project proposal v0.1
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new project proposal
Fabiola Hanna
email: fabiolahanna@gmail.com
website: 
fabiolahanna.com
Fabiola Hanna is an artist pursuing an MFA in Digital Arts and New Media at UC Santa Cruz. Her work is about people, technology and seeking practical solutions. She explores ideas that might help communities through art and technology. She aims to not only critique problems that exist but try to provide practical solutions through art. She is interested in everyday art that enriches the end user.
In her current work, Fabiola is interested in examining how people relate to responsibility. She asks: "Why do you feel responsible for your environment? How can you feel responsible for your body? How does responsibility work?"
Fabiola Hanna is an artist pursuing an MFA in Digital Arts and New Media from UC Santa Cruz. Her work is about people, technology and seeking practical solutions. She explores ideas that might help communities through art and technology. She aims to not only critique problems that exist but to try to provide practical solutions through art. She is interested in everyday art that enriches the end user.
Fabiola graduated from the University of California, San Diego with a degree in Interdisciplinary Computing and the Arts. Although she used electronics and programming as a medium, she made sure it had a human touch. Merging fun and silliness with hints of seriousness, she dealt with topics ranging from rss news feeds to waking up in the morning to children in war to sipping through a coconut to hear music.
In 2007, after detecting gaps in the social life at UCSD amongst art students, she co-founded a group, the New Media Lounge, where art students met every week to discuss and critique new media, along with guest lectures and presentations, software tutorials and demo of equipment and facilities. She also volunteered at a Fabrication Lab in San Diego called the Heads On Fire :: Fab Lab that is part of a network of MIT’s Fab Labs around the world. It is a lab open to the community, where anyone can walk in and make whatever they wish. She also co-development a curriculum for a 10-week summer program for 20 high-school interns and instructed them how to make things, starting with design and finishing with fabrication.
In her current work, Fabiola is interested in examining how people relate to responsibility. She asks: "Why do you feel responsible for your environment? How can you feel responsible for your body? How does responsibility work?"
Fabiola Hanna is an artist pursuing an MFA in Digital Arts and New Media from UC Santa Cruz. Her work is about people, technology and seeking practical solutions. She explores ideas that might help communities through art and technology. She aims to not only critique problems that exist but to try to provide practical solutions through art. She is interested in everyday art that enriches the end user.
Fabiola graduated from the University of California, San Diego with a degree in Interdisciplinary Computing and the Arts. Her art has always been human. Although she uses electronics and programming as a medium, she does not build robots to imitate life, but to emphasize that life is nothing if it lacks spirit. Concept behind art is essential and everything has to have a meaning in an art piece she makes. She also values performance art, because it relates to the human touch again. Merging silliness with hints of seriousness, she dealt with topics ranging from rss news feeds to waking up in the morning to children in war to sipping through a coconut to hear music.
In 2007, after detecting gaps in the social life at UCSD amongst art students, she co-founded a group, the New Media Lounge, where art students met every week to discuss and critique new media, along with guest lectures and presentations, software tutorials and demo of equipment and facilities. She also volunteered at a Fabrication Lab in San Diego called the Heads On Fire :: Fab Lab that is part of a network of MIT’s Fab Labs around the world. It is a lab open to the community, where anyone can walk in and make whatever they wish. She also co-designed a 10-week summer program for 20 high-school interns and taught them how to make things, starting with design and finishing with fabrication.
In her current work, Fabiola is interested in examining how people relate to responsibility. She asks: "Why do you feel responsible for your environment? How can you feel responsible for your body? How does responsibility work?"
Fabiola mainly works with digital media, but loves to try different methods, languages and skills, depending on the problem she is trying to tackle.
Although she is a very optimistic person, she is also very realistic. Art and technology will not solve all the problems on this planet. But they can provide some solutions and inspire people to make this world a better place.
I want to go beyond critiquing or pointing to the problems in our societies, world, and environment. I would like to offer solutions through art and technology. Various fields have become more interdisciplinary, and as the Nobel Laureates of 2008 concluded (in a BBC interview) they have seen many overlaps in their fields and feel that Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, Literature, and Peace have more things in common than they thought. I'd like to take a little from sociology, cognitive science, philosophy, art, computer science, performance art, hacktivism, and electronics to offer solutions to everyday problems.
