With current technology, the Internet has become an essential thing for a human. Everyone chose to go online to rant, complaint, celebrate and to share their life through social media. There is this small group of audience who also turned to online for help, asking for help by expressing their suicidal thoughts and their depression online. This happened a lot especially during this pandemic period, where everyone is forced to spend time either alone or in an environment that stressed them up. It is also during this time when news of people committed suicide rises, including popular South Korean Idols and actors.
Thus I wanted to do something to remind people about how they can help or destroy life just by what they casually said online as a stranger. As online identities could easily be fake and anonymous, thus people could say whatever they wanted to say and not even have to be responsible for it. This is also one of the reasons of how cyberbullying is getting worse over the years.
Concept
As a result, I wanted to explore how far people would go to either help or destroy one person who has suicidal thoughts through the Internet. So I am using a locked room to signify the sealed inner world of the suicidal person and zoom meeting as the “online platform” where people can reach out to the person. Plots such as suicidal posts and suicidal notes are also lying around in the room to help with the narrative. Commands can be given through Zoom meeting and the player will then react to it. However, the reaction to the commands will be revert or of the opposite of it. Initially, I wanted to give people 5 minutes to try to give me any commands and control me around the room.
Final Props
Suicidal Post
Suicidal Letter
Photos with friends
Treasure Box
Overview of the Performance
One of the cameras will be facing the mirror view and I will hold another phone camera on my hand as the first-person perspective. In the beginning, I will start by blindfolding myself while seated on a chair. I will let the audience know that they are supposed to help me escape my “depressed room”.
Things lying around the tables include:
Printed Facebook post
Suicidal Letter – Write about the stress, anxiety and depression
Bonus reward:
Inside a box – Need to be unlocked, every item revealed helps to unfold my eyemask a little bit, symbolising the escaping from depression
Lying around the room (on one table): Family photo, friends photos
Hide inside a locked box: Caring conversation from friends
Commands that the class can use:
Directional – Front – Left, Back – Right, Left – Front, Right – Back, turn around – squat, squat down – turn around/ reverse
Side command – Pick up, use the item (keys and scissors)
Ending –
1 – Escape
While at the last stage, off the light and open the door. Walking out and close the door behind. After that, a short message for the class.
Thank you for helping me out, dear strangers over the internet, whether I know you or not. Thank you for paying attention to my abnormal and fragile behaviour, for reaching out to me and told me how to do and what to do to get out of the depression that I locked myself in. I can’t describe how thankful I am, and I am truly grateful for you to know that they are still someone who cares about me in this world and know the pain that I am in.
2 – Not Able to Escape
The light went off and the camera will be placed on the table. Play a piece of funeral music and announced,
Thank you, everyone, for attending my daughter’s funeral today I believe she has tried her best to give everything to being a good daughter, good sister, a good friend and good classmates to everyone. I know she has been facing problem all along but if only I could help her in time, maybe she wouldn’t choose to end her life to escape the pain.
Final Performance
Reflection
This project helps me to get out of my comfort zone as I am not someone who likes to perform in front of a group of audience and I am not someone who likes to reveal my fragility in front of a crowd. However, I did not spend enough time planning the stage and how to go about for the performance and I felt that the narrative of the performance was not clear to the audience. Due to the lack of planning, I also forgot to time the performance and was initially not able to performed the part when the audience did not help the player to escape on time and resulted in the player committed suicide. I should have spent some time rehearsing the stage as well so to be able to predict and avoid certain incidents during the formal performance day itself.
Born as a playable character, do you still have a future? This film follows a character which is born from the artificial game world to travel to a different dimension of the game. It started small, with a 2D platform game that is plain, then slowly as you advanced on, you find that it is not as easy as you think there are obstacles and challenges that need to be overcome, but you are tired, how to move on and continue to “level up”. The game world will advance to 3D and eventually VR world as time goes by, signifying the player’s skill has improved and is open to a newer world. I portrayed my journey of game creation and design using the film, to represent my depressions and lost when I faced difficulties, and how I managed myself back with the help of a mentor. Then eventually able to pursue a high goal as my skill develops over time.
