Category Archives: Foundation 4D 1 – G1

Project 4 Final – The Unfolding Narrative

Our installation is titled “The Unfolding Narrative“.

 

The stories that would be played through the headphones initially before anyone records their thoughts in the booth:

1 – Working adult – Mild bipolar disorder
2- Old Uncle – Anhedonia (Major Depressive disorder)
3- Working Adult – Manic depression (Suicidal)
4- Working Adult – Relocation depression (change of nature in job)
5- Working Adult – Parenting through depression
6- Working Adult – Depression caused by chronic Illnesses/change of environment
7- Fresh Graduate – Financial depression

 

Our purpose:

  1. To encourage open conversations on our mental health
  2. Choose to use the toilet -> where private thoughts are most apparent, bringing them to a public space

Front view:

  1. A row of 9 toilet bowls placed at the ADM entrance
  2. A headset will be attached to each toilet bowl where participants can pick up and listen to the recorded stories
  3. Each toilet bowl will have a different encounter recorded

Back view:

  1. Participant can move to the back and contribute their own personal stories
  2. We want to create a safe and comfortable place -> drawing/ writing/ highly encouraged to share their stories verbally

Explaining the layout:

  1. According to statistics, 1 in 10 Singaporeans suffer from mental health issues
  2. So we made 9 toilet bowls -> equivalent to 9 listeners lending their listening ear to the one person in the booth.
  3. Straight line of toilet bowls

Stories shared:

  1. Most common problems -> depression, alcohol abuse, obsessive-compulsive disorder,
  2. Other problems -> Schizophrenia and Dementia

Community involvement:

  1. We want to have an interactive/community sharing component included in our project
  2. Reason why we encompass different ways of expression -> to have a greater sense of inclusion towards the process of story sharing

 

What we considered?

  • Live streaming of personal stories -> why not? -> might create a sense of fear, a sense of formality in the process of sharing -> therefore, we chose not to do it

Project 4 – Interactive Artwork – Research

The I-Ching Art Installation Involves 64 Chinese Phrases

Created by artist Huang Rui, the I-Ching art installation is hosted at the Opposite House hotel in Beijing, China. When the artist is presenting, guests are invited to hold one of the umbrellas and form a circle. Following the artist’s cue, the participating guests can then communicate with one another either aloud or in silence. From above, the umbrellas look like the yin-yang symbol.

Somehow, the usage of umbrella concept is pretty unique as we only uses umbrella when there’s rain but not in the indoor.

 

The light installation CLOUD

Cloud is an interactive sculpture created from 6,000 incandescent light bulbs by Canadian artists Caitlind r.c. Brown & Wayne Garrett. The piece utilizes pull chain switches and everyday domestic light bulbs, re-imagining their potential to catalyze collaborative moments and create an enveloping, experiential environment.

Project 3: Thinking Sequentially – Impossibilities of being

Inside A Box 

I got my inspiration while chance upon a quote, thinking outside a box. A guy in the box was affected by the movements he made previously. Any new movements to the box will eventually affect the current situation. By opening up the box also gives the character a new chance to redo what he did wrongly previously.

Project 2: (Image, Sound and Memory) – Goodbye, Emily

Scroll all the way down for research and development. 

BEST WITH EARPIECE ON! 

 

Ending

Summaries of Goodbye, Emily

Emily is a girl who suffered from depression, by using the tape recorder to record her sorrows in every places she visited. Which helps her to keep things on track but she decided to end her life at the very end.

This is a recording of her whenever she felt that she isn’t herself (Depression thoughts). I skipped some days in the middle part if you did hear carefully in the recording to represent she’s alright and a sense of fighting against her depression, but she still decided to give up and live on with her depression.

I wrote it in a point of view story-telling method, it allows the viewers to listen and understand that they are actually the one who played and rewind the tape recorder at the very end.

Inspiration

I got my inspiration of writing something regarding about depression through a video that I saw on my Facebook feed. It was actually a video of 36 hours before the death of  “Chester Bennington” the lead singer from the famous band “Linking Park”.

As we can’t really judge by seeing someone’s emotion and someone who suffered from depression will always protrayed a side of their happiness but we did not know actually they are dying inside. That concludes the story that I wrote.

RIP Chester Bennington.

Exhibition Visit to Art Science Museum

This is actually my very first time visiting the Art Science Museum in Marina Bay Sands. We visited the Human+ The Future of our species exhibition and we were given 1 hour to tour around the museum, I was pretty amazed by the artwork and installation that were done by many well-known artists and also not forgetting some of the artwork was done proudly by NTU students and their professors.

Personal Review – No. 1

While touring around the Museum I found some interesting artwork that I wanted to include in the OSS.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Name of Artist: Cao Fei
Title of Artwork: Whose Utopia?

Description of the work: It’s a video installation done by the artist Cao Fei produced back in 2006. Total length of the film (20mins 20sec)

Preliminary Read

Upon entering the small room which screened the film “Whose Utopia” by Cao Fei video, we can hear the factory-like sounds which really attracts me. My initial impression of the work as I watch the video, I saw a group of young adults working in the light-blub factory with no special expressions, as we can see they are not happy with their life,  no dreams, being trained and used to their daily routine. I felt that they were so called trap in a box and unable to express themselves.

Secondary Read

After reading the descriptions, I was correct. It was something related to their hopes and dreams of the individuals. The film really brought out the emotions and it shows us the facts of their daily life. It took the the artist a total of 6 months to produce out the video, the total length of the video is about 20 mins and 20 sec which displayed clearly on the wall. The message in the video has a strong meaning behind it which can be relates to people as they watch the film.

