Influence of New York

From the beginning of my project, my trip to New York was an extremely strong inference. My initial idea was to explore social interaction. This deeply stemed from my experiences of my time there and memorable events and moments. I felt throughout my trip that there was a lack of social interaction, particularly in places you would expect to witness this type of activity. For example when we went to Times Square, a place known for people meeting and gathering, I noticed that in fact there was very little social interaction or true emotion. The only interaction was glimpses of people lives which I heard in moments of conversations. This was in strong contrast to somewhere like Harlem which we also visited. When we were in Harlem I felt a lot more soul, feeling and emotion towards the place. I think this was due to how the people around us interacted with us and wanted to interact. Another form of social interaction which I found interesting was the dynamics of the group of people that came on the trip. The way that other people interacted with the New Yorkers in these various different locations. To spend an intense amount of time with a small tight group of people lead to intimate conversations, jokes and strong relationships. All of this got me excited about social interaction and lead me to want to explore in further.

A lot of the artists that I saw in New York also influenced me to think about how I will potentially explore this concept of social interaction.

After seeing Picasso's Gurnica and the messages and values behind this piece it really made me want to make a statement with my work and think strongly about messages created by artworks. Gurnica is a piece of artwork which often insights strong reactions from viewers. The strong political around this piece is something that extremely interested me leading me to do further research around the bombing in northern Spain, by German and Italian warplanes

The height of everything in New York and the wow factor which it gave me is something that blew me away from the moment we stepped out of the subway. The height and power of the buildings shocked me from the beginning, however made me feel like I was a part of something greater. As well as making me feel like I was on a film set.

The idea of being part of something bigger and greater than me on my own is something that I definitely want to explore further as I develop my personal project. I quickly realised that I wanted to create a way for people to add a part of themselves and have an opportunity to become something bigger and better together.

The idea of being on a set is also possibly something to explore further too. I loved how it felt quite theatrical.

Throughout New York I also noticed very ornate trees. These trees seemed out of place and part of New York at the same time. We took a moment to sit and draw some of these trees. All these trees almost seemed like wire and delicate, I would hope that I can reflect this in my work. These tress made us pause what we were doing and take a moment to look and think. I think that fact we all paused is something I could hopefully get people to do. I would hope that people could have a moment to pause and think, even if it was about something unusual.

I was blown away by seeing the Statue of Libery, how huge it was and everything that it stands for. Our visit to see it was really exciting. The idea of having such a strong and beautiful image of a women repencenting huge messages of freedom and equaility astonded me.