The film also carried a short message at the back in which how as the development of games is improving and moving to a newer platform in the near future, there are still glitches that we have to face before leaving the 3D and VR game industry. To me, I tried to raise a question to the audience to discuss how current game industries allows “half-product” such as “No Man’s Sky” is opened to the public to purchase (in full cost) and was not even fully developed with lots of bugs and glitches in the game. Is this action allows caused it is explained as involving its players as the tester thus the game is able to improve and improvise based on the different reviews and feedback? Or is it just the industry itself is trying to push the game out to earn the money and move onto another project?
Final Video
Ideation & Development
Refletion
This project allows me to look into problems that exists in an industry that I am looking of getting into as well as giving me a chance to look back to my journey and my belief in how the industry will be going towards in the future. However, I think I should be looking in the industry more and instead of my own journey, to bring a film of how games has developed from the beginning and to the future of the game industry and even the player itself.
Our second assignment for Foundation 4D is to create a psychogeography map using images from the location allocated by our classmate, showcasing it together with a 3-minutes audio clip to enhance the experience of the audience.
Psychogeography and Dérive
Psychogeography was a term invented by Guy Debord in 1955, with inspiration from a French nineteenth-century poet and writer Charles Baudelaire’s concept of the lâneur – an urban wanderer. With this, Debord suggested playful and inventive ways of navigating the urban environment to examine its architecture and spaces. Psychogeography is also defined as the “specific effects of the geographical environment on the emotions and behaviours of individuals”.
Hence, the dérive was invented as a critical tool for understanding and developing the theory of psychogeography. It continued to be a critical concept in the theories of Situationist International, an international movement of artists, writers and poets who aimed to break down the barriers between culture and everyday life. dérive explored ways of unleashing the subconscious imagination of the individuals. An early example of this concept could be La Route des Alpes,1937, a painting of Tristam Hillier.
Tristam Hillier, La Route des Alpes, 1937
Dérive: “A mode of experimental behavior linked to the condition of urban society: a technique of transient passage through varied ambiances.” Situationists used “ambiance” to refer to the feeling or mood associated with a place, to its character, tone, or to the effect or appeal it might have; but they also used it to refer to the place itself, especially to the small, neighborhood-sized chunks of the city they called unités d’ambiance or unities of ambiance, parts of the city with an especially powerful urban atmosphere.
Yellow Menace is a Japanese-Canadian art vlogger who based in Canada, Korea and Thailand.
Marie Korjaz
A project by Marie Kojar to explore how human and nature can blend together in a landscape, merging into a new genetically engineered ‘natural factory’ for luxury goods, masqueraded as a revamped ‘eco-industry’.
Revisiting My Childhood Location – Sembawang Park
This is the park I have been going to since young, however, I have stopped going there when it started to renovate in 2012. Sembawang Park is located away from the city, which also has a beautiful beachside and also a popular fishing ground.
As I have not visited the park since it renovated, I chose to follow the path from the entrance of the park. As I went to the park around 4pm in the evening, I did not expect the park to be crowded with people. Many people are gathering at the fitness corner and playground, while some of them are setting up at the barbeque pit.
Ideation Of Concept
In my memories, Sembawang park used to a park with lots of trees, animals and a windy place. However, during this visit, I realised how things can change just with a single renovation. There are now wider roads for people to jog and walk their dogs, all the trees are carefully aligned along the path. Throughout the whole trips, the park felt too perfect for me. Everything is perfectly placed, there are fitness facilities, toilets, benches and table designed for people all around the park.
Even though I understand it is a park, I am sometimes annoyed by all the human noises when I am immersing myself into nature. Sembawang Park felt like a perfectly planned park, with a blend of nature, history and human. But to me, I felt that the park was contradicting and all the elements are invading each other within the park.
Concept 1:
Thus I wanted to showcase in my psychogeography map how manmade structures or elements and nature could collaborate to make a balance within the park. For my first concept, I printed out what interests me at the park and laying it out with some text to describe it.
Concept 2:
After the consultation with Prof. Yue Han and comment given by my classmates, I decided to go deeper into the concept of how human activities and manmade structures and facilities and nature correspond to each other in the park. I tried to bring out this idea using a spectrum structure for my derive. The picture of a playground section is used as a middle point of my spectrum for its symmetrical balance composition and helping the other pictures to branches out from there.
I tried to achieve a gradient spectrum effect in the middle of the paper by arranging the photos according to its size. The left side of the spectrum is the nature side of the park, whereas the right side is leaning towards human activities and manmade stuff. I also showcase how human interacting with both sides. However, I checked with my friends to see if they understand what I tried to portray in this map. Most of them cannot understand the interaction of human and nature in a park and also pointed out how the map is quite confusing to look at as they do not know which part to look at.
