Put Something Here 2.0 (con.)

Put Something Here 2.0 from aymann ismail on Vimeo.

I went back to the same location, this time equipped with a camera (and extra batteries just in case). In the previous version of this assignment, I put a video depicting a struggle of identity in a public place to insight debate. To push it foreword, I put the debate in a more public place.

Augmented Reality

After the lecture last class, i found this article very interesting

http://thecreatorsproject.com/blog/iphone-app-lets-you-turn-real-life-into-star-wars

augmented reality is taking over, i'm very interested where private coders will go with this technology...

...

look theres more!

http://www.thecreatorsproject.com/blog/paint-all-over-your-world

Sara Drury

Based on Sara Drury's works that we have seen in class and the works that are viewable online, I would like to know her views on interactivity and wether or not available technology would push her work further or she would complete and present them the same way.

I would also like to know if she would ever consider combining her creative experiments with tasks of daily life to create a blend of creativity and practicality.

Last, I would like to know why Sara Drury uses musical elements in a lot of her work, and if she would ever use pre-recorded music samples to automate the instillation work.

Put Something Here 2.0

After finishing Put Something Here 1.2, I was inspired by the dialogue that was created in a public space about a topic that is very sensitive in today's world. I wanted to take this idea to the next level and go to the streets and engage people in direct conversation about Muslims in America and how their identities can come with negative stigmas attached. I interviewed several people of all backgrounds, including other Muslims, and the responses were very diverse. One student, who claimed to have many Muslim friends, could not identify a single difference between Muslims and Arabs other than "One can have many wives right?" Another student went as far to say that there isn't too much of a Muslim presence on the College Avenue Campus because it primarily a caucasian campus.

Not everyone was dead wrong with their responses, as one student went a far to tell me less than 20% of the Muslim population in the world is of Arab descent. Out of disbelief, I looked it up and discovered it to be true that only 15-18 percent of all Muslims are Arab. I took my video camera and recorded all of the interviews, but for some reason the audio was not recorded, making the video useless.

I will be returning to the same setting and asking a new set of people similar questions with more direction and create a video discussion between different students on campus about what Muslim identity is about and how it is dangerous to believe false facts about a large diverse group of people.

Put Something Here 1.2

To take my video to the next step, i grasped the idea of really shoving the video into people's faces. For the 1.0 version of Put Something Here, I had posted the video online to Youtube, but did not receive as many views as I had hoped for. To really try and get a response from people, I spammed the computers in a Rutgers computer lab by logging into every computer available and played the video on loop for everyone to see. To get the proper responses out of people, i stayed in the computer lab and claimed ownership of the video.

Students asked me what it was about and I asked them to interpret on their own. The opinions were widespread, but most visitors understood the piece to be about personal id

entity. Many students had questions about the challenges of being a Muslim in America, and I explained my view point and experiences.

I feel that this method of presentation was most effective, only because of my ability to have 1 on 1 conversations with those who were interested in learning about the differences between being an Muslim in America, and being a member of any other faith. Some questions that were brought up were very serious in nature. One example that stood out came from a Jewish student who spent time studying in Israel. He was very kind and shy about asking wether or not all Muslims hate his country, but as the conversation grew more intimate, I was able to dispel the fallacies that surround the issue as being as a religious conflict rather than the political conflict that it is.