Chicago; The City That Works

The City That Works is a project that I did for my photojournalism course. For the winter term, I took an independent study in Photojournalism. In order for me to take this course, I had to do a proposal. I chose to focus on this subject because it's something that I've been passionate about and I wanted to dedicate more of my time to it and figure out what I truly enjoyed about it. One of my inspirations coming into this class was Vice's style of documentation and Adrienne Salinger's "In My Room" project. I started the course off with research. I learned about influential photographers in the community like Larry Clark and Erika Bowes. That was probably my favorite part of the course because I learned so much about the development of different styles and how important photography is to me. It was really fun to look at the process of some well known photographers. Here's some of my favorite works that I discovered:

Philip-Lorca diCorcia, DeBruce, 1999

Nan Goldin, Misty and Jimmy Paulette in a taxi, NYC, 1991

At first, I didn't know what I wanted to make as a project to show of what I learned. I knew I wanted to interview people because that's something that I enjoy because it allows you to know the subject beyond the photo. The process of finding out what to wasn't that hard but I had to be practical and consider who I had access to. A consistent thought was I wanted to document people doing what they love or something important to them. It then came apparent that I should do workers in Chicago and it was a good opportunity to have an insight of how this city is actually ran beyond the politicians and news casters.

Overall, I'm so glad that I proposed this independent study. This was a great opportunity for me and a great learning experience.

The Celestial Clock

Welcome to my third and final Action Project for the Winter 2019 STEAM course Light, Sound and Time. Not only am I wrapping up my class but I’m wrapping up the unit, Time. During this unit, we learned about a few science principles having to do with time like longitude and latitude, and time zones. For this unit, my classmates and I had a field experience at the planetarium. The most relevant things that we saw there were telescopes and we sat in on a presentation about travelling through the universe. During this course, we had mini lessons. A mini lesson is when one of my classmates presented to the class based on a concept from a book that connected with the class. I presented about wormholes and the book that I read was A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking. Applying the “M” in STEAM, I learned about Pythagoras and arcs. I also learned how to calculate longitude.

I think that my favorite things about this course were to learn about the universe and the culture of time telling. I reflected those interests into my Action Project. The Project for this unit was to make a design of a time telling device. My design is called The Celestial Clock. This device represents time by telling the placements of the planets every 24 hours. It also tells time by having a 24 analog dial.

MW, The CC, 2019

My inspiration for this design was the astronomical clocks invented by Su Song, a Chinese scientist and astronomer, which was also operated by water. The Celestial Clock is in the shape of a cylinder. On the top of the cylinder is an analog clock and the cylinder is see through so that you can see the Milky Way and the placement of the planets. You don't have to be an astronomer to want to know where the planets are so I wanted to make a clock that's accessible for everyday people.
Here are the dimensions:

Diameter- 6.5 in
Clock circumference- 20.42
Height- 4.5 in
Volume- 149.32 in

MW, The Celestial Clock Arc Length, 2019

The process of making this design wasn’t that hard because during class we had to research time telling devices so I already knew what I liked after further researching these devices. This design is purposeful for people who are into astronomy. I really wanted to make a physical version of my design and I might because it seems like such a cool idea. I learned a lot and it was fun to incorporate history and theory into a STEAM class.

People's assembly, Policing a Nation

This post is dedicated to my final Action Project for my Winter term Humanities course called A Nations Argument. The third unit focused on the 1960’s and we focused on civil rights and the bill of rights. I learned about Dialectics and how they connect to argument. In one of my last classes for this course, my classmates and I attended an online Yale lecture. We also attended two other lectures in the previous units. In this specific lecture, the lectern was Professor Jonathan Holloway. He discussed the civil rights era and events within 1964-1966. I think this is my favorite lecture so far.

