revised outcomes

tsklist mar

visual-mar4

Updated list of project outcomes:

  1. Physical data visualisations of blog archive
  2. Map of growing up in the age of Internet (Timeline), to be mounted on installation wall
  3. FYP report (formal)
  4. FYP report (publication accompanying the artwork)
  5. Process journal

I’m in the process of clearing things that have already been finished, like the 3d data vis and my process journal. Just rearranging them for print. Next week I will begin to make the map. Will share more on that. I’m alternating between report writing and making, as I feel that both will affect each other.

I have already printed out a part of my process journal and am quite satisfied with the outcome. I like the outcome a lot and even though I did this as a test print, I might just use it as the actual. I will bring it in for critique and feedback next Friday to see if there is anything else I can work on to make it better.

Images that are sourced online or are made on the computer are printed on transparency sticker. I kept the doodles and sketches from the notebook black. The paper I chose is called ‘sugar paper’ (what a cute name) from Art Friend. It feels really nice and suited for the nature of the ‘process journal’. It works beautifully to convey the handwritten nature of my text. I up the contrast and amount of black, and the laser print gives it that touch of shine on the paper which really looks like I’ve used my own pen to write in it. I decided to go for laser printing because my inkjet printer is simply unable to replicate that shiny black that I wanted.

In terms of material and paper choice, I wanted to highlight the dual nature of my process. I enjoy both doing work on paper and on computer. Transparency sticker and paper is used throughout the book, as it resembles the glossy nature of the computer screen, in contrast to the textured paper. I also feel that it makes the colour of the images pop, which would otherwise be slightly washed out if I had just printed it on the slightly greyish sugar paper.

Here’s a surprisingly high-res and accurate photo of the paper texture.

sugarpaper

 

Photo 4-3-16, 10 24 51 AM Photo 4-3-16, 10 25 03 AM Photo 4-3-16, 10 25 16 AM Photo 4-3-16, 10 25 22 AM Photo 4-3-16, 10 25 27 AM Photo 4-3-16, 10 25 35 AM

This is one of my favourite spreads.Photo 4-3-16, 10 25 52 AM Photo 4-3-16, 10 25 58 AM Photo 4-3-16, 10 26 07 AM

 

 

creating my own system – part 2

march–may 2015

you say you do not sense any kind of resentment from me. i like to think that’s pretty good. comparatively, someone once told me that all she could see was that my work is so full of resentment. that’s not great. that was eight years ago.

i am very lucky to love what i love to do. it made me more aware of myself and gives me hope and courage to not be a culmulative mess of my past self(ves). i console myself with the knowledge that i am getting better at doing this.

this project is about remixing existing histories and playing on the idea of reworking and filtering to give new meanings to old identities. a massive photoshop job, a work-in-progress, a painstaking filtering of flaws, to re-present the self, to rework flaws, to conceal and reveal, to give new meanings to old identities.

it’s about being self-aware. can i stand being this fucking mess?

gifs captures moments of transitions

digital technology, data mashups

filters and edits to re-present feelings and reality in an approachable way, which is what draws the line between personal narrative/struggle/angst and wanting to be relatable (viewing work critically)

internet nostalgia and attachment, ‘to form relationships over the internet, to live life and memories over the internet where everything is immediate gratification and can be replayed over and over’

unprepared again. don’t know how to explain my mind. this paralysis is getting worse. i liken this state to being dumped at the gates that opened to the darkest corner of my mind.

due to the nature of such work, we will be conveniently categorised and classified under the stereotype of the tortured, anguish artist. it is no romance being one such artist, causing hurt and confusion to those around us.

you say that people will gradually see the bigger picture of ourselves and even we needed to do that for ourselves, and not focus on this one part that failed. i wanted to tell my best friend, but i coulnd’t anymore i guess. it’s not the same anymore. it’s uncool to harp on such things, but i’ll have to just keep these things in me. i’m going to pack up my bags, carry on moving forward, no matter how long it takes.

all of these words made sense when they came out of your lips, and they lose their meaning when i rewrite them in my book.

