“What do you want to be when you grow up?”

Ah yes, the age-old question that has plagued me since adolescence. I always wondered why adults enjoyed asking kids this question.

As I grow older, I suspect it’s the innocence and naivety behind their answers that we find amusing. An answer untarnished by the harsh realities of the world and hard logic that has been hammered into the rest of us years after.

As a child, I had many dreams. Many weren’t very realistic though. In fact many were derived from the various movies and TV shows I watched. In fact, I recall a vast part of my childhood was spent creating an alternate reality version of myself where I lived in whatever universe that I was currently obsessed over.

In fact,  I’m positive that sketches of these alternate realities filled more of the borders of my old math books than the actual math itself. The desire for escapism was just that strong.

A fool’s errand of course, given how all these realities will never exist and I’m flunking P5 Math in the real one.

Yet, when thinking of jobs, this memory comes to the forefront. Of course at this point i have a bit more of a direction I’d like to head in in life. But the thought of chasing seemingly impossible dreams often leaves me wanting for the blissful comforts of my bedsheets. The same feeling of escapism resurfaces.

And that’s what I wanted to express with this project: 3 dream jobs from these “alternate realities” and one “reality”.

RESEARCH

Here’s the hard part, how should I show these alternate realities? I mean they are just figments of my imagination. Most of the time my mind just fills in the gaps in my internal storyline with random things. There wasn’t any pressure for my piece to make sense. It reminded me a bit of the surrealistic style my projects took last sem. But I wasn’t very keen on doing exactly the same thing twice. So I researched into several other artists as well as artists that incorporated typography into their work.

 

MIKHAIL SISKOFF

Mikhail a visual artist and photographer living in Anchorage Alaska who makes surreal collage images from vintage publications and free use archive images as well as my own original analog photography.

Here are some examples of his works: 

I enjoyed how he played with the size and general shape of the subjects to insert them seamlessly into the environment to create a whole new world. 

VLADISLAV ERKO

Vladislav Erko is a famous artist-illustrator from Kiev, Ukraine. “Fairy Tales of Foggy Albion”– illustrated by him are published in 20 countries. His illustration of “Harry Potter” was recognized as one of the fifth best in the world by the studio Warner Brothers.

 

Erko is definitely more known for his complex illustrative works on published books. However, while I’m not completely sure if this set of works are belong to him as the only place I could locate them were on Pinterest. But most of them on that site are attributed to him. 

I enjoyed the subtle collage-y style in which he combined the pieces to form a typography. A fact which I could consider incorporating into my work. 

I also liked how each piece within the collage also added to the world or the message he was trying to bring across. 

 

CONCLUSION FROM RESEARCH

After looking at all these artist, it became clear that what I wanted to create were 3 “portals” that were obviously out of this world and weird looking. As I mentioned earlier, imagination to me meant filling the gaps in the internal reality with things that were familiar to me. So I also knew I wanted to create realities made up of things that are relatable and recognizable to Singaporeans.

As a kid, I used to imagine construction cranes as dragons or dinosaurs eating things off the ground and buildings as giant robots and the red lights on top as eyes. So i wanted to do the same with my collages.

I also came up with a few alternate realitiy jobs inspired my storyworlds that I found interesting and would sometimes think about. For example: Dragon Wrangler, Zombie.

CONSULTATION #1

After consulting with Joy, she mentioned that she liked the part where I wanted to incorporate Singaporean-y things into the work. She also recommended a more collage-y cut and paste style compared to the less obvious photo collage style last sem.

She also suggested looking into scanography and experimenting with it to see how I could apply it to my works.

Which of course threw me for a loop because I had never heard that term before. Thankfully Joy provided a few websites I could look at before I gave scanography.

Here are a few scanography artists whose works I enjoyed:

I really enjoyed how glitchy everything looked. The portraits taken with scenography, why mostly not very flattering due to the smushed faces, does cause a discomfort that is slightly alluring. Like how the portrait seems a lot more real and raw. Since the face is so close, you can really see every strand of hair and every pore on the face. Nothing photoshop can hide.

