Negative Pleasure

Reflections on words of Gilles Deleuze, Friedrich Nietzsche and Maurice Merleau-Ponty as sensory experiences in time and space.

Meltem Ĺžahin | 2015-16

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Meltem Ĺžahin | 2015-16

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table tableof ofcontent content ›Negative Pleasure ›Negative Beauty

0 Imperfection in Illustration and Animation 1 Imperfection in Movements 2 Imperfection in Music

›Sensory Learning ›Acquired Skills › Manisfestations

0 Friedrich Nietzsche 1 Maurice Merleau Ponty 2 Gilles Deleuze

› A Liminal Journey 0 Kukla 1 Title 2 Visual Decisions 3 Musical Decisions

› Reviews and Comments ›The Road Ahead › Acknowledgements

Borrowed from renowned philosopher Immanuel Kant, Negative Pleasure is and experience of the sublime. The sublime feeling is a kind of constant shift between the fears of the overwhelming and the odd pleasure of seeing that “overwhelming overwhelmed”. One of the first articulations of the theory of sublime can be found in Kant’s book Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime, “The various feelings of enjoyment or of displeasure rest not much upon the nature of the external things that arouse them as upon each person’s own disposition to be moved by these to pleasure and pain.”

My thesis is comprised of three different environments, consisting of animations and toys dedicated to three philosophers who are milestones in the history of Philosophy of Art: Friedrich Nietzsche, Maurice Merleau Ponty and Gilles Deleuze. Each of these environments put observers in a dense mood that belongs to certain philosopher. All the works presented in my thesis are reflections on words of these philosophers as sensory experiences in time and space, aesthetics sublimated to perception, and what I hoped would be a sensation of unsettling pleasure. I am creating animations that aim to achieve the mood of each philosopher’s mind or

Immanuel Kant, 1724-1804

Rather than Illustration in its most fundamental form as a 2D still image, I have always been more excited by its other practices such as Animation and Toy Design. To continue my education after my Undergraduate degree in Graphic Design, I had to make a choice between studying Illustration,

Sculpture or Animation.

Thanks to MICA’s MFA in Illustration Practice which gave me the flexibility to integrate these three, through my MFA thesis I was able to fulfill my dreams by combining my interests, and experiment with how illustration can translate into 3D objects and time.

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to show observers how to look through his eyes as well as my own. This is significant to today’s world since Philosophy itself is considered to be in a position that is distanced from contemporary society, is hard to understand or elitists . Besides animated videos, I am producing optical illusion toys that use the nature of animation, in regard to each philosopher. While some optical-illusion toys are ancestors of animation we know today, some toys are deeply based on the idea of animation. These toys are tools to understand the philosophy of art, considered a very complex study of art by the majority of the societies we know today. Toys—being solid, nostalgic, approachable, and humanistic—provide a wonderful contrast to the abstraction and distance of philosophy.

Philosophers questions the way we see and understand. My optical illusion toys investigates similar questions through their treatment.

Negative Beauty»

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By swimming in the sea of imagery, artists collect all the signifiers with or without consciousness, and what one creates afterward basically spills from one’s inside to the sea, to the place that other possible images can be made. I believe in the uniqueness of each artist as filters and, according to French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty, those filters comes from inside; a painter does not choose a style but this style is an integral part of artwork or nature. While I am producing artworks, I feel as if I am revealing something that is already a force within, a continuation of my body, an extension of my time, reflection of my cultural patterns.

As an artist raised in Turkey, I observed the idealized beauty of Western culture alongside that of the East which commemorates beauty that is imperfect and transient.

Since my childhood, I leaned toward the Eastern side and was interested in the oddness of the universe, details of its beauty, melancholy of its passing time. With my illustrations, I attempt to create a language that may not necessarily imitate real life’s supposed appearances, which entertain and alienate individuals from their own existences, instead creating figures that have a humanistic, and sensitive approach without any specific race, social status or qualifiers of beauty.

