Month: April 2017

4D Final Project – Research

Back when I was still dancing ballet at Singapore Dance Theatre, there was the annual Ballet Under the Stars at Fort Canning Green which both of my sisters have performed in and I have watched the performances multiple times in my childhood.

I wanted to capture the awe I felt when I was young when I watched the ballet performances because there was something so organic and relaxed about it as you were sitting under the stars, in a historic place and watching an ancient form of artistic performance. It was magical. Thus, I wanted to capture the magical quality of the performance and maybe show a film about maybe me dancing again (or die trying) or a mini documentary about my aunt as she was the one who introduced it to me.

Installation 

Location: Cinema Room in the ADM library due to the total darkness it can achieve in the room.

My set up involves removing all the chairs inside for the room to be empty. As during Ballet Under the Stars, the audience actually picnic and sit on mats and cushions while enjoying the performance. Thus, I required the room to be empty.

There would be a projector on the floor in between the pillows and the mat which would shine towards the ceiling to play the film (TBD). 

I plan to hang up a black cloth with little holes in it that would be filled with the bulbs of fairylights as a representation of the night sky. The audience has to lie on their backs as though they are star-gazing.


Goodbye.

I’ve named this Goodbye as I felt that it was rather apt from what I’ve said in my research . After consulting Robert with the first draft, I removed the ballet music as he said it was rather manipulative which I agreed as it did sound a bit too depressing.

Instead, I did add more different sounds to try and convey this nostalgic yet melancholy mood. The ballet teachers voice, flames cackling and the nature soundscape still remains. The ballet teacher’s voice is reminiscence of my childhood as I’ve concluded that my ballet teachers had a very soothing and calm tone similar to the voice in the video which brought back many memories. Along with the sounds of nature, they represented my time as a child that I wanted the audience to relieve.

I’ve added the sounds of little kids laughing happily as the joy and innocence I experienced during childhood and as the paper mache tutu burns to almost darkness, sounds of crows and owls can be heard to symbolise death and it gets louder and louder until it overshadows the children’s laughter completely. 

The whole video and sounds allude to death of the past with the burning imagery and the sounds of crows and owls which in some cultures represents death. This is a continuation of my first project but this represents a means of everything comes to end. Stop lingering on the past and that part of me is gone forever.

Assignment 2 – Goodbye draft

Since this project was focused on sounds, I wanted to include sounds that I heard when I was still doing ballet as kid. That means the sounds internally in the room when I was dancing and the surroundings trees swaying to the wind and birds chirping outside. They were both very different sounds as previously, Fort Canning Arts Centre was not air-conditioned so there were fans installed and the french doors were open for the wind to enter. I chose these sounds because they were reminiscent of my childhood and it brought a sort of nostalgia when I went back there for my first project. 

I added sounds of the leaves rustling, cicadas, ballet music and a ballet teacher saying the steps and ballet music which I had found online. I wanted to convey the sounds I heard when I was young when I was having ballet lessons so as to bring you back into the past. 

To complement my sounds, I decided to add a film to go along. I was thinking of what to film while doing paper mache for my 3D project. And since I was playing around with crepe paper which itself was fragile and burns easily, I decided to use that as my medium. Moreover, the fragility of the paper reminded me of how the past makes one vulnerable and has a deep impact on our lives. So I made a paper leotard and tutu using crepe paper. I chose a black background to go with it as I felt that the flame would be more contrasting if I used a white background and the soot from the flame would not transfer onto the background. 

As you can see I did experience some difficulties in burning the paper mache as it did not burn up the way I wanted it too. It did not continue burning so I had to make a new one and dipped it in wax.

I wanted the message to contrast whereby even though I am reliving the past, the past is still gone forever. Thus, the burning imagery which I felt apt as it symbolised burning away the past.

 

Assignment 2 – Goodbye (Research)

I was inspired by my visit to CCA at Gillman Barracks where I was intrigued by Jeremy Sharma’s Vertical Progression. It had a serenity to it from the background noises created from each surrounding yet a certain fragmentation from reality with the constant switching of nature to production/ technology.

I want to create something similar whereby it depicts something from the start to an end but I have to decide what to portray and what sounds to include to evoke a similar feeling I felt.

Final Zine: East to West

Jurong. It is just so far. The extreme west end of Singapore and the place everyone calls “Pulau NTU” because that is just how far we are away from everyone. But it is also where my uni life began.

In my opinion, this was a rather challenging project just to come out and develop a concept that I thought would capture the essence of Jurong, show my exploration and at the same time not be a commercialised zine.

I struggled quite a bit because I was not alway certain with what I wanted to do with my concepts. I kept changing and switching back and forth with the concepts because I was not very satisfied with one. However, I really did enjoy looking at artist Kate Rabbit’s work especially her collage series which incorporated everything I wanted for my zine. 

