A Locale Illograph

Brief

With part 2 of the Locale project starting, I had a clearer idea of what to do using the critique reviews from part 1. Consultations, as well as brainstorming ideas, reveals a direction towards illography- illustrations and photography of the photos I took from part 1. I would also envision trying out mark making to heighten a stronger sense of location identity.

Zine

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_jlsO2hpgKt1iiZ9N9w1oqx1M-84QYGh/view?usp=sharing

This zine in summary is a visual representation of the relationship between the people and the location within different time periods, conveniently labelled as the ghosts of the past, present and future. It navigates through this location from public to private spaces, seeking out what makes this place unique and representational of their feelings.

The past refers to the students who graduated before,

the present refers to the students who are still studying there and

the future refers to the students who might study there.

A big big BIG summary

looking at the Big picture, i wanted to show a series of ideas as the audience would look through the zine, looking through the eyes of the narrative I want to tell. Hence, I arranged for the narrative to follow a sequence throughout the front, back and 3 spreads consistently :

Colours

The colours starts off with a muted and tamed theme on the first spread, mainly black as background that shows intensity with situation. There is little light and colours to justify how the students of the past are losing their memories and connection to a place they are no longer in connection with.

I also made a note to not overkill or overuse the colours, thus giving rise to my idea of using it in a fluctuating manner, dark-colourful.

The colours become more greyish with a stronger play of colours, indicating that this spread belongs to the students who are currently studying there and experiencing the place, but is met with the inevitable idea of having to leave this place they call home after two years.

The last spread is the most vibrant with the strongest play with colours as the future is deliberately made optimistic with saturated colours. No one wants to know that the future is bleak.

Green is also a special colour used especially in the present and future spread as we discussed about the idea of merger of Pioneer Junior College (PJC) with Jurong Junior College (JJC) in the recent years.

Glitch

The glitching effect is made by the website https://snorpey.github.io/jpg-glitch/, utilising four different toolbars to create the glitch effect desired be it colourful, pixelated, blockish or grainy.

Using the photographs that I took of PJC, I decided to create glitch effects that tell of three different kind of concept: Forgotten, Configuring and Unknown.

Forgotten

The first spread starts off with a glitched background that is pixelised but retains a strong sense of form. It references to how ones memory will gradually lose its shape as the years go by, hinting that the students who graduated has a slight idea of what life was in PJC, but as years goes by, starts to lose its structure.

Configuring

The second spread has a glitched background that is deconstructed, but still having a strong idea of structure. It gives the idea of one being in the situation, but not appreciating what there is, thus not seeing the true form.

Unknown

The last spread is totally glitched with colours and shape. It refers to how no one knows about the future, thus depicting the future as an amorphous plaster of colours and shapes.

Characters

Different characters were also planted within the zine, each representing something that I have gotten from the interviews with the alumnis or students from PJC. However, two main characters would be the lady on the front and back page, as well as the glitch man.

Front-Back

as the front and back page are the first and last thing that the audience see, I wanted the characters on both pages to tell a story.

the front page features a girl with adequate decorations and having two heads staring into two different directions. However, as the character moves through the series, it eventually ends off with a confident posture. This character follows one of my interviewees who experienced an increase in growth of character and confidence as she found her way through PJC. This character pays homage to the students who found comfort in the space of PJC. The posture in the back page, as well as her glitchy backdrop is reminiscent of Francis Bacons paintings, who exudes confidence in his own space of identity.

There is also overlays of the word “ghost of past, present and future” placed all over the front and back page as I didn’t want the zine to be overwhelming with a context, but not enough to not let the audience understand what it is about.

glitchman

the glitchman utilises the central spread, which is the only spread that is connected together when printed. Hence, I intentionally made the glitch man printed with disconnecting body bodys, with the paper as the demarcation. This was to intentionally intensify the glitch effect

Space

Throughout the zine, I incorporated the idea of a navigation through public to private space, which is an idea that was apparent in my Part 1: Locale.