july–october 2015

documenting work as a reveal of my thinking, as person and artist

have faith in your audience

my process describes the work more, opening up the process, trying to see what you don’t see.

not guarding information but making it open (for what)

mark napier, the shredder

douglas davis, world’s largest collaborative sentence

my collection of personal documentation is important in allowing me to understand my artistic practice and my development as an individual. this project aims to break down my writing and documentation and use it as a form of analysis in trying to understand the value of documentation in this age

bildungsroman as a concept, a coming of age story

jodi.org

technology is an invasive element, a fetish in the pursuit of perfection. can be a radical gesture

intangible heritage

ten years on the internet: the blog. an activity i have been doing for the longest time. documents my teenage years actively, particular the struggles i go through as an adolescent. how that shapes my being and identity and come to my present self, my artistic self and how that changed my perspective on how others see me

creating my own system – part 1

Some writing collected over the past year that I haven’t shared yet.

Trying to integrate my personal voice into the formal structure of the report as I feel that having that honesty is crucial to my work.

I know it is important to be able to write about your own work critically, but I have been struggling with how I can present it in a way that’s meaningful and thoughtful. So I am trying to create a ‘system’ where I attempt to reformat some of this writing that’s a little more personal and present it in a different way, from the same perspective that I view and live my own life right now, as someone who is developing an personal identity that does not suggest any struggle that I’ve been through.


january – february 2015

i should learn to express myself better. haven’t been thinking. i continually make poor conversations.

new year resolutions 2015: 1) avoid being sad/emotional. i say avoid because it is impossible to stop, but prevention is better than cure, they say. 2) draw more. 3) make an effort to document shit, even the bad shit. 4) stop using my phone so often. nobody could be that desperate to talk to me. 5) look at more books. 6) touch more books. 7) create more stuff. 8) take more photos. 9) listen to more music. 10) save some money

‘sometimes you don’t always know what you’ve got’ – wayne white.

‘the problem with hoarding is you end up living off your reserves. eventually you become stale. if you give away everything you have, you are left with nothing. to replenish, to give away. the more you give away, the more comes back to you’ – paul arden

i am feeling so terribly right now because i know all of this is contributing to an investment that will seek absolutely no returns. how will it feel to lose your life savings at one go, same again, however little there is, losing all that yet again. i think this is a feeling i really cannot feel again, you know. i could not imaging the other reality again.

jean jacques rousseau: the romantic reaction, the general will, the development of the inner voice.

shutting down: is it possible to not feel anything? to acknowledge feelings, but not actually feeling it. yesterday for a short while, i lay crippled once again on my bed, unable to move forth with anything. i really needed to shut down. i really want to think about how i can deal with the issue of being alienated, the lack of reciprocation, and finding a place to belong.

i look back at my journals and i thought why am i not writing as much as i used to, but then i think i wrote a lot because i feel unnecessarily. there are certain traits i want to find in myself again. i used to sit at tables, writing the things that i only recently realised were the basis of me being an alien. it is kind of depressing when you discover such truths of yourself through the things you write, many years ago.

i am filled with  a million thoughts, thoughts i already had for quite some time, all making their way to this physical space. this feeling is rather repulsive, revealing. i can call it whatever i want. above all, it is this feeling of alienation. why does it consistently happen to me.

it was a melancholy humour, and consequently a humour very hostile to my natural disposition, produced by the gloom of the solitude into which i had cast myself some years ago, that first put into my head this daydream of meddling with writing. and then finding myself entirely destitute and void of any other matter. – michel de montaigne

“messy, this collection of recollections” – david levithan, the realm of possibility
year after year, i return to this book. again and again. the review at the back of the book says ‘all teenagers will find themselves, their relationships, and their attitudes toward life, love and the pursuit of happiness somewhere in this poems.” through these years i turn to this book like a textbook of sorts, turning to it for answers and for some sort of reasoning as to why things happen the way they do, why i react the way i do, and more importantly, was there any way i could stop any of these things. and the answers were the same, over and over – to forget, to let go. all these years of documenting it was a process journal of remembering while forgetting.