Final Design
Invader of Park
The park is a place designed for the human to spend leisure tie, exercising, playing and relaxing. However, when you talked about a park, the only thing that came to your mind is always green, the trees, the grass, the bins and more So why a park exists? Is it made for human, or is it to contains nature? Who is the invader of the park?
A park always contains manmade facilities designed for human activities and we, as a human, has also mostly only enjoy using these facilities at a park. The fitness corner, the playground, the toilet, shelter and more. To think about it, isn’t it just a ‘nature theme for all these facilities?
We killed trees and grass to build a park, and we planted trees and grass again to create a ‘park’. Now, do we invade the park?
Explanation
In the beginning, I only wanted to portrait how human and nature interact with each other in a park. However, I felt that it is quite a shallow idea and it did not really express how I felt when I visited the Sembawang Park. Even though I appreciate the presence of manmade facilities, I hated it when I was interrupted by the noises made for all the human activities while immersing myself into nature. So I was thinking, why can’t I design a park to this problem. So I created my psychogeography map to consist of two areas, one side which is mostly nature, and another side with all the facilities and human activities area. The park is designed in this way so people can make their choice to go to the side which suits their mood on the day. You are able to immerse yourself in nature, with all the birds chirping, cricket sound and wind gushing through the trees. Whereas if you are going with your family and friends, you can definitely enjoy yourself on the right side where all the facilities are at!
Reflection
One thing that I have learnt doing the derive is to think deeper while creating my artwork instead of only going with the first idea. It is great that I have the time to work on another concept and idea before deciding which one I want to drill in for final. I think I also need to create a mindmap and have an idea before going blindly into my work.
After the presentation, Prof. Yue Han pointed out that I can try pushing my derive map to be more “commercialize” so to give a deeper impression that it will look more like a commercial board of a park concept. Also, he commented on the confusion and lacking in my artist statement. As the artist statement failed to give the audience an impression that the derive map is supposed to be urban planning for a park, thus making the audience lack in linking the map and artist statement together.
According to Ina Loewenberg, a self-portrait “is an artist’s presentation of self”. ( Loewenberg, 1999, p. 399 )
Vivian Maier, Self Portrait, October 18, 1953. Photo from Vivian Maier
Self Portrait To Me …
Self Portrait helps me to express the feelings that I am not able to voice out in words through photos or pictures. I classified self-portrait into two categories, abstract or performative. Abstract self-portraits are more of expressing the feelings or emotions through more abstract elements such as lightings, shadows etc, whereas performative self-portrait is where the “object” will be placed in an act or situation, creating a reaction based on the circumstances.
Photographer Reference
Alan Warhol
Andy Warhol’s self-portraits are mostly screenprint with a bright colour onto a black canvas. A comment made by Warhol in 1967 supports mentioned to only look at his work at the surface instead of looking behind it. He seems to ask the viewer only to examine the surface of his features rather than what they carry or represent.
Andy Warhol (1928-1987), Self-Portrait. Photo: Christie’s Images Ltd 2011. From Alain.R.TruongAndy Warhol (1978), Self-Portrait. Photo: Artsy
Vivian Maier
Vivian Maier used photography as an escape from her daily routine as a nanny. Throughout her life, she has taken more than 150,000 pictures and in the majority of them, interesting self-portrait photography ideas are implemented. Vivian’s portraiture often used the reflection of windows or mirrors to capture the shots. By looking at her photography, you can tell the way how she wanted to be represented rather than her true self in reality.
Kyle Thompson is a surreal self-portrait photographer. He always inspired bu deserted locations such as macabre forest or abandoned buildings. Besides that, as a true nature lover, his self-portrait mostly carried some natural elements. Kyle also loves to emphasise his bias towards surrealism and often uses effects which are typical for this style: smoke, water, mirrors and balloons to help him show abstract concepts.
In the beginning, I was thinking of working on a theme about how views or labels work on me. I listed out the difference between how people view me and how I view myself, making a contrast between each different views or labels.
Changes In Concept
However, after much consideration, I feel that the concept of “Views And Labels”, three self-portraits make it hard to bring out the contrast and thus I venture into exploring a more emotional concept which is something I have been through not long ago.