Due to my curious nature, I tend to explore new areas that

I have never entered. Last year for instance, I started learning digital fabrication tools like Laser-cutting and 3-D printing along with electronics for artists. Thanks to these new media, I started creating optical illusion toys that work electronically or mechanically.

Regardless of what the final medium is—animation, ceramics, or toys—my pieces belong to the universe where people of neon colors floating in space, either hermaphroditic or androgynous, will invite you to join their uncanny experience. While my figures are making the observer feel pain and pleasure at the same time, they will make them get their essence intuitively.

0

1

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Illustration and Animation

Kinetic Sculpture

Music

Imperfection in

Other than some portion of my puberty period I have never interested in Western beauty ideals in the images I created. With the certain symbols that they bring images of perfect faces, bodies create barrier between the piece and the viewer. Unless the topic of the work about perfection, those images lack delivering concepts, ideas and emotion.

Moreover, I believe, artists have responsibility on public with the images they produced. “We’re losing bodies as fast as we’re losing languages,” says prominent British psychotherapist Susie Orbach, to emphasize the danger of those ideals of beauty. What is called “ugly” or “deformed” has lots of little treasures inside along with its uniqueness. I would rather call those images “negative beauty.”

Imperfection in

While I was creating kinetic sculptures, I started thinking about the movement of the objects. After lots of failings and mistakes I have decided to create some distortions in the mechanisms also, imperfection in the movements creates some tensions between the artwork and motors I used which increases the effect of pain.

Imperfection in

Imperfection in Music Imperfect actions generate suffering sounds that amplify experience.

When I was making animations for my thesis, I have wanted to give similar experience to the observer by emphasizing the beauty of my characters’ imperfectness with their movements and emotions that emerge from them.

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"A turmoil of emotion or vibration between pains rising from inadequacy of all sensible standards and pleasure emanating from correspondence with rational ideas.�

Immanuel Kant, the Critique of Judgement

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Sensory Learning Unsettling, Uncanny

There are five classical senses: vision, audition, tactile stimulation, olfaction, and gustation.

Sensory learning which helps people understand information better involves multi-sensory integration. The most common and effectual sensory integrations are audiovisual system and sensorimotor system. Audiovisual is the integration of vision and audition, as the name says, where as Sensorimotor is the integration of visual and tactile.

In my thesis, like I mentioned I aimed to connect philosophy back to contemporary people’s life. When they play with my toys and watch my animation, they can learn

about philosophy not because of the written information in the piece, but the senses they use to process the piece.

In most of my toys, one needs use their senses of vision, audition and tactile simulation.

Thus, Audiovisual and Sensorimotor integrations will be used by the person who interacts with my pieces.

The effects of Sensory Learning can be increased through creating oppositions and developing contrasted balance with these oppositions as well as analogies and developing familiarity within unsettling, uncanny.

+Acquired Skills+ After I graduated from Graphic

that changed the course of

Design at Bilkent University in

my artworks. For my thesis, I

Ankara, Turkey with the highest

have decided go even further,

GPA in the faculty, I decided

take risks and create things

to work for an Advertisement

that I don't have the technical

Agency as an Illustrator and

knowledge on how to do that.

Character Designer. I have

Some of the technology was

realized that in the Advertise-

important for me to learn since

ment and Graphic Design

it might not be available to me

Sector in Turkey, there is not

when I am in Turkey. Through-

so much space for creativity.

out this book, I will explain each

After leaving that agency, I

skill that needed to be learnt

worked as a freelance children’s

for each artwork along with the

book illustrator, while going

failures and mistakes I faced in

to a printmaking studio at

the process.

weekends. 3 of my books are published in Turkey, by one of

+Arduino and Coding

the most prominent publish-

+3D Modeling and 3D Printing

ing houses. So when I came

+Lasercutting

to MICA, I had the dream to

+Mechanical Movements

improve my skills in Children’s

+Electronics and Robotics

book illustration. In the first

+Casting and Molding

year at MFA Illustration Practice Program, I saw all the possible doors, all the amazing sources

