4D Foundation II – G8

Last Meal (Research)

Task 1: Researching the site – ADM Library

Layout of ADM Library:

FullSizeRender

Majority of the people who uses the space in the library are students, and they go there to either kill time, relax or study. However I realised that they usually go there alone and they behave quietly, and are reserved. They hardly use the book shelves, unless for modules like Art History but they have a high level of interaction with the furniture there.

Developing Idea

I was keen on the idea that although there was not much interaction between the people there, one thing that connects them together is the use of space. So what I initially wanted to do was using the idea of an image to collect stories of people. Everyone has their own stories and this is what is common between them and if they write their stories down in a book, they are connected within this book but at the same time there is no need for an interaction between them, much like how the space of the library is.

I was inspired by my 2D module where we had to do a zine for our last project and I decided to do a book instead of something else like a blog as I like the idea of keeping stories in something physical, that to me gives more weight and value to the stories of people.

Hand sewn book:

Processed with VSCOcam with hb1 preset

After consultation I was given the task to do on a certain topic I wanted to get out from my audience, instead of an open ended book.

First draft of 1000 Things To Eat For Your Last Meal On Earth:

4Dfinal1111 4Dfinal1111fdfg

I decided that the cover page was too plain, and I had to add an image on the book cover.

Initially I wanted to do a book where people would write what they would want for their last meal on earth and there would be 1000 of them. So when the book was filled up there would be 1000 different things of what people would want to have, but I realised that to me there wasn’t any meaning of the number ‘1000’ so I decided to just change the title to ‘Last Meal’.

Last Meal

Last Meal

If you could decide, what would your last meal on Earth be? Last Meal invites the audience to take part and write down what they would like to have as their last meal on earth, and why. The aim for this installation is to explore the endless possibilities a person’s experience has in relation to food, and for them to reflect on the meaning of what their last meal would be.

Digitally designed, hand bound pieces of paper using thread to produce a book. A5 (5.83” x 8.27”).

Digital version of installation:

4D Final1 4D Final11

Hard copy version of installation:

Singapore Diary

Exploring my identity as a Chinese has always been a big part of my life. Although my dad is Chinese, we speak English at home and I often have difficulty understanding my grandmother when she speaks Cantonese to me. My family is not traditional, we don’t celebrate Chinese New Year like every other Chinese family, all we do is to go to my grandmother’s house for reunion dinner.

So this time I decided to explore Chinatown in hopes of finding something that tells me there is a connection between this place, myself, and my identity.

Walking Home II

Home: As a form of an object

Video: Image and sound

Having grown up hearing my mum in the kitchen cooking, the sound of chopping, slicing, sizzling meat etc has now become something familiar. After 21 years I have already formed an attachment to this sound and just hearing it from the kitchen makes me feel warm and homely. Likewise, something feels amiss if I don’t hear it. Also, meal times are the only time my whole family come together and share a table, and even if we don’t talk at all I still leave the table feeling good, as if we all had a conversation through mind reading.

Brief discussion:

Creating narratives using still images allows you to picture the situation in your head, usually based on your own experiences while moving images are really just what you see is what you get (unless abstract, then imagination comes into play). To me, this could be both an advantage and a disadvantage. Being able to imagine gives you freedom of how you want to view the work, but it can also mean that you might not be able to understand fully the artist’s intentions. However when sound comes into play, it is a sign that makes you think in a certain direction that the artist intended to and it can also enhance the experience of the work, where you might be able to perceive smell and sometimes taste (in the case of my work, you probably can perceive both smell and taste based on your own experience and memory which could be a nostalgia of your mum’s cooking).

The Singapore Diary: Research

Honestly I was torn apart because I wanted to do both on Marine Terrace, which I had lived in perpetually my whole life (or as long as I can remember before I moved 2 years ago), and Chinatown. However, I had already went back to Marine Terrace during my last semester for 4D I so this time I decided to work on Chinatown instead.

