Shivani's SAS Blog

Now that I have my CAD program set and a solid idea, I started creating the mould to pour my concrete in. I used the same material from our last project, plaster-board, to create the outside of my mold. Since I was making this triangle object, I created a triangular prism without the top as my external mold. Next, I created small pieces for each of the side triangles (rectangles attached to triangles that would fold over) and placed them in each corner of the triangular prism. Since this plaster board had ridges, I needed a way to cover up the holes that resulted from folding the board over, so Mr. Williams suggested I use small strips of balsa wood. I just used the glue gun to glue these strips into place, and I was done with my mold. This is what it looked like before pouring concrete into it: After the concrete dried, I cut open the mold to reveal my object. I haven't taken any pictures of it yet, but it didn't look very good. The inner corners were very uneven be...

Before I start my reflection, I wanted to split my blog posts into 3 parts: designing, trial 1, trial 2. My blog posts will go chronologically from step 1 to step 2 to step 3. I spent quite a bit of time on the brainstorm/design stage during this project. Initially, I had numerous ideas for a concrete object, and many of my ideas were very complex. After a few classes of sketching and planning different objects, I finally simplified it to the object I carried out the rest of the project on. I made the CAD image for several ideas I was considering: (This one was extremely complicated, and I didn't really know how to create this out of concrete. In addition, it didn't really have a specific function.) (This one was an idea I really liked, however I realized it would still be really hard to make this structure out of concrete. However, the function for this concrete piece would be a stand of some sort - I was thinking something to do with displaying jewelry) These two ide...

This is the concrete candle holder I made in class. We got a mould outline on paper, and I taped this outline to a piece of plastic poster board. Using an x-acto knife, I cut out the mould, and lightly marked the folds by making shallow cuts with the blade. Since I used x-acto knives in my summer architectural program, I already had some experience. I'm grateful for this experience, because a cleaner mould cutout created straight edges in my concrete candle holder.  The left photo is of my concrete structure still in it's mould of a plastic bottle. The hole in the middle was created by placing a straw in wet concrete, and I let this dry by leaning the bottle against a roll of tape to create a "slant" effect. I was going for an abstract, unique structure, and I think I succeeded. 

The insights I got from the 2nd day of workshops were mainly a better understanding of poetry and literary devices compared to last class. My top three insights were how detrimental abstract words can be, how important the structure of your poem is, and themes. While analyzing poems, a lot of us used abstract words, and sometimes they’re useful, but most of the time they’re confusing for the reader. This is because we were trying to describe an abstract topic with abstract words, making the poem very uncertain for the reader, because there were so many ways to analyze it. Secondly, I realized how important structure is for a poem. For one of the poems we read, there were no stanza breaks, and the line breaks were all random. This made it very confusing for the reader, because although there were tone and even subject shifts during the poem, since it was all bunched together that made it hard to separate. If there was a stanza break at the tone shift, the poem would have flowed much...

The top three insights about writing I got from the workshop today were the importance of the speaker, nuanced language, and imagery. During our workshop conversation, many of the speakers in the poems we analyzed were quite confusing, because the author didn’t provide enough detail on who was speaking. This often made the entire poem confusing because we didn’t know the point of view. Next, I realized how important nuanced language is in poetry and writing, because one word can have many different connotations. Sometimes, these connotations are implied, but sometimes it can be a mistake, so you have to make sure to use purposeful words while writing because it can be analyzed the wrong way. Finally, I noticed how vivid imagery in poetry added a deeper level for the reader to observe, because along with the tone shifts and emotions from the poem, the reader can now visualize the setting and the subject. Vivid imagery makes the poem more interesting and engaging for the audience. One...

     During the summative task, my biggest challenge was figuring out exactly how the poem conveyed their specific tone. Since I had my tone sheet, figuring out what tone was conveyed wasn't extremely challenging, but when I had to explain how the poem displayed that tone, I faced some problems.      I mainly focused on what rhetorical devices the author used, for example: metaphors, imagery and diction. After analyzing the use of these rhetorical devices, I tried to relate them to the tone I saw was conveyed in those few lines. The challenge here was figuring out how a metaphor conveyed a nostalgic tone, or how diction conveyed a dark tone. In addition, I found it hard to differentiate between the subject's emotions and the tone of the poem, because analyzing the rhetorical devices wasn't enough to separate these two. What I did instead was focus on how I felt after reading a specific line or stanza, and use that to identify the correct tone. Overall, al...

The left structure is my final model for our concrete candle holder using the Sketchup software. The right structure with all the extra lines shows my process for how I made the final model. Using both geometry and previous Sketchup experience, I was able to successfully create my concrete structure on the computer.