In the context of PJC, it is an isolated location that only the alumni or students or even relevant personals have access to, and my job for this project is to highlight its uniqueness.

Hence, from the first page to the last page, it navigates the main character through the spaces of PJC from public to private, or even activities, into the bowels of PJC and what makes it unique.

It starts off in public places like the canteen and field where everyone can access it, just in plain sight.

Then we move into a location where students dwell in introspection, like the classrooms or art room (specific to my friends and I). This engages in a semi private space where we get lost in our own thoughts.

The last spread features the most private location where the students remember enjoying the company of their friends, look ing under the stars, sharing a space in the art room or looking at the sunset after vigorous training in school.

Furthermore,

to add on to the idea of a isolated space, I wanted to create a sense of three point depth within the zine. This meant that the glitched background would be one layer of space. The characters in the photograph would be in one layer of space. And the mark making I tried to make would be another layer of space.

The results were as follows.

However, the issue was this visual quality was eventually lost once I scanned it into the computer, since the task at hand required all works to be digitise, I had no choice but to give up on this mark making effort.

These mark making were done by pasting the site’s unique features like water cooler drain with acrylic ink, then overlaying it with a transparency or paper.

Reflections on Illography:

Since there weren’t a lot of time to spare during critique, I couldn’t elaborate more on how the procedure of the illograph was done. Firstly, I took the photos and printed them out on a high quality standard A4, which gave me prominent space to draw my illustrations on. I was worried that the visual quality would be lost once I used a scanner.

Then, I used transparency and overlaid onto the photographs, which I then draw over. Each illograph attempts to accentuate the space within the photograph, and also to highlight the uniqueness of the site, which I will elaborate below.

I used paint markers, which allowed me to get the textural quality that is missing from using Adobe Illustrator on digital files. This was an idea suggested by Joy, using the scanner to render that textural quality I want to retain.

I realised that illography also emphasised a lot on the idea of symmetry, in which balance gives off the strongest composition in illograph as they give a strong structural aesthetics compared to something messy and chaotic. There is also an inherent beauty in the idea of asymmetrical balance, however this would have to be balanced off with a play of colours.

Drawing technique wise I have learnt to use dots and lines to create textural details, each style requiring an acute sense of pressure since the paint marker is very sensitive.

strong contrast between specific colours only

Each individual characters

front page

As mentioned above, the first character you see follows the main protagonist who enters PJC, but has trouble deciding where to go from there on. The illography on this character attempts to highlight the wavy hair and keep the decorations to a bare minimum as the back cover character is the one that is excessively decorated. The colours in the hair follows a transition of PJC logo colours of red, black and white into the colour of JJC, which is just green. I also wanted the art direction of semi-tribal and surrealistic as both themes employ heavy usage of colours.

First Spread

This illograph utilises the abundant space in the background, using only white to accentuate the dark space. It is supposed to be the canteen at which students dwell and enjoy one another’s company. Hence, I decided to portray the presence of people through the usage of leftover bowls and chopsticks piling up. There is also a presence of a puddle motif with sticks poking out to give off a trypophobic atmosphere, alongside actual dark holes all around, giving a creepy sensation when looking at it.

This character has a small tint of red covering it. She is seen in the field, lying down looking at light which represents the hopes and dreams lost as the time goes by. The red checkers is supposed to be reminiscent of the red checkered picnic mats in Alice in Wonderland, giving a feint idea of being trapped down, along with actual chains drawn to tie her down. The circular neck-brace helps to give a sense of three-dimensional space within the photograph.

The last photograph in the first spread features an abandoned glitch face with cockroaches crawling out, while a pair of legs stand behind it. There is light coming out of the glitch, reminiscent of the lights shown in the photograph above. This idea of looking down at the glitch parallels to one of the interviews I had with an alumni, who mention that she sees glitch whenever she visits PJC, but because this idea is so distant, she no longer does- This represents that imagery. Cockroaches are motifs that are related to her experience in the art room ,which is full of cockroaches crawling around.

