Poster Session
Art and Hope - “Mongol Shovajatra”: The Role of Folk Tradition and a Symbol of Blessings for Prosperity, Happiness and Renewal for Global Community and Culture
Poster Session Fariha Binta Khair
Mongol Shovajatra is a procession traditionally organized by the students and faculty members from the University of Dhaka, Faculty of Fine Art in Bangladesh. “Mongol” means blessings and “Shovajatra” means procession. The tradition started in 1989 when students, disheartened by living under military rule, wanted to give people of Bangladesh hope for a better future. A month before the festival, the university's faculty members work together to make masks and large structures, believing they will drive away evil and bring progress to the community and the world. The procession creations represent courage, strength, bond with nature, respect to the traditions and a message of peace. Through this topic, I consider how this festival serves to enrich the community and deliver blessings across diverse cultures. I want people to come and see the procession details and the opportunity to feel courage and harmony through. In addition, I also highlight how art installations from Mongol Shovajatra and public events can bridge cultural gaps and foster better understanding of a new heritage and practice among people.
Hidden Connections: Using Artificial Intelligence and Art to Illuminate Brain Networks and Community Identity View Digital Media
Poster Session Joshua Sariñana
The network functions of the brain and artificial intelligence (AI) are hidden complex systems. Brain networks that underlie spatial memory are foundational to cognition and are critical for generating internal representations of an individual’s physical environment and related abstractions, such as time, social, and virtual spaces. This project leverages a large language model (LLM), a specific AI technology, to reveal hidden cognitive networks from personal narratives that connect internal and external worlds. Centered on local communities along the rivers surrounding Boston, Massachusetts, this transdisciplinary project explores how participants—a diverse group of creatives—navigate natural, social, and virtual ecosystems and their artistic practice. In-depth qualitative interviews are implemented and designed to map cognitive networks, emphasizing contextual and navigational descriptions of behavior across these spaces. The LLM, ChatGPT, was used for thematic, sentiment, and network transcript analyses. Formatted outputs were used for network visualizations, including explicit and implicit connections that link personal relationships, organizations, concepts, processes, and values. Networks are presented alongside hybrid digital and film-based photographic portraits, interview audio excerpts, and images of physical landscapes, contextualizing participants' mental maps. Thematic and sentiment findings identified interconnected themes of resilience, community engagement, and environmental awareness. Network analysis highlighted key nodes linking environmental advocacy, digital interactions, and artistic collaborations. This transdisciplinary project demonstrates how neuroscience, AI, and art can reveal hidden cognitive networks, and infer the network properties of the brain. Furthermore, these research methods provide an integrated approach to show the interconnectedness of individuals and collective identities reflected in the environment.
Outstanding Universal Value: World Heritage Reimagined View Digital Media
Poster Session Michael Kopp
How is power spatialized? How do photographs make visible the problems of the world? Images produce feelings, and as they produce feelings they reconfigure the distribution of power. This body of photographic research concerns the power structures of historical narratives, image making, and the systems of power which govern the inscription, maintenance, and routinization of UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Photography makes visible the problems of history. While every society has a relationship with its past, the processes of World Heritage identification, inscription, and maintenance are produced in the context of contemporary concerns and localized cultural experiences. Today, the term ‘global’ implies worldwide, as in the flow of capital and communications. Heritage cannot be global because its origins are localized. World Heritage is Empire reimagined within a contemporary-globalized framework. The concept of World Heritage is contrived from Eurocentric, archaeological, architectural, and art-historical epistemologies with a focus on protecting monuments, buildings, and sites with quote “Outstanding Universal Value.” The systems that establish and maintain World Heritage Sites promote the commodification and fetishization of culture, as well as the past, to capitalize and commercialize the present and future, often at the expense and detriment of local communities. Accompanying the images in this body of work is a series of essays analyzing the historical narratives of the inscribed Sites and a new photography glossary titled "A Neo-lexicon of Photographic Vernacular." This glossary is a reinterpretation of photographic, architectural, anthropological and critical-thinking terminology as a means to further problematize narratives of Empire and World Heritage.
