Part
12/09/2016
15/09/2016
Idea factory
Today was Library Induction. We have been given assignments to do research about 'wood', 'Gillian Wearing', 'expand' and 'ink'. It was such a experience to work through all those shelves and books, I found a book called 'WOOD' by Andy Goldsworthy whom works really well with the nature of wood. I feel connected to how he explains his ephemeral artworks, 'What has been drawn from nature will sooner or later merge with it again.' It was definitely devastated when you had a whole exciting list and found out someone else took them already but I am so glad I looked back and forth between those shelves and found something relevant to my topic.
It was also really nice to share books we interested in with friends. I was a bit stuck on ''expand'' at the time, and my friend had this book called ''sk-interfaces'' which he finished for a while and had some great comments about it so I decided to go through the book. I ended up intrigued by a project called ''Touch Me'', the artist invited people to leave their hand marks on a sensory colour-changing wall. The pigments will react to changes in temperature(human body heat) by colour change processes. People are insure about others knowing about how they really fell, meanwhile we feel curious about how we really feel(we are sometimes confused about what is in our head). Plus, I really like how Zane Berzina showed the audience their inner emotion in a poetic sensitive way, using colours instead of obvious confession in words.
Today is about the development of the project, I was stuck by the further developing since the outcome seemed lack of something but I cannot quite be sure about what it is. After wandering around on photoshop, I realised it would be interesting to add random outlines on the banana to emphasis its presence and to add a bit of oddness. I think I could do more on explaining my theme since I usually run out of words when it comes to introduce my work. It was really nice that most of my comments are recommendations of relevant artists that are got similar style. I should have done more experiments on the colours of the banana skin and maybe some layouts of the banana skins (if that is the case), yet I guess I will still stick to my final colour decision since the white gets a sick pale tone (not ''normal''). What is normal? It is a real question and not easy to define it...
26/09/2016
Poetic cardboard
Our video is about schizophrenia, sharing a common day of people surfing this type of disease. This way we edited is slightly different from other films that have the same/similar topic. We delivered it in a less serious way because we like the public to understand schizophrenia but not be intimidated by it (we think sometimes it is the flyers/advertising videos on the market that increase the fear)... However, it is a sensitive topic after all, we are a bit confused if we are doing the right thing but we definitely do NOT want anyone/ anyone's family/friends that experienced/ are experiencing the similar situation to feel offensive by the way we did to/in our video.
29/09/2016
Type
I struggled a lot when I first started the project since I was thinking about flat images only. After a walking through the classroom, i had seen people cutting out shapes and leaving the shape to create a shadow which completed the letter. Thus, i started to try using shadow to form my own letter face but without cutting the paper. For example, the upper layer of letter A created a triangle shadow for the the upper half for A. I was stuck when i need to do letter B since it was impossible to form a B by simple folding the paper. The tutor gave me a hint -what if I ignore some part of the letter as long as people could still recognise the letter, so i missed out the vertical line of B and just made it into a shape like 3. It was difficult to photograph the outcome since it was just a thin piece of paper and easy to fall off. Also, I need to go high up to express the concept of ''one bit'' and the papers fell easily while i was trying to get upstairs.
03/10/2016
Wear it
This one would be the final outcome since it is more focus on the product and the light/colour is more sensitive...
Hopefully there are customers interested in my 'Real choker'. I played around with the chokers on the market to make a real cheer with sharps on the inside that might hurts if you wear it for too long. My model's neck started to get red when I kept taking photos for 10min or so...
