3D: Project 2 Final

My chosen object that was of importance to me is actually my yearly planner. A planner is very important to me because I hate not being organised, and not being able to keep track of what I’m expected to finish. Hence, the planner is actually my way of exerting control over time to ensure that I have what it takes to keep doing the things I love. This includes meeting the people I love and doing things I love and of course, to stay on task for school. The planner is like a little break down of small baby steps that I need to take for the life ahead of me.

So I wanted to create something that represented a protection of time and of my dreams. The first thing that came to my mind was actually a dream catcher and I did try to incorporate the dream catcher together with my work. However, the complementary addition to a dream catcher didn’t really come through which resulted in a new search of other items that were used to protect something.

I thought of the wind chime, where it’s use to ward off evil spirits. In a way, the planner is used as a way to prevent mess and chaos in my life which made a wind chime a possible representation.

Next up, was trying to include my desire to exert control over time. I thought of what kind of items required an action to protect something and I thought of an umbrella. An umbrella is used to shelter one from rainy days and a physical action is required to open an umbrella. Hence I thought of making an umbrella wind chime.

I made an origami umbrella which can be opened and closed. They were of varying sizes, with the biggest closest to the viewer. This is purposeful in showing how the current month I am in will always be a period of time that I exerted greatest amount of control. The smaller umbrellas then represented previous months that have passed, which also represented time that I have either exerted control over or failed to do so.

There are bells inside each umbrella to further enhance the idea of it being a wind chime (: The size of the wind chime was also portable and easily hand carried because my planner is one that can be brought anywhere and everywhere.

If the umbrellas I made could open and close to a greater degree, I think it would be better at communicating some of my ideas but yes, super happy that I managed to make an origami umbrella that could open and close HAHA.  Oh and I should have thought of the use of my colours as well, instead of it being  a random aesthetically pleasing element of my work.

3D: Rube Goldberg Machine

So my chosen movie scene was when Mulan makes her decision to go to war on behalf of his father. What I caught from the scene was her immense contemplation and the use of rain/thunder sounds to guide the entire scene. Hence, I thought that my machine will encapsulate these elements that were of significance to me.

Video of successful attempt below:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Qm9FTDp9XcLW6BP9hG7dD1N0c_Vp-TEE/view?usp=sharing

I realised that I have tendency to not express my thought processes accurately during critique sessions, so I guess this is the only platform left for me to explain the purpose behind some of my machine’s components.

So what I did to portray Mulan’s contemplation was to complicate the ramp downwards. I did not create a straight path for the marble to roll down. Instead I created triangular obstacles as well as  curved paths for the marble to roll.

And from the scene, it seems that every huge downpour or thunder heard signified the next course of action for Mulan. So I wanted to create that with the first see-saw which also act as a rain stick. However the force exerted on the rain stick was too quick, such that the raining sound was not captured fully.

The first see-saw (which also represents the downpour) triggers the next movement where the ball rolls down a straight and steeper path. The steeper ramp signifies how Mulan becomes more resolved and motivated to fight for his father. And I also made the marble hit some bells which represented the sounds of the thunder. This was an attempt to sort of fuse the effects of sound and Mulan’s behaviour together into one.

Like what Peter critiqued, it is true that my machine was lacking a key component of a dramatic move at the end. To be honest, I wanted to include the last act of the marble triggering a cutting act but couldn’t do it in the end. This is so because I went back to amend the 2nd tier of ramps to increase it’s level of complexity (where the sounds are heard). So I kinda lost stamina to create the last action which was indeed very crucial. So boo to me ):

As much as I get super uncomfortable with 3D briefs, I actually quite enjoyed the amount of problem solving this machine required of me. And it was quite a joy to have the opportunities to constantly resolve errors. But I guess I needed to put more thought into grounding my piece of work to the concept which was probably my biggest takeaway from the critique session.

Interesting Finds: Sound Art

I have never taken much interests in installation work when I visit museums prveiously, however, there was one sound art piece that left an impression on me.

“Raising Stars and Restoring Souls” – Zul Mahmood

This piece of work was part of the Majulah Singapura Series in SAM. I guess i was intrigued by the scale of the interaction and how the sound produced felt like it was following the participant. What seemed like random sounds going through metal pipes turned out to be a deconstruction of our national anthem.  I thought that added layer to the sound installation was what truly left an impression on me.

4D: Evocative Objects

Brainstorming

Our group started this project through brainstorming  possible locations in school where we could create a narrative/ message from. Not too sure how we eventually settled with the toilet, but we felt that the toilet is a public space that people often reveal their personal struggles. The privacy and intimacy that a toilet provides for different people was what we decided to explore as we went along.

Initial Idea

So this was our first draft in terms of set up. It was  a point in the development that we were still  rather focused on bringing out the idea of bringing a private space to the public space. That explained why we wanted to set up an open wooden frame to give the idea that the participant was stepping into a different space. However, Michael pointed out the redundancy of the framing as well as the importance or priority that our narratives had in this installation. Hence, we needed to think deeper into what exactly do we want to convey and how were we going to achieve that.

