a letter to you,
from the sun
It took me some time to formulate a meaning to this project, but after talking to Prisha Jain today about our shared experiences, I learned the term "quickening" from her thesis. I realized that this term closely describes my own experience, which ultimately led to the outcome of this project.
This project was created for my class, 'Energy.' It is a solar-powered poetry generator that generates day and night poems, depending on the amount of light falling on the solar panel. I built it using Allison Parrish's Python port of Kate Compton's Tracery, which I learned from her class 'Reading and Writing Electronic Text'. I used Tracery because I wanted to work with computational poetry. Through Tracery, I defined a JSON grammar with structured rules and lists of words (nouns, verbs, adjectives) and phrases. Tracery randomly selects and arranges these words and phrases based on the defined patterns to create these poems. The project utilizes solar energy and stores energy in recycled vape batteries, then displays the poems on an E-Ink display, all connected to a Raspberry Pi-Pico.
Having been in mostly bad relationships, including an abusive one, I have felt extremely detached from people, and especially in romantic experiences, but I met someone, and though it was short-lived, I'm really grateful that I met him, and I fell for him, like I hadn't fallen for anyone before, and it reminded me feeling safe in my capacity to feel really deeply. And, during that time, I wrote him around 24 letters. Calling oneself an artist is a heavyweight and a big responsibility, one that I'm not ready to take on yet, but I'm one step closer to doing so, thanks to my conversations with him and moving past my detached phase.
The day poems are meant to capture the realities of waking up next to someone. They reflect the deep care I received in the small moments we shared. The night poems show the more challenging aspects of my emotions, including anxiety and depression. When I wrote those, I wished things could have worked out between us.
This project intends to express my immense gratitude for the time we shared. He reminded me of my ability to feel deeply, and although our time was short-lived, it meant a lot to me. I wish him the best moving forward. I’m sure he’s going to go on to do great things and will always root for him.
Radio for Raviya.
Radio for Raviya.
I met Raviya Careem in 2025, and we quickly became close friends. During one of our early conversations at the end of that year, I asked her about her favorite memory with her father. She shared that her favorite memory was listening to the radio in the car before her family went to run errands. Later, for my class ‘Energy’ at ITP, I created a Hand-Crank Radio that produces static as a way to honor that memory.