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manifestations › Friedrich Nietzsche › Friedrich Nietzsche › Friedrich Nietzsche Flow, Digital Animation 00Flow, Digital Animation 0 Flow, Digital Animation Eternal Recurrence, 3DZoetrope Zoetrope 1 1Eternal Recurrence, 3D 1 Eternal Recurrence, 3D Zoetrope

Maurice Merleau-Ponty ››››Maurice Merleau-Ponty ›› Maurice Merleau-Ponty Eye Mind, Monoprint Animation 00Eye &&Mind, Monoprint Animation 0 Eye & Mind, Monoprint Animation the Sensed, Jacobs Ladder 1 1InIn the Sensed, Jacobs Ladder 1 In the Sensed, Jacobs Ladder Thing Among Things, Ceramics 22Thing Among Things, Ceramics 2 Thing Among Things, Ceramics Lent Body, Automaton 33Lent Body, Automaton 3 Lent Body, Automaton

›››Gilles Gilles Deleuze ››› Deleuze ››› Gilles Deleuze Singularity, Vinyl Zoetrope 00Singularity, Vinyl Zoetrope 0 Singularity, Vinyl Zoetrope Becoming, Retroscope 1 1Becoming, Retroscope 1 Becoming, Retroscope

Friedrich Wilhem Nietzsche 1844-1900

Germany

Notable Ideas: Ăœbermensch, Eternal Recurrence, Master-Slave Morality, Apollonian & Dionysian, Will to Power, "Death of God", Christian Morality...

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“Wherever the Dionysian prevailed, the Apollonian was checked and destroyed.”

Friedrich Nietzsche, the Birth of Tragedy

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Flow Digital Animation The animation is created with a digital drawing tablet using Adobe Photoshop. In this project, I want to focus on Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche’s book The Birth of Tragedy, and specifically his ideas on Apollo and Dionysus.

Apollo is the God of reason and rationality—of the intellect and thought.

Dionysus is the god of the irrational and chaos—of emotions and instincts.

Nietzsche establishes his aesthetics theories

from the archetypes of Apollo and Dionysus and offers, specifically that art is based on polarities and tensions rather than delight and imitation.

His polarities are those of order (Apollo) and passion (Dionysus). The main character in this animation is a sculptress who travels through Apollonian and Dionysian states. In the Apollonian world, everything is made of rigid lines, and there is no color except for the color of the

main character, pink. In contrast, in the Dionysian world, she fuses with the nature; she becomes white and transparent and everything is made of shapes and colors.

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29 framed pencil drawn storyboard of the animation.

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“You will find every pain and every pleasure, every enemy, every hope and every error, every blade of grass, every ray of sunshine once more, and the whole fabric of things which make up your life.”

Friedrich Nietzsche, the Birth of Tragedy

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Eternal Recurrence 3D Zoetrope I created a 3D Stroboscopic Zoetrope inspired by Nietzsche's concept ‘Greatest Burden of Eternal Recurrence’.

Inside of the zoetrope, there is a man who is moving up and down like a wave. The figures in the zoetrope is made of lasercutted plexiglass hand painted with neon—pink color when he rises with the woman emerging from him , and blue color when he descends with the disappearance of her.

On the upper disk there

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is a woman and man that became one and moves in circles. The body of the zoetrope is made of frosted plexiglass and the feet that carry the second disk as well as LED case are 3D printed . Zoetrope fabricated and coded in a way that the movement of the upper disk is seen in a different speed of the motor than the lower disk.

So after, Arduino change the mechanism’s speed from one to another, it stops the zoetrope for five seconds so that viewer

can understand, how the actual toy is working.

Like the other toys that I created for Negative Pleasure, this toy has an open electronically system that viewer can see the circuit.

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Electrical circuit that I used both for 3D and VInyl Zoetrope.

3D model of the toy. The green and pink items are 3D printed, the rest is laser-cutted.

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Laser-cutted plexi-glass pieces that are hand painted with neon colored acrylics.

The coding that determines the speed of the motor and the frequency of the LED.

