to ride swing. Riding a swing in a very long time was extremely entertaining. The wind hitting my body, me going through the block of air that shatters as soon as I hit them. The experience of floating in the space going against the gravity solely depending the arms and the hands as I hold the chains. I looked up the sky and saw three bright stars.. and as longer I stared at them, more stars would show up. It started as three and then around ten and then when I was reaching 1 minute, I couldn't even count all the stars that were in my sight. Allegra, Philip, and I sat on the bench started talking about how we all miss creating something-- especially wanting to have discipline where someone would pushes us in the directions of what we want to pursue, ready to spend our time in institution where it will forced to think critically and open opportunities that can bring us to another.

My interests always circles around relationship and sensations. I have dealt with hyperesthesia throughout my life and it has ups and downs. The negative part of living with hyper sensation is that you react to external circumstances very fast in bodily level. You would be out of breath, faintness, tunnel vision, wanting to puke, etc and I go through this almost everyday from the things that people might think it is very subtle. ex) smell, loudness, stress. Nobody will understand unless they have same condition as me. However, the positive side is that I strongly believe my bodily experience. I have very tuned sense of catching beauty from looking at something, also I am good at visualizing the atmosphere… capturing the visual language. So the condition became apparatus for me to create something that wouldn’t be seen in this world if I don’t make it. I put a lot of value in those because there are things that should be talked and seen when they are not visible. If I can make the conversations, that is when I get most excited. Gestural language… can speak more than verbal language. It eliminates many semiotics that is embedded in the symbols of verbal language and is left with pure communication. I am in the process of researching very shallow surface of what I want to dig deeper… but I am happy that I found something that

I can be passionate about while studying it.

07.29

I woke up and went to open house for ITP, the program that is part of Tisch, thinking that it is something that I want to apply for. I emailed this Japanese woman named Midori, who is administrative director in ITP, saying I want to go visit and listen about how the program works in detail. I met her and had brief conversations — but it turns out the program is more programming heavy than I expected though when they said they seek for the students with creativity… I would have to do collaborations all the time, which I am not very interested, and also she said there is no critiques. Realistically, the program was more centered in making practical stuff and I know it will definitely help me a lot but I am hundred percent sure that I can’t commit myself into that environment for 2 years. I should know what I am capable of before I jump in. But Midori told me about alternative programs that I can take like 4 weeks of intense coding summer camp. I am down to do that. After the open house, I went to uniqlo and bought some socks and then went to work…