Group Photo Exhibition: 2020
Annual Faculty Show: Around China Town: Ho Chi Minh City
October 2020, May Gallery, Sverdrup Building, Big Ben Boulevard, Webster Groves, MO, USA
This photographic series is my second episode extended from the Bangkok one.
The China Town Series serves as a visual anthropology project to unveil as well as to connote cultural context in terms of core value, friendly invasion, or maybe idea transformation by the following photos:
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Available from this link: https://spark.adobe.com/page/xtlLJr8Lkt6aI/
Ideal Fashion:
Fashion is one of the prominent artifacts to express cultural identity. It is the universal sign to communicate who you are; your taste, style, as well as economic or financial status. However, fashion could also illustrate whom you wish to be like your dream.
Fashion, in this photo, depicts the conflict of culture within the same nation between local culture -maintaining identity with plain color and the hat, and elite culture - modifying for more elegant, complex, and colorful design, but still keep the recognizable identity of Vietnamese, as a core value.
Pop Culture everywhere:
Pop culture is one of the prominent artifacts to express cultural imperialism. However, the new perspective in anthropology viewpoint came up with the concept of dubbing culture.
Like dubbing movies, the visual artifacts have to find the creative approach to match or melt within the new cultural context, not from the host culture.
As you can see Channel, Doraemon, or Snoopy everywhere without the boundary of language, religion, or politics; some kind of friendly invasion.
Transition:
Traditional performing art is innately the product of a culture that maintains the intangible heritage and yet encapsulates different genres of art together.
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This heritage seems to be sinking into oblivion by time and generation. Seemingly, the gen Z seems lost in translation on this heritage.
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Although a lot of traditional performing art might start fading away, the legend or saga still there and has been creatively transforming into another platform; film, TV, or YouTube, as cultural transformation.
Click at the poster to view the event photos
Solo Photo Exhibition: 2017
Remembrance of King Rama IX at Hua Hin: a Charitable Photographic Show and Art & Culture Workshop
October 2017, Port Walk, Bluport, Hua Hin, Prachup Khiri Khan, Thailand
The imagery series "Remembrance of King Rama IX @ Hua Hin" is applied both Conceptual Art and Street Photography to emotionally portray Hua Hin's daily lives linked with the honorable signage and images of the late king.
I used the Street Photography style to instantly captured a slice of life or moment in time around Hua Hin, while I utilized Conceptual Art to plan and set up some particular shots for maximizing my desired content. Besides, I applied the proper mood and tone adjustment within an individual photo to dramatically evoke profound emotional connections between Hua Hin residents and King Rama IX ranging from gloomy, hopeful, determined, optimistic, moving forward, and so on...
The key messages from this photographic series metaphorically visualize that our late beloved king will remain with us now and forever…
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Upcoming Book Publication:
Around China Town (in Bangkok) is the photographic media integrated with applied visual context of anthropology, sociology and culture of Chinese in Thailand captured since 2005 till present. For over 10 years of semi-photographic documentation, it delineates daily lifestyle, religious faith, architectural influence, environment change, heritage transition and intercultural communication through black & white imagery through the proper application of photographic style and tone adjustment in each picture.
The creation of this photographic series is based on the terms and contexts of visual anthropology, visual sociology and visual culture with the expectation for not only the aesthetic achievement, but cultural reflections as well.
Published Conference Proceedings:
POSSIBLE THERAPEUTIC BENEFIT OF SPIRITUAL IMAGES
B. Srisupawat and A. Beckstein (2019)
Abstract
While talk therapy seems to be the golden standard in counseling psychology, there are other possible modalities that have some empirical support. The use of photographs is one such example that has potential to help clients express themselves in instances where words are not enough. Furthermore, it seems that religiosity, spirituality or a general connection to a higher power likely have a positive effect on happiness for many people. Therefore, it seems to make sense that viewing spiritual photos could have a positive impact on happiness. This paper first reviews literature on the use of images and photographs generally as therapeutic tools and then the rather scant literature on the use of spiritual images more specifically. Limitations, possible implications for therapy, and future directions are briefly discussed.
Keywords: Art Therapy, Therapeutic Photography, Spiritual Image, Positive Psychology
https://www.spirituality-conference.org/icsp2019-proceedings.html
INTERNATIONAL PODCAST PROJECT: USING PODCASTS TO ENRICH AND ENHANCE EXPERIENCES IN INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION
B. Wiggins1, S. Leahy2, K. Jenkins3, J. Smith3, F. Arese Visconti4, T. Young5, B. Srisupawat (2017)
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Abstract
The purpose of this document is to describe the process and outcomes of an international collaboration involving student-produced podcasts as a university-course requirement. This project took place across multiple campuses in the global network of Webster University. Students and instructors participated from the following campuses: St. Louis, Missouri (the university’s home campus), Leiden, The Netherlands, Geneva, Switzerland, and Cha-Am, Thailand, and Vienna, Austria.
The concept of the International Podcast Project was to provide an active learning experience in which students participate in a global media project by choosing a topic related to media and society, research their topic, develop a short audio program in the form of a podcast and publish their work along with their fellow classmates from the participating international campus locations.
Keywords: Podcast, Active Learning, Media Convergence, Digital Literacy
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