I decided to work on the topic of “Adulting”, using self-portrait to express the strong emotions and significant event that happened throughout my adulting journey. I venture into exploring the different phases/ stages of my adulting journey and grouped it under three categories: Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced stage.
Stage #1 – Beginner
Dilute
I want to use different glass with ink dropped into the water and diffuse to signified the dilution of society. To me, as I start growing up, I receive more and more opinions and views from outsiders, these opinions and views actually slowly diluting my thoughts and how I act and see things. During adulting, I think it is really how you find yourself in this diluting society.
Mariamne used glasses and reflection to express the fragility and complexity of human souls. From Exploring Concealed Beauty: Mariamne Photography, by Bailey St Design, n.d.
Loneliness
I realised I am maturing into an adult when I start to feel lonely when I am within a group of friends. Even though I am also participating in the conversation, laughing my lung out, but deep down, I kept holding to the thoughts of how no one really understands me.
I want to use a long exposure and the depth of photo to capture other people with movement around me but I will be to the only person who is in still and sharp. This makes a contrast between the outside world which is constantly moving and without my participation, life still goes on, thus expressing the loneliness I felt deep down in my heart.
Stage #2 – Intermediate
Stress
Stress is one of the things that will constant drown me during the adulting period. The stress may be about something that has happened, the uncertainty in the future and of all the desire that I have. It is due to all of the stresses, I am constantly in an insecure state.
Thus, I want to portray this state of stressful emotion with a backdrop shadow of myself, troubled by all these thoughts that only appeared in the dark.
Reflection Time
Using the reflection of MRT window
During the time when I commute, I feel like it is the time for me to reflect and think of things or event that has happened. As during this time, I am Alone and I do not need to accomplish or work on any tasks. I have all this time by myself and to myself only, which is why it is a good time to think.
Using the reflection of Office Window
During my working days, I will always reach office 30 minutes early so I am able to be alone in the office. I really treasure these times as I am able to stay quiet and focus, planning my goals and objective I wanted to achieve for the day.
Walker took the photo of this man smoking, however, he also finds the multiple reflections on the window interesting. From Street Shot Sundays Photo of the Week: “Train Reflection”, by F.D Walker on Shooter Files
Stage #3 – Advanced
Three Wise Monkeys
I heard about the three wise monkeys since young, but I didn’t really understand why is so ‘wise’ about the monkey as I don’t see the need of following the rules of “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil”.
It is only when I started to work, maturing myself in the society, I learnt that there are times when I need to ‘not see’, ‘not hear’ and ‘not speak’. The more complex social circle you are in, the harder you will learn about these rules. I think this is one of the “adulting’ rules I learnt and follow in heart, helping me to be a mature and responsible adult.
Camouflage
Eyes are the window to emotions and thoughts of a person, and that works for me as well. During my working period, I have always tried my best to hide the emotions in my eyes, and also control the words that flow out of my mouth. I also pay extra attention to this when I am communicating with my friends and people around me.
I am planning to play with a long exposure, creating with a blur motion of hands covering the eyes and mouth to symbolise the restriction and controls that I had to have for my mouth and eyes.
Self Portrait Production
Loneliness
I wanted to express loneliness with the reflection of my office window at night. Thus to make a contrast, I stood alone at the corner of the room when everyone is gathered at the side of the table to chit chat and playing game. Due to the lighting of the office, I am not able to create a bright and dark contrast with my raw photo, thus I edited it slightly with Photoshop.
Playing with lighting indoor and outdoor. This photo is taken when there is still some natural light outside, but it looks too dark for indoor reflection.Trying with horizontal composition, however, this makes the photo looks flat with even lighting and big space.I wanted to create more depth and contrast lighting between my group of friends and my corner, thus I titled the window with a slight angle and it creates a depth between the space.
Stress
For stress, I used my house toilet as the stage, it is a place where I think and reflects a lot, especially during my shower. There is a period of time where I shower in the dark with little lighting as I do not want to disturb my family as they are already in sleep. To me, darkness gives me a sense of security, it feels as if I am able to put everything under control and have a clearer mind to reflect on what is going on. I am someone who is good at hiding my emotions, especially the more negative side. I do not usually cry or shed any tears, but sometimes when I am really nearing the edge of stress and could not contain it anymore, I chose to release my stress and fear in the shower where I can do it alone and prepare myself again to face the world later.
