Poems?? nahh.. boring!

First of all, I am not a big fan of poetry. They just don't seem to interest me for some reason! Lets just say, I suck at understanding the poems, I mean why can't people just write in a simpler paragraph way rather than making it complicated in few lines. I see no point of that. Anyways, since I am not a big fan of poems, of course, I did not enjoy these poems. Both of the poems sort of had a reflection of nature like the idea of Daoism. Tang talks more about the relationships between the humans. Yes, I do believe that these poems reflect both societies well. We can probably use these poems to understand any society because they mention about nature of human and also the nature of 'nature'.

My awesome Show of the spread of Islam

So, the assignment was to show/demonstrate the expansion of Islam up to a certain dynasty known as Abbasid dynasty, which started about around 751 C.E. Before that was the Umayyad dynasty and the early Caliphs (around 632-733 C.E.). In order to show the expension, I basically made a wonderful showme for those who are interested in getting some knowledge about Islam and oh, of course interested in my awesome show show showme! So here it is:

The Expansion of Islam


Hope you enjoyed it!

Conversions of Russians vs Byzantines.. lets see who's more accurate!

Constantine was a Roman general who wanted to be a Roman emperor. He considered himself to have a power of the Christian God because he believed that the Christian God helped him to handle his rivals and to become a Roman Emperor. He promulgated the Edict of Milan which allowed the Christians to practice their faith openly in the Roman Empire. After then, he converted himself to Christianity. Vladimir was a prince of Kiev who converted to Orthodox Christianity. He already held a higher position, so it was different than Constantine. Vladimir didn't like other religions due to certain reasons such as Islam. He didn't like Islam because he would have to give up on alcohol and certain meat such as pork. There were other religions which he could've converted into, but he didn't. I think Constantine's conversion had more meaning towards religion behind it rather than Vladimir's conversion. Pretty much, converting into Christianity brought them closer but they converted for different reasons.

Byzantine Empire's Awesome-ness

Painting - Virgin Mary Praying

Dome Mosaic - Christ Central

Well, the Byzantine architecture and the paintings sort of share the similar color themes - the architecture was more of in brownish and reddish shades while the paintings had more of yellowish into them. Both has the feeling of warmness due to the choices of the warm colors. Red, yellow, brown, purple reflect the warm feelings. There isn't much representation of the cold colors such as blue or green. I did not think it is distinctive. The architecture served more as functional rather than decorative, because well, there isn't much pattern/details in the architecture like how the Persians did. Also, it looked simple and definitely doesn't look like decorated at all. I did not see any influences on the American architecture except the Byzantine interiors were decorated well inside with the bright colors, which is sort of how it is up here as well.

Hey Constantinople, you forgot your documents..

Document 1 is from Benjamin of Tudela, a Rabbi, who pretty much gives an overview of the city, Constantinople. May be the document is just giving an overview information about the city to the others. Since Benjamin was a Rabbi, he talks about the places of worship and about the king - King Manuel.
Document 2 is from Robert of Clari, who talks about how the city was conquered and taken over. He also talks about pilgrims reacting to the city. Robert describes the different parts of the city. I think this document was written for the public in general - describing more of the city.

Document 3 is from Nicetas Choniates and talks about the statue of Hercules, and the barbarians. Technically, the barbarians did not like the beauty of the city and 'did not neglect to overturn the statues standing in the Hippodrome or any other marvelous works". I think this document talks about the history of the city to teach others.
Document 4 is the map of Constantinople - painted map from the 13th century. Since it was painted, I think it was created by some famous artist in the city. May be it was painted for the travelers or merchants who were travelling all the times just to guide them about the city.
Document 5 is a photograph of an Interior of a church - Saint Sophia. I think this was photographed to promote the culture, may be religion! It has to be taken by a modern photographer because there weren't cameras back in days.
Document 6 is from George Acropolites, who may be have been a servant of the emperor since the document mostly focuses on the emperor. I think the document was written for the people to get more knowledge of the king, especially the citizens of the city.
Document 7 is from Chrysobull Detailing, who might have been a historian since it gives information. Even though the document does not seem so real and factual, I think it was directed towards the people in general.

The Route of Treasures...

Actually, almost everything went well in this silk road project! I loved working with my partner, Helly! Hmm, three things that went well would be, of course, the poster itself went pretty well, umm, I think we did well on the essay too and also, over all the time management which we had planned, worked out. There were few things I didn't like such as drawing the map was a pain; I'm an artist still I don't like to draw maps - especially maps on these kind of large posters. Since I like things to be perfect, I wanted my map to be perfect and I tried my best. Helly and I were half way done with the map and we realized that we have to include empires, which kind of annoyed me so much! So of course, reading the directions was definitely an issue! Also, Helly and I were working on this over the weekend as in on Saturday - Saturday evening; as soon as we opened the Google document for the instructions, the power went out. So we had a hard time with the map as well as the essay. There wasn't any difficulty in this project other than just making sure we were coloring the right empires and drawing the right/correct roads. My partner was a great help! Helly and I did everything together; we both helped each other out, so it wasn't like one person doing all the work and other one is just chilling! Overall, the collaboration was 5 out of 5 between us two.
If I were to do this differently, I don't think I would change anything other than just drawing the map technique - meaning I think you should project the map on the white board and we can just trace it. Other than that, I actually liked this project and I learned more than I would've by reading because when I draw things like locate them on the map, it just sticks in my head for some reason and I just remember it very well rather than reading. Just to let you know, I am not a reading person overall, so I enjoy doing this more than reading except it's time consuming and it sucks when you don't have power!