10/10/2016
Your surrounding
We were asked to find interesting shape from the neighbourhood near the campus, and the tutor said that we should use the double page to complete the whole image so that everything could be displayed without losing details. I tried to finish one with left hand and one with two colours in one hand, in order to create more inspired shapes and outlines the next step. A classmate used negative space to record his observation which is quite inspirational. After that, we needed to combine two shapes from observational drawing and create a 3D mini-model. It is a test-out for the final outcome- it gives us time to experiment different composition and different combination before we start making the final (it also saves materials- we might miss up in the middle of the process/the structure of the 3D final does not work out if we haven't make a mini-model first). The mini-model turns out to be completely not the same way as my initial mini one yet the experiment did give me inspiration of how/what i could do with my shape- how to balance the two. The idea of our fashion outcome should not be anything that could be defined, not a gown, not a trouser, not a hat but something that has no definition just yet. The task is to explore the possibilities of the shapes so i covered my model's face and left a gap for her one eye, the shape continued along the neck to the shoulder. One shoulder held a pad stretching out sharply, the other one had nothing at all (contrast). The sawtooth-like edge of the pad made it like a outfit for soldiers. The last part was to live draw our models under varied instruction. One of them is to draw as our eyes staying on the model (not looking at the page at all), I was not sure about the idea but the tutor sensed our doubt and told us to trust out pen and instinct. It turns out to be the most interesting drawing because it was nothing like i did before.
11/10/2016
Your data
Our task is to make a 3D structure with things that means something to us as a group. It took us a while because we have a perfume, a book , a silver necklace, and a pair of grey wool gloves which are not relevant with one and another. There was another group hanging their shoes on the ceiling and making them look like a shoe collection flowing in the air. We then realised it was more about the structure we created, not the relationship between the objects. We set up a shape of a dragon - the idea of using the round pearl as the eye of the dragon turned the dragon alive. We were asked to draw the set-up within time limits which was really a challenge so that i used what i learned from last lesson- live drawing wit eyes on the objects all the time. And i borrowed a fellow classmate's pen with ink- the hardness of the head gives me a new experience compared to soft head pens i normally used.
The live drawing of the second part is also needed to follow by specific instructions. We need to have pencil on the left hand and coloured pen on the right hand, and swift hands when the tutor told us to (with varied time limits). The outcome would be performed in lines continued with two colours one after another. And we asked to turned our page for a certain angle (90 degree, etc.) and repeated the process of continuing lines. The result was beautifully presented in a form of spiral with a centre in the sightly left upper area (it was my choice).
31/10/2016
1/11/2016
3/11/2016
Interaction
During research discussion, one of our group member found a cat candle which would show the skeleton of a cat after the wax melted. The communication of this idea is also a kind of interaction, the humour passing through the surprise after the melting. We were assigned into pairs randomly which is quite an icebreaking since this is the first class of specialist pathway. My partner (Ella) and I had the quote ''Sins are attempts to fill voids''. We connected it to a poem which tells a process of this boy from killing a fly, to flushing goldfish into toilet, to commit a murder. The outcome would be an animation, playing repeatedly in public and we will document the reaction of people the entire time. However, the tutor feels like our idea was not focus on the word ''interact'' enough. We were running out of time so we had to talk over the phone to figure out a new subject because we needed to bring out throughout planning about our execution of the idea during the group tutorial on the other day. We set our idea as follows: offer smokers on the street free cigarettes in order to attract them to be part of our project, ask people to tell story of their first story of smoking:when they first feel like they NEED a cigarette instead of merely the first smoking experience- most people had their first sip because it is cool (shoot the entire story telling process but only their hands in the frame considering most people are not willing to show their face in a video publicly), after they finished it, we will ask them to write the brief version of the story on the cig (film the writing as well). And we decided to collect the cigs as a part of the evidences of the project.
The tutor liked our idea and suggested that we could interview students at the open space outside Waitrose in the campus. There are loads of people smoking and chatting during lunchtime. We did a few there but wanted to change place as we would like to have people with different jobs and ages- they will have different stories. We went to London bridge the other day and found it much difficult to interview because people there are either in a hurry, or quite discreet to us approaching. The communication between Ella and me are smooth which is really a relief to the teamwork- we were calmly exchanging ideas and giving out suggestions throughout the progress. After getting sufficient amount of resources, we discussed about the editing session and split the recording into equal two portion. Yet we cannot send the videos to each other as they are too large for email, then we cannot check if we have the same arrangement on editing style (it would be a collection so we should keep consistency). We should manage time carefully or come up with a plan that could finish when we were all there, e.g. make a collected video instead of a individual video for every interviewee.