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Maurice Merleau-Ponty 1844-1900

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France

Notable Ideas: Phenomenology of Perception, Anonymous Collectivity, Motor Intentionality, the Flesh of the World, "the Perceiving Mind is an Incarnated Mind," Chiasm, Invagination

“The eye is an instrument… which has been moved by same impact of the world, which it then restores to the visible through the traces of a hand.”

Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Eye & Mind

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Eye & Mind Monoprint Animation Inspired by Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Eye & Mind proposes an aesthetic approach to certain ideas of his philosophy, which have always evoked in me visual images. Each gif in the animation is my vision of a passage in Ponty’s last published essay, “Eye and Mind”.

Each frame was created with mono-print and stencil technique.

My intention was to achieve the mood or the environment created by Ponty's words by means of

the cyclical nature of the gif and the randomness of the mono-print. My Fulbright colleague Vicente Munoz who is a philosophy student at Boston College wrote a reaction text on “Eye and Mind” focusing on Paul Cezanne and his reaching singularity through the painting Mont SainteVictoire. With him, I gave a speech at Stony Brook University’s Philosophy and the Arts Conference.

After the positive and valuable feedback from

the conference audience, I have realized the need for these kinds of artful approach to philosophy.

Most of the animations made about philosophy are either instructive or moralizing. Animations that are aiming to achieve the mood of the philosopher’s mind or to show you how to look through his eyes are significant to today’s society since philosophy itself is thought to be detached from the society and hard to understand.

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Photo of me, giving a presentation about Eye & Mind at the Philosophy of Art Conference at Stony Brook University.

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“But a self by confusion, narcissism, inherence of the one who sees in what he see, of the one who touches in what he touches, of the sensing in the sensed— a self, therefore, that is caught up in things, having a front and a back, a past and a future…"

Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Eye & Mind

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In the Sensed Jacobs Ladder In response to MerleauPonty’s words, I created a Jacobs Ladder with lenticular prints applied onto it. I saw the form of a Jacobs Ladder reflected the overlapping sense of time reflected in MerleauPonty writings. On one side, the lenticular prints will show two similarly rendered young women in an intimate hug. On the other side, they are aged, in their 80s standing back to back. Using a lenticular print, the male version of the same scenario can

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be seen by tilting the toy handle slightly to the side.

To visually compliment the shiny lenticular print, I fabricated a elastic, tactile, sensuous handle for the toy.

One of the images in the lentucilar print that is at the front of the toy

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One of the images in the lentucilar print that is at the back of the toy

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Last version of the 3D modelling of the handle.

Five generations of 3D-print handle for jacobs ladder beginning with my first print attempt.

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“It (my body) is caught in the fabric of the world, and its cohesion is that of a thing.

But because it sees and moves itself, it holds things in a circle around itself..”

Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Eye & Mind

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Thing Among Things Ceramics This piece incorporate twelve different ceramic figurines that are shaping a spiral form while corresponding each others’ negative spaces like puzzles. The tactility of the piece has been increased by the black sand that put underneath it. There are Neo-pixel LEDs hidden in the sand, that changes its color in a spiral form from outside to inside to increase the dynamic feeling of the

piece. The connected figurines have floating gestures with peaceful sleeping-like smiling faces.

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Ceramic figurines before glazing at the inner side of the circle

Ceramic figurines before glazing at the outer side of the circle

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“It is by lending his body to the world that the artist changes the world into paintings.�

Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Primacy of Perception

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Lent Body Automaton In this piece, there is a woman in pink made of silicone that is becoming flat on the surface and popping up again with the movement of the motor.

Behind the woman, there is a triangular prism made out of clear plexi-glass that viewer can see the system of the mechanism.

In the mechanism, there is a one-gear motor, an eccentric cam, and a shaft that is connected to the woman. While cam is touching the motor, it creates an impressive

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almost suffering like voice that become the voice of the figure. The movement of her is unbalanced again to increase the affect of the negative pleasure. She inhales really slowly and then suddenly pops up which creates an element of surprise for the observer.

The mechanical system of the piece which includes a gear motor, an eccentric cam, and a shaft that is connected to the woman

Nâ °71 The 3D model of the mechanism, other than the blue motor all the pieces are to lasercut

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The back of my silicone woman with the silicone cords that allows observer to play with her

The situation of my hand after 30 hours of hand buuilding, molding and casting.

