February 2017 – Page 4

3D | Soundscapes I

2 weeks ago, we were introduced to a new project – Soundscapes, sounds interesting right? It’s not the Landscape that I’m used to hearing, now it’s Soundscapes. This project reminded me of last semester’s project – Obscure Cities, as we dealt with sounds too and tried to portray our created audio in the sculpture itself. Throwback to then, I had lots of fun because it was something new that I’ve never tried before. As I’m a Visual Communication student, we’re always used to portraying meaning through visuals, now it’s to portray sound through visuals, and in 3-Dimensional too! Say byebye to flatlays and vectors.

Anyhow, there was an in class activity and we were told to scout around our school to find a pleasant and a unpleasant sound. So of course… while getting our kopi gao siew dai, we recorded quite a number of audio!

Here are my Soundscapes. Enjoy!

Pleasant Sound: Fountain Waves

I’ve always liked how the waves and the sea sound like as it makes me feel refreshed and energised. The clear sounds of the water splashing against one another reminds me of the vast sea (closest we have is Sentosa…), it makes me feel free. Hence, the closest I can find is the fountain which is in our school, ADM. It’s not exactly relaxing and soft as I wanted it to be due to the repetitive flow of it, but it’s close enough! I tried to portray the overflowing waves and ripples caused by the fountain, therefore the flowing motion of the paper, and I scored certain areas to show the “splash” of the water. I felt that I didn’t manage to portray it as accurately as it should be, I should have cut the curves even longer! And maybe curl more of them?

Unpleasant sound: Screeching of the Clamp

The 3D room is like my 2nd home, as I spend quite a long time there doing my projects. But what irks me the most is when someone or me accidentally release the clamp while tightening it and it makes a really LOUD screeching slam which gives me a headache! I tried to portray the screeching noise by scratching and tearing the paper itself. The lines are inconsistent, with different lengths for the ranges of the screech. I curled it into a cone (which reminds me of kachang puteh hahaha) to “amplify” the noise. As when the clamp slams down, it gives a loud and long *KNNNNNG* sound which drags and has a slight echo in the room, a new word I learn to describe this – Doppler Effect!

In addition, Cheryl embraced more of the festive season by sharing some chinese new year goodies with us! How awesome is that!? She brought kueh balu (my fav), pineapple tarts and fishball crackers. We had a G3 tze char session as Cheryl wanted us to experiment and hear how different items produce or affect the sounds.

After researching the words provided in the brief, I finally know the right term to describe some sounds that I’m hearing! It’s really interesting as I felt I’ve gain some new knowledge HAHA and I’m able to sound really “smart” when I used this certain words (im joking). But anyhow, here are some words and their meanings that caught my eye and their meanings.

Pizzicato
A playing technique that involves plucking of a string instrument

Whispering Gallery
Usually a circular, hemispherical, elliptical or ellipsoidal enclosure, often beneath a dome or a vault, in which whispers can be heard clearly in other parts of the gallery.

$wave-diffraction-2$

Diffraction
Process by which a beam of light or other system of waves is spread out as a result of passing through a narrow aperture or across an edge, typically accompanied by interference between the wave forms produced. This reminds me of the word Refraction.

Anechoic Chamber
A room designed to completely absorb reflections of either sound or electromagnetic waves.

Pianissimo
Very soft or softly.

Kokopelli
Fertility deity, uses a humpback flute player

Thats all for now! Have a good day! 🙂

2D | Que Sera Ideation I

Disclaimer: My sketches are all over the place so pardon me!!

Here’s the process after two weeks of consultation. And being an indecisive person, lets write down the occupation that I’m currently considering!

To make things easier for everyone, I shall cancel out the ones that I’ll least be doing (because idea rejected or it’s not gonna workkkk hahaha)

Baker / Pastry Chef
Chocolatier – Willy Wonka inspo!
Ninja / Samurai
~~Ice Cream Shop Owner~~
~~Fashion Designer (with my own label)~~
Surgeon, possibly brain or heart?
Doctor
Pirate! Aye aye captain.
Furniture Designer
~~Architect~~

Ideas Sketch #2: Fashion Designer, Baker / Pastry Chef, Cupcake Store Owner, Chocolatier

All this idea was rejected as Shirley mentioned I’m not doing as what the brief mentioned, as I’m only applying my name onto the object itself. *note taken*

Ideas Sketch #2: Astronut, Random Cupcakes(?), Santa Claus, King

Ideas Sketch #3: Surgeon, Ninja, Architect

Ideas Sketch #4: Pirate, Surgeon, Architect

Ideas Sketch #5: Furniture Designer, Chocolatier, Doctor/Nurse, Ninja

Ideas Sketch #6: Matchmaker (really random)

Ideas Sketch #7: Samurai

That’s all for now!!

2D | Que Sera Research

I’m still in the festive mood but lets welcome the new semester with a Typography Project! When I first got the brief, which was to express your dream occupation with your name, I was really excited as I had many ideas in my head that I wanted to try. Alas, all the ideas that I wanted to try was rejected as it wasn’t exactly what the brief wants? As most of my ideas were applying my name onto the occupation, when it’s supposed to be applying the occupation onto the name! It’s a pity but it’s ok! Isn’t it time to brush up my typography skills which has been kinda rusty for the past 2 years?!

