Sidney Strong​
Arts Scholar
As an experiential component of College Park Arts Scholars, I attended a selection of five art events during the Fall 2020 semester. These events ranged in art mediums and each sparked dialogue among my peers.
Pentathalon Fall 2020
Images sourced via David C. Driskell Center, TedEd, MadArtistPublishing, and Netflix.
The David C. Driskell Papers
I viewed the virtual exhibition of the David C. Driskell Papers which is a collection of photos that date from the 1950's to 2019. It was amazing to view an exhibition that not only portrayed David C. Driskell's life and accomplishments, but also demonstrated how he evolved as an artist throughout his life. I thought that it was interesting to see the work of an artist who never confined himself to a singular medium of art. I aspire to be an artist who constantly explores new mediums and is not confined to one style of art like David C. Driskell. The contributions of David C. Driskell's documentation and preservation of African American art is an admirable feat that reminds me that the preservation of art is equally as important as the creation of art.
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#visualart
Follow along this semester as I document my arts experiences this semester.
Pentathalon Spring 2021
Teamwork & The Reality of Personality Tests
February 5, 2021
Last week I played games with fellow arts scholars students as a way to build community despite our distance. We played skribbl.io and codenames which are both games that require teamwork from the players. While we were playing skribbl.io, which is an online version of Pictionary, we learned more about each other as we drew as fast as we could to earn the most points. In the second game we worked in pairs to see which team could guess all of the mystery words first. It was nice to talk to people in a non-academic setting and to play games because after a while I forgot that we were on zoom. I think it's important to have zoom-time that doesn't feel like zoom-time because zoom fatigue is a deterrent that can make people feel hesitant to be on zoom more than they need to. Having positive experiences like this one makes me look at zoom activities in a different light.
After we played games, we watched this TedTalk about the reality of personality tests. What stood out to me about the video was that it had really dynamic animation and creative transitions between scenes. This video revealed that personality tests are not an all knowing being because they are limited in how they categorize personalities. The video also stressed that our personalities are fluid, meaning that they change over time and are shaped by our experiences in life. After the video, we took a personality test to compare what we learned from the video to our results. The personality test labeled me as a INTJ-T and I felt like the descriptions matched my personality, but because of the TedTalk that we watched I was more aware of my own unconscious influence over the results since the test is self reported. Overall, this event was fun because playing the games was a low stress activity that gave me much needed social interaction and I learned a little but more about myself (albeit while not putting my full trust into the personality test results).
#presentation #artsscholars