Collaborate

Empathize

Material Exploration

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Reading & Media Literacy

This project aims to facilitate discussions of the immigration of Cambodians to the United States using Noum Kong, a Cambodian street-food pastry similar to donuts. California and Oregon have a substantial number of Cambodian immigrant-owned donut businesses due to their familiarity with making pastries similar to donuts. When the United States government and the Khmer Rouge began the Cambodian genocide during the Vietnam War, many people had to flee Cambodia and find a way to make a living somewhere else. Despite the cultural influence and the heavy United States involvement, the Cambodian genocide and resulting migrations are rarely discussed in the United States. With the reliable combination of donuts and research, we facilitated a discussion about these events with peers.

I worked on skills in research and discussion. I made attempts to become more comfortable with serious, researched writing. Generally, I worked on communication skills (which I may actually have someday). At the end of this studio I felt like I had completed a functional project, which only happens sometimes.

Empathize

Collaborate

Research

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Express

Exoticism Unwrapped is an exploration of the concept of exoticism while working through the lenses of representation of different cultures through food. Using cooking as our medium, we explored the origins of the Mediterranean diet—a diet used to encourage heart health-- and upon uncovering it misrepresents the actual diet of the Mediterranean, chose to create a meal that both follows some of the key parts of the “Mediterranean diet” while also sharing a meal that is found in a wider amount of places. Sarma, our dish, which features rice, onions, and meat wrapped in grape leaves and seasoned with allspice, is found all over the countries surrounding the Mediterranean Sea and comes in a lot of different forms. The dish also follows the Mediterranean Diet’s general rules of being low in red meat and high in other fats, with a healthy balance of grains and vegetables.

We haven't done G4G for so long, but reflecting on my goals from last time, I think we collaborated well enough in the end, and some parts went well! we successfully cooked together and we made decent food, and that went well, there were minimal disagreements.. but i think overall this project it was not organized enough to be a successful collaboration-- we all knew what we generally wanted to do but our ideas never really got refined and our project really suffered from it. Our final project did somewhat come together but we weren't refined by pencils down and our concept just, doesn't hold up (as we learned during the final presentation).

Concept Development

Collaborate

Physical Fabrication

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Concept Development

 Exoticism Unwrapped is a project aiming to challenge the popularization of the Mediterranean diet in America. The American Mediterranean diet is based off the food of Greece and Italy, ignoring the rest of the 20 countries in the Mediterranean Sea region. Our group held a workshop where attendees cooked a dish that's common through the whole Mediterranean region, Yebra. The workshop also facilitated a conversation about the exoticism of food in America,

In this studio, my main goal was to participate in interesting discussions and learn how to discuss world politics with more poise and compassion. I think the workshop our group lead was a good example of these things, the discussions were productive and fun, and the food was pretty darn tasty. I think I learned more about the application of food, I don't cook very often. And when I do its usually dishes I've made many times before. So this was a good learning curve!

Exoticism Unwrapped is a project that examines exoticism via a workshop as well as an interactive food exhibit in order to facilitate conversations and discussions about all aspects of exoticism. In this project, we contrast the allure of exotic foreign food as one with extraordinary health benefits with that of unfamiliar cuisines with deep cultural roots that may be unappetizing to American sensibilities.

Engage & Persist

Empathise

Itteration

Exoticism Unwrapped is a project that examines exoticism via a workshop as well as an interactive food exhibit in order to facilitate conversations and discussions about all aspects of exoticism. In this project, we contrast the allure of exotic foreign food as one with extraordinary health benefits with that of unfamiliar cuisines with deep cultural roots that may be unappetizing to American sensibilities.

We did a lot of iterating and spent many days simply brainstorming until we had an idea that we all felt proud of. This likely took up most of our time but was well worth it. I think that my concept development and iteration skills are what grew most during this studio. A large key point of this studio was empathizing, as we were empathising with the cultures whose foods we were making.