The patterns on the shoes serve to contour the shoes in the dark environment, making audience know that it belongs to a noteworthy character. The yellow cockroaches also help to shape the three-dimensional quality in the picture.

second spread

This spread starts to have more colours at play, depicting the current students who are still in PJC. The glitch character is seen in the central page, disconnected by the central border. It is seen glitching with white and black pixels popping out of the eyes, while colourful pixels are sucked into the mouth. It represents the idea of how this glitch character sucks away all the happiness that the students find in PJC. This was a visual effect mentioned by one of the interviewees I had.

This character is seen opening a door of a toilet in PJC, as if opening itself into a world of mystery given how dark the environment is. Behind her is a bud of an orchid, which are common flowers that can be found in the location. The white pixels link up to the image above.

The same motif of opening a door happens again here but this time with the character going out. There are black pixels that link up to the character above. The character is seen having a transformation where she has a triangular head, one of the more abstract creatures seen throughout the zine so far. It reminds the audience of how short the time in PJC is, which is limited to two or three years per batch. The yellow triangular head helps to highlight the central empty space of the door.

Last spread

the last spread is the most surrealistic one out of all three spreads, with interesting creatures interacting with the character, as well as colours bursting into the image.

In this scene, the central character is seen in a nest of web staring into a computer that says installation in progress. This location is actually the art room , where many art students have said is the best location they would stay in PJC. I wanted to bring across the idea of comfort and isolated space, thus having webs drawn around it. The tiny details is achieved by acute pressure to draw thin lines. The shadow cast infront of the character is drawn to have two yellow sparkly eyes staring back at the character, implying how isolated this location is, and the possibility of it being haunted. (A rumor) There are three plant like creatures of red, yellow and blue origin, giving off pixels of colours that we see in the previous spread. however, this time round, the creature is less insidious, seen as giving off light rather than taking away light.

In this panel, we have the main character seen sitting under the sunset, which is a common activity to do amongst many of my interviewees. The sunset however, is seen as violent and strong, to represent the intensity and passion that the interviewees had when describing this little hobby of theirs. The mix of yellow and red intensifies this idea of passion and energy, with yellow stars shooting out. There are also blue creatures from the previous photograph seen crawling out from the nearby trees. The idea of a criss cross roots or stem helps to accentuate the space within this photograph, which is mainly the pattern of the gravel on the floor.

This panel is a continuation of two different photographs of the same place but with contrasting emotions. The top image shows the character looking at the stars, which is another private activity the interviewees enjoy after a whole day of school. The stars are seen falling down and drooping from the sky, as if their dreams are fallen down. This is a commentary to the PJC0JJC merger, highlighted by the green logos drawn as tattoos on the characters arms. Many interviewees mention that they believe the merger of the school would kill of identity of the school, effectively killing off the dreams and hope of every students who might come into PJC in the future. This is represented by the upside down image, that supposedly represents the same space. The lights that she is standing on is sucked away into this black hole that is connected to the sunset that is happening in the image above.

The back page features the last illograph of the zine, which is the character drawn to dress more intensely with details. She is seen more confident and decorated as if she is is the queen. As mentioned, the style is inspired by Francis Bacon’s portraits, an idea I wanted to use to elevate the idea of confidence with a surrealistic persona. The details actually falls out into an overlay with the background, giving out a glitchy effect apparent throughout the zine. This was appropriate as it features a private corner in the art room where no one was at, just the character, her computer, her corner and a camera.

Reflections

Moving on from this project, it was satisfying doing the locale project on a location that actually means something to me. The idea of playing with dream-scape and a childhood memory heavy location has always been a project that I wanted to embark on.

Feedback from the critique was mainly positive, with a few exceptions on the dark quality of the zine being too intense. I also forgot to mention how the navigation from public to private space is an important factor in this zine.

It would be a great way to end off this project by passing a copy of this zine to all the interviewees who provided their story for me to tell.

October 16, 2017October 18, 2017

A 80s quote

My mama always said, “Life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.”

Forrest Gump 1994

In this project, we were tasked to reinterpret our chosen movie quotes and create imageries using Photoshop and found pictures. It draws inspiration from Surrealism and Dadaism, making imageries that transcends cliche solutions and responses, strongly based on spontaneity and randomness. (https://oss.adm.ntu.edu.sg/bren0022/a-surreal-nonsensical-dream/)

Brainstorming

Before embarking on the tedious but fun journey of surrealistic image collaging, I thought through and brainstormed for a concise theme that summarises my love for film- and that answer is the 1980s movies. In the recent years, 1980s nostalgia has been on a rise and 1980s themed homages is prevalent in many films, such as the Duffer Brother’s Stranger Things, Andy Muschietti’s IT or James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy, to name a few.

1980s

I decided to follow this theme since I loved watching 1980 blockbusters growing up as a teenager, movies like Ghostbusters (1984), The Shining (1985), or Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), etc. The 1980s was a special time as it was the aftermath following the wave of film popularity preceding Hollywood’s Golden Age. The film in this period of time was characterised as high concept films with a cinematic plot that could be easily distinguished by one or two sentences, typically with a few strong characters to build up a narrative. It was the rise of blockbusters, but not built on special effects like the films today. It was also a period with many political tension since it was the rise of political conservatism, particularly Thatcher and Reagan; Filmmakers pivoted to make their form of entertainment uplifting and joyful.

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Before I begin, I would have to list out a series of movies I loved that were from the 1980s, and that was a long list:

Ghostbusters (Comedy) (1984),
Back to the Future (Sci-Fi) (1985),
Blade Runner (Neo-Noir) (1982),
The Shining (Horror) (1980),
Nightmare on Elm Street (Horror) (1984),
Honey, I Shrunk the Kids (Family Comedy) (1989),
Breakfast Club (Coming-to-age) (1985),
Dead Poet Society (Coming-to-age) (1989),
The Poltergeist (Horror) (1982),
The Thing (Thriller) (1982)
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (Coming-to-age) (1986)
The Evil Dead (Horror) (1981)
Predator (Thriller) (1987)
Etc

With a list of my favourite 1980’s movies, I had to come up with a few to quote from and that could only be done through re-watching everyone of them. After a few movie marathons, I realised that the movies that I quoted from were predominantly from coming-to-age related movies, which was a genre of film that focused on the protagonists’ growth into adulthood- to say the least, was relatable to me.

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Action

In spirit of Surrealism and Dadaism, I decided to incorporate an essence of a Surrealist/Dada artist for each imagery that I have, creating a 1980’s surrealism confusion.

I also wanted to pay homage to 1980’s movie posters, particularly the usage of one central subject figure that plays along to the audiences’ perspective, acting out an action/narrative imperative to the film. With that, I would recreate any iconic scene within the movie, and retell it in my perspective in a fantastical context, like the movie posters below.

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“You see us as you want to see us- in the most convenient definitions” – Breakfast Club 1985 + Lucia Hartini

Referencing the quote to the meaning I understood from the movie, I interpreted the quote as a summation of how the characters feel from the stereotype society places on everyone one of them, looking at their every moves. In the film still above, they are in a midst of confessing to one another regarding their problems and trouble, how they are fallen into a particular stereotype and probably cannot mix around as real friends when they are out of that tiny space.

In this work, I referenced to Lucia Hartini’s work “My Child”. She is an Indonesian artist that focuses on broadcasting sensitive subject matters like gender equality in a predominantly Islamic Community through surrealistic paintings. She focuses on symbols like clouds, horses and babies to communicate an idea of a bigger and almighty entity looking down on her without being crude in the context of expression. In the work “My Child”, she is seen looking up, interacting with the deity, which is also her child by blood, interacting through a thin veil of spiritualism and religion without being specific to any religion. The usage of clouds also enhances the fantastical aesthetics.

“You see us as you want to see us- in the most convenient definitions” – Breakfast Club 1985 + Lucia Hartini

Using the techniques I learnt from Hartini’s work, I created this collage referencing to the quote above. In this imagery, I wanted to exaggerate the stereotype each characters face from society, with the society imagined as a fly in this context- Flies see the world in a slower speed, giving them the ability to place judgement and react faster. I turned each character into a caricature: the beauty into Medusa, the nerd into Yoda, the jock into a football player, the crazy into a timebomb and the criminal into the hamburglar. The medusa represents a beautiful character that lacks of self confidence and leeches on compliments. The yoda represents a socially awkward character that is from another realm or environment. The football player, quite literally is a stereotype of a jock, one who focuses too much on sports and the events that come with it. The timebomb represents the quality of unpredictability and the damage it can do to people around it. And the hamburglar is the caricature of a burglar/criminal who is also the comic of the group. The fly (society) is seen coming out from the clouds like in Hartini’s works, it is essentially imagined as an almighty deity looking down and deciding the fate of the characters, with every facade on the compound eye looking at every directions. The characters are seen looking up at the fly, providing a visual direction for the audience. However, they are still in a comfortable position of leaning, unable to react to the impending judgement. The characters are also seen in a tight space, with the little breathing space implying the physical privacy that was seen in the film still, insinuating a conversation between them.

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“Its funny, the moon looks the same size whether you’re big or small.”- Honey, I Shrunk the Kids 1989 + Rene Magritte

With my understanding of the movie, I interpreted the quote as an expression of figurative size. Throughout the beginning of the movie, the children are placed under a microscope of judgement by the adults, who fear that they are incapable of responsibility and protecting themselves. The adults on the other hand, are placed in a caricature of illogicality and insensibility. The quote expresses a paradox of “size”, the figurative size the characters felt and the literal size that they were in compared to the moon.

Hence, I wanted to play with the idea of a figurative and literal size, and this led me to the artist Rene Magritte. In Magritte’s work, he played with the idea of perspective and size. In this work, he places an easel in front of a window. The precise and intentional placing challenges the audience’s perspective of whether the tree stems from the environment outside the window or is the tree a physical painting. Hence, there is only two options for the audience, whether the tree is a few centimetres short or a few metres tall. The question is left unsolved and left for audiences to predict or think.

In my work, I wanted to play with Magritte’s perspective paradox and apply it to the moon and ant, which are the main characters apart from the children. In my work, I applied the same composition of an easel and a window, of which the subject matter is a moon. Hence, audience will question whether if the moon is the size of a painting or is the moon outside the window, broad as the space it is in. However, there is another moon right beside the window and easel, seen looking down at the ant. The conversation between the two characters leads to the question of which moon is of the real and actual size. The presence of the ant makes audience question if the moon is the size of an ant, or is the ant the same size as the moon. Further more, zooming out of the pictorial space, the ant is seen stepping on a ground that is textured like the moon, playing with the idea of three possible moons. This imagery references to the quote as to how there isn’t any real physical size, and the idea of “size” or “ability to withstand responsibility” is one’s entitlement and how you strive to achieve it.

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“Your future is whatever you make it, so make it a good one.” – Back to the Future 1985 + Dede Eri Supria

In the film still shown above, it is the last scene in the movie where Doctor Brown and Marty say goodbye. Doctor Brown was implied to have succeeded in his time travelling endeavors and had travelled back from the future with a time travelling train. I imagine the quote as an implication to wanderlust and passion, how Doctor Brown is encouraging Marty to chase his dreams and to never give up, as you are the one who decide where you are going.

