5 4 5 Followup: Eraince Wang Day 4
I loved Eraince’s Day 4 project! The risk she took that most appealed to me was that she made something purely for the enjoyment of her friends. Given the current cultural and political atmosphere in the US I certainly feel pressure to always produce things that have a socially progressive message. I also happen to think that this type of work is important, BUT there are so many other themes to explore it made me happy to see Eraince’s work.
To make something purely for the enjoyment of one’s friends, even on one’s birthday could be misconstrued as a selfish act by an audience. I see creating things to simply be enjoyed by either by yourself or with friends as something with the potential to be very socially progressive, but in a mush less overt way. If we are able to make things and share them with others, and if those things serve to increase the happiness of others are we not doing a very valuable thing by simply helping to increase the amount of total world happiness? I would answer “yes” to this question.
Her approach to making this piece was also much more active than mine. Where I asked for ideas and then executed them in an attempt to create a dialogue, Eraince came up with her own idea and executed it to draw her friends into an experience. Her idea to reach out with a concept, rather than reach out for an concept is very interesting to me. I feel that her approach could be at least as, if not more, effective than mine at drawing new people into a conversation. By soliciting ideas from my community it means that because of the framework I set up for myself I won’t be immediately reaching new people. In the future I definitely want to try to incorporate and aspect of reaching out to new people to be included in the dialogue I’m already having with my community.