I also enjoyed how the length of things and the shape of things could be experimented with and altered by moving the object along with the scanner.

 

EXPERIMENTING WITH SCANOGRAPHY

 

So basically all one needs with scanography is a passable printer with a high res scanning function. Thankfully I had one at home. I cannot imagine how MORE awkward it would have been if I had done my experiments in a printing shop or anywhere else.

Additionally scanography needs to be done in a dark room so that the image captured would be what is directly above the scanner. Which naturally meant I had to do it at night.

 

Naturally, this is how my mother found me at 2AM in the dark:

It took some explaining after on my part. But here are some of the result s from my efforts:

Very flattering I know. Overall it was an interesting experience and it did change how I perceived photography quite a bit. I liked how the lighting ended up with a bit of a studio spotlight kind of effect due to the shallow depth and black background.

I also enjoyed the irony that came with me making the glitches together with the machine. It feels as if I’ve bridged some sort of gap between human and machine and we’ve created art together in some odd poetic way.

I did attempt to make some letterform shapes with the scans, but it didn’t read as well. As can be seen with the baby’s breath and burnt paper. 

Also, while it the photos turned out really interesting, I also had no idea how I wanted to incorporate it into my work.

LET THE FUN BEGIN

And so begins my journey with the collages. I started with the dragon playground playground since it was the one that visually I had in mind the most.

DRAGON WRANGLER

I started by compiling all the objects I associated somewhat with dragons. Turns out this cut and paste look wasn’t as easy as I thought.

 

 

Second attempt turned out better.

I wanted to incorporate the organic curves of the C and L in my name into the general shape of the dragon. The bend of the neck and the disconnect from the main body forming the C and the reaining neck and body of the construction digger forming the L. After that I decided to place all the dragons into an environment made out of dragonfruit.

Now came the hard part of incorporating the scans.

Looking at previous examples of scanography art, I noticed that most of them tended to use layering and had a glitchy effect. So as a test, I tried scanning a paper with my name written on it and burnt it (because…well, dragons.)Just to see if the effect of burnt paper in the scan. I layered it over the a scan of my face and hand. It ended up looking like i was smushing my face against the glass of an aquarium and I liked the look it brought when I placed it in the background of the piece. It had this glitchy otherworldly effect that I decided to replicate throughout the rest of the works.

After consulting with Joy, she suggested that I tried to make use of the movement of the construction diggers as well since they sort of “write” out the letter C in their digging movements as well. To emphasize that point, I added dragonfruits with gouges in them that form the letter C, to emphasize the movement and the shape of the letter C.

I also added more “dragons” so it looked like there were more of them in my little aquarium.

I think all in all it turned out pretty well. I enjoyed how dystopian it sort of looked. Like I was controlling the dragons in some weird dragonfruit harvesting sweatshop like a dictator rather than the innocent childhood dream of having a dragon as an adored pet. In a way, I think my childhood dream turned out a lot darker and more glitchy because of this process. 

ZOMBIE

I know I know, why would I even want to be a zombie? It probably stems from me wanting a job that requires me to just eat all the time for once. Also I figured if a zombie apocalypse were to happen, I’d more likely be Extra #3 that gets bit in the first five minutes of a zombie flick than a badass survivor.

Anyway, I always felt it would be ironic if everyone in Singapore became zombies considering we ARE a The Lion City. So to allude to that, I represented Singaporeans with Lions and made them queue around a wet market table full of meat. Also to show how we forgot our humanity and our “past”, I layered a scan of my baby picture and a hand that dragged across the screen, like a zombie clawed down it.

I also added static around the eyes of the Merlions to emphasise the fact that there is nothing going on in the brains of zombies. 

To incorporate the C and L letterforms, I decided to play with the “water” that normally spews out of the merlion’s mouth, which naturally forms a C like curve already. However, I wasn’t too sure how to go about it. Also, the static wasn’t really working out and I felt it took away a bit of the blank stare effect that I thought the merlions naturally held. 

