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I’ve titled this project | | | O | | |

It’s a iconization of the visual of this project, the | being the lasers and the O being the face in the middle.

Firstly, the entire experience really turned out to be better than expected.

From getting the lasers, cardboard, learning to solder, hooking it all up to a power supply and it working was a great learning experience for me and is giving me the confidence to pursue this sort of project in the future. It really felt like quite the risk, but I was certain of the visual I had in mind.

At essence I wanted to recreate a Sunn O))) concert experience. Sunn O))) is a drone metal band. Their music consists of long droning distorted guitar riffs. Their concerts involve a lot of fog and the vocalist on tour with them (Attilla Csihar) has a costume that’s made of mirrors and his fingers have lasers shooting out from them.

Thus began my second journey into fog and lights.

I also thought there were similarities to concerts and religious experiences, and my final idea was an amalgamation of the two.

A room like the old days where only the top priests could enter or devout followers.

Image result for ark of the covenant room

Image result for ark of the covenant room

Hence my intended layout of the room below

The configuration I wanted for the lasers, was to be to be by the side, and there be a clearing in the middle as a path to the face with beams from its eyes

Top View

Top View

As for the laser configuration, I first intended for it to be 5 clean rows per side

But I had another idea for another configuration

by shifting two columns down I could get a potentially more interesting layout, and also use 2 less lasers.

I made these gifs in After Effects because I wanted a way to check how they’d look in 3D space outside of my imagination.

I settled on the 2nd formation.

I set out measuring and poking holes for exact distances and had my book of measurements from each dot to the next and line to line.

However, after everything was soldered and wired up, my lasers came up short of my planned spacing. So I started at the middle and poked new holes accordingly.

As long as the relative distances were the same it would all be alright (thankfully).

This would be first time ever seriously soldering, and with so many components, I’d want to make sure it was working at every stage.

I checked all the lasers if they were working one by one, then when did a test (video below) of the lasers connected by crocodile clips in a series. Lastly after I soldered the entire board together I checked one more time. Thankfully, even tho it was my first time, every stage and every test went fine. I was deathly afraid I’d short or blow a laser out.

You can hear my sigh of relief at the end.

I soon found out that facing all the lasers vertically down uniformly was highly unlikely with this setup, and i got quite worried about the outcome.

But I actually really liked how it turned out, the lasers pointing in every direction really gave it a nice touch. Also the projector video I made for this final version was not too bad, but after putting the video i made for the first iteration of this room, I and other people agree that it was actually a little nicer, alas, if only I had thought of changing it during the crit session. I’m also glad that I was able to make audio for this project, it was really quite a pleasant surprise to get the throat singing type of sound by recording temple chants and then slowing it down and adding some reverb. I still enjoy listening to it.

Overall I’m above and beyond satisfied with how this project came to be. I really do want to do more in this line of visual space and hopefully will have more opportunities to do so.

Many thanks to Zi Feng for helping me source online for cheap and plentiful lasers, 60 in total. Along with a 5V power supply and cardboard.

Thanks to Joan and Tiff for helping me hoist my large cardboard slabs up, to Jake and Zi Feng (and those who taught them) for teaching me the ways of the solder.

 

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For the mid-sem analog version, I intended to have the lasers set-up for this version.

However, I couldn’t find anywhere in Singapore that sold lasers for cheap. Ended up paying $20 for 3 lasers that weren’t very bright or bright enough to show up in the fog.

Quite worrying, considering I still needed videos. So I tried to figure out means of which to replicate the effect.

Hence, at the last moment I booked out a projector, to try and replicate thin beams of light, which also didn’t work entirely as planned.

However while I shot the video for documentation, i managed to improve and somehow get a nice thin beam of red.

I also found large blocks of colour worked really well.

However, ultimately I was entirely worried that it did not constitute as analog enough.

But thankfully some encouragement and good feedback was helpful and reassuring to stop me from sweating loudly.

Personally speaking, the longer I spend on this project, the happier I am with it. I ended up spending a few hours purely on documentation alone and I really enjoyed my time in that room.

Walking into the triangular beams and being able to see the layers withing the projected shape really enriched the visuals for me and made me want to keep snapping photos and shooting videos.  Which in a way, was one of my goals with the space I’m making; to make a place that people really do want to spend time in and take a lot of photos.

Even while editing the video, I felt the urge to remake the room just to spend more time in it.

Video Link Below.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1E_j3C3JGLzbB4_EZJPscSaR1Aa5YMz2V

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https://drive.google.com/open?id=1gawJs-3SHI_Lmw393m7tVNU5eTOSrbrk

Here we are.

I was really teetering back and forth between sticking to the old sound which was sourced from outside and going with my own sounds.