Naturally, my work is very human. For example, I enjoy electronics a lot but not to build robots that imitate life, but to emphasize that life is nothing if it lacks spirit. Though my art is made out of computers, programs and electronics, there is always the need to include human interaction, whether it is a conversation or interaction with participants. I also value performance art, because it relates to the human touch again. Being silly in art is important because it can relate to more people and being funny as well because messages can have a deeper impact.
My experiences also shape the way I think of my art: I have lost a cousin who served in the US Marine corps to war and have also been through the Lebanese-Israeli war in the summer of 2006. I can't stand wars and I know how it feels to lose loved ones. There is nothing in the world that is worth a human life. I can't stand the memory of having a unmanned plane flying above our heads; the scariest moment is when you don't hear the buzz anymore: that means a fighter plane will replace it and a bomb will drop down in a few minutes. These are memories I can never forget and that are sometimes needed to keep things in perspective in the art I make.
Although I'm a very optimistic person, I'm also very realistic. Art and technology will not solve all the problems on this planet. But they can provide some solutions and inspire people to make this world a better place.
Art is powerful because it can be helpful to participants more than anything else. It can also be universal and even with the practical solution aside, it can inspire hope in the viewer. In our era of technological advancement, not everyone is reaping benefits; some are even getting hurt with the consequences of technology.
At the same time, people deprived of technology can feel empowered and grow, when they gain access to it, not necessarily in the same way the majority does, but in a manner that is adapted to their needs. I also see the strength of open source technology. Not only in programming but by making solutions available in a step-by-step manner like instructables.com, people can be empowered to create their own solutions according to their needs, not depending on commercial products.
I am inspired by Electronic Civil Disobedience and Ricardo Dominguez. The Flood_Net project which assists in the execution of virtual sit-ins does not just comment on governments or institutions, it takes the idea of revolution and action into the internet. I identify with them as I like to call myself an artivist. But I do not find it necessary in my work to bother or disturb others, rather, when possible, I try to find solutions that help someone without hurting others. Both directions are necessary. My work does not stop at critiquing, rather it tries to provide solutions.
My latest project, u-hall, is a mobile space in which children enter to find themselves in a room with a live capture of the outside on both side walls. They find pens and are encouraged to draw on these walls. If they draw on a person, this new “accessory” will stick to the person throughout the entire frame. U-hall will arrive in various neighborhoods with the goal of giving children a small sense of empowerment over their environments. This idea came to me while I was on vacation in Lebanon in the summer of 2006 and the war erupted. I was very much concerned about how children felt in all the mess. We were all trapped in this and they especially could not make sense of their world. I wanted to take them out of this environment. It had to give them a sense of empowerment over their environment. Through u-hall, children focus on passers-by to change their looks in an experimental angle.
Another project of mine is called Electronic City. In the U.S. there is a shortage of students in the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) programs. So I set out to create a piece for the New Children's Museum in San Diego that allows teens to play with electronics. The concept of this piece derives from the resemblance of electronic circuit boards with actual cities. It is an acrylic city on top of which lies a circuit where components are attached to it magnetically and are therefore movable. These components consist of LED's, microphones and speakers, LED displays and stepper-motors. The teens were encouraged to play and move these components around, modifying their own electronic city through this interaction.
My goal is not impossible. Several artists have worked in community/public art and I will look to Suzanne Lacy as well for guidance. Community is what shapes life in the end.
I am currently attending the graduate program Digital Arts and New Media (DANM) at UCSC to experiment with new approaches to a few problems. I am currently interested in the idea of responsibility. Some questions I am currently asking are: "What makes people feel responsible for their environment? What makes us responsible citizens? If we follow the law, does that make us responsible? Socially, how much are we responsible for taking care of our children? of the elders? If I do my job at work, and just stick to the rules, would I be doing my job? How can people feel that they can affect their lives and everyone else's?"
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