Critical and Creative Thinking

Prompt: IAS students develop their critical and creative thinking abilities by learning how to identify assumptions, and to work out how those assumptions inform results. They assess multiple perspectives, with an eye to understanding why and how they differ, and developing the capacity to engage in controversy productively. Students learn to identify central questions or concerns informing other work, and to develop their own work with an awareness of their own social positions and clear animating questions. Students develop a range of skills in interpretation, analysis, argumentation, application, synthesis, evaluation, and reflection.

What it means to me: Critical and creative thinking is a core part of my process as a creator. To assess things from multiple lenses, taking into account of multiple points of view can be challenging, but my time in IAS has helped this greatly. I have always been a creative, and to now create in a way that requires planning and follow through has opened up a whole knew world to me, especially when it comes to planning tours. Eager to critically analyze my favorite aspects of pop culture, one of these artifacts touches on how video games can be more than just for fun, but can also bring about social change. The other artifact is a view piece that was a homage to another women artist’s work with cosplayers. Both pieces touch on aspects I love about pop culture, but delves into their themes in complicated, creative ways:

BIS 313 B- Games for Social Change
Fall 2017
Can Games Bring Social Change Paper-

As the main thesis to think about through the entirety of this class, I chose to focus on all the games I had written about that quarter to emphasize how games really could be used for social change. Focusing on games that blatantly dealt with social issues like domestic abuse such as the game Papo & Yo, as well as those that provided some sort of health benefit such as the meditative aspects of ABZU, I showed how games can make about social change in different ways. Finally, I discussed the significance of world building within game lore in order to provide more diverse and intersectional characters and storylines, like displayed in the multiplayer first-person shooter, Overwatch, a game with a diverse cast of characters that flesh out the game’s lore in inclusive ways with characters from many walks of life, colors, creeds, sexualities, and genders. This critical analysis of games showed how I could explain that they hold more purpose than simple entertainment.

Can Games Bring About Social Change?

BISIA 240- Images in Time + Space
Winter 2017
Homage to Women Artists (Cao Fei)-

My final project for this class was an opportunity to showcase women artists with our own derivative works. Tasked with creating a short video art piece, I took inspiration from Chinese artist, Cao Fei, who’s best known for her work with fantasy art pertaining to the modern era, primarily using cosplayers as her models. As both a female artist, and cosplayer, I was instantly drawn to her work, and created my own video showcase of the call to cosplay. Recruiting cosplayers of all skill levels, I found that the one thing that brought them all together was the dedication to their craft, their characters, and the escapism it provides from daily life, and tried to show this my work. I critically examined the lives of the cosplayers I worked with to see what brought them to the community, and found a way to show their work in a positive open-minded light with the creative outlet of film.

Below is the final shot of the film that was drawn by myself after the cosplayers I worked with:

BISMCS 472- Advanced Media Production

Winter 2018

Final Film

My final project for this class was an opportunity to have free range over a creative film that followed all of the film techniques we had used during the the quarter. I took inspiration from my own personal life to make this piece a critical and creative look at psychological abuse in relationships. In my piece, a young woman has to deal with her boyfriend who is abusive, not with his hands, but with his words, lying, ignoring her feelings, disrespecting her friends, and gas lighting her on serious issues. After an upsetting breakup, the woman later has to deal with the aftermath of what this abuse has done to her psyche, even as she has started dating again. The spin I put on this was to make the piece a thriller, with a mysterious figure that is introduced in the beginning, and shown throughout the film as a metaphor for the lasting effect emotional abuse can have on a person after the abuse has stopped. Post traumatic stress, depression, and anxiety can all be results of this kind of relationship. This assignment allowed me to show my videography and editing skills while also allowing me to creatively and critically analyze an often un-spoken of social issue.

You can watch the film here: