Truisms over the years

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Jenny Holzer’s ‘Please Change Beliefs’ (1995) is an interactive work that is available to the public via the internet. Jenny Holzer has a list of Truisms that she came up with and as the title suggests, the viewer is invited to modify a common truism that they choose.

The viewer first arrives on the homepage that include one of the many truisms Jenny Holzer came up with, and she invites the viewer to click on ‘Please Change Beliefs’ which leads the viewer to the page with the list of Truisms that we can choose from. When we modify the truism, the new ‘truism’ ends up on a separate master list with everyone else’s truisms that they have come up with.

This dramatically alters the act of writing and narrative, from the singular activity of a very personal form of individual expression, to a collective activity that is highly collaborative: all publishable instantaneously to a global audience. -Randall Packer, Open Source Studio (2015)

I think this line from the article is really accurate. The truisms started off with Jenny Holzer’s (or the general public’s) consensus about an issue, which is the individual expression, and is morphed into an activity that many people are able to collaborate and contribute their own opinions and truisms. I love that the work will (theoretically) never end. The work started off in 1995; The people who lived in 1995 would have had different opinions as compared to the people who will live in 2045. It would be interesting to see how the master list of truisms grow and morph into a thing where we’ll be able to see the changes in the way people think over 50 years.

 

For example, maybe 50 years on, no one will even remember what One Direction is, or what a Barbie is and why it is so controversial. Hopefully all of us will live to see the day arrive, and log on to the website to see it for ourselves.

Telematic Embrace: Adobe Connect Experience

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So this past week we tried using adobe connect in class! Adobe connect allowed us to be in the first space and third space at the same time, since we were doing the adobe connect activity in class, and we could see each other physically and virtually.

We completed little tasks that Randall Packer set for us: align your fingers with the person sitting next to you, form a cross across the screen, align your pens so that a line forms across the screen.

It was vital for everyone to in a way, negotiate with each other on the screen to allow this to work. We needed to gauge the distance away from the webcam, the angle in which we were pointing our objects to, the way we placed our objects. This was unspoken negotiation that we did mostly virtually: we didn’t actually communicate in the first space for this and our eyes were glued onto the screen so that we could see the other people. This was especially evident when one person’s laptop ran out of battery in the midst of the project, as she remained frozen on screen while the rest of us were still doing the activity. She looked (unfortunately) awkward in the midst of all of us engrossed in the class work because in a way she wasn’t able to negotiate since her laptop died. Obviously this isn’t done on purpose but it showed the importance of the negotiation that takes place in the third space.

pandora’s box: revisited

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!!!THIS IS A WORK IN PROGRESS CHERYL IM NOT DONE WITH MY CHOCOLATE MILK ICE TRAY I WILL CONTINUE UPDATING!!! (and sorry i forgot to tag i uploaded v long already:'( )

So when the brief came in, I immediately knew: modular structure=tessalation=difficult. I got the words: SPLIT, EMBED, REFLECT.

to me, the word ‘split’ was to divide my structure up into clear parts. I decided to go with a triangular cut out for one of the modules. 

because of my decision to tesselate my module, I needed to push it a step further with this! so my monster grew a little fin. the split is thus emphasised further with this.

I also wanted it to tesselate the other way so i made my little monster grow an eyebrow!

The reflection bit i was thinking of putting a few of them together to make it ‘reflect’. The embedding part is the eyebrow! so when they join together the eyebrow is embedded into the other pieces’ part.

Here are my initial designs after the first lesson:

The first design (above) I abandoned after the first lesson because it felt too simple and didnt quite adhere to the three words given! So I continued developing my little monster.

I later changed up the eyebrow abit so that it would work with the latex/silicon (original idea was to have a hole to embed the eyebrow in to tesselate) so I draw up the orthogonal drawings to scale (3.5cm is REALLY tiny)

I then made the blue foam model that i later destroyed (and forgot to take a photo of), and use the latex on it! 24 gruelling hours later, i returned back to school to put in the FIRST (!!!!!) plaster of paris. I overflowed mine unfortunately, but as a result i can remember which is my first trial.

A problem I faced is that my eyebrow didnt fill out with the plaster. I will later massage my eyebrow so that the plaster will flow in there and fill it out. I have TWO successful eyebrow filled module as a result (at the time of writing this). Another problem was that the module expanded alot because of the exothermic reaction but i just had to shave the excess off to make it right!

This one is the most successful one thus far (with all the shaving off with a penknife and making the eye hole with a screwdriver) which is the one i plan to put for the final ice tray!

UPDATE: ICE TRAY IS OUT!

first image: first initial pour of the silicone- abit shallow but would have worked

second image: poured a little more, so only two little eyebrows stick up!

third image: dried and pulled off the base! ready to remove the plaster pieces

fourth image: last (and most difficult piece) remove because of the eye hole.

Later on I trimmed off more bits of the silicon so that end product would be smooth (the fin area)

 

END PRODUCT:

i ended up with two only because the other two got stuck and i wanted to quickly photograph them before they melted! this was the first trial and there were still residual plaster in the tray when i poured in the water, and i think i didnt manage to trim off all the silicon properly and some of it could caught in the ice when i was yanking it out. I’ll be trying another one with chocolate milk in hall to see whether it would show better. (but the freezer is too full with cny stuff so my mom has forbidden me from freezing my milk in case it spills.)

Update!