Further Development

With that, we decided to find a focus in the narratives we were sharing first. We decided to share a wide variety of stories on mental health issues due to the gravity of the issue and for the (almost) unlimited potential it had within a confined topic.

We decided to do a little more research to keep our set up more grounded to ideas that resonated with mental health issues and hence explains the reasons for our installation below.

Final Outcome (titled UNFOLDING NARRATIVES)

We found out that actually 1 in 10 Singaporeans suffer from mental health problems. Hence, we decided to place 9 toilet bowls to symbolize the 9 pair of listening ears that are available to a single person suffering from mental health.

Since we aimed at encouraging open conversations about mental health, we decided that each toilet bowl will be playing a different mental health problem. This will allow participants to gain more awareness about the variety of problems that mental health entailed. The listening of the recording will be done with headphones attached to the side of the toilet bowl.

Lastly, we wanted to include an element of community involvement where participants could share their personal encounters of struggling with mental fitness or even their interactions with such people. We thought that we needed to create a safer space for people to share their opinions on a rather sensitive topic. Hence we decided that we will provide materials for different forms of expressions, writing, speaking and even drawing.

4D: Text & Image (Advertisement)

I was given chicken cup noodles as my food item and hence began ideation for it. My overall concept stems from how cup noodles are consumed when one is extremely rush at work, making the food fast yet delicious. Hence, I wanted to show how there is a team of culinary staff preparing the meal while the guy at the background is doing work.

Since I wanted to show that the cup noodles is prepared fast yet fresh and delicious, I staged people carrying freshly grown vegetables to the making of the noodles. The caption, “3 minutes, that’s all it takes” further reinforces that a scrumptious meal will be prepared without you even knowing.

The whole set up was staged which means I created a photo shoot for the miniature world created by the food items.  I chose this manner of execution simply because of my personal desire to have a more tactile experience creating this work.  I also want to experiment creating a world through construction of  the vegetables.

4D: Strange World

The strange world I created was one in which our society’s minority group becomes the majority. Hence, the minority group I chose was people with special needs, particularly children.

This whole idea was inspired by my experience teaching in a school with a significant number of special needs children and realizing how a cohesive learning environment is beneficial for both parties.  Each of the character embodied a certain area of concern that was more memorable for me during my teaching experience.

The first child is one with slight autism. His condition meant that he would have days that he doesn’t behave like other kids, and will often produce shrilling screams. His condition has caused others to view him in a different light and not see him as who he really is, hence covering up half of his face. It’s as though his true self is masked by his special need.

The second child was inspired by a student who could not converse in English. His inability wasn’t exactly a special need but it has lowered his learning abilitly tremendously. His lack of ability to communicate explains why the 2nd child’s mouth is covered by black paper. This is to show how the child is treated like  mute in our society.

The third child is intentionally placed upside down because it was inspired by my encounter with a kid with severe dyslexia. And since dyslexia results in incorrect writing of letters and having incompletely accessibility to our daily conversations. I flipped the character the other way to show how differently a child with dyslexia perceives the world.

4D: Paradox

My paradoxical space was created through an unrealistic manipulation of the bulldozer along the hawker centre at the soon to be demolished Old Woodlands Town Centre. The juxtaposition of size seeks to communicate how Singapore’s extremely fast development results in the loss of landscapes that embodies the nation’s culture and heritage.

I also enhanced the brightness of the bulldozer to make it even more striking and out of place, increasing the level of dominance it has in the image. I also included people whom are struggling to keep afloat as the bulldozer approaches them.

I remembered some key feedback for this image:

  1. The bulldozer was  missing a person controlling it – possible to add someone and show him being nonchalant and ruthless towards the people it’s drowning away.
  2. the landscape chosen should be more iconic or have a clearer indication of where is the place exactly.

4D: Image, Sound & Memory Process

Since the central theme of the project was “Memory”, I wondered whose memory did I want to play with for this project. I was looking for something uniquely localised, close to my heart and really, just a sincere piece of work.

“Lover’s Tears” is an oldies song that gave rise to my motivation of capturing a memory that was related to the lyrics of the song and befitting of that era. I decided that I would construct the sequence by which it will begin and end with the same song, giving a sense of continuity to the 10 images.

 

So I initially wanted to step into the shoes of my grandma, and walk down her memory lane of my Ah Gong.As I explored the idea visually and planned some of the shots I wanted to take, I realised that there was a sense of detachment to this piece of memory. It was almost impossible to shoot and record the series through the eyes of my grandma. Hence, it prompted me to tweak the direction a little, of which it is the love story between my grandma and I.