i wanted to ask you, you who are reading this now, how do you feel? did you feel the same way too? did things get better for you? what are the books you read, and do they speak for you the way they did for me?

this morning i thought, people cannot mourn the losses of what they have not gained. empowered by this thought, it helps me to pull through today. and tomorrow.

it’s amazing, i have been doing this for years.

the nature of personal voice

unedited

self–portrait of words

using the internet as a time capsule, an archive. specifically using my blog as a source for this time capsule project – a very long narrative

why do i use the internet? i want to examine how the internet can be used as a form of archiving – also, i have a lot of material up there. it’s also about charting emotional and character change. it is about reconciling with the negative experiences of being an adolescent.

from blast/counterblast:

– ‘loose networks/data platforms. with networks come a new meaning: entrepreneur and cosmopolitan character. people today can boast of being both an insider/DIY at the same time’ – lane relyea

– you – non-artist, artist, artist who defies labels, doesn’t make typical art, uncategorisable and nomadic. hacker of culture and poet of everyday life. you are a romantic but we need less romanticism. otherwise we look past the fact our sense of social structure.

– art is for empathy – empathy is for the reduction of suffering. that’s why we always justified being artists.

– perpetually arrested adolescent dream. is it because i am able to hang onto moments of my adolescent keening that i can still at least occasionally find some company and solace in this circles of confusion? – mike hoolboom

the thoughts of 2am are so horrid, sometimes do not wish to entertain them at all. the moment they end up as a word, whether on paper or virtual space, they become branded onto the cruel face of reality.

from e-flux journal, what is contemporary art:

– the vacuum created by the sudden arrival of freedom and the possibilities it seemed to offer. hans richter, dada artist/historian on the experience of dada

– disbelief: from comrades of time by boris groys

when we begin to question our projects, to doubt or reformulate them, the present becomes important. it’s because the contemporary present is constituted by doubt, hesitation, uncertainty, indecision, by the need for prolonged reflection.

– mass art consumption: practice of self-documentation has today become a mass practice and obsession.

– as time passes and we grow more into the contemporary, the reasons for remembering other times grow, while the ability to recall them weakens. memory straddles this paradox. we could say the ethics of memory have something to do with the urgent negotiation between having to remember (which sometimes include the obligation to mourn) and the requirement to move on (which sometimes include the need to forget). both are necessary and each is notionally contingent on the abdication of the other, but life is not led by the easy rhythm of regularly alternating episodes of memory and forgetting, cancelling each other out in a neat equation that resolves itself and attains equilibrium.

it can be crazy and shit, but it’s okay, because it’s all in my head. then the written, physical record is the censored version, the one i am allowed to put out there.

how long will i take to document my documentation? i think it will take a real long time. taking into consideration that i must be at times overwhelmed with the wave of nostalgia and loss. not sure what i lost, actually. time, maybe. i am sure i still keep whatever that keeps me going, and kept me writing.

if you had to put a timeline of your life how would you do it?

reading journals is a pretty scary process, sometimes tapping into things i may not want to know about myself

i also discover things i wrote since young that i still believed in (i am a person with a really weird character. i really doubt i would have any relationships when i grow up)

music and books influenced the way i think, adding on my already negative perception of myself.

things do get better

alone is my partner, an apt companion for me. you must think i am too good for anyone or to be with anyone. that’s not it. again i must stress, the alternative isn’t all that great for me.

a stranger-girl said to me just now – why do you write in your journal? don’t you think by archiving, by recording, you aren’t really living in the moment?

i spent so much of my time writing about people and things, observing, obsessing but in reality, i don’t know anybody at all.

i think i also spend a lot of my time reasoning, it seems there’s nothing i could do or say without having a reason.

to be honest i don’t know how to describe the feeling of going through my archives. it does leave me more quiet than usual. thoughts are busy and have not found their way onto the pages. did i cry. no.

we are often not aware of the changes we go through until we read our archives.

how is this ten years worth of digital documenting important? what did i truly cared about? what am i actively purging now, and what did i feel?

i was drawn to the word ‘alone’ written in your book. lol, alone. i decided i couldn’t hate you anymore. you and your stupid book and stupid pen and overpriced analog camera and the way you tap on her shoulders. she says to me a few days ago, “sometimes, i forget that you are still a student”. i know right. i am so resigned to the fact that i am an alien.

overwhelmed by the writing of years before, i was unable to do any reflection for a while. i have no choice but to look at it from a different standpoint. as unemotional, humourous and objective as possible.