I eventually went with the latter because it was an opportunity to do so and also that way the work in it’s entirety would be of my own doing. (save for that one heartbeat sound)

Ultimately I think it was the better choice and additionally it also allowed for more control of the sound whereas with the sourced sounds, I’d be dictated by the rhythm and tempo already laid in, something I found really restrictive in the editing process.

Overall it was quite satisfying to have made something I’d consider quite indulgent while also having this level of flexibility and allowance of content.

Strong 9 outta 10

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https://drive.google.com/open?id=1eVDrrYp-fz7HeQjMD9U7Sv9Yr5dixv_9

VIDEO ONE

Sound was a good opportunity to experiment on the ideas floating around in my head.

I started with what I could find at hand, a broken guitar

Some of the results were better than I expected, but sometimes the same experimentation didn’t yield the same results as seen in the video.

However from that one thing alone, I could conjure up something along the lines of what I was looking for, which really started the subsequent treatment of audio.

I accidentally created a 2 hour long drone ambient sound from my timelapse video, and there were quite a few nuggets in there.

Birds sounded like whale song and any repetitive sound were like sirens echoing in the background.

Subsequently I also recorded my breathing, the fan (because whenever it hits a mic it’s always sounded like rocks tumbling)

LINK TO SOUNDS: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1gBlUsgO4nR6mxB6MPqOKB2LJLGkTLUTI

but what was really golden, was the recording I did of the temple chants. When slowed down, it instantly started sounding like throat singing, which is something I’m already big on.

and with that the basis for my introductory sound into my final video.

Sound was also a good opportunity for goofing around with mashups that occur in my head that I never make.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1Uy2auvmif2EXXd4tf8NY1YhlmlWXN-Rc

VIDEO 2

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This video essay was given with the premise of making a video about something that you like.

I really wasn’t sure what to do, especially with the stipulation of using footage I had already shot.

Thus I was left with the footage I had recently shot either at Hong Kong or from Japan from when I had visited my grandparents.

I was quite hesitant to be honest dealing with quite a personal space. But I did it anyway.

I intended for it to be spoken word simultaneous to the footage mainly because it would save me having to listen to my own voice for hours.

But this came out with an unintended effect of having a lot of ambient sound on the video, something I really enjoyed when I watch the edit back.

It makes the video able to stand on it’s own without the words, while maybe even giving a sense of what I was trying to say with words. Although that might just be because I know what the words and mood I intended for was.

As such, I think it’d be better to leave the footage and words as separate entities. Thought I was thinking of perhaps translating or subtitling in the future, but I really feel that the text at the bottom detracts a little from the whole image by cutting out the lower portion visually while also commanding the strongest presence.

 

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1CxFbc8Z15JOOzc2A5sv8PKXKI8eUOGVz

 

Text below, Video Above

 

At the end of May last year, I went to Kagoshima, Japan to visit my Grandparents.

Kagoshima is in the south of Japan and to get to my Grandparents house, we had to take a long ride into the mountains where the average age seems to be in the late 60s

I generally thought of myself to be more of a city boy, but the two weeks I spent there seemed to say otherwise.

A lot of the places are in the middle of nowhere but seem like the typical anime tropes

Train crossing, grassy fields, typical Japanese houses, crows

But I digress

This was the same house my mother and her sisters grew up in

This is the same river that they played in as kids

And it brings to mind how peculiar the passage of time is

Something change while other things stay the same

There’s a strange disconnect between the two

My grandfather doesn’t remember much and doesn’t even recognize some of the people in the photos of family.

My Grandmother doesn’t remember much at all

As my two weeks drew to an end, I really didn’t want to leave

Because I worried that that would be the last time I have a reason to be there

I don’t know if that’s true or not

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The title is a pun, but the technique I’m really talking about is the act of directly applying a medium or technique onto the film stock itself.

Funnily enough, after doing the exercise in class, Rose Bond, a projection artist came to ADM for a talk.

Her previous work however, were animations done straight onto film.

While visually or topically not as experimental as the works show or done in class, I thought it was a funny coincidence.

Still though, I’d consider her works on some level, experimental.

A blend of sounds and visuals that all tie into one idea. Visuals ranging from patterns to swashes of color and lines ebbing and flowing, merging and melding and then taking on human or animal forms before ripping apart again and going back into the more abstract.

On the more experimental side of things, it was pretty cool to desecrate such a “up there” and physical medium.

Puncturing it and coloring over it lead to surprisingly great visuals.

but things don’t always turn out as planned, that’s probably some of the joys that people have in handling film this way.

i tried scratching the images on the film but the image got flipped and the visceral or more frantic jittering that i was hoping for didn’t happen.