Concept Development

Habit of Mind

Habit of Mind

Core Skill

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Core Skill

Sushi Discussions is an exploration into the americanization of asian cuisines and a deep dive into assimilation, soft power, cultural diplomacy, and the food and language involved in the perception of japanese culture. To do this, we served sushi and facilitated conversations about the perception of asian foods, and the correlations between fanciness, price, cultural authenticity, and the words we use to describe these dishes.

I think i grew alot with my reserch skills since i had to do more reserch than previous studios. Im glad i got to practice more cooking (especially the sushi) I had made sushi sushi once before but felt we were able to make it better this time in studio.

envision

exspress

Concept Development

writing



This studio is about making food to talk about some sort of geo-political issue.

Our project brings awareness to one of the first Cambodian donut entrepreneurs and the history of Cambodia and Cambodian-American immigration through noum kong. We intend to do this via the lens of America and focus on immigration policies and Henry Kissinger's actions during the Vietnam War. we also intend to cover one of the biggest success stories for Cambodian immigrants, Ted Ngoy. This topic is important because of how Henry Kissinger is often glorified and how Americans tend to focus on their losses in the Vietnam War.

I i think improved at envisioning I have gotten better at picturing how something could connect to something else. at the beginning of the studio, I was unsure about how I would connect food to more broad geopolitical issues but I feel like I understand it better now, and not only for my project. for writing, I feel like I improved my flow while writing, the transitions in my pamphlet were smother than in some of the other things I have written. and I also learned what active writing meant and how it can be better at more clearly demonstrating what was done. exspress goes a bit hand in hand with writing and I feel pretty good about how well I expressed the idea I was going for during the presentations people didn't have many questions and during most of my other presentations, there are usually more. for concept development, I think I've gotten better at decreasing my scope to something more feasible. because in the past I've had a lot of trouble with scope and I've tried to accomplish way too much in not nearly enough time I struggled with this at the beginning when I wanted to make the noum kong more complicated so that the connection would be more clear. after some research, we decided that it was good how it was and if I wanted to add some sort of extra layer of complication tactfully I would have to spend a lot more time than we had to research and we transitioned from the food to the issues we wanted to address well in the end.

Collaborate

Engage & Persist

Research

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Writing

Sushi Discussions is a project that uses sushi as its medium to have difficult discussions. Sushi has become a modern cuisine that people from around the world enjoy, but it was derived from China between the 5th and 3rd BC. It was known as "the poor man's diet." The hard topic of discussion this project was based around is how sushi became Americanized, and how they adapted such a traditional simple food into more peoples diet. Another hard discussion related to this topic was the idea of sushi being classified as a delicacy, as well as a a "snack" that someone can easily pick up from the grocery store.

Throughout this past studio, I feel as though I have grown mostly in engagement and collaboration. I learned about the history of sushi through my research, and also learned about sushi culture. I feel like my group collaborated well together, and came back with successful ideas to share after researching.

Habit of Mind

Habit of Mind

Core Skill

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Core Skill

We started the project focused on building an electric gokart to continue on a previous OI of mine, that idea was shut down due to space so we shifted to an electric scooter/bike, that idea also got shut down due to lack of time( a problem i had been saying and suggesting solutitions for from the beggining most of which were ignored). So we shifted to a small scale model and getting the smaller electronics woring with a chain drive mechanism. We wanted a full scale working model origionally but we had to shift to a small scale version which we ended up not getting running together but we have some electronics working seperately and a nonworking frame model. In the end i liked the chain drive gear we got woriking with the motor i just with we could have done bigger scale.

I learned a decent ammount about the smaller scale electronics but that knolege doesnt really transfer to larger scale so i didnt learn the main things i wanted to learn about . I had been wanting to learn about working with, programing and assembling the larger components which are very different so i wasnt able to get the knolege or skills i wanted to from the studio. During the studio i was focused on some frame fabrication and getting the gear drive and motor setup working