This is my website for IML 300 class.
Avana Wang is a visual artist and a first-generation immigrant from
Beijing, China. She is a Cinema & Media Studies major at the University
of Southern California with a minor in Digital Studies. Avana is
passionate about observing, documenting, and reflecting on details that
add beauty and meaning to shared human experiences. She also aims to
help amplify AAPI and immigrant voices through her creative endeavors,
whether it be through design, photography, videography, or fine arts.
This project is about auditory and spatial memories of my experience while walking through the Temple of Heaven in Beijing. It depicts space and time with its interactive audios and visuals——taking the viewer on a walk inside the park. The menu can be clicked to display a collection of visuals and audios. They can be viewed/ listened to either indiviually or in combination with each other, resembling a photo album or a collage of different sounds. The photographs correspond with the sounds of birds the morning, the chants of exercising aunties, the hum of the lawn mower, the chatters in the pavilion, as well as the melodies of flutes, erhu, and the Beijing Opera played and sung by the elders around the park. The faded circular visuals are abstract representations of these specific memories from the park being forgotten or recalled.
The hypernarrative project “A Return to My Childhood Home” is centered around a nostalgic visit back to my childhood home that my family and I used to live in before we moved to the States. There are multiple rooms to explore within the house and each room contains multiple personal items that evoke specific memories. Rooms and items can be discovered in a non-linear order as the users have the freedom to decide on the order of which rooms to enter and which items to examine. The project aims to touch on the topics of childhood and nostalgia, moving and immigration, memories and ephemera, as well as the complexity of emotions experienced upon returning to a space that one used to occupy with fond memories. It is also my own personal digital space to preserve my memories of the home I love.
This site is dedicated to independent Chinese films and artists that are banned within China and erased from the Chinese internet. It aims to address the issue of censorship in China and amplify the creative voices that have been silenced, as well as raise awareness of this issue on an international scale to people who may be unfamiliar with it. The homepage consists of an empty bookshelf that represents the ongoing erasure of media and history as well as the oppression of the freedom of expression in China. When the shelves are hovered on, resources such as information about banned films, filmmaker profiles, articles and reports about the film, and description of relevant social issues will appear. The project serves as both as a catalog of educational resources about independent Chinese films and as a statement against censorship and restriction on freedom of artistic expression.
This is a portrait of a gracefully againg woman. The fine lines on her skin grow and curve following the movement of the mouse as her silver hair grows following the passage of time.
This drawing tool is inspired by the process of writing Chinese
calligraphy and making ink paintings.
1) Enter your INITIALS on the top left corner
2) Choose
the color of Xuan Zhi (Rice Paper) you prefer: Press 'Y' for YELLOW;
'W' for WHITE
3) For SOLID brush: Press '1' for SMALL brush;
'2' for MEDIUM; '3' for BIG
4) For DILUTED brush: Press '4'
for SMALL brush; '5' for MEDIUM; '6' for BIG
5) Press '-' and
click to stamp a personalized CIRCULAR red seal;'=' for RECTANGULAR
6) Press either 'Y' or 'W' to clear the page
This visual pattern and its animation is inspired by the shape and movement of ripples in water. A trail of ripples can be activated by pressing on and holding down the mouse. The faded print it leaves behind will remain on the canvas, allowing the users to create patterns with its expanding and intersecting lines.
p5.js sketch 3: Interactive Pattern BThis pattern is an extension of the ripple pattern with a similar color palette. Pattern A is on default and pattern B appears with a click.
I chose Teens Edge by 老王樂隊 because I liked its instrumental intro. It contains rhythmic beats and pauses that were easy to base the shift of imageries on. I wanted to keep the shapes, colors, and movements simple yet harmonious and pleasing to the eye. I played around with volume/amplitude as well as 'for loop' patterns.
This project is made to resemble the experience of journaling, where users are prompted to write down what’s been on their mind. The line “There are years that ask questions and years that answer” written by Zora Neale Hurston inspired the idea that with each thing the user writes down in the journal, a randomized ‘response’ will also be written down simultaneously. The randomized responses are lines extracted from the “Milkshake” poem in Before Sunrise (1995) by Richard Linklater, which has stuck with me since viewing the film.