Ruben CS STA 351

The second installation project, Constellations in Our Heritage, was based on the concept of time. I decided that I wanted to incorporate my heritage with astronomy. With that in mind, I based my installation off of the constellations that the ancient Mayans used to tell time for agricultural routines and daily life. Why did I decide to go back to the time and place of the Mayans? Because of my heritage that leads back to them. I felt a great connection to this project. The concept is whether it be the stars, constellations, planets, or galaxies that we see in the night sky, humans have become dependent on them to function in society. In my Mayan heritage, astronomy was mainly used for agricultural planning and timekeeping. The message that I wanted to share through this installation was how important it is that we remember our heritage that revolves around astronomy. Everybody comes from a culture, and every culture has used astronomy to survive and live their everyday lives in some way or another.

My final project of the semester was titled Perception. The goal of this installation was to be interactive with the community in some way or another. Since the beginning of the course, I had been wanting to do a large scaled yet simplistic installation. I thought that this community-based one would be the perfect one to do that since I could used the observance and perspectives of the audience as the interactive aspect.  The concept of Perception was for people to be able to peer through the different colored panels to the environment around them in order to see it in a different way. The message is that changing the lenses we see things through determines how we perceive the world around us.