I made use of my grandma’s 3-room flat and old Macpherson estate to portray the oldies vibes. I wanted to portray the character of my grandma through the things she used and the dialect she speaks. These became visual and audio cues that gave the viewer/listener an idea of the era where my grandma grew up in and also the kinship that me and my grandma shared.

 

It was a constant process of re-thinking and re-arranging of images, ensuring that the image and sound played complementary roles to each other. It was also slightly challenging for me to constantly question if the chosen image was crucial in portraying that part of the story while ensuring a match with the recorded sound.

The sounds I used were a mix of recorded and found sound tracks, either which contributed to the narrative of the sequence or simply as asynchronous sounds to reinforce the homely vibes I wanted to give off.

4D: Sequential Thinking Research & Development

Upon receiving the project brief, I was excited by the level of playfulness that could be included in the series of images. Since most of my 4D projects had a inclination to visuals or techniques that are less modern, I decided to continue with this streak by playing with old Singapore toys.

IDEATION
The very first part of my process was to draft out my idea. I drew out some of the key transformations in the sequence and went ahead with the production as soon as I was able to visualise the images in a clearer manner.

PRODUCTION

I went on a shopping spree for old Singapore toys and even set up the stage for shooting in my room. This was probably the best part of the project where I get to play and craft out the scene for the shoot. The toys where arranged in a way that the overall composition was balanced and pleasing to the eye. Even the wrapping paper at the back was chosen for the “vintage” vibes that it gave off.  It was also super fun when I get to involve my sister for the scene with bubbles blowing.

A tedious process of constantly shifting the character inch my inch and calling upon my sister to blow the bubbles, it was truly a fun process where I, as an artist,  was involved in every way possible.

(learning point) I didn’t set my camera to shoot continuously at first, which made the bubbles movement a little choppy.  However, I managed to resolve the issue towards the end of the shoot which resulted in a smoother transition.

EDITING

There were post production edits that I did to enhance the element of play in this series of images. Above were just some of the images that I had to digitally piece the elements together. Once these images were edited, I proceeded to string them together through a video. 

Project 2: Ego Final

The overall concept of my ego is actually explaining (visually) how I re-imagine Singapore’s local landscape into something dreamlike and childlike. I hope I can divert the viewers’ attention to the seemingly insignificant fragments of our everyday Singaporean encounters through the frames of my imagined outcome.

All of my last frames has a same younger female character in it to highlight the child-like quality of the imagined outcome. This character is actually inspired by my younger self (such EGO) where I used to always tie 2 ponytails, had a very bad fringe cut (cos my grandma cut it) and had a very iconic looking kindergarten uniform (green checkered dress with 2 ribbons).  The female character is seen to be unrealistically situated in the composition to reinforce the surrealistic nature of the imagined outcome. 

Since I really love to draw, I usually have to go out to find drawing content. This means bringing my camera out and going to more unconventional/ unexplored places in Singapore. My exploration, unlike many others, is for the sake of drawing more realistically grounded pieces. Hence, I will use the photos taken and  turn them into dream-like, surreal landscape. I chose to use the Old Woodlands Town Centre landscape as my final imagined outcome.

I really love to drink Teh-Bing, Teh-Bing with less sugar to be exact. Loving such a drink also means visiting coffeeshops very often. I always felt that that the coffee/tea making kitchen scene is very uniquely Singapore and decided to play with it after watching Beauty & the Beast. The movie had a talking tea pot and tea cup which then inspired me to bring it over to our local coffee making tools. The female character is seen sitting on a stirring spoon and flying around like how harry potter flies on his broom.

Since I don’t stay in hall, I have long bus rides to school and to home everyday. These bus rides are usually extended snooze time for me which explains the visuals on the first frame. However, taking a bus ride on a day with heavy downpour can be really really cold. It’s made worse when I don’t have a jacket with me. This inspired me to create a snowing bus and it was a scene set at the stairs going onto the upper deck of the bus. The female character is engineered to move as though she’s jumping from one step to another. 

The snowing bus is actually one of my favourite frames because it felt like I gave a new life to a seemingly insignificant part of the public bus. It is also this frame that will continue to spur me on to re-establish insignificant parts of our everyday lives into something special and dream-like. The last panel is one that explains and sums up the reason behind my inclination to illustrate images in a child-like manner. The first frame captures me at my favourite daydreaming spot at home which is in the kitchen. I often stand at the window to face the scenery outside to get a mental reboot before returning to work.

My daydreaming tendencies turned into something more than just a dream after I discovered the world of children’s illustration books. These books became a living proof of the potential direction of my artistic style and inclination. Artists like Ah Guo, Jimmy Liao & Shaun Tan became my main sources of inspiration to bravely venture into the world of illustration books.

Hence, the last frame has the older me hugging the younger me, showing how I have chosen to embrace and accept the child in me through my artistic pursuit.

 

P.S. I think photos of my drawings don’t portray the colours rendered at their best but oh wellz, the best is seen when it’s live.