In my work, I wanted to reimagine the scene of Doctor Brown flying off in a train, with the train as a representation of wanderlust. However, I had to use another caricature to portray Marty and I chose to reference to another Indonesian artist named Dede Eri Surpia, with his usage of clowns are protagonists. I liked the idea of using clowns as the characters fighting for their passion as in Dede’s works, they are always seen in industrialised environment, struggling to pursue their passion in an ever confusing environment that is rapidly growing and moving. In the work shown below, the clowns are seen floating in the air, struggling to make ends meet in a ghastly background that is almost a caricature of an industrialized city, like Jakarta where Dede is from.

Dede eri Supria “Clowns in the Capital” 1999

In my work, I wanted to play homage to the original film of Back to the Future by placing all the direction of the trains following the original film poster, which was the left side. I juxtaposed the the trains with same sized human beings sitting on the train, looking at the left side, as if looking forward to something in the distance. There is a clown at the right bottom of the image, representing the essence of passion I wanted to draw from Dede’s work, making him hold on to a string that is being pulled by the floating train. The idea of clowns and train contrasts strongly as there is subtle difference of metal versus skin, passion versus robotic movements. In any environment, trains are supposed to be a logical mode of transport with only one direction at a time, implying logic. However, with the theme of floating, it can move to any direction at any given time, hinting of wanderlust passion. In pursuit of technical accuracy, I used motion blur to hint of visual space, depicting how the trains are moving from a distant location to the audience’s eyes.

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“Because believe it or not, everyone one of us in this room is going to stop breathing turn cold and die.” – Dead Poets Society 1989 + Salvador Dali

Last but not least, I have a quote from Dead poets Society as shown above. It is predominantly similar to the previous quotes as it is from a coming-to-age movie revolving around a group of teenagers with an inspiring teacher helping them pursue their passion. I wanted to bring out the idea of everyone being in a precarious position of “turning cold and die”, and emphasis on the aspect of time, since that is an element important in the movie itself since mortality is greatly discussed inside. In the film still and even the movie poster shown above, the teacher Mr Keatings is always shown with a certain level of hierarchy implying that he is a teacher and the guide to these children, via techniques in composition or colours.

Salvador Dali’s Persistence of Memory 1931

In my work, I referenced to Salvador Dali as I found that his works to have an eerie sense of mortality without any physical depiction of death itself. There is a morbid language that is unspoken, through the symbol of a melting clock. Hence, I extracted the melting clock as Mr Keatings, overlooking the characters in a higher and bigger position then the rest, symbolising death of passion. The play of size allows audience to direct their gaze at the clock, which is the focal point of the image. I chose to represent each of the main characters as a sculpture as I found that sculptures tend to lose their visual value when they are placed in a 2 dimensional plane, effectively losing their life, much like the idea of “turning cold and die”. I represented each character as a sculpture using their personality: the fun and joker as Marcel Duchamp’s Bicycle Wheel 1931, the quiet but thoughtful as Alberto Giacometti’s Pointing Man 1947, the romantic and innocent as the Cupid and the goal-oriented dreamer as Auguste Rodin’s the Thinker. The sculptures are seen standing on a barren wasteland looking up on the melting clock, just wasting their time away until a perpetual mortality. In homage to the film itself, where the main character of the goal-oriented dreamer dying, I decided to blur the Thinker in the background, hinting that something is happening to it in a still wasteland, probably it being the first to die off in this scenario.

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Following the process of Photoshopping and collaging the found images, we were required to silk screen the chosen quote onto a tote bag and present it. After a few attempts, the above photograph shows my final work of the quote from Breakfast Club, arguably my most favourited movie in the world. The process of silkscreen was tedious and difficult, especially since I tore one silkscreen board by accident. It is a process that is heavily underestimated, at which subtle difference in pressure and moisture can affect the final results.

Throughout this assignment, I faced the challenge of patience and dexterity as both are tested in the context of photoshop and silkscreening. The journey of not knowing any Photoshop techniques to having tried both photoshop and silkscreen has been really challenging, but a fulfilling one nevertheless. From the comments I received from the post-presentation commentary, my main problems were technicality issues like the cutting of border from the Breakfast Club imagery, as well as the composition of the Back to the Future imagery.

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