Response: Ali Momeni
“If a lion could speak, we probably wouldn’t understand him.”
Ali Momeni is a brilliant New Media artist. As a professor at Carnegie Mellon, he is extremely intuitive and experienced in regards to New Media. His projects are extremely extensive, between creating new musical instruments to his experiments with different insects. All of Momeni’s works are ones that I personally would never be able to think of, to which I am jealous. He was truly inspirational, and I was honored to be able to learn from him.
Even though I am a New Media major myself, I am very skeptical about the types of work and fields one can go into after graduating. Making money is my primary goal and it’s difficult to picture being financially comfortable in an artsy field, hence why I chose more of a technological major rather than a art major. Seeing Ali Momeni made me realize that you can be successful in any field, you just have to work for it and be dedicated and passionate.
Art has always been my favorite pass time. I have been an artist ever since I can remember. I have been painting and drawing and love every second of it. My dream would be to change the world through art, and by doing so, I would love to make statements with my art pieces such as the piece you see below. I did that my senior year, and the meaning of it is that “mold” of the perfect American dream. The barcode represents a person living in the United States, just going through the motions, and doing everything they are told just to be somewhat successful.
I did that piece because I was trying to decide on a college at the time, and felt so pressured I wanted to scream, and art was my way of venting. As Momeni continued with his discussion, he started talking about projection art. Projection art is probably the best way to make a statement that you want to make public. Banksy, for example, my favorite artist, does this with “graffitti art”. He creates public, sometimes controversial, messages on public streets for the world to see. And this is exactly what I would want to do with my artwork, and my artistic abilities.
What I did not like about his works were the ones involving insects. I understand that working with living organisms is quite amazing, but I just didn’t exactly understand the point of it. It was an art piece I guess one could say, but I did not love it. I’ve never been into sculptures or anything to that effect, probably why I was not a huge fan. I also did not understand the musical instruments he made. I thought that what he made was way too complex for my taste, but again, I am not musical so this could be why I felt this way.
Overall, I was really inspired by Ali Momeni. His background was not only amazing alone, how far he got just by working hard and following his dreams was tear worthy. I found his opinions and views on the art/new media world were amazing. I would have loved to learn more, and I’m sure I will continue to learn more about this field as I further myself and reach my full potential.