Author: Amanda Lee

Sometimes what you are most afraid of doing is the very thing that will set you free

Time Passes – Passage Moist Beings

The work i have chosen to analyse is Passage Moist Beings by Yeyoon Avis Ann in the Time Passes exhibition. On the surface, Passage Moist Beings focuses on the appreciation of protecting snails and the artist’s actions of helping snails cross paths to prevent them from getting crushed by passerbys. The work consists of a setup of a rainy and wet pavement with dirt and branches, where the puddles were pre-made with silicone. Some of the puddles consisted of screens which showed the videos of the artist shifting the snails away from the path and onto plants. The whole setup was small and simple, and may look unassuming at first, but contains many concepts that tie in with the exhibition and even in daily life.

The artist only started doing this during the beginning of the pandemic, where people were under lockdown, and the only things open were food stalls and supermarkets. She would encounter many snails on her walk to get groceries, and then she started to pick them up and move them away. She would video her encounters and post them on social media. Her friends who saw the video then proceeded to do the same action as well. This was the closest she got to contact with another living being at that time, thus inspiring her to create this work.

This artwork does talk about the niceness of shifting and protecting snails from getting accidentally killed, but on a deeper note, she realises the concept of a small action becoming a lifelong commitment, or the impact of a small action that benefits others in the long run. She uses her care for the snails as an analogy of people caring for others that are not related to them, or just even extending out our personal boundaries of care to others. In a way it highlights that we humans aren’t the only beings that are occupying this world, but are surrounded by an ecosystem that depends on each other. The emergence of a pandemic and lack of human to human contact starts to highlight the prominence of other living beings that we have co-existed with in this world.

In that sense, how can we care for the same environment as other non-human beings? How can we extend our care to non-human beings that do not give us any gain?

Looking at the concept of home, small beings such as snails carry their entire being and house around, and being crushed and killed leaves nothing behind. This also showcases the state of a home for different people and how some people have more stable homes and some more deranged ones.

Some food for thought: How do we gear care towards people with different home settings?

About the artist

Yeyoon Avis Ann is a motion graphic designer and artist, who works prolifically across installations, sound, and video. Avis’ interests include artistic methodologies, computer thinking and modes of production. In her practice, Avis strives towards what she describes as “breeziness” – she simply works with whichever material that encapsulates these ideas best. She quotes: “I think of randomness as being breezy, and I enjoy those interconnections between seemingly unrelated things. What I find the most compelling is the way in which artists or theoretical writers act in order to draw these connections in their works.” – which can be seen through Passage Moist Beings.

Final Thoughts about the work

I think it was an interesting and unique idea to incorporate the concept of the plight of snails to relationships and care between human beings. It did come to me as a very random thought and something that i would never think of as an artist, but through this work, i realised that our universe is more interconnected than we ever thought it was.

Final thoughts about the exhibition

Overall the exhibition was pretty interesting and easy to grasp from the descriptions. The artists chose very interesting topics to correlate to the theme – Time Passes, and the medium of these works were unique as well.

Binaural 3D sound experience – Hunted

Listen to the sound here!

This project was done by me and Wei Lin. We were inspired by one of the scenes in Alice in Borderland, where the victims are put in a survival game of tag.

Our initial idea was to record the experience of a person accidentally drinking a potion and turning into a blueberry, then getting chased and eaten, but the range for the binaural earpiece doesn’t really identify the upper and lower areas, thus making our concept not so achievable.

For the new plot, we used the route in our hall to run and record, while getting pre-recorded audio for the gunshots and screams.

Thoughts – Designing for the Digital Age by Kim Goodwin (CH1)

This reading describes well the whole notion of design for a user and its goal to serve human needs and goals. It made me think of my current standing as an Interactive Media student – what am I striving towards, and what kind of design or art I would like to give to my audience.

The reading talks mostly about Interactive Design – the discipline focused on defining the form and behaviour of interactive products, services and systems. I felt like it was pretty similar to our Interactive Devices class, where we were tasked to create devices that targetted a particular context or situation, and help to alleviate it. I’m not much of a devices person, but the questions that Interaction Design answers are pretty applicable to both designers and artists alike (i will make some adjustments to show the application):

What activities does the product/service/artwork support, and how?

What workflow provides the best way for users/the audience to accomplish their goals/your concept?