During the critique, the tutor popped out the question of our collected cigs- if we display them on a wall, it may be a better way to document our project with more visual impact if we have enough cigs to fill a whole wall. I then think we should have left packs of cigs and a note saying ''please write a brief reason of why you smoked for the first time after taking our free cigarettes''. Also, ask them to leave the cigs on the desk or ask them to place it into the transparent sealed bag we sticked on the wall. And we could put a camera away from the desk and wall to record people interacting.
We also got feedback about the unclear voice on the background, it is because it was on speaker and we decided to set the audio into an echo effect to create a sense of vivid memory: the audience are telling story from their very past.
Part
17/11/2016
21/11/2016
22/11/2016
Graphic score
lines and dotes w/ different textures/materials represent different pitch and instrument/sound
metal workshop
My initial idea needed plastic transparent board so that the inner side of the produce could be shown clearly, however the metal studio did not have them. The tutor suggested me to change my initial idea- learn to compromise between the ideal and reality. I did not want to throw away the initial concept of using materials from the nature to produce the instrument, so i came up with the idea of leaves-shuffling. It looks like a cage for leaves as i spotted abandoned metal grids at the metal studio. The rust on the metal matches the theme of nature and creates extra roughness to the final outcomes.
detailed drawing about ideas-explain throughly
Me and my fellow group members should corporate to create a band performance yet we started off with confused understanding to the task, thinking about making a theme for the 60sec audio. It leads us to meet another day and this time we thought being spontaneously since the quality of the sensibility would be taken away if we rehearsed for every sound we made. The only thing is that we should have document our making process for sketchbook- at least take photos of all the instruments together.
how to visualise the audio
ideas changing- dots moving forward- random shapes popping out from the page
critique
experiment in sketchbooks
the balance of the abstract milky red and white
if it could be completed, it would be better- time management
Someone in our group did animation which are combined by several 3 seconds movement with different characters individually.
5/12/2016
6/12/2016
app store
Compose/Disrupt
Concept:
Creates new songs out of several songs, max5
connected to other third party app
automatically setup by app
app separate stems song(bass, melody,etc.)
profile management
Name:
Stems/composer/soundcloud/Genius/Mix/Songs/Mozart
05/01/2017
09/01/2017
10/01/2017
Building Blocks
After fitting every letter in a square(3*3), I tried to wipe off the parts of the letter where is overlapping the outer square, and using dots to represent. With tutors' guides, we started from letter A, W, K, R, G as they have similar characters towards the rest of letters. For example, if W is solved, then V, M, following by N is solved as well.
However, it seems confusing at every aspect when it comes together as a word. The dots are difficult to distinguish where they belong so I made two other versions using tiny triangles/lines to guide audiences/customers.
The second typeface is inspired by tore candy wraps. Since my first typeface has strict rule towards every letter, I wanted to be more spontaneous with the second one. The sawtooth edge of wraps could lead people's focus on the part which determine the weight of the letter. While as the inconsistent tearing could be the characteristic element that make the typeface have style while every letter is unique. The way I designed them is to make them look like a bit mashed together.
Specimen
Poster
Booklet- crop off the parts on the four directions and print them on tracing paper so that it forms images when they layer up
I, O, Q, V, X, Y would be having a 35% grey as background and stay uncut since they either do not have any parts overlaying the square, or have exclusive elements.
12/01/2017
Binding
One cut book-look and arrange carefully the pages as how they will look when it is folded and layered out.
I
20/09/2016
22/09/2016
Collection
My concept is about my anxiety of me having no concept in mind, and taking screenshots on my phone when the anxiety comes up. The tricky part is that my concept is about me trouble finding my concept yet I have set my concept in a way. It became a problem when I knew it could be work because I started to not thinking about it and the anxiety went away bit by bit... I guess the better thing to do is to tell myself not to make it like my final concept but to set a backup plan (if this one doesn't work) or to set this one to be the backup plan (so that the anxiety would not fade away since I haven't made up my mind). I really like how Max went interact with homeless people and heard them out their story and edited it into a page of profile, the presentation looks like a page from a refine magazine. A big sized portrait photo of the homeless people and the quote of their words split the page evenly into two parts. I think it is really clever because people's appearance equals the value of what is inside. The next thing I need to figure out is how I will present it, if it is just the screenshots/ graphs/ 3D setups...
