UNTITLED 3

I once had a very close friend, but drifted from her because of miscommunication and many little things in between. It been around 2 to 3 years since we drifted, but yet I catch myself still thinking ‘what if….’. I then realised that, although we are not close anymore, the friendship has still changed me as a person and helped me grow a a person.

While looking back at the impacts my friends had on my life, I decided to explore how time facilitates change in people through relationships. Inspired by the ancient Egyptian paintings, I used a series of photos put into a single strip to signify the documentation of time as time progresses, a strip itself signifying a part of a person’s timeline. The 2 people starts on opposing ends, and I wanted them to start on opposing ends of the strips to portray that people ‘come from different walks of life’. In other words, I wanted to show that the people who enter our lives all had different lives from us until our timelines collided when we meet. The background of the strips are also empty, to represent our lives as blank pieces of paper, making the relationships we form the writers of our lives. The first strip represents us, and the second represents the people we meet.

By the usage of the photo strip, I wanted to manipulate time by hinting at the repetition of this particular part of our lives. I wanted the photo strip to constantly “replay”, signifying the constant repetition of us meeting new people, forming new relationships with people that impact our lives and hence resulting changes. The photo strip allowed the constantly looping of the sequence of photos, hence achieving the effect of our lives constantly on replay. The girl in the first strip enters from the left while the guy enters from the left, and when their timelines collide, they break away from repetition and start doing things that varied more in terms of movement and emotions. They start doing the same things in the same parts of their own timelines, but yet they only share a single moment together when their timelines align in the centre. This is to signify the weaving of other people’s timelines into ours when we from relationships.

 

Signifier – The repetition of the characters walking from opposing ends of the photostrips

Signified – The difference in starting point of every other life that enters our own

 

Signifier – The blank background of the photo strips

Signified – Our lives as blank pieces of paper and relationships as the writer

 

Signifier – The repetition of the characters at the start of the photo strips

Signified – The monotonous repetition of life before meeting others