So, if you know me well enough… my number one(!!) dream occupation is to be a baker or a pastry chef. And I’m still aspiring to be one, hoping that I’ll be able to open my own cafe in the future! But for now, I will just design for my living hahaha. Fun fact: my chinese name 洁玲 means agile (said by my parents), which I hope to be but I am clumsy as HELL. So my second dream job is to be a NINJA. Yea dressing in black and I’ll flying here and there and be like, now you see me… now you don’t.

So far, those are the occupations that I had in mind, but for now, let me show you some of my inspo!

Thats all for now, stay tune!!

4D | Project 1 Ideation

Hi guys,

My indecisiveness is killing me, but luckily, I managed to scope down to… 2 ideas. So in this tiny space of mine, I will list down the ideas I had.

Idea #1: Temples of Singapore

If you know me, you should know that my mandarin is shit. Hence my Dad says I’m a fake Chinese ha ha ha. My mandarin didn’t suck that much back then as I was quite fluent in it till I’m Primary 4, when my Grandma had pass on. As I come from an English speaking family, I didn’t get a chance to practice my mandarin, so my mandarin deteriorated as years pass. Fun fact: I’m a Taoist but I don’t really know whats going on in my culture/religion because my family isn’t that religious or traditional. I mean yes, we do pray from time to time, go to temple visits but when I asked my Dad what is the reason or what does this signify… Apparently, he doesn’t know too as he simply follows the “tradition”.

So. This inspired me to do a topic on Chinese Temples. During my temple visits, there’s this question that kept bugging me, how did they manage to built this intricate architecture and also managed to bring the hugeeee Buddha statue into the temple??? And I mean huge, like HUGE. If you’ve been to temples you should know what I’m talking about. Ok, besides that, I really LOVE the carvings and statues in the temples. It never fails to amaze me how detailed they can be. Therefore, that was how I got upon to taking pictures of the Chinese temples in Singapore.

BUT. It didn’t quite sit well / feel right to me to be snapping away in the temples as it’s a sacred and holy place… As it’s quite disrespectful in a sense? Therefore. Idea 1: ~~Chinese Temple~~ Bye.

Idea #2: 1 Room Rental Flats aka 33m²

I even thought of a cool name for this project and it’s called 33m². As 1 Room Rental flats’ size is 33 x 33m².

I’ve always been quite “passionate” (is this the right word to use?) about senior citizens and I’m not being pretentious or what but something in me wants to do something for them. And actually, I’ve done a project on 1 Room Flats for my FYP in my Poly days. So basically, I’ve studied and research this 1 Room Flat located in Marsiling and realised that it consists of mostly senior citizens. The thing that I couldn’t understand was why was the environment there so… dull? I’m talking about the common spaces here. The elderly who lives there are either alone, outlive their family members, or was abandoned. Some are even sick or have difficulty moving around. Some don’t even leave their homes! This may result in depression or isolation. And do you know there are cases where senior citizens who are living in 1 Room Flats actually dies from loneliness??? So, what should we do, or what can I do? All this led me to my FYP… and my project was try to better the living environment for the residents there by re-desigining the common area to enhance and encourage socialisation to take place.

Ok I anyway my FYP was really very much 3D based but lets take a chill pill on that. So besides focusing on the senior citizens, what else can I look at or how do I look upon 1 Room Flat in a different light? Robert mentioned that I could focus on the living spaces as he mentioned that it can be interesting. I thought about that and another fact here. Do you know that it’s possible for 2 strangers to be living together in the 1 Room Rental Flat? I thought I could touch on this topic as it would be interesting to see how 2 strangers live in a space and that reminded me on how this Japanese Couple took 118 pictures of different HDB flats.

But the thing is… I didn’t have the “drive” to take photos of 1 room flats anymore as I felt that I’ve sort of done this and wasn’t as motivated to do so anymore. It’s a pity but I hope that I will find that drive again! Idea 2: ~~1 Room Flat~~ Bye.

Idea #3: 22 Years & Older

While I was buying food from my nearest coffee shop, I will always pass by this particular fruit stall and that has been there since FOREVER. Well maybe not forever, it seems to be there since… I can’t really remember. So I thought, why not do a series of shops that has been here like for generations and generations? I thought a good margin would be 20 years and older, and I was like, why not make it 22 years and older? That is how old I am this year, and it would be really cool that a shop has been here waaaaay before I was born. But guess what? I took some test shots of some shops and when I asked how long have they been here… I got a shock.

So since I took some pictures, I guess this is one of my “finalised” ideas? And I kinda like it. But the thing is… I only got this idea inspo over the festive period and can only managed to start shooting on third day of CNY… So most of the shops weren’t open! The photos will be shown in the next post, or tomorrow during the critique :p So stay tune.

Idea 4: White Hair is Good Hair

Carmen Dell’Orefice, 85 years young in Guo Pei Couture’s show

This idea was basically derived from the 1 Room Flat senior citizens. As I wanted to do “something for them”, the first random thing that jumped into my mind was – “Why not dye their hair for them?” I felt that maybe they would feel different after an image change and hair is something that plays a very big part in our appearance. I’m sure this might give them a esteem boost or make them feel younger and happier!

But then I thought about it, why am I trying to cover their white hair? White hair is beautiful too! Though its a sign of age, but it comes with wisdom, experience and evidence on how long you’ve been on Earth, and the things you’ve seen that the young has not. And it’s funny how the trend of the younger generation hair now are all ash grey, platinum grey and so on! They deem white hair as old, yet they are dyeing their hair grey to be “trendy”, how contradicting?

So, why can’t white hair be good hair?