Puncturing actually became a more interesting effect even tho it was kind of sketchy to load when the surface was warped.

The idea of pasting insect bits and twigs was also quite interesting purely in concept alone. Reminded me of those insect collections where they’re pinned in an array, except this time the layout was different.

Lastly, while unintended or even unwanted, the film burning produced a nice overlay of a decaying image over the slowly slipping film stock.

Overall a Fun/10 rating.

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A peculiar movie indeed, any movie that has an extended shitting scene is surely a stunner in its own right.

The first thing that struck me is how everyday they make the shoot feel. Even at the very start, there’s a shot of a corridor on the second floor, and before anything happens, we see a person run by a small portion of road momentarily. It really made me wonder how choreographed this movie could be or if in fact it was editing together a series of unplanned moment alongside their scripted and produced moments.

Blurring this line really made for an interesting series of thoughts through the viewing. I don’t know if it’s my constant overthought or something else, but the extended holding of a shot really lends itself for my mind to frantically scramble for a meaning or reason. What is he trying to do by holding it so long, what’s going on, where is this leading, can someone give me an answer (probably not). But the longer it goes on the more I think that there is a motive to induce discomfort within the viewer. Surely in the scene where one lady is cleaning an older ladies leg with some kind of ailment is intended to induce some level of grotesque discomfort, especially when a mouth starts to get involved.

Additionally I learnt that the song at the end is the only time a song or audio is heard that wasn’t present during/in the scene itself. It’s not something I particularly thought of till i was informed. Though that’s often my approach to a lot of things.

Lastly, it reminded my of another film wherein a family or something living in a rural/jungle house is inhabited or visited by spirits. It’s styling was similar to this movie and having seen more than just one of these kinds of shows really made me start to ponder about the intents involved in shooting in this manner. The people involved in these styles of film are doing so with very specific intents and I tend to lean onto the idea that nothing is left to chance. This harks back a little to wondering how choreographed even the most seemingly everyday background events are. And with nothing left to chance, perhaps part of the intent is to indeed induce this sort of dialogue and extended thought, active engaged thought in the themes and events portrayed in the film. Which I’d hazard a guess, that the directors find more effective than conventional methods of film narratives, and I personally, considering how much this show has made me seek for answers, I’d agree.

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The Links below are the slides for my FYP pitch and folders for files that were not integrated in the slides themselves. (Little India Soundscape + Japan Video of the atmosphere/vibe)

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1M6e2kK4xJGDSQBPJVKz12MSo2zUtwzpSqo50aeNAgdc

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1tX1vFl7cLFoygoWKDmk2dt8_w_GDFP4h

 

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It was funnily coincidental that Rose Bond started her presentation by showing us her reels of hand-painted animation clear lead film. Having done similar work just a few weeks prior in my Experimental Film class really helped me connect with the process of when viewing her work.

Sadly, that’s where the similarities between me and Rose Bond end.

Her repertoire of work is quite impressive. From execution to scale, layout and even the themes.

The work is made even more astounding to me, especially on a technical level purely because she’s been doing this from long before a lot of modern conveniences were around.

The imagery she displays on buildings often are tied to the history of the building itself

Broadsided!, Exeter, UK, 2012

Broadsided!, Exeter, UK, 2012

Which I feel leads to a greater connection between the projection, the site and the audience.

A nice refresher from the usual more abstract or “3D’ style projections we’ve come to see often at various events in the recent past.

Another thing that she noted was that she much prefers the audio on the street mixing in with the crowd and harks to that as the experience as opposed to just the clean sound design from the work itself.

Considering all this it makes me wonder about Singapore’s potential for projection mapping.

Not that it’s under utilized, but with the wealth of history in Singapore, old buildings gone or still here. The types of projections done so far, have been while still enjoyable and quite stunning, not quite tapping into the potential of the buildings themselves. That is to say, whatever visuals they project on to one building, could very well be transferred to another without much significance being lost.

Image result for singapore history buildings

Art Deco Buildings in Tiong Bahru

Especially with the recent push for the Arts, “real” or “not”, there is still support for it, and thus, opportunity for works of the aforementioned manner to emerge.

Tho, some would argue that it’s already begun, what with the recent projections on the old supreme court now turned National Gallery.

Image result for singapore history buildings

Lastly, I really enjoyed her Oregon Symphony collaboration work, Turangalila from 2017.

Both visually and aurally captivating, the visuals spilling forth from the walls, light bouncing around the symphonic swells.

It’s like Disney’s Fantasia /Fantasia 2000, both of which i enjoyed as a kid, but with Rose Bonds work, unconfined by the screen format.

It was just simply enjoyable.