asylum. Here is the link to my slides! Enjoy 🙂

For my creative remix I will be creating a video with testimonies of immigrants who have come to the United States for asylum. I would like to include the stories of those who have been denied and of those who have been accepted. I will then try to provide with some ideas on how our immigration policy regarding asylum seekers could move forward.

For the extra credit assignment I went to the Virtual Sculpture Gallery located 6-120. When I read the event name in the promoting flyer I actually thought there would be sculptures shown in some kind of technological way. To my surprise, it was models created by students that were later turned into virtual representations by a company specialized in virtual imaging.

My group of friends and I were the only ones that had been to that exhibit, so the students were excited to show us their work. Two students were there representing the class which created the models. The professor (Joshua Whitehead) was explaining to us what the class consisted of and all of the obstacles that came along the way. He said that it was a semester’s worth of work. It’s really amazing how we may see the finished product as small or maybe not worthy of such long dedication. It was interesting to see the talent and complexity of the work. The shapes of the models weren’t simply squares and circles. They were stacked on top one another and printed in 3D. 

Baruch is known as a business school and sometimes it’s hard to acknowledge the different classes and opportunities we have to push our creativity. The class that created these sculptures is Environmental design ART 3041. I loved that this all started from the classroom. Although it was a collaboration between the students and the VR company, the idea and work came from the classroom.

Around the laptops in two separate tables were the sculptures with a sign that said “don’t touch it took 10 hours to make”. I was honestly surprised by the amount of time it took to make because it looked very simple. But later on they explained that each piece was cut precisely to be identical as the other. Along this table they also had google glasses which we needed to download an app to see a virtual world.

What I found most fun and entertaining was the VR glasses connected to the glasses. For a moment I thought that the sculptures were to imitate Baruch’s shape. The glasses were hooked up to computers which had the virtual world programmed and everywhere you moved so would the sculpture. Aside from this we were also given two controllers to help us navigate. The student helped us understand the different things we could do with the controls. We were able to point at one place and then simply teleport there. Fine blue lines would show up if in real life you were close to a wall. So not only was this technology keeping up with the virtual world but also with the real world. Once I learned how to navigate with the controls I began to jump from sculpture to sculpture. Although my feet were set in the ground it felt like I was actually jumping. This shows how our minds can play tricks on us based on what we see. Truthfully, even though it was great to be the one using the VR it was even more amusing to watch my friend’s reactions. I had never used the VR glasses before and was exposed to a new experience. I am generally not a tech savvy person but seeing that this project was so cool and a team effort it’s exciting to think about all that I can learn. 

For those that are not familiar with That 70’s show… Fez is the younger guy who has an accent and whom was sent to America from an unknown country. People always make fun of his culture and the way he speaks and Mr. Forman who is very patriotic and a veteran tries to teach him about America. Obviously he teaches him a very biased history of America. This shows displacement because Fez is displaced in his school although he does have friends, everyone finds him to be the weird one. Mr. Forman even calls him names like “Tarzan” which is not kind and racist. This show shows many different personalities and characters but to me Fez is special because he is comfortable as who he is even when people don’t think so.

How does gentrification affect the dynamic of diverse neighborhoods? How will we end up in the future?

Do you think that gentrification has a lot to do with elected officials and their gerrymandering?

I live in Washington Heights and I have seen the culture erase due to gentrification. Gentrification is often seen as a reason for the decrease of crime rates and is often seen as a positive. Many people view it as a negative because of the increase in real estate, and change in cultural appreciation. Some businesses have shut down while big companies like Starbucks and 711. I have attached a link about the signs we have seen in Washington Heights of gentrification and speaks about the “different faces of Washington Heights.”

https://cooperator.com/article/washington-heights-changing-faces/full

Before reading this text I looked up the definition of the word maladies. I found out that it meant diseases, meaning that Mr. Kapasi would interpret people’s diseases. By simply knowing this, I assumed that he was some kind of curer or doctor. Later on, I found out that his job is literally to communicate what the patient is feeling to the doctor. I found it very interesting how he thought this was a failure job. Given that he knew so many languages and wanted to be an interpreter of diplomats instead, I understand why he feels this way. I felt that his job has so much more meaning than he places on it. Since his son had died from a disease, it’s interesting to see that now he is helping those who can’t communicate how they feel with the doctor as maybe his 7 year old couldn’t at the time. I agreed with Mrs. Das opinion about the true responsibility he had in his hands. Once she confessed to him about the affair I was able to see two different perspectives of this “Interpreter of Maladies” role. She expects him to provide her with a remedy because she feels that keeping that secret and not loving her husband is unhealthy. He doesn’t see how he could possibly help her malady, he thinks that she is in charge and that honesty would help her out. This is when I came to understand that Mr. Kapasi viewed his job as simply language based, while the rest of the world and even the patients viewed him as a key component of the curing process. I enjoyed the connection between the title and the central problem of the story.

“To be lost is nothing to fear,
you are just spinning, gliding, flying
into free fall. Waiting
for the moment when your wings
detach from your sides, catch
the wind underneath their feathers
like sails. Then you learn to flow
with the change of the breeze,
learn to find your rhythm
in the wake of change
with each flap, each shift,
each breath.

To be lost is nothing to fear,
for everything that is lost
is on the path to being found.

And you, my darling, have wings.”

-Marissa Donelly

This is a poem that speaks about the feeling of displacement and being lost. We often see being displaced as a bad thing. It’s a feeling that challenges us and we don’t know how to feel comfortable with it. I think that everything is about perspective. When we see things as negative, they come into our lives with a negative effect. Often, it is helpful to switch perspectives and analyze things deeper. That’s why I encourage you to be comfortable with being uncomfortable. As college students, we may feel physically displaced at Baruch. We also may feel displaced because we are currently exploring and learning new things about ourselves. Society places a lot of pressure on deciding on a major and career. The feeling of displacement should not make this process less valuable or less enjoyable, it should make the moment more special. Therefore, I hope that this poem makes you feel less pressured and more grateful of the process ahead. We all have the power to view things the way we choose, so for a change .. get lost! Get lost within yourself in order to find yourself!

Question 1: Overcoming a family loss, led to the feeling of displacement and hard transitioning.

Question 1: The feeling of displacement in the role I played in the past and now in my family.

Question 3: Where I met my best friend which now is closed down, caused a sense of displacement the other day when we walked around it.

1. Could we argue that the reason why he never felt at “home” was because his mind would constantly travel to other places? Was he trying to construct a home out of many other already established places?
2. Aciman repeatedly speaks about Straus Park and describes it as the “center” of four different directions. Since visiting the park has become a part of his routine, how does nature play a role in his ability to feel comfortable?
3. How come he felt that he could never love New York without envisioning other countries through it? Is it possible that all the different cultures in New York forced him to think this way?