However, I decided to add another layer to the image. I wanted to talk about how Singaporeans are sometimes viewed as technical zombies, always lifelessly glued to our phones and walking without awareness. So I gave the merlions hands holding onto iphones and made them spew glitches out of their mouths instead. The glitches are a popup window that says “Human Error, you are obsolete.” Instead I warped glitch to have a similar effect as it would have if I ran it through the scanner. It read as the organic curve of the letterform better than when I ran it through the scanner. To add to the impression of the glitch escaping from the mouth of the merlion, I tapered down the tip of the glitch at the tip to give the impression of suction.

After consulting with Joy, she felt the merlions in the  back were a bit distracting and not merging properly with the environment.

So for my final, I shifted them to the back, to make it seem like they were queueing for something in the wet market of merely blindly walking past.

Overall, I liked how this one turned out in terms of the colours. It was a lot more glitchy than the first, which could be something I could play with as I went along; making things get glitchier and glitchier.

ICE CREAM AUNTIE IN HELL

With all the conspiracy theories out there about the world ending, one can’t help but think, “what then” sometimes. Many movies touch on this topic, on the end of the world or the life after. I couldn’t help wondering the question “ What kinda job would actually be the best if we all went to hell?” Which led to the thinking “Hell’s pretty hot. I’d bet people would kill for ice cream. I’d probably earn a lot hell notes.”

Thus this new job was borne. This job was the most fun for me to visualize considering the less serious thinking behind it and the lack of limitation on my imagination as to how to express it made it a lot of fun to brainstorm about.

My impression of ice cream aunties was always with the red truck with the huge umbrellas that were constantly surrounded by pigeons waiting for a scrap of food. So instead of the humans queueing for ice cream, I swapped them for pigeons. There are also stacks of hell notes beside the ice cream cart. To emphasize the amount of money coming in, I photoshopped hell notes with a similar effect to glitch popup window in the “Zombie” piece. This time the hell notes are flowing and tapering into the ice cream cart. The shape and flow of the hellnotes flying thus form the shape of the C. The shadow casted by the hellnotes thus make an L shape on the floor. This also highlights the similarity between the shape of C and L.

Finally, to make the place look more like hell, I overlayed the ice cream cart and pigeons on a desert landscape. I feel that hell would be very dark but very warm. And to show that effect, I changed the hue of the sand turning it purple. To represent the fire, I overlayed the backdrop with the scan of my hair, changing it’s hues so that they will become red.

REALITY – THE COUCH MANAGER

I wanted the final image to represent myself in reality after having spent so much time daydreaming. Obviously, the daydreaming has not helped me achieve my dreams and I was jobless. But in my delusion, I had given myself a job: ‘The Couch Manager’. Which was simply a fancy way of describing myself as a couch potato. This was also to imitate the way some companies liked to give very convoluted names to certain jobs just to give the illusion of it sounding important. I once had to work as a “Administrative Production Coordinator” which was simply a fancy way of describing my desk job during internship, sorting through paperwork.

In the piece, you can see a sloth, wearing an “idiot hat” mid descent down the image. The bottom of the image being darker than the top. This is to physically illustrate my descent from my daydream to reality. I also added a TV at the top of the image to represent where all the ideas for these daydreams originate from. To emphasize on the descent, I added the scan I did of a baby’s breath plant dragged down the scanner that gets progressively more glitched out as it reaches the bottom of the image. As baby’s breath symbolizes innocence, I wanted to represent that innocence being stripped away when falling into reality.

The more obvious incorporations of the letterforms would be in the doughnut on the sofa with a bite taken out of it to show the similarities in the shape between C and O. The L letterform can be seen in the sloth’s body, contrasting with the R letterform formed by the spilling coke. So far, most of my pieces only incorporated the C and L letterforms, but this time I chose to incorporate R as well from my first name. This is to show the similarities between the L and R letterforms apart from their orientation.

CRITIQUE

Joy felt that the overall concept of the pieces for the jobs from alternate universes and the one with reality was interesting. She liked how there were relatable Singaporean elements within it to showcase how my perception of how imagination works. She also liked how the scanography was incorporated. However, she felt the letterforms could have been more emphasized within the pieces and take up more of the construct of the image.

Feedback from Friends