What information do users/artists/the audience need at each point in that process?

What information does the system/artwork need from the users/the audience?

How will users move from one activity to another? (applicable to interactive artworks/ space-based artworks)

How is functionality segmented and manifested?

Goal-Directed Design 

I think as a student who wants to create immersive environments for my audience, I relate with Alan Cooper’s way of putting himself as the end-user and mentally walking through different interactions as he was coding them. That gives the creator of the device or experience a better way to enhance the experience or functionality to a normal user or audience. This method is good for creating a well-planned schedule or process for a certain concept to be achieved, especially since we are all reaching the final stages of our course.

Final Thoughts

This reading made me question the execution method of my works and whether I prefer to be an artist or designer. I do relate better to being an experience designer as I feel more inclined to make spaces and immerse my audience within my concept, and am interested in learning technologies such as projection mapping. But there is still space for experimentation and self-learning and we would never know what kind of designer or artist we would become in future.

 

Thoughts – Social Practice Art

Social Practice Art

Social Practice Art is something that is pretty prominent in our society today, with increased artists giving responses to social issues through their art, and yielding some positive input to a potential solution to this issue.

And yet question that stood out to me in this article:

Is this strand of art a starting point for addressing social problems, or a distraction that keeps us from seeing their true extent?

Sure, it is very beneficial to have artworks or movements that highlight the importance of this issue at hand and encourage the masses to take a part in addressing the same issue. However, the amount of information that the artist can show about the issue through the artwork is very limited, and sometimes pretty surface level, so that the audience is able to easily understand the type of issue they are potentially going to fight against. Thus it blinds people or misinforms people of the extent of damage that this issue is causing certain parties, and when the audience realizes how big this issue actually is, they may stop helping or even argue on the deceiving aspect of that artwork, which deviates from the artist’s true intention of wanting to spread awareness.

Also, “the very fact that “social practice” focuses on tangible issues means that, quite often, its aesthetic aspect is downplayed” and some people cannot distinguish between what is social art and activist movements. What distinguishes the ‘art’ from the whole social movement is probably the fact that the occupation of the main person that headed this activity is an artist, to most people who do not discern a non-aesthetic work of art as an artwork.

Where does social practice stand in relation to the mainstream commercial art world? And how much different is it from relational aesthetics?

I would say that the line between what people deem as socially practiced art and commercial art is very thin, and as an artist myself, I often think of how different artists can convince their audience that their work will benefit the parties in need, rather than for commercial purposes. And the temporal bliss of an ideal situation created by relational aesthetics may actually be playing into the likes of social practice art, as temporal support by an audience towards an issue due to artworks by social practice artists, will help the issue in the long term. That being said, the work in itself will shift closer to being commercial art, due to its temporal impact on its audience. It also highlights the first part of this reflection about it not highlighting the greater extent of this issue at hand.

Final thoughts

Despite the criticism or potential backlash that social practice art may have on the society, I think that social practice art can be successful if we thought more about the execution aspect of these works. How can we create a lasting impact on our audience as artists, while bringing light of the graveness of an issue to sustain the audience support so that a long-term solution can be created? It’s a good thinking point for all of us who have a situation or crisis we want to help with in the future as artists.

 

Artist Inspiration – Meow Wolf

I’ve been following Meow Wolf on social media from a very long time ago, even before I decided to take Interactive Media. Knowing that I am creating works that are in the same frequency as them feels slightly surreal and bizarre, and unknowingly enough they may have inspired me at certain times, thus I will be presenting on this group as my artist/studio inspiration.

Link to slides can be accessed here.

About myself – Week 1 Assignment

Hi all! Here is some information about myself!

My short biography

My name is Amanda Lee and I am an Interactive Media student in the school of Art, Design and Media. I have a passion in exploring the quirky and interesting aspects of life by linking psychological concepts with physical elements, creating works that invoke the 5 senses to enable maximum exposure of the work to my audience. Interactivity, execution and audience reactions are aspects that I take note of when i am creating an artwork and i make sure that the audience not only has fun, but also have takeaways from the conceptual side of the work. In order to execute that, I have worked with a variety of software, such as TouchDesigner and Processing. These softwares help to create mesmerising works that are whimsical and light-hearted, yet thought-provoking to the audience.

The slides for my self introduction and works can be found here!

My resume can be accessed here!