‘you are so different’ is the one phrase i do not want to hear again ever in my life. having been to the darkest corner in my world and back, nothing fazes me anymore.

to remember is to impede being fully in the present and to thwart moving forward. to pause over the past is to be intolerably encumbered, to dwell on yesterday is pointless indulgence and to think historically is to sink into pitiable paralysis – tk sabapathy

In order to talk about the biggest, most defining things, one may need to return to the smallest of situations. They say that youth is about increasing one’s territory, a search for vastness, while adulthood is about sieving out the expanse, and returning home.

loss of idealism

talking to my online friend reminds me a lot of mark whom i used to write about many years ago. we certainly have the same things in common. bounded by our longing for real-life friends and for that virtual life we lived voraciously in before. i could hardly think now that can exist in my life again. tired of building shit over an invisible line. or any live, really. it’s so easy to hide under the blanket of critique that surrounds our social habits today. being the social alien that i am/could be, i am perhaps mistaken for my dedication to my virtual social life, that stops me from participating actively in real life social situations. they will possibly not know i already lived a large part of my life that way. the virtual life is not like the way it used to be.

forward. met an acquaintance from my past a while ago. what a coincidence. to reacquaint yourself with histories is not easy. the only way to live is to move forward and never looking back.

perhaps many many many years later i may bump into you again on the street, in my grandmother dresses, that it may occur to you at last that i am a girl.

defining my online self (heroine’s descriptions)

how all of this is a progression and development of self. reinstates the idea of an ever changing self-portrait and life as a process journal.

why do i choose bright colours for my publication> it is letting go, a celebration

this project also examines the concept of nostalgia in a virtual form (physical relics vs virtual relics)

alienation sums up my whole project, i am a perpetual loner and because of this i had all the time in the world for this work that i’ve produced

rework these emotions into something worthwhile. to make sense of darkness, of nostalgia. a presentable melancholy, a celebration.

internet ephemera.

glitch art, embracing errors as part of the virtual experience. the fleeting nature of these short lived faults is similar to the experiences noted in my journals and blogs.

the feeling of saturation and overwhelming and translating that in neon colours. as part of a distinctive identity that does not suggest any struggle. as i mature as an artist i find myself able to form a vocabulary and aesthetic that hints at the opposite of all i have suffered.

an endless, irritable, pathetic pursuit that makes me churn out these writing.

the sadness i had when i threw her table out of the back door in the container class, the times i sat outside the room with all sense of self, all dignity and self respect down the drain, unaware, uncaring, of the general public that is subjected to see that self, infinitely uglier than i perceive myself to be. the good thing is that i learned early. all of this is past, and you will no longer look at this again one day and remember anything, except that you have moved on.

invisible monsters – chuck palaniuk:
– now, you are going to tell me your story. just like you did. write it all down. tell that story over and over. tell me your sad assed story all night. when you understand that what you are telling is just a story, it isn’t happening anymore. when you realise the story you are telling is just words, when you can just crumble it up and throw your past in trash can then we will figure out who you are going to be.

– you have to keep recycling yourself.

can we live by screenshots and let a nondescript typeface by the mouthpiece for our thoughts?

Research Critique 5: Shredder and Riot

 

shredder02shredder01 shredder03 shredder04

Shredder, 1998

 

shredder05 riot01 riot02

Riot, 1999

Mark Napier’s Shredder and Riot were alternative web browsers made in the 1990s. The main aim of these browsers was to deconstruct the webpage as it is conventionally viewed, by manipulating the underlying source code and re-presenting the data in their own elements. It is like taking apart a Lego sculpture and rearranging the bricks around.

