100 Things, 100 Beer Bottles (with SUHWEE)

We started this project by brainstorming a list of ideas and eliminating those that we feel might be too costly for our poor pockets. We really like the last two ideas of using beer bottles and servos motors as we found them interesting. After a few discussions we decided to go with beer bottles and approached the drinks stall in kopitiams (coffee shop) around the school and near where we live. We found that many of these coffee shops recycle used bottles by returning to the sellers at 20 cents each. Most of them were not keen on selling or loaning the bottles to us as it was too much of a hassle.

  • The abandoned: Using beer bottles and plastic bottles [disposable objects] can be queuing to the dustbins
  • beer bottles
  • plastic bottles
  • leaves
  • paper bags
  • plates (disposable)
  • cups (disposable)
  • cans (empty)
  • cardboard boxes (used)
  • clothes peg
  • servos motors [since LPD has a lot]
  • safety pin
  • notice board pin
  • handyplast
  • toothpick
  • colour paper
  • paint tube
  • our A2 drawings LOL like is art consider as art when place at different place
  • photographs?
  • rubber bands
  • hair clip
  • candle
  • beer bottles/servos motors/ 
Retain events of humans 
- can link to foreign workers where they are ostracised by locals. Most of them gather around these places 
grass field / park on their free days, construction sites, kopitiam 
- Technology advance [place at raffles place] 
- put like as if its servo motors that run the show 
- sun bathing, go down stair case 
- spot light like in theatre 
- cinema 
- paper crane in the stomach
Plans on Friday
School compound
– carpark parking lots [mimicking cars]
– Tall areas to shoot down [Lobby, ADM roof, or level 3]
– School swimming pool [they are diving or playing]
– Lift [carpark lift]
– Mix with another type of beer bottle [in a mess]
– Sun bathing at sunken plaza
– Foot steps of bottle trace [can use the paper from drawing room]
– staircase [in sequence]
– Basketball court [using the ball to create movement]
– Bus stop [the queue @ busstop]
Su Hwee’s house
– Sand [maybe i can bring some bottle home]
– Coffee shop
– Void deck

Initially, we managed to get a good deal with a steamboat shop at Chinese Garden who was willing to sell a used China Beer bottles to us at 20 cents a bottle. However, we were quite lucky that Bao and Zhou Yang attended the CoHSS event in school and they found many used bottles (thanks!). They helped us keep the bottles and saved us a lot of trouble with transport. We managed to collect 107 bottles! We broke 2 of them while arranging them and gave 5 away to film students.

Things we have learnt:

  1. Unity is strength
    Smaller objects, when placed at bigger space are less visible [e.g. when placed at the sunken plaza] however placing them in a cluster makes them more visible
  2. Lighting is key
    Playing with lighting can help us to create mood and feel
  3. Help from friends
    Sometimes we need more hands to help us. We were quite thankful that
  4. No time to be glam
    Iit was tough work cleaning, laying out the bottles and taking photos of the bottles
  5. Is there a need to impose meaning on objects?
    We struggled with whether or not to impose a story or a meaning to the objects but in the end decided to let the viewer come up with their own interpretation
  6. Learning to adapt to the space and unforeseen circumstance
    Despite planning beforehand, there were many unforeseen circumstances, such as the change in bottles, the rain, we found ourselves having to adapt to these spaces, which is what makes this mini project so unique.

Basically, we just let our ideas flow and experimented with our ideas as much as  we could. Although some photos might not have turned out as intended (like the Beer Belly shot), we were happy with the results. During the shoot, we also explored the use of space, angles and lighting to create different context for the same bottles.

The bottles also created opportunities to interact with the passersby, most of them were curious and asked questions about what we were doing. It was interesting (almost hilarious) to watch them interact with the space that was filled with bottles.


 


Process

 

Author: Xin Feng

Chasing imperfection.

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