KS, DS, Policing Assembly, 2019

We started the unit off with our Action project. My classmates and I hosted a people’s assembly with the help of a Regina Holloway, a senior program manager for the NYU School of Law Policing Project. To prepare, my class divided into 3 teams, people research, topic research, and agenda managers. I was apart of the people research team. We invited Regina, 2 other community activist and a Police Sergeant, who’s taking apart of the Policing Projects pilot. We used this as an opportunity to discuss what we researched and ultimately get different perspectives in our community of Chicago.

There was really helpful conversation. I wish that we had more time and my classmates and I got to share more of our opinions and experiences but it was very informative. We started off with the conversation of policing in schools and here’s where you’ll see how I put my skills of dialectics to the test and break down one of the arguments used in our discussion.

Amending the Test

For my Winter 2019 humanities course, Argument we studied the constitution. Within that, we focused on the amendments and bill of rights, my classmates and I studied different cases . We also learned how to set up a proper argument in unit one. We went to 2 different field experiences, the first one was going to the  Citizenship and Naturalization Court downtown and towards the end of the term we had a great experience at a City Council meeting on Public Charge. Determining if you're liable to become a Public Charge is when you are likely to be dependent on the government for things such as food stamps or section eight, it denies immigrants citizenship because they would be a charge to the United States. This was an interesting field experience, we got to hear from a citizen called George Blakemore and he is an activist in Chicago.

Wasserman, Immigration Cartoon, 2019

I'm a fan of political comics, I think that this is relevant with the government and people who are very ignorant towards the immigration process so I think this is a good representation on how we need to change the immigration system.
For this Action project, I amended the naturalization test. The current test has 100 question with many opportunities to be right or wrong, meaning the questions weren't the most airtight and had a lot of options of answers. What I did was make my own test. I took questions off of the test and amended them, I chose the ones that I felt are the most important and tried to make them more frank.I also added a few scenario's about american citizenship that covers some of the question on the naturalization test but it makes it more practical to your everyday life.

Here are the four questions that I chose and how I amended them in bold.

Before: In what month do we vote for President?
             What is the name of the President of the United States now?

After: What is the name of the President of the United States now? When were they voted in?

Before: 13. Name one branch or part of the government.

After: Name all 3 branches of government?  What is one thing that each of them exclusively do?

Before: There are four amendments to the Constitution about who can vote. Describe one of them.

After: Describe the requirements for voting, according to the constitution.

Before: What is the economic system in the United States?

After: What is the economic system in the United States? What does that mean?

Here is my Argument.
        Knowing something without context is useless.
        Explanation is a good way to learn context.
        The test should have more question that asks for explanation.

I think that this unit was very thought provoking and challenging. I had to use empathy and my knowledge of the US laws to create this test. There were many times that I felt under-qualified to make this and even intrusive because I know many people who are greatly affected by US immigration laws, I had to use different perspectives. My main inspiration for what I did was my teachers and I used my past experience on taking tests. I think that it was a useful project nonetheless.

Sound Waves from Space

THE DIDDLEY BOW

I’m on my second unit for light, sound and time. In this unit we focused heavily on sound. My classmates and I learned the anatomy of the eye, the Doppler effect, and science principles like frequency and wavelength. For a field experience, we went to the Chicago Music Exchange for our external investigation. There we got to ask questions about how sound travels through instruments. This was a smooth transition into our action project where we built our own diddley bows.

A diddley bow is a one stringed guitar made with a plank of wood serving as the neck, a metal can serving as a sound hole, a guitar string, a battery that serves as the bridge.

Diddley Bow, MW, 2019

It took me about 2 hours to create my diddley bow. I started with my board of wood and a tin can with a hole in the middle so the string can go through. The first thing I had to do was secure my sound hole. I did this by adding a screw on each side of the can. Then I had to wrap a portion of my string around the furthest screw. After that, I added another screw on the other end of the neck, then wrapped the other side of the string around to create as much tension as possible, this’ll create a cleaner sound. I also had to be careful not to break the string by making it too tight. The final step is to slide the bridge in on the side without the can as far as possible. 