The lighting is not strong and not able to emphasis the details and there is also a white reflection that distracts the audience’s attention.However, with too harsh lighting, it makes it looks too much in focus like a spotlight.I tried with softer lighting and added in more colour elements, this makes the photo feels more steamy and really looks like I am showering. Also, the lighting and blurry shadow formed a dreamy feeling.
Camouflage
I have tried to use a long exposure to create an effect of me covering my eyes and opening it. This signified how I am able to have control of how I view the world and what I want people to see me as.
I tried it over a white background to keep the audience to focus on me only. The photographs were taken with spectacle and without spectacle to see which one create a greater impact. Also, I edited the photo into a monotone tone to express how I want my world to be more simple, either black or white, good or bad.
At first, I tried with a black t-shirt, however, I want the audience’s attention to focus on my face instead. The shirt making it harder for it to happen.I changed to a white shirt, but with a blue blazer so I do not blend in with the white walls. For this shot, I tried to take with spectacle to see how the effect work. I think the spectacle makes it harder to grab the attention to the eyes at first glance.I am quite satisfied with this shoot as the hands are clear and define on my face and the shadow is working the way I liked.
Final Presentation – Self Portrait & Artist Statement
Artist Statement
Adulting
Why do you not smile as bright when you grew up?
Where is your voice? Why do you stop asking questions?
What stops you from having fun?
Do you still enjoy the company of your friends?
Why can’t you sleep at night?
When do you learn to cry in your shower?
Is the weight on your shoulder growing?
Do you stop trusting people?
Do you still sing the songs that you used to sing?
Do you start making choices on what you want to see?
I chose to arrange the photo in this arrangement to represent the time in an in the 3 stages. The beginner stage – Loneliness is the stage that I have stuck the most in the journey of adulting. I have been trying to surround myself with people, trying my best to occupy my life so I will not overthink. Whereas for stress, this is a small but significant portion of my adulting life, thus I am placing it at the top. In the end, I placed “Camouflage”, to signify how I accepted the society as an adult and is able to have control of how I view the world and what I want people to see me as.
Critique & Reflection
Questions Asked During Critique
Why do you to have yellow lighting in your stress/ shadow photo? What does it signify?
Yellow is the colour of happiness, however, I used yellow as a juxtapose against how my mental health is feeling negative and stressful instead of its positive meaning.
Why is there a transformation from using reflection to shadow and yourself?
I am someone who is not good with facing problems and when I encountered them, I usually occupied myself so I will not have time to stop and think about it. I think the reflection and shadow also signify how I do not want to face the first two stages of adulting directly and hence finding ways to escape from it. Even at the last photo, even though I am present, but I still choose to cover my eyes. This also means that even with the acceptance of growing and maturing into an adult, I still sometimes chose not to face my problems directly.
Reflection
This assignment helps me to explore my deeper emotions and face problems that I have always choose to escape and forget. Throughout this assignment, I have also learned some photography skills on how I can use different tools to enhance photography. I think if I have more times, I would actually like to try to use reflection on the MRT to create a more impactful self-portrait to emphasise the idea of ‘personal time’. I believe with passengers on the trains, it will form layers or depth in the photo more easily, helping to shape the idea.
I would also like to explore more themes such as My roles, responsibility and struggles. For example, what is the role of being eldest at home affects my views on things, what responsibilities do I carry.
Reference List
Loewenberg, I. (1999). Reflections on Self-Portraiture in Photography. Feminist Studies, 25(2), 399–408. https://doi.org/10.2307/3178687
Tate. (1986, January 01). ‘Self-Portrait’, Andy Warhol, 1986. Retrieved September 03, 2020, from https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/warhol-self-portrait-t07146
Official website of Vivian Maier: Vivian Maier Portfolios, Prints, Exhibitions, Books and documentary film. (n.d.). Retrieved September 03, 2020, from http://www.vivianmaier.com/
Portfolio. (n.d.). Retrieved September 03, 2020, from http://www.kylethompsonphotography.com/fine-art
FixThePhoto.com, T. (n.d.). 15 Best Self Portrait Photographers Who Are Famous Nowadays. Retrieved September 03, 2020, from https://fixthephoto.com/self-portrait-photographers.html
Walker, F. (2015, November 02). Street Shot Sundays Photo of the Week: “Train Reflections”. Retrieved September 03, 2020, from http://shooterfiles.com/2015/11/street-shot-sundays-photo-of-the-week-train-reflections/