My collection is the anxiety towards the project so I took screenshots every time I felt anxiety about this project since i had a difficult time with deciding what i would be collecting.
This should be a continuous video (or not).
During the critique, I have received a comment saying if it is better to add sound to it. I thought about it if I should add sound effect afterwards but no sound would be a better off option as sound/music would distract people's attention from the moving image. The changed speed of screenshots are the 'sound' of the video. The tutor suggested the choice of the picture of screenshots could be considerate more since a random picture does not help the audience to get to know the subject and concept. However, the layering up of the screenshots emphasised the anxiety of my worries towards the project.
27/09/2016
Lost characters
Really impressed by the one at the bottom left, at first sight I was a bit overwhelmed but when I stepped a few back, I started to get the image. It is so sharp and clean with every print and the eyelashes are so delicate. I just cannot get enough of it after I understand it!! And the one in the middle up is also really interesting, this person must put so much into it, it has different vibe to the 'eye'. This one tells a completed story, or at least a vivid image of an act with such humour. The idea of using the capital V as the character's top, and the body shape of the character is just on point, it needs nothing less and nothing more!!
My work is a game process of tetris... I should have put a starting page with 'START' and score bar on so that the image could have more interesting elements for people to look at and it will create a story with context if it is the moment of 'lose' or 'win'.And I should do experiment before i started to print- about if i should leave thin white gap between bars, or have black outlines so that they could be separated instead turning into a giant mushy red/black area.
04/10/2016
Use it
My intention of making this chair is to let the user feel comfortable setting/ laying with any position as I learnt from observations and personal experience that most chairs are not made for relaxed setting- hugging your knees/ putting your legs on, etc. Plus I would prefer my chair could be in one piece instead of building up by several parts due to simplicity in visual. The final outcome turns out to have similar concept to passenger seats on long-distance airplanes, which gave me thinking about why this form of chairs have not been introduced into daily life and been used since it absolutely suits any possible way an individual liked of setting/laying in a chair.
6/10/2016
Build it
We chose octahedron and dodecahedron, a simple and a sightly complex shape to balance the complexity of the final and to set up some bars for us to challenge without reaching for impossible tasks(if we chose two complex shapes). In the process of making, we had problem of keeping the shape standing as themselves as we started to finish up a third layer. Luckily, we fixed that problem by making crosses within the shape so the triangles would firm the structure- prevent them to fall apart by any second and by any chances.
The observation drawing seemed to be a difficult task since there were too many lines crossing over each other and next to each other- they distracted and blocked out one anther as I tried to be accurate and to not miss out any part. I then found a way which is to divide the structure into layers and then into left/right parts. Then i could focus on a smaller part with less complexity and move on to another, although it is important to look around the part i focused on at the moment in order to make sure parts could link up together afterwards into a complete piece.
13/10/2016
Your interpretation
We were asked to corporate and produce a life drawing of our fellow classmates as models. The more materials involved, the better. Yet our group members were limited by how the scale of the model going to be presented on seven sketchbooks laying out in line. Due to that there was no much time left, we pushed ourself to just work over the page as every individual wishes. Our model had a pure black fabric tangled over her thigh, thus there was no much detail with that part on page. It could be better if we used other material such as some fabric to represent the whole blackness instead of trying to do what we see and to fill that area using black ink. It was a challenge since most of us were inspired by similar parts of the model- in result of huge range of quality presented in final outcome. And there was definitely pressure to take on when you were aware you may mess up other people's sketchbooks as there was no turing back after going all over the page.
7/11/2016
10/11/2016
white space
manifesto- rules and instructions towards white shape- questions about if there is white SPACE and what is inside/behind the white?
The questions I have made about white space makes me wonder what if white space is simply a blank visually, that it does not have all the philosophy and complexity behind the concept. And I really wanted to produce something that gives the audience the same thinking, so I tried to 'limit' myself to work under no conditions. There was only rule of my manifesto- make everything out of nothing. It was quite similar to what these few weeks' experience in CSM, that tutors left us to a board topic with no limits of display form or material used. This 'no condition' seems to be easy to work on since there are no specific requests, but it also means that sometimes you may get lost in the mist of too many choices and may end up clueless. Thus I started to think what could represent everything. The answer is 'emptiness', only a blank space would have left itself with nothing and with every possibilities at the same time. Yet i did not prefer a entirely white square(a square is the most regular shape and it will be sample-sized(10cm*10cm) so people would not get distractive by the size and shape), i want to create something that people could look into by getting to know it step by step.