Why Chinatown? It recently dawned upon me that although I do have some Chinese blood in me, I had never really gone to Chinatown before. I knew nothing about the history of the place, nothing about what they had there whether was it the things they were selling or the people that went there, nothing. I only knew how to get there. So I dedicated this trip to just walking around and experiencing the atmosphere there.

Of course, there were some things I found really interesting:

This was some Chinese calligraphy drawing incorporated into English alphabets, which was really interesting as you can tell that the modern age is slowly taking over traditions.

At first when I saw this I didn’t really knew what it was until I saw the sign and I was like “OH okay so you could buy one and get the seller to carve your initials for you and it acts like a seal.”

Apparently my friend told me that the hanging fake fruits and vegetables were Chinese New Year decorations….okay. Also one question that kept haunting me when I was at Chinatown was: What do tourists even buy here??? Most of the things sold here were all in Chinese and are the non-Chinese tourists even able to read them?

And I found my answer:

I guess they were more attracted to things that they couldn’t find in their own country, whether or not they understood it, the ability to appreciate culture and beauty is something that is naturally instilled in us.

(Also this is NOT candy even though it’s called “Bing Tang Hu Lu”. The ‘tang’ (candy) got me there. Sorry but I couldn’t bring myself to finish it. I prefer it sliced like the one I had when I was a kid.)

Yay to childhood snacks!!

The bottom slippers looked like something I used to wear when I was a kid.

Overall the trip there was good, I was able to pick out some items that I could relate to, but at the same time some of the items gives me question marks. My family is never one to celebrate Chinese festivals, or own things that relates to the Chinese tradition so going down to Chinatown myself and seeing new things and food makes me curious of the history of my roots.

Walking Home

Task 1

5 Things That Makes Me Feel At Home

Images: Prints on textured paper

Home to me is a place of freedom, where you can lie anywhere to read a book and have your own bed to sleep on.

It is like a nest where you can decorate however you like, and at the same time it hold memories.

Home is where you come home late at night, and even though you’ve had your dinner outside, your mum insists you eat more.

Home is where you are fully sheltered and showered with care and provision.

Home is when you come back, you see your family’s shoes, and your heart is full because you know that you are home.

Singapore Art Museum Visit (Review)

Heman Chong

Calendars (2020-2096)

1001 offset prints with matte lamination

1001 picture calendars are put up in a grid form which covers the walls of the entire gallery space. The pictures on the calendars are old pictures of existing places in Singapore. However, the dates on the calendars are dates that have not come to pass, they are dates of the future.

Preliminary read: This artwork explores the idea of a fast changing society and country like Singapore and how the use of old pictures and the dates of the future questions how much Singapore will change by the time we reach the years on the calendar.

Secondary read: It does explores the rapid development of Singapore to the extend that a place once hold memories to you will eventually disappear. It also makes me question how do you measure time: through the dates that are fixed on a calendar, or how much a place changes?

Ringo Bunoan

Endings

Framed book pages, where endings of books from No Endings are being torn out and placed on a single shelve.

No Endings

Book Installation, where books placed facing up are being stacked up with the title of every book hidden so that the audience can only see the blank side of the books.

Preliminary read: Only the endings are being placed on the shelve, so it might be from the books that are stacked together. It probably means that the artist is placing an importance on the ending of every story: it doesn’t matter how you start a journey, or what happens in a journey, the ending is the one that will define your journey.

Secondary read: The endings were indeed torn out from the books that were stacked together. However after reading the description of the artwork this artwork makes me question: can stories be really squeezed into a single medium? Is the ending of every story a beginning of another story? Do stories really ever end? It is ironic how every ending is a new beginning.

Groovy Steps

This is a very very short video of a dance showing how excited I was for my first day of school. If you see me with an expressionless face now, it probably means that the excitement has died down.

Also, here‘s a link to my most memorable project that I did for 4D in the previous semester. For this project, we had to come up with 90 sequential pictures where the first and the last picture has to be a picture of ourselves sleeping.