Personal Review – No. 2

Name of Artist: Matt Kenyo and Douglas Easterly with Tiago Rorke

Title of artwork: Tardigotchi Object

Description of the work: A cute looking little device called: Tardigotchi which is make of plastic with a few metal screws to secure the screen.

Preliminary Read

How does the work enable you to gathering and build those informations?

When i first came across this piece of artwork, I was actually pretty excited as this reminds of my childhood, which I used to own one of the cute looking little device called, tamagotchi. The feeling of owning one of the device which allowing you a new experience of having a pet without any hassle. The Tardigotchi and tamagotchi which has the same word “gotchi” which representing the word “Egg”. It is also representing your virtual pet in your device started from an egg which hatch eventually.

Secondary Read

After reading the descriptions on the wall, it shows clearly that the device has something to do with virtual pet. It features two pets: a living organism and an artificial life avatar which find themselves unlikely denizens of a computer enclosure as we can see from the information board. The device name “Tardigotchi” was referencing the famous Tamagotchi toy from the 1990s. This piece of artwork communicates to people because  at our very first glance, the name “Gotchi” and the object flashes through out brains which brings back old memories from our childhood, which is something people can also relate on.

Sound Art – Interesting finds

Sound Art Artist: Samson Young

URL: https://vimeo.com/146790656

The Hong Kong-born and based Samson Young is currently drowning the world in sound with his politically-charged performances and installations (and will represent Hong Kong at the 2017 Venice Biennale).

A very interesting information that I found is that he watched six hours of compiled footage of US bombs dropping in the Middle East on mute, and then recreated the sounds of the carnage on a custom-made setup of instruments and non-instruments, like a can of compressed air, or a shaving razor.

Sound Art Artist: Tarek Atoui

URL: https://vimeo.com/146790656

Another amazing interesting sound art installation and instruments from Tarek Atoui. He studied contemporary and electronic music in Paris when he was still a student. His current practice finds the artist building custom instruments, like for his “Reverse Sessions series”, an ongoing project currently staging performances at the Tate Modern.

He built 10 unconventional instruments including blowing horns and teacups—and invited a series of fellow instrument makers and composers to improvise with them. The sessions are then layered on top of each other to create a final sound piece, a multilayered synthesis of the summer’s work. Its really changes your perspective of how sounds can relate to your emotions.

 

Seminar Questions

Seminar Questions

What is sound?

Sound vibrations that travel through the air or another medium and can be heard when they reach a person’s or animal’s ear. Each sound, as it is created, propagates amongst the hard Newtonian billiard balls of matter, adding to an internal din from which the cosmic maker, at the end of the creation, can discern every act, word and deed. The atmosphere is in effect a cosmic recording medium, and the hush we hear is still air holds, encoded, the words of all time. Almost every activity in the world has an aural component.

How has it been use in culture and society?

Sound is an art which often been used in the exhibitions that include a subset (sometimes even all) of the following music, kinetic sculpture, instruments, activated by the wind or played by the public, conceptual art, sound effects, recorded readings of prose or poetry, visual artworks which also make sound, paintings of musical instruments, musical automatons, film video, technological demonstrations, acoustic re-enactments, interactive computer programs which produce sound, etc. The invention of phonograph presented a different set of observations when playback three sounds were heard and in various musical cultures, a variety of sounds and figurations assumed the role of creating the presence of silence.

What makes it an art?

A art form called ‘Steel Art’ which composed of steel sculpture combined with steel guitar music along with anything else with steel in it which overall its about the aesthetic experience as art the medium is not often the message.

How does advancement in audio technology affect our sense?

The advancement in audio technology creates illusion which affects our senses through sound. It is also simulating reality in films which gives audience a new sensations through visuals and audios. Special sound tracks were also created certain mood which affects the senses and emotions of the viewers.

Project 2: Image, Text and Final Artwork

Project 2: Create an advertisement with the non-perishable food item that you have received from the exchange. consider the various concepts introduced by Roland Barthes in his analysis of an advertisement and the layer of meanings created through the interplay of linguistic message, Image & Meaning, Dennoted messaged, connoted Message.
Brain Storming & Sketch

Baked beans was one of the most interesting product that I got in class during the exchanging for our new 4D assignment Project 2: “Image & Text”. In the above as we can see a rough sketch of my initial idea which by placing the product in the middle filled with jelly beans around. As we know baked bean doesn’t really have any unique flavor in it.

(Foreground)

Jelly beans has lots of different unique taste and in colors, By replacing the baked beans into jelly beans it gave a sense to the viewers a whole new experience of eating baked beans. Which linked to my slogan “New Experience in Every Taste”

(Mid Ground)

As the actual Baked beans can that I got doesn’t really look appealing so I decided to use this brand for my main subject.

(Background)

By putting kitchen as a background, it shows that where the product is belongs to. As whenever we see a kitchen it reminds us like our mother’s cooking. It brings a warm feelings to the viewers as a connoted message. This will be a challenge because I wont be shooting the images in a real kitchen set. It will be like a office setting but by putting familiar objects, it will look exactly like a kitchen. Stay tune for the image!

Final Artwork

This is the final layout of the artwork that I created using the ideas that I sketched out previously.

Challenges 

I felt that there’s always room for improvement in the artwork, like example the art directions can be improve and of course the ideas behind this advertisement poster can be more clear cut and more in-depth. I will definitely do more research and improve my artwork in the near future.

Project 1B “Paradox” – Health and Greenery

Collage done by Shawn Ong.

My idea behind the artwork is to promote Health & Greenery at the same time by using “Garden By The Bay” as a local location. As Singapore are moving towards to clean and green enviroment, by building more parks and running tracks which encourages people to run while enjoying the scenery at the same time.