Dystopia, Book, Art

Hi and welcome to what seems to be the first blog post of my grade 12 year! 

It has been quite a wild ride since September and boy have we been busy. While we’re currently (rapidly) trying to finish up out “OH the horrors” (pending) unit, for this years winter exhibition we presented dystopian models. 

After our horror movie was fully filmed (notice how i didn’t say complete) we went straight into out dystopia unit. This was fun alright. 

We stared with learning about what on earth a real dystopia even is, and spoiler alter is not just Hunger Games and Divergent.  

We continued to learn about; the difference between dystopia and Utopia, a quick refresher on propaganda, what makes a dystopia society as-well as different types of dystopian control

 

Once we were knowledgeable in terms of what a dystopia looks like, we read some Examples. 

While reading each novel, we were tasked with taking notes on the following:

• Characteristics of dystopia present in the novel 
• Dystopian controls 
• Connections made throughout the novel 
• Intended message – prevailing themes 

I had the opportunity to read Farenheit 451 and with that I learned  a lot about Government control, censorship and the clash between conformity v.s. Individuality. 

—

While reading our chosen novel, we spent a lot of time learning about conceptual art, and what on earth that is. 

We learned about what makes conceptual art conceptual, who commonly makes conceptual art and the importance of it in todays society. 

(Ad youtube link, videos, photos lalalala)

Then we created our own, very simplistic of course and to me, maybe a little far fetched but conceptual art nonetheless. 

As we continued to make progress in ur novels, be continues making progress in our “conceptual art understanding”

And with that boom! Our novel was done! Finally. Lovely book by the way, not “lovely” based on content but I thought it was very well written and I personally enjoyed it 

**Press the photo to see full document

 

Once everyone was done their chosen novel, we went straight into our “Annotated biography”

This was probably the hardest part of this entire project. To finding proper, crinkle sources to making a strong, concise connection from a source to our novel to our overall theme, it was hard work but in the end in very happy with my connections. 

We were assigned to first, choose a theme that could be used as a research promoted and with that find 5-6 sources that support your “themes” or claim and them MLA cite, summarize and make connections to your novel. 

My research prompt was: Government and censorship

And with that prompt I was able to find to make 6 different connections with 4 sources, a movie and of course, My novel.

Combined with our conceptual art exposer and our new-found dystopia knowledge, be began to start design and creating our own pieces of conceptual art, that to us, would portray a theme of modern-day dystopia. Using connections and themes present throughout our novels, modern day news and media, and our annotated biography sources, we would each create a piece of art to present at our winter exhibition. 

With that, the design process was lengthy. 

After countless re-designs and pivoted ideas and just straight up failed attempt, i found it!! My design!!. And once design was complete, we had to write an artists statement, or “an explanation”

And then the building…

Oh my gosh was this an ordeal.

So in my originally idea, I wanted to make the water move in the top, inside the “plunger”, but it proved to be WAY to be too hard and extremely technically challenging. I was extremely close to just giving up and taking yet another dramatic privet but Mr. Harris had the idea of the water moving set in stone. So we worked it out and in the end this is what I designed and created. Attached is the ”blueprint” or the logistics of how I made it work:

Shoutout to Theryn’s dad for helping me out!! Literally wouldn’t have a product without him. 

And in the end it worked!!! Yay  

In the end, while this was an extremely informative and interesting, it was also quite stressful, but what project isn’t all those things??

My final takeaway is we are much more closer to a modern-day-dystopia than we think, with Donald trumps re-election, the countless exsamples of Government control and censorship (banned books, social media terms and conditions, iPhones, journalism, etc,) and well the list goes on. If that integers you, I fully suggest spending a couple minutes going down this rabbit hole of Modern dystopias and seeing where it will take you.

Here is are a few sources I found interesting and “thought-provoking:

• America Has Always Been a Dystopia – Brian Merchant 
• Damn it, I love America – Kawika Miles
• Project 2025, the dystopian political agenda you need to know about – Chantal Bellefeuille

 Hannah 🧉🫘🍫🌰🍪