Category: Making

Creative projects and works

  • two horizontally running splotches that look similar to the silhouette of trees and their reflection in a lake

    More Pu-Erh Dragonball Chromatography

    While cleaning up for the Lunar New Year, I ran across more pu-erh dragonball chromatograms.

    Mari

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  • abstract splotches that ripple across the paper, almost like flames or steep mountains

    Love, Land, and Chromatography

    Last year, I learned how to do chromatography. You may be familiar with science class experiments where you apply a ground up plant or a marker to a piece of filter paper and watch as the colors in your sample separate out as capillary action carries them across the paper.  In photography, chromatography is based…

    Mari

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  • An out of focus closeup of a shiitake mushroom's gills gives the photo a dreamy quality.

    Shiitake Mushrooms

    At the end of last year, I started growing my own oyster and shiitake mushrooms. Watching the shiitakes grow beyond the stage where you would normally pick them has showed me that I really didn’t know shiitakes like I thought. Their shapes can encompass so many frills and scallops that I don’t normally see in…

    Mari

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  • white models on a white background, from left to right: speaker, drawer pull, speaker, lamp, chess piece, speaker, door handle

    The Cai Modeling Materials, MDes Thesis pt. 1

    For my industrial design masters thesis at the University of Illinois at Chicago, I developed plastic-free modeling materials. Cai Board can serve as a replacement for extruded polystyrene foam. Cai Clay is an air-drying clay that is an alternative to plastic-based clays.

    Mari

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  • and Indian woman looking in the mirror of a bathroom mirror as she puts a sticker with a cut-out over her eye. A sheet of stickers is next to her on the counter

    FR Shields

    Facial recognition software is becoming more and more ubiquitous.What if people started messing with CCTV cameras?Tricking them into thinking they’re an everyday person/celebrity hybrid?What if people showed up to government protests wearing a dictator’s face? This project was created in 2019. Thank you to Bansri Thakkar for modeling.

    Mari

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  • torso reflected in a pot of grease, making the image abstracted so it's difficult to tell what body parts are being depicted

    Eating Myself

    Chinese women and Chinese cuisine are fetishized and made palatable for the consumption of Westerners. I have a number of food allergies and intolerances that have cut me off from eating my grandmother’s food, my Chinese heritage. Experimenting with allergen-friendly versions of the dishes I grew up with is a way to reclaim my heritage.…

    Mari

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  • gif of a paper chandelier as the camera zooms in from showing the whole chandelier to going up the chandelier to show the geometric interior, the chandelier is faceted and vaguely flower-like

    Paper House

    If we cannot raise manufacturing costs to ensure quality home goods and we cannot teach millions of people to suddenly take care of what they have, what if we instead filled our homes with paper? Unlike in the past, when families would live together their whole lives or gift newlyweds with heritage furniture, many people…

    Mari

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  • render of a wardrobe rack, lamp on a pedestal, and a chair in a white space

    The Bentwood Bedroom Collection

    How can 19th c design relate to modern lives? Many chairs from 19th c Western countries look uncomfortable by today’s standards because people sat differently then. Letting their backs touch the backs of chairs was an example of very poor breeding. Today, everyone tends to lounge in chairs. But chairs in bedrooms are more often…

    Mari

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  • An Indian woman picking a tomato at teh grocery store and putting it into her grocery backpack

    Grocery Backpack

    What if we brought all our own packaging to grocery stores? The grocery backpack, created in 2020, doubles as a grocery basket. Extend one strap and wear the bag messenger style. Most cloth produce bags are rectangular, which lets food particles build up in the corners. The grocery backpack comes with rounded corners so as…

    Mari

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  • gif showing the layers of the a B&W page being built, each image of a water layering over part of another image, and finally the text "if a screen is textureless, does water have a texture?"

    Textural Translations

    In some ways, we live in a more texturally diverse world than we did pre-Industrial Revolution, considering advances in technology combined with novel materials. But our textures tend to have a more shallow relief than they used to.

    Mari

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