My string thickness- .02inches

When it’s played, the stings makes vibrations, the vibrations travel from the string to the air in order for us to hear the sound. We can change the way it sounds by four different ways-

1- The length of the string

2- Thickness of the string 

3- Tension of the string

4- The string material

My diddley bow-

Diddley bow, MW 2019

Diddley bow (2), MW, 2019

DB Calculations, 2019, MW

Harmonics, MW, 2019

The harmonic waves are waves with frequencies. In order for the wave to be calculated, I had to find the frequency, which I did above. 

Lights, Camera's, Action Project!

This is my first action project for my winter term STEAM class, Light, Sound, and Time. During the first unit I learned about the fundamentals of light. I also did review trigonometry from my first term class, Design and Engineering. We also talked about science principles like if light is a wave or particle. A short answer would be light has the capabilities to be both but in the process of my action project, light acted as a wave because there was no metal involved and reflected light through the camera. Me and my classmates had the opportunity to go to a darkroom, this is where we tried out our cameras. This had to be my favorite Field Experience yet.

For this action project, my classmates and I made a pinhole camera. In order to make one, we had to take a container and make it into a light proof box. In order for it to be light proof, we had to paint the inside black so that no light can reflect through the box, if it was white it would be too bright on the inside. Then we had to tape off any corner that light can pass through to ensure it’s completely light proof. Then we use an aluminum can and cut it into a small square, that will act as a lens. We also had to make a lens cap to make sure no light goes through the pinhole when walking back and forth from the darkroom. When we put a piece of film paper inside of it and expose the pinhole to light, it will project the image onto the paper backwards. When I went to the darkroom, we were able to use the camera to put it to the test. First I had to set up my scene in front of a backdrop. This included what I wanted the picture to be. I chose a clock for the first one but for the second one I decided to choose some figurines. After the scene is set up, I had to open the “lens cap”. This is when I time the shutter speed. Shutter speed is just how long you want the light to hit the inside of your camera. To get a good image, we had to have a shutter speed of 3.5-5 minutes. I chose to do 5 minute because I wanted a really clear image. However, because my shutter speed was so long, I had to be sure not to have any movement in my image, it’ll not turn out right.

MW, First attempt, 2019

MW, 2nd jpg, 2019

In my first image, my lens cap flew down for a few seconds without me noticing. You can see that really affected the image by the way it’s flipped. In my second image, I liked the way that it turned out. What I did differently was taped the lens cap up so I can ensure it wouldn't flop down. I also set the subjects on books to be higher so I know that they'll be in frame. We also had a chance to do a photo-gram, the process of that was setting up a scene and capturing it with light. 

MW,Leg wars, 2019 

Here are my calculations:

MW, Calculations, 2019

MW, Light rays inside camera, 2019

In class, we also talked about refection and refraction. Refraction is when light enters through a different medium and changes direction. Reflection is when light bounces off of a surface. My camera doesn't demonstrate neither reflection or refraction because it does neither of those things.

I Declare Anthropology!

Below, you can see my declaration for independent study. This is my first Action project for my Humanities course called A Nations Argument. During this course my classmates and I learned the framework of an argument and what makes a successful argument. We had a great opportunity to be guests at the Cook County Courthouse for a black history program and were able to see the opening statements of a live trial following an interactive panel of successful black workers who have a career in law. We also focused on the declaration of independence and that's what really led us up to this project. Inside of the declaration we saw a good example of a successful argument. What my job was for the Action Project was to make a declaration of my own for independent study. 

I chose to do someting that has to deal with human behavior and observing it. Human behavior and observation by themselves are very broad subjects to study. I had to narrow it down in order to create an airtight argument. With the help of my teacher, we came to the decision that what I was looking for was the subject of Anthropology. That STILL being a very broad subject, I did some research and was finally able to narrow it down to Structural Anthropology. Structural Anthropology is a subject inside of Anthropology, some know it as socialism. It is based off of the idea developed by Claude Lévi-Strauss.