I am not an artist by any stretch of the imagination. My passion has always been music. I loved everything from Chopin, System of a Down, Tupac, and The Eagles. I am not joking when say that my artistic ability stops at tracing. As I have taken more classes on the ChicanX experience however, I have begun to appreciate art more and more. There’s a Chicano candy store in my city called Lotería. It’s owned by a millennial just like me. In the store the owner includes a number of art pieces, and he sells stickers made by a Chicano artist named Jose Pulido. These stickers are a union between mainstream American cultural icons like Iron Man, the Dodgers, or Ariel from the Little Mermaid and traditional Mexican sugar skulls. There is a coffee shop down the street that sells coffee blended Mexican flavors such as the mazapán, horchata, etc. The Zapata reading really made me think about why I never felt art the way that others do. I think it’s the fact that I never truly felt represented in the art pieces that we study. I’m meant to appreciate a Bernini sculpture, but never shown a Diego Rivera piece. I’m meant to appreciate French, and Italian, and Japanese food, but I grew up eating molé. If I were to create an art piece, how would I engage that child that will likely never leave their hometown? As Zapata said, can technology change the way that we see art? Can virtual reality really be the next big medium for ChicanX art?
It is not a secret that many in the tech field feel that virtual reality is the next big technological step. Apple has added depth sensors to their phones. My son asked my mother-in-law for a $400 Oculus Quest 2 virtual reality headset this Christmas. Virtual reality is talked about briefly in the Zapata reading, but I really feel that there is untapped potential. I remember the field trips we had when I was a child to nature preserves and museums. I recently found out that my grandfathers and paternal great grandfather were braceros. I also discovered how badly this country treated the people that harvest their food. I would love to create a virtual reality experience where visitors are brought to a field that was cultivated by farm workers and create a virtual reality experience centered around the field. I picture a bus full of laborers picking up dust coming to work with the sun still down. I picture them hunched over for hours picking tomatoes with no where to relieve themselves when the time comes. Finally, I picture visitors removing their virtual reality headsets, getting into their cars, and realizing that their present reality is based on the back of my ancestors.
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Hi Chris ! I really like that you included your own experience. I definitely feel like I don't know a lot of about my ancestors or my general family history. It must have been cool to realize that the things we talk about in class connect to the things your family once experienced (in terms of history). I also really like your idea on using technology to look back on the past; I've never thought about using it like that. Technology always seems like something of the future, but it can also be used to unlock the past.
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