The final page could be something instead of a pure black page- the sewing together papers are delicate. And my friends suggested that I should try to put some actual images at the final page instead of a complete black- which i have considered about but I gave up that idea due to that a image of any kind would have ruined the clean and simple atmosphere of abstract.
II
24/11/2016
28/11/2016
29/11/2016
1/12/2016
Made to persuade
initial ideas- 1 out of 3- business cards(1)/ white one white-storybook with famed/ poster?(3)-what drives people to buy them/packaging&promoting
My fellow group members gave extremely useful and inspirational references for my initial idea:
For 'don't be mean'- 'don't be mean' in english and mean lines in other languages:
White on White with english on top and other languages below and make sure the english is in white and the rest languages are in shadow
Make it in the form of business cards so that you could leave the card /hand them to anyone who is mean to you- they thought you are trying to suggest a timeout yet you play a trick(payback)by using foreign languages they don't understand.
making process-create character-software skills-idea changed:newspaper/calender
pricing tutorial -paper&ink testing -inkjet? -fingerprint ruins the outcome:buy papers from printing room to prevent that situation -time management: could be 30min waiting at printing room- test out with A4 before getting serious with A3/A2
Change the idea of newspaper to calendar/poster- people would buy their birthday month
Keep the red background-eyecatching
Add dates to the blank area which feels empty and it does its job as a calendar
Put quote/brief of the story on the front/back of the poster in order for people to learn the story
7/12/2016
Printing room
Next time I should go printing the day before deadline as sometimes papers get stuck in the machine and printing would take probably double time as they should, like today.
As I carefully folded the printed outcomes, marks left on the papers as my nails pressed over (the marks could be seen when you look the page at a certain angel, reflected by nature light).
I was going to use the printing paper in the library which i thought they would have in the printing room, however they had no idea and were short of double-sided papers. And the last time i was here, i brought my own paper to print for experiment, yet the colours were dull like it applied a grey/brown layer on the initial image. It was because they have got too many fingerprints and dust on my way from the art shop to printing studio(so i heart my lesson). There was only two options for double-sided prints and the staff in the printing studio suggested Tecco Duo Matt(130 gsm)inkjet paper won't get the ink perfectly as it is lighter and thinner, thus I chose 130gsm instead- it turned out to have a much brighter colour than the image shown on computer and as I imagined. However i do not mind since the strong brightness of the colour is what i aim for, it won't hurt even it is a bit over.
16/01/2017
17/01/2017
19/01/2017
Hear Make Heard
My initial ideas are all associated with emotions/senses that are difficult to present visually, or even describe its nature.
i) warm steam in the bathroom while showering
ii) Imagination
iii) the sound of talking to yourself
iv) conversations in dreams
By the influence from pervious project, I came up with the idea of using tape to cover some of the written words in my book as i assume people would be more comfortable to give out stories/dreams this way. Dreams are personal and nonsense. At least I would like to collect some personal stories. And my visual language could be not making any sense. On the background, there could be minimised illustrations with black lines only, so that the stories themselves are not been taken over. Or having stories embossed on semi-/transparent papers due to the vagueness of dreams, and how they fleet away in our memory once we are conscious after waking up- as if you glimpse something, you miss it in a second, just like that.
Another idea is to have pictures' of people sleeping on the background of the stories. A photography of they being unconscious and unguarded has contrast to the craziness of what happens in dreams. However in this way, it would be difficult to ask any strangers to do so, the interviewers could be only family, friends, friends' family.
The title of the book may be
i)dth-dth, which is the sound when television lost signals
ii)the whispering, because dreaming is like a nature whispering crazy stories in your ears while you are asleep
iii)the level of a desired signal, to have a scientific-style title will have an ironic effect on those documentary of dreams which are no way explained scientifically.