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Gilles Deleuze 1925-1995

France

Notable Ideas: Affect, Assemblage, Body without Organs, deterritorialization, line of flight, minority, plane of immanence, rhizome, schizoanalysis, transcendental empiricism, univocity of being.

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"Van Gogh caught in becoming sunflower."

"Becoming Mountain - "This is Cezanne's enigma, which has often been commented upon: Man absent from but entirely within the landscape." “Ahab really does have perceptions of the sea, but only because he has entered into a relationship with Moby Dick that makes him a becomingwhale and forms a compound of sensations that no longer needs anyone: ocean.�

Gilles Deleuze & Felix Guitar, What is Philosophy?

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Becoming Retroscope Deleuze talks about American writer Herman Melville becoming Moby Dick, Van Gogh becoming sunflowers and Cezanne becoming landscape in the absence of man. He says during the process of creating art, artists become the piece itself.

It is like a state rather than an end. This endless quality is shown through the loops of retroscope: there is neither an end

nor a beginning. After I created three gifs for the toys, I printed them and put on the three different retroscopes. Retroscopes are mainly made of clear plexi-glasses to become almost invisible and to highlight the flip images.

The viewer should crank the toy towards himself in order to see the animation.

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Still images from each gifs starting from Cezanne, Van Gogh and Captain Ahab

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3D model of the retroscope, other than pink and red items everything is laser-cutted

The retroscope in scale with a hand before images from the gif put on it

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“Becoming minoritarian is a never-ending process. It is a escaping from the sameness of majority.�

Gilles Deleuze, A Thousand Plateaus

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Singularity Vinyl Zoetrope According to Deleuze, on the road to singularity, one needs to escape from the axiomatic model of the majority. On the disk of the toy, one can observe a woman walking with the disembodied heads falling onto her constantly, but the woman moves away from them with the shake of her head. In order to see movement of the

image on the disk, there is a stroboscopic light (white LEDs) that flickers on certain times like in 3D Zoetrope. Along with the linear animation that happens on each slice of the disk, there is also radial animation that can be observed in the totality of the disk.

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The coding that determines the speed of the motor and the frequency of the LED.

3D model of the toy, other than the lamp case everything is laser-cutted

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One out of twenty three slices of the disk

The digital image of the disk before sending it to the printer.

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A Liminal Journey › The Beginning 0 Kukla 1 Title

› Visual Decisions › Musical Decisions

0 Eye & Mind 1 Flow 2 Negative Pleasure

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› The Beginning 0. Kukla

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Kukla means puppet in Turkish. I have always been fascinated by wooden puppets, which despite their thousands of years of history, still retain the simplicity of toys. Last year, I combined my desire for retro toys and created five characters that are hybrid creatures. My inspiration for the puppets came from a book that was illustrated in 1665 by Fortunio Liceti called “De Monstris”.

Liceti’s creatures are deformed and freaky. However, he didn’t see deformity as negative thing. For him it was the beauty of nature which fits perfectly to my thesis.

This year I have chosen one of them and made it five times bigger in the Fall-2015 Show.

It was an interactive piece that viewers can play with.

This semester for my thesis show, I have made it move electronically. There are two sprockets connected with a chain, that make two torsos of the puppet in opposite directions. The movement of the motor is intentionally slow so that the observer can see and hear the “pain” of the motor carrying the weight.

There are 19 LEDs that are hidden behind the lasercut flowers, constantly fading in and out almost like breathing.

Kukla is put outside of my exhibition space on a black and very high wall. With its magnitude it is saluting visitors, preparing them for a Liminal Journey. It is a welcome to set the mood to the exhibition as well as the guardian of a sacred space.

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› The Beginning 1. Implication of the Title

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For the title I have used scanning to deform, distort the letters. By dragging my perfectly neat Negative Pleasure, I have created an alive imperfect title.