It had the flora aspect which I could incorporate from my research in Jurong, the illustrations which I could include my architecture concept (Mimi’s advice after I showed her my inspirations as she said I needed something that is representative of Jurong) and the photography which was my personal aspect.  

FINAL

Cover page

My first attempt at the cover page is seen as the featured image for this page at the top.  I quite liked it but I felt that the words was not as visible as my second attempt which is the one that I used in the end and is pictured here. I arranged the flowers in the shape of the whole Jurong as I felt it best captured the essence of my zine along with the title (I mainly featured the opposite ends of Jurong for this zine).

Introduction

This acted as a brief summary of my zine and what to look forward to. I added the scotch tape to create a scrapbook vibe, including the black highlighted “journey” part. The black highlighted part reminded me of childhood whereby my mum to have this small handheld manual name printer. It was not like the digital kind from Brothers where you can simply key in the the words you wanted to print. The one from my childhood had the alphabets and symbols in a circle and you had to rotate it till you reached the alphabet you want before pressing down the handle to emboss it. Then the whole steps repeats for the next letter and so on. It also had a typewriter font on it thus I chose a similar font for it too.

Page 3

This served as my “trail” as the places that I will talk about in chronological order. I started with the East which is the Ng Teng Fong Hospital and Chevrons then proceeded to the West which is ADM and Safti. I illustrated all the structures using the pen tool on Adobe Illustrator.

Page 4

1st entry and the flowers do have symbolism to it which I specifically chose. The Frangipanis represents death which I thought was apt for my finger as I couldn’t use it for months and till now it does not bend properly. The rest of my pages follows the same structure which is the word entry, location then flora and personal pictures. I tried adding more illustrations similar to Kate Rabbit’s style but it would look quite cluttered.

Page 5

Again, the flowers has symbolism. The orchids represents love and happiness while the hibiscus mean joy, seeing beauty and finding a reason to celebrate the simplest of joys. The reason why I did not include the flower symbolism is because it was more of a personal thing and I felt that it was not necessary for the zine. Also, the flowers here are vibrant and colourful to allude to my emotions of happiness and nervousness during the event. For the personal picture here, it was trimmed in a very messily way as based on Kate Rabbit’s work not all of her pictures were trimmed properly. It also adds to a more scrapbook vibe.

Page 6 

This personal picture was roughly cut out too for the same reason as I explained above and it created a more casual and playful mood which added to this theme of the page. Here I did explain the flower symbolism because it had a connection to my friends’ personalities.

Page 7

Similarly, I did explained the symbolism of the flowers as I wanted to clear any misunderstandings for Chrysanthemums. In some cultures, Chrysanthemums are used during funerals to represent death and purity but they also symbolise happiness as explained.

Page 8

This page was covered in grass to connect to the cover page.

Zine: Jurong Themes/ Concepts

JURONG

My perspective of Jurong mostly comes from my daily routine of travelling to school and back home. I do not stay in hall and it can be quite draining at time to travel an hour or so everyday. Because I’m not the kind to travel places that are far away from where I live, this was how I was introduced to Jurong.

Concepts/ Themes

ARCHITECTURE

Jurong is quite an old estate with quite a few historical architecture remaining. I made a list of all the architecture that were from the 1960s – 1990s and they had a vintage or sci-fi vibe to the buildings. I thought it was an interesting idea of doing time travel or taking picture of the interesting angles of the structures. My main inspiration for these were the posters and magazines from the 60s with psychedelic style, contrasting use of colours and vibrancy. 

BOTANICAL

I realised from my daily travel that Jurong does have a lot of flora and fauna and these photographs are some that I took at the Jurong parks. Even just outside of NTU at CleanTech Park, there is an eco-garden with even more flora and fauna. I found the interaction of the branches created a rather interesting geometric pattern and the caterpillar-eaten holes on the leaves quite adorable too. I did further research on the flora and discovered that these plants have a function other than decorative purpose such as medicinally or substantially. The inspiration I had for my zine were skincare brochures with the properties of plant extract and what they could be used for so it was more informative and educational.

PERSONAL

I asked my classmates (those who lived in hall and those who did live in Jurong) where they would go to in Jurong or what they liked to do. At the same time, I did explore Jurong with my boyfriend because at that time he was still in OCS so we would meet up and find places to eat and relax or if he had any OCS events, they mostly held it in Jurong. I did start familiarising myself with Jurong mostly because of ADM and I would probably have never explored Jurong that thoroughly if I was not in NTU. I wanted to do a diary events of my life because even though I’ve been studying here for less than a year, there has been many eventful things that happened to me over here. The style of it would in a scrapbook style and a small diary entry of the occasion.