In Rosa Menkman’s essay, she examines the beginnings of glitch art in sound culture:

The notion of glitch art was just crossing over from sound culture, and leaking into visual art culture only sporadically. Glitch more fully entered my vocabulary for visuals and networks when I began an artistic collaboration with the musician Goto80 (Anders Carlsson) in 2007. He explained to me how he exploited the Commordore64 sound chip for the creation of music. The bugs Goto80 used gave a very specific texture to the sound (the result of noise artifacts) and I began to develop and recognize visual equivalents to this process.

I feel that there is a textural element to both Shredder and Riot. The deconstructed website produces interesting outcomes.

shredder03

Take this screenshot from the Shredder browser, for example. The blue part is made up of the source code: the line height of these coding text have been tweaked drastically. The extreme condensing of these lines produces a solid area of blue, and some of the background elements peek through the spaces in between, creating an interesting, textural effect. The blurry, pixelated images look like marbled texture too. The outcome of these glitched elements look like a collage made by a machine.

In the Glitch Studies Manifesto, here’s a description of glitch art as a progressive art form:

4. Employ bends and breaks as metaphors for différance. Use the glitch as an exoskeleton for progress.

Find catharsis in disintegration, ruptures and cracks; manipulate, bend and break any medium towards the point where it becomes something new; create glitch art.

Most of the works we discussed in recent weeks were artworks that were made with a piece of technology that is relatively new; artists who are keen to experiment with the purpose that these kind of technology have been designed for. Like Douglas Davis’s work The World’s Longest Sentence, Mark Napier’s Shredder and Riot were made in the late 1990s, when the Internet phenomenon was still rather young. It explores what can be done with the Internet browser than using it purely to surf the internet or to obtain information. Taking apart the surface of a website, “manipulating the medium”, was the creation of something new in the realm of something that is still new.

The machine no longer behaves in the way the technology was supposed to. Its glitching interface, strange sounds and broken behavioral patterns introduce tension into user intentions; an astonishing image (or sound) must be some how negotiated amidst a normally much more boring masquerade of human computer relations.

I also found this point very relevant to what the Shredder and Riot was designed to be like, particularly for Riot. The Riot browser really created this chaotic effect: elements of a webpage strewn all over, and the web page look really wild and crazy. If a user were to navigate a website using the Riot browser, it must have been quite an interesting experience, particular in that time, when websites looked simple and it was not diffucult to get around. A Riot-ed website probably would have made navigation way more interactive, with the user having to forage through this chaos to search for the links and to demystify text and images that have been layered over each other.

 

WIP: type + collage

1409_01

03 01 02 03

 

 

Been spending these haze-filled days making these collages and experimenting with type layout. The first gif image of type shows my process of creating a few character styles on indesign. I think that would help speed up my process since I have tons of type to go through. Also, with just a click I can see how they come together. Been flipping through Carson’s books for this.

Then these are the scans of the collages I’ve been making. I will eventually print the manipulated type on tracing paper and wrap it around the printed collage, rather than directly on the collage itself. Helps to give the work some texture and dimension.

I’m working on a few different things at once, and I’m not really sure if it’s clear what I’m trying to do for each outcome, but writing here helps a lot. Also have tons of references that I got to categorise… I will work my way through slowly. All exciting and good stuff!!

 

Eduardo Recife

misprinted04  misprinted02

 

Eduado Recife is a total collage god. I’ve followed his work for about ten years now, and he inspired me a lot when I was making my old websites. I tried so hard to copy his style. It was so fun to be able to make these collages on the computer.

His collages and illustrations include a lot of old-fashioned stock images and vintage magazine cut-outs. The screenshots above were older versions of his website. He used to change them quite a bit, and I look forward to visiting his website each time, and then run off to make something inspired by his new things.