Because during the process of scanning, the written title has been separated into its channels, distorted, moved away from its original location, it became almost animated. This animated quality along with the Puppet gives a hint to the animations and optical-illusion toys inside. This technique that is used for typography associates with an

underground Grunge Graphic Design approach. With embracing this connection, I wanted to take it somewhere different somewhere new.

In 1990’s, this approach was used on newsprints or other cheap papers, for my project I used laser-cutted plexiglasses. Each color channel is represented with different layer of plexi-glass that is colored with spray. For my postcards, I have used two different versions of the title to increase the variety. The title is accompanied with a white vinyl which gives brief information about my thesis.

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›Visual

Decisions

regarding exhibition space

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Since there are two toys with strobe lights and two animations inside, I have decided to create a room with black walls in my exhibition space in order to make it as dark as possible. To have a consistent look, I even painted the pedestals in black. The design of the space was minimal to create a balance with the complex images and moving objects. On each pedestal there was an elegant simple black desk light, to help viewer to see the toys without the strobe lights in the dark.

Each piece in the space was numbered and each number was corresponding to a quotation on the wall. For the whole space

I aimed to have a cold professional museum-like look to enhance the mood of the space. In order to enter my space, after seeing the Kukla and the title, the viewer needed to pass a black corridor that enhance the curiosity and the affect of the journey. needed to pass a black corridor that pique the curiosity and the affect of the journey. The anticipated experience inside was otherworldly, sacred.

Almost like temple.

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›Musical

Decisions Other than the beautiful sounds of motors, there are three pieces that Mert Kocadayi, graduate Contemporary Music student at Mozarteum, Salzburg, composed for my thesis projects. Eye & Mind and Flow are for my animations that are in the same names.

Negative Pleasure is made to enrich the experience for the exhibition space. That's why the space music was played from speakers, whereas music for the animations were given from two different sound domes.

The descriptions on the right, written by the composer.

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0

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The music ideologically serves two purposes: the idea of the painter towards the mountain and the motion of animation itself. Thus, it creates surfaces; depicts and underlines the movements and expresses the dilemma of the artist integrated with a quotation from American modernist composer, Charles Ives' "Unanswered Question" through Ponty's philosophy.

The idea of the music for "Flow" is mainly based on an individual concepts in terms of music. In other words, music follows its own structure with its own developments as if it is just a musical project and only in some critical points of animation not accompanies but gets together with the image. Because of the general "counterpoint" of music and animation, most of the time, sounds do not follow the motions and do not act symmetrically as well.

With all its imperfection as an accompaniment to the motion, music aims to create a more natural atmosphere instead of full time symmetry and motoric movements.

Music is created by sounds recorded from prepared piano and celesta and their transformation. Recordings have been examined and cut in to pieces. While the harmonic language of music is stable, timbral changes by destruction, underlining and distortion create new spaces for harmony. Music totally serves to the purpose of exhibition, no big dynamic and rhythmical changes occurs and it is aimed to avoid a starting or ending point because it is a loop and composed to restart from where it ends again.

Percussive elements in music accompany harmony as timbral changes and also aim to neutralize, break the pure melodic language of music inside of the exhibition hall.

Eye & Mind

Flow

Negative Pleasure

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›ROAD AHEAD

the major publishing houses.

Then I will sign up a new contract for P is for Pussy II.

In Turkish universities, a separate specialized department of illustration does not exist. I hope to be a pioneer in filling the gap in this area and in so doing save other students from searching for basic education in this field elsewhere. I would like to be the initiator of this major in my country; therefore, obtaining a graduate degree with a teaching certificate in Illustration is both crucial for my academic career and my long-term goals. At the end of May, after my 4 graduate teaching assistantship with four amazing teachers, I will start teaching. It will be 1 month condensed Animation course under Continuing Studies. And at the end of July, there i a likeness that I will go to Paris with Laurence Arcadias who is the head of Animation Department, and assist her teaching animation to MICA students. These two opportunities after my graduation, on my road to bigger dreams, are crucial for my career.

Before I came to MICA, I was working as a free-lance children’s book illustrator.

