Event 1: Understanding Arts Based Research Workshop (4/5/19)

During the first week of this course, I had the opportunity to attend the Understanding ARTS based Research Workshop. The seminar I chose to sign up for was “Unseen: The Invisible Menace” led by Jiayi young. I simply chose this topic from its engaging title.

                                          Selfie with Jiayi Young, Assistant Professor of Design 

                                          at the University of California, Davis. 

The entire workshop was very engaging, interactive, and different from any previous seminar I attended. I am used to going to research conferences and meetings where individuals present their scientific research to the public. For the most part, it has been lecture-style where the presenter speaks about their project for the entire allotted time. This workshop was completely different. Jiayi Young introduced her topic of CO2 (the invisible menace) and its effects on the earth, but then turned to her audience to complete the seminar. We were told to pair up and work on inflating long strips of plastic tubes with air. We were limited to 2 min per tube. When we had enough tubes, we were told to form a cube.

 The group working to fill the tubes (left) and the blueprint of the cube along with some inflated tubes (right).                                                   

The emphasis of this project was to work together to create a 12ft by 12ft cube in less than an hour. We weren’t given many instructions but were given the freedom to work on any aspect of the cube. From the 20-30 individuals who were present, we divided up the workload to get all the tubes inflated. After some time, a few of us diverged to begin building the cube.

                                          Taking a picture with the almost-ready cube. 

The process wasn’t perfect, but that was exactly the point. We continued to work together with people we just met to circumvent some of the problems faced. This workshop was fascinating because it united many subjects in one project. It was a creative and artistic, engineering project that had a message behind it. That cube that we filled represented one metric ton of CO2. The idea was that excessive CO2 from cars, for example, hurt our environment, but because we don’t see an immediate effect of the “invisible menace,” many people ignore this problem. The project enabled us to visualize the unseen and understand the impact that CO2 can have. Even more important, we came to that conclusion on our own. By including and interacting with the audience rather than lecturing, Jiayi Young indirectly revealed to us her main point behind the very inventive project.