reflections

There are 2 posts tagged reflections (this is page 1 of 1).

Reflection: Week 9

What drew my attention from the previous lecture was Rhinoceros (1515) by Albrecht Dürer. The intricacy behind this the woodcut print was astounding. The term “Math letter forms” used in class also caught my attention. 

Apparently, when the artist was creating this piece, he has never seen a Rhinoceros before because it was rare to spot one in Europe then. He took inspiration from a sketch done in 1514

and also had to piece together various reports to create the creature. Perhaps it was his own flare or even lost in translation, he covered the creature’s legs with scales and the body with hard, patterned plates.

Focusing on the inscription, it is in German and it accounts of when King of Portugal, Manuel of Lisbon, brought such a living animal from India, called the rhinoceros to Europe in 1513 AD May. It also mentions of the rhinoceros being more superior to an elephant.

I believe that the typeface ‘Albert Dürer Blackletter’ created in 1500 was used in this piece.

Dürer applies a grid system into typography. His typographic grid proportions were 8 squares high, based on the human proportion of 8 heads high. The technically behind this could be attributed to his study on the aesthetic anatomy of human proportion. He believed that various mathematical figure (e.g straight lines, curves, circle) could be made beautiful by proportion.

According to Dürer,

“… since architects, painters and others … are wont to set an inscription on lofty walls, it will make for the merit of the work that they form the letters correctly.”

In conclusion, Albert Dürer almost seem to embody the T-shaped person we are striving to learn in this course. He was a German painter, graphic artist, author, publisher, and mathematician but what really stood out was how he weaved and incorporated various skills together to seek “perfection”, in this context, his typography.

Micro-Project 3 – Together Split

I would like to title our piece (done up by Alicia, Brian, Shaojie and myself) “family house”. It depicts how despite objects are being passed around the family members in different rooms, it still stay within the same one house- almost presenting a paradox just like the project title “Together Split”. With this concept, we translated it to our video, the multiple screen being the rooms in the house, the entire video representing the house itself, the dish/bowl/pot/water being the objects and lastly us as the family members.
It was a scene in the house of the process of a dish being made, cooked, eaten and washed.

This was shot at multiple locations. The various locations were outside ADM, Alicia’s dormitory, the pantry and the toilet. This stretch was due to logistic issues.

With these 4 lines,
(Q1) “wow this vegetables looks so fresh”
(Q2) “ah boy cook finish already come and eat”
(Q3) “mm delicious”
(Q4) “ok time to do the dishes”
we tried to establish the garden, the kitchen, the dining room and the kitchen again respectively.

In order to execute this, we took visual cues directly from the screen. Perhaps the only few instructions given beforehand was everything was to be in the middle so the grass was dropped in the middle, the plate to be shot in the middle as well.

But of course, not everything turn out according to the plan (40min plan to be exact), we actually realised that the final cycle was actually slightly laggy and at the same we also still found it so short– fickle minded us!

Personal reflection:
Yes it might not necessarily but the best production level or entertaining however at least to me the dishes/eating family home scene is relatively clear. Found the exercise actually pretty fun- maybe it’s because we took this so seriously and even went to the extend of taking the pot that made me want to join in the spontaneous-ness of my group or the tedious process of swopping phones just to get the screen order right that gave me a sense of satisfaction when we finish it ON TIME.

Out of all the Micro-Projects,

  1. Which project did you feel you had the most creative control? Why?
    It has to be “Creating the third-space”. It could possibly be because it was a solo curation project. This project was done on my Instagram and the fact that I knew my account followers, following and tendencies best, I could curate content I knew would get my participants to act a certain way and maximise participation– which was humour. (almost like SEO but social media context)
  2. Which project had the most unpredictable outcome? Why?
    “Together Split” had the most unpredictable outcome. There was too many deciding factors as compared to the other 2 projects that could possibly go wrong. Wifi connectivity, coordination, logistics to name a few. The biggest factor would have to be that fact that it is live. This very factor means that we are unable to edit, and also that it is one-time off, the moment anything or anyone even screws up we have to redo. It is made even more challenging because we are all in extremely difficult locations speaking over 1 platform. This aspect made it the most different from the other 2 projects.
  3. Which project best illustrates the concepts of DIWO & Open-source? Why?
    I would like to say “Creating the third-space” honestly. Even though it was curated by 1 person from my perspective, its participation reach expands to those following that account(“others” within DIWO) and the hashtag(“openness of the project”). In fact, i feel like we have to look at it from a broader perspective, the hashtag #1010adm was created by 2, Serena and Lei, and their students executed it in their various style, creating a community together with their followers and those who participated. 
    I bring up this screenshot as evidence:

    The characteristics are so evident that it has sparked conversations!Another characteristic is the fact that this project allows for maintenance and up-keeping to keep it alive. This further elaborated in the post I made for this particular project.

    Personally, I have enjoyed these projects alot! It has opened my eyes to how interaction can be enhance on social media. A lot of times, (with reference to my project “Time is our zero-sum game.”), social media is branded and experienced in a very self sufficient, self centered manner which is such a paradox considering its reach! 🙁 So, I am glad to be able to enjoy social media in the interactive manner it was meant to be and to see its beauty again!