Three of my books were published then. Last month, I made a new contract with them for a new book that I will work on it, on August when I came back from France. Besides those, right after I graduate I will make illustrations for a project regarding STI testing among youth with MICA Social Design and John Hopkins University.

The book that I illustrated last year, P is for Pussy, got successful media appearances including Huffington Post, Bitch Media, DesignTAXI and BuzzFeed.

For the book launch and signing, with the author Elissa Blount-Moorhead we went to three different cities: Baltimore, New York and Philadelphia. Those experiences were so special, so motivating for me. At the beginning of June, there will be another signing of P is for Pussy in Los Angeles that I will go. In addition, on April Elissa and I made a contract with New Leaf Literary Agency that, they are trying to sell P is for Pussy to one of

With the animations in my thesis, I will apply to different animation festivals.

With the first one applied, MICA Animation Festival, I got the “Excellence in 2D Animation” award. With the toys in Negative Pleasure, I will apply to Museum Stores. In my recent visit to MOMA’s museum store, I have observed a drastic increase in number of toys with basic electronics and it made me realize that there is a really high demand with Arduino toys. One of my biggest dream is to meet with Alain de Botton and create pieces, toys, animations for School of Life.

After all those small jobs in the summer, I would like to go to different art residencies to improve my art, meet with new artists, make connections and to live in different cities.

Those residencies will be either related to animation, robotics or the combination of both. Before I apply for Doctorate program in visual arts, I believe giving a year of residencies is important for me to digest what I have learnt in Graduate School and to push my art further.

MICA Illustration undergaduate: “I've been in a bit of a "existential crisis regarding Majors" since coming to MICA , but your show reminded me of why I wanted to do illustration in the first place "and also showed me how illustration can be pushed beyond a "rigid" structure.”

Anonymus: Truly amazing and outstanding work you have done. I am in awe. I experience so many emotions while looking at each piece.

MICA MFA Alumni: I stayed and played for a long time and still want more.

What curious and intriguing interaction you invite. So smart, so creative the ways you find to express such complex ideas. I want to live in the world you create.

Anonymus:

FANTASTICALLY CHILLING and BREATHTAKINGLY SURREAL!

Anonymus: Beautiful and inspirational.

Weird in the way where the prettiest things are weird.

Anonymus: Immediately smiled when I came in. Like an uncontrollable smile. Something is going right in here!

Anonymus: Amazed by the depth of each piece… Beautifully tranquil with an alluring dissonance that kept me staring. Hypnotizing.

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MICA Illustration Undergaduate:

Something about this brings me back to it every time I am in Fox. I canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t quiet explain, but the environment is magical. <3

REVIEWS AND COMMENTS

Eun-Ha Paek: You are going to go far with your explorations! Excited to see where it ends up. I'm very happy/lucky to have met you too! I'm sure we will see each other again, I think there are similarities in our work that will keep us in the same orbit.

x

Anonymus: This is so amazing! I love your work. It is like my dreams come to life. #goalsr

Pam Li I can't make any suggestions other than just continue on this path of exploration.

Exploration of motion and light; original presentation of old-fashioned toys. Meltemâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s work sticks in the mind

Richard Borges Amazing work, both in quality and quantity.

Anonymus: Beautiful! I really identify with the girl turning into the tiny blob to become a drop of water in #5. This work will stay with me forever.

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*Acknowledgements My sincere thanks go to the following faculty, friends and family for their helpful suggestions and moral support: Ru Kuwahata, Joyce Hesselberth, Paul Mirel, Christopher Brown, James Rouvelle, Michele Glenn, Shreyas R Krishnan, Sara Al Haddad, Johnathan Baker, my mother Gul Sahin, father Mustafa Sahin and uncle Ali Turksu. Special thanks to Fulbright Commission for my scholarship that made my graduate dream in US come true.

My most sincere thanks go to a very special man, my best friend, Mert Kocadayi, for both creating the music for my pieces and the huge moral support.

Finally, the deepest gratitude is expressed to Whitney Sherman, MICA Illustration Practice Program director, for creating an incredible graduate program that bring together amazing artists from all around the world.

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