Proposal
Idea 1: Chosen Doppelganger
The idea is to capture the duality of the names of international students, particularly, Chinese students. This duality of given and chosen name is an interesting phenomenon that exist in the international student community. One given name in their native language, representing the best wishes and hopes of their parents; and one chosen by themselves as a new identity that they relate to more as they begin a new chapter in a new country. The process of choosing a name is a process of self-discovery. This duality is often unseen or ignored as their native language names are simply weirdly sounded “gibberish” to people who don’t speak Chinese.
The challenge is finding a way to appropriately capture and visualize the participants’ native language name. It could be done by word description by the participant themselves, AI generated image, etc. I did a test to AI generate my roommate’s name into an image using Night Café. The result is quite promising. However, I do wish to find a more objective, automated capturing process.
Fun Fact: This idea is inspired by the inside joke between me and my friends that, while my Chinese name is a macho macho boy’s name, my English name is as feminine as it gets. Surprise, my given name literally represents “the universe”, “the stars”, and “dragon”.
Idea 2: Tiny Neighborhoods (I might turn this into a personal project 🙂
The idea is to generate more microscopic photos and add creative interpretations to them to transform each photo into a cute little world with characters and neighborhoods.