Ridhi Agarwal
Would Five Year Old You Be Proud?
Class of: 2024
Major: Strategic Design and Management BBA
Medium: Photoshop/Digital Illustration Mockup
Faculty: Audra Wolowiec
Prompt: Using your three collages as a starting point and your Memoir writing from Seminar, locate a selection of short phrases, sentences, or single words that convey your presence, a message to others in public space that “you were here.” What messages would you like to see in public space? What would you like to convey to others, and how? step 1: What is your message? Choose a selection of words, phrases, or sentences that have meaning to you, from your writing in Seminar. Make a list. step 2: How and where might these messages be conveyed in public space? Should they be large, small, loud, quiet, poetic? Consider the examples in class, and scale, from the size of a penny to a billboard. How will others see your message? step 3: In Photoshop (or an image editing platform of your choice), create digital mock-up sketches of your idea, as a proposal for public works or public interventions. This is a proposal only, as sketches using photographs, drawings, renderings, collage, or a combination of media.
Words more often than not are interpreted according to wants the reader either wants or needs to hear. This rhetorical question Would five-year-old you be proud, serves as either a reality check or a positive affirmation depending on how you look at it.
It’s supposed to make a passerby think, would my five-year-old innocent self, full of childlike hopes and big dreams ready to take on the world – be happy with the path my life has taken? the path that I am on?
I think when it comes to words, people interpret them how they want to and how they need to not necessarily how they were meant to be. This rhetorical question – Would five-year-old you be proud. The five-year-old was innocent and happy and hopeful and dreamt big. It could serve as a reality check that you’re doing something wrong or as an affirmation that makes you stop and look around – You dreamt of this life as a child and you made it.