What I like about his work is that, like David Carson, he really plays with type. Working so much with collaging also inspired the way he viewed type, and he created a bunch of ‘deconstructed’ typefaces. His new website is much cleaner now, and easier for people to view his works, but he used to make longform websites too. I can’t find any of that on Google now.

Collage is often a big, experimental mess. But what I learn from Eduardo Recife’s work is that white spaces and minimalism is possible too. When he shrinks down some of this collages and place them right at the edge of the screen, it becomes quite an interesting visual experience.

misprinted03

These are some of his new works which I also enjoy:

Screen Shot 2015-09-14 at 12.59.35 pm Screen Shot 2015-09-14 at 12.59.41 pm

 

pirate broadcast

I’m trying to combine various methods of capturing footage and put them together in this pirate/unedited fashion.

  • screen recordings
  • filming with my iphone
  • using cheap special effects

I haven’t been out of the house in the past five days because I’ve been caught up with making some work, so I don’t have a very exciting story I can tell. So everyday I filmed a few minutes of ‘pirate’ footage of something that I’m doing. I try to do it from an outsider point of view, like what would somebody think of this girl who haven’t left her home in a few days, all cooped up in this room? How would somebody snoop around my working area, and what happens if somebody turned my screen recording on without me knowing? It’s nothing very Cloverfield though. But I can possibly expand on this. I haven’t tried putting my camera in anywhere that’s dangerous or particularly sneaky.

Recycled mix process

IMG_9550  IMG_9562 IMG_9563 IMG_9564 IMG_9565 IMG_9566 IMG_9567

 

I’ve been making stacks of these collages, from torn magazine papers. Trying to layer different patterns and elements to form a texture, which will be the background for the type from my blog. Will make a couple of spreads this weekend.IMG_9570IMG_9568  IMG_9571 IMG_9575

Thinking about layering text over the collage surface to give it some dimension rather that having it all printed on the page.

 

 

IMG_9576 IMG_9577

 

 

Recycledmix

dirtyprogress02 dirtyprogress01

 

Think it’s time to get my hands dirty and start cutting some things up before reassembling them again in photoshop. Can’t do much of these stuff on the computer, and I think I enjoy cutting and pasting.

I also printed my journals out, and will get to work cutting them up and physically remixing/deconstructing them. Can’t wait…

 

David Carson and dirty type

The introduction and success of the personal computer allowed for designers to take the clean design of modernism, destroy it and reassemble it in a new visual language. Most associated with the ideas of deconstruction was the designer David Carson whose work for the magazines Ray Gun and Beach Culture helped develop the aesthetic commonly referred to simply as deconstruction. Wolfgang Weingart‘s approach to typography and design was being carried on by April Greiman and labeled as New Wave. Emigre exploded onto the scene in 1984 with a host of new approaches to, and uses for, typography. All while students from the Cranbrook Academy of Art, such as Ed Fella and Andrew Blauvelt were allowed the freedom to explore and develop these, and many other design aesthetics.

design is history

I really like David Carson’s design approach and I feel that my work will have some elements of his style.

Thematically, it pairs well with this concept of remixing that I am exploring in my work. I think what I want to do is not just to simply present whatever I have on hand as it is, but to give it a new meaning.

Screen Shot 2015-09-06 at 12.29.39 am Screen Shot 2015-09-06 at 12.29.35 am

I feel that the style of deconstruction and dirty type has never been fully explored by students in ADM. In my VC classes, we are constantly exposed to very particular kinds of aesthetic, which one of my VC prof finally addressed in our final critique some time ago by picking up a couple of publications and saying quite simply that “these are all the same”. What I can observe from this is that orderly layouts inspired by the grid and clean typefaces are making a comeback. In the past, minimalist, clean layouts were just as popular as it is today, revered for its timeless quality. Before this, grunge typography and dirty type like what Carson had made here had been considered inspiring and revolutionary. Designers, armed with the computer, are able to digitally manipulate the clean design of modernism, destroy it and reassemble it in a new visual language.

Using the glitch experiment tool I shared in my previous post, I’ll glitch up body of texts for fascinating results, and then use that as a starting point for my typographical and layout exploration.