VOLUME 109, ISSUE NO. 6 | STUDENT-RUN SINCE 1916 | RICETHRESHER.ORG | WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 2, 2024
New art opens behind Brochstein’s closed doors JULIANA LIGHTSEY
A&E EDITOR
The morning after a terrible storm, inspiration struck Karyn Olivier on her commute to work. In a North Philadelphia neighborhood she had driven through countless times before, a huge swath of vines and ivy had been peeled off of a concrete wall by the rain and wind, crumpling forlornly over an adjacent fence. Olivier stopped her car and took a photograph. That photograph, titled “Revelation,” will be on view at Brochstein Pavilion until August 2025. “Revelation” is this academic year’s “Off the Wall” installation, an ongoing partnership between the Moody Center for the Arts and the Museum of Fine Arts Houston’s Glassell School of Art. Olivier’s installation was revealed with a reception at the pavilion Sept. 27. The counter area remained sectioned off for construction. Despite the exhibit’s opening, Brochstein is still not open for student use, according to Beth Leaver, senior executive director of Housing and Dining. “We do not have an official date yet, but we are close and will be prepared to make a formal announcement soon,” Leaver wrote in an email to the Thresher. Frauke Josenhaus, a curator at the Moody, said that despite the pavilion’s delayed opening, the Moody Center chose to continue with Olivier’s “Off the Wall” installation as planned. “We decided to move forward … out of respect for the busy schedule of the artist but also knowing that the work would
be visible,” Josenhaus wrote in an email to the Thresher. “The open architecture of the Brochstein Pavilion allows for the work to be seen from outside while the cafe is still closed.” Olivier, like previous artists, was selected from the Glassell School’s Core Residency program alumni. “This is now the sixth iteration of the ‘Off the Wall’ series, and each artist really brings a different vision to the wall,” Josenhaus, who organized this year’s commission, said. “We always try to find an artist who has this ability to conceive something on a very monumental scale, who is interested in creating something for a very public space and likes a challenge, so [Olivier] has been on our list for a while.” Olivier’s grounded photography is a sharp contrast to the previous year’s “Off the Wall” installation, an abstract collage of squares by the artist william cordova. According to Josenhaus, the artists are given extensive creative liberty over what they choose to display in the space. “We knew that [Olivier’s] approach would be very different than [cordova’s],” Josenhaus said. “We had something that was very abstract last year, and this time it’s very figurative and illusionistic … But that’s just the beauty of letting the artist decide what they want to do. It’s an open invitation, and we are always thrilled to discover what the artist comes up with.” According to Olivier, “Revelation” is rooted in the phenomenon of finding new ways to look at the familiar or mundane.
Sophomores debut AI nutrition app Diagnos ABIGAIL CHIU
FOR THE THRESHER Diagnos, an AI-backed nutrition-tracking app, launched in the Apple app store Sept. 24. The app, designed by Ifty Ahmed and Thun Silpsamrit, provides AI-based calorie and nutritional estimates based on users’ pictures of their food. The app also provides nutritional estimates of food on servery menus. Ahmed and Silpsamrit said they had considered building a health-related app since January. One of their advisors, Roberta Anding, a lecturer of nutrition and health sciences, suggested focusing on nutrition. Ahmed and Silpsamrit began developing the app in June. They worked throughout the summer for as many as 14 hours a day to code the app, Ahmed said. “It took [such] long, uncomfortable hours,” Ahmed, a Wiess College sophomore, said. “I’m living that life right now, fourteen hours every day on this.” The team added Maya Zhang, a Jones C o l l e g e
SEE REVELATION PAGE 8
Senior Spotlight: Abdullah Jahangir captures home and belonging SHREYA CHALLA
SENIOR WRITER
Through Abdullah Jahangir’s camera lens, a photo isn’t just a still image — it’s a moment in time, dynamic and emotional. Working with film in his freshman photography class prompted him to consider photography as more than just snapshots, but rather a form of self-expression and exploration. “I like to take pictures of my friends and family, of things I want to document, and of scenes that consciously engage multiple senses of mine at the same time,” Jahangir, a
FRANCESCA NEMATI / THRESHER “Revelation,” a photo of the aftermath of a storm, debuted at Brochstein Pavilion Sept. 27. Despite the exhibit’s opening, Brochstein remains closed for construction, with no confirmed opening date yet.
Wiess College senior, said. “I think that people look a bit differently at the camera when they know who’s behind them, and I like my subjects to have an expression of familiarity.” Jahangir, who is double majoring in visual and dramatic arts and computer science, hopes to use photography in his senior studio work as an extension of his own perception of the world. He considers himself a lens-based artist, focusing on film and photography. This year, Jahangir wants to work with cyanotypes, which are vivid blue and white prints created
SEE JAHANGIR PAGE 8
COURTESY ABDULLAH JAHANGIR Wiess College senior Abdullah Jahangir considers his photography a form of self-exploration, often grappling with loss, belonging and his homeland of Pakistan.
sophomore, in August to focus on business and marketing. Diagnos’s AI works by identifying the size and diameter of the plate and the portion size of each food. It calculates the area, volume and density of each food item to find the associated calories and nutrient values. “We have some faults in the data, and if we do not consider them, [image recognition] goes to 78% accuracy, which is … higher than a lot of competitors,” Ahmed said. Faulty data included images that were unclear to the AI due to stacked food items. Ahmed said that the app uses prompts created by the team, which are then combined with other nutrition-tracking technologies and information from Housing and Dining. “We do prompt engineering by ourselves, which is … the algorithm we made to train the AI,” Ahmed said. “We [use] the technology that provides other companies the nutrition tracking … So we combine both, and we use them to provide people more refined information … We are connected with Housing and Dining and, we collect their information, and use them as a reference in our algorithm, [making it] more accurate.”
SEE DIAGNOS PAGE 2