Author: Candy Lee

I'm always tired, but never of you

2D II Proj 1 – Que Sera: FINAL

FINAL FOUR

final-yoga-instructor

final-spaceman

final-lawyer

final-white-hacker

 

OTHERS

wine-taster screen-shot-2017-02-06-at-4-56-48-am

 

Semiotics

Understanding semiotics (signs, symbols, icons etc) have helped me get a better idea and association with the types of jobs. I can choose more appropriate graphics and symbols to link and represent the occupation I have in mind. For example, in the spaceman, I made use of the satellites and moon and spacesuit to draw association with the occupation, and in the white hacker, I had the idea of matrix.

 

Personal Take away

First lesson, I was being suggested to do always do sketches. I have never tried to do it for my idea making as I’m horrible at drawing. But I decided to try it, and indeed that would give me a better picture of my ideas, and able to allow me to think further and expand my ideas on-the-spot as I’m sketching it.

Also, this project has been a great learning experience as it allows me to experiment new things. I feel a sense of achievement as I produce works that are better each time. 

 

Challenges

I believe for most of us, the greatest challenge would be time and finding unique ways of assembling/rearranging the most typical items eg. symbols or icons. 

Personally, 2D has always been a very tough mod for me as I don’t even have knowledge about Art and Design. Naturally, I don’t know typography, semiotics… even all the designing softwares are so so new  to me and thus my greatest difficulty is to use these tools at my basic level to create the best works of my ability.
(I was in Science stream all the way, and had minimal contact with art and design. But I decided to pursue my passion in the media arts at NTU.)

I will continue to work hard and hopefully sharpen my design and software skills for KILLER WORKS in future! wink

 

 

2D II Proj 1 – Que Sera: Process

Creative Process

First lesson, was being suggested to just always do sketches. or Thumbnails. I never had the habit but in the process of brainstorming I decided to just sketch out the graphics which appear in my mind.

 

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Ideation

Lawyer

Hairwig | Balance | Hammer | Books | Court | Lady Justice

I thought of Lawyer, because I used to write it as my ambition when I was younger. I didn’t score too badly for my PSLE and then my parents had their hopes high that maybe I could really be a lawyer. Yet, I decided to study film in uni. I guess I will always mind that I may have disappointed them in not pursuing law study… 

lawyer

C: Lawyer’s hairwig
A: Sword on Lady Justice, signifying the power and strength of justice
N: Blindfold, symbolising objectivity
D: Balance, the fairness of justice
Y: Judge’s hammer

The background is full of books. This suggests that to be a lawyer, you probably would have to read a lot about law and cases laughing

 

Singer/musician

Musical notes | Piano | Music score sheet | Multi-instrumentalist
I did my online research and interestingly discovered music fonts! They were aesthetic and I wanted to try it. But it was just too simple a concept… frown

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In an effort to improve my idea of a musician. I thought of a multi-instrumentalist!! This gives me more to explore and play with if I abandoned the idea of using just one musical instrument. 

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I am horrible at drawing/sketching, so I referenced and drew out the best I could of differing instruments which can form my name (Candy). I made use of piano keys and music score to connect them together and add ‘colours’ to the piece. 
Honestly, I am pleased with myself for the effort shown above 🙂

 

Doctor

Stethoscope | ECG | Medicine | White uniform | Organs | Blood Vessels

Director

Director’s chair | Slate | Camera Equipment | Studio Lighting | Loudspeaker

TaiTai

Poodle | Make-up | Bags | Nail Polish | Heels | Mahjong | Car Keys

Astronaut

Galaxy | Spacesuit | Rocket | Mars Rover | Moon | Asteroids | Satellite

I have always been curious and interested in the space. The galaxy…  I feel it’s a very beautiful and amazing space and if not for my fear of heights and my motion-sickness, I probably would have considered studying astronomy and probably one day visit outerspace. tongue-out

The production of this piece took the most time and it is very interesting as I decided to try to use mark-making. 

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^ This was my alternative concept towards translating astronauts: Having the tracks of the mars rover on the moon spell out my name. I liked this idea a lot so I experimented.

 

 

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1. Buy a toy car with rover-like wheels

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2. Dip the wheels in water

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3. Play and make marks on white paper

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4. Collect the marks and scan the paper for digital enhancement

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5. Scanning failed horribly so just use the original photograph

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6. Crop and make it B&W, and then increasing brightness and contrast, make it grainy…

I LOVE THE EFFECT. I think the image is convincing enough as rover tracks on a moon surface laughinglaughinglaughingHowever, it’s a pity that it would be a little too plain and flat to merely use the tracks to spell out my name. Nevertheless, it was a great process and learning experiment! 

 

spaceman

C: Arm part of the space suit
A: Space helmet
N: Connecting cables
D: The moon being cast shadow
Y: Satellite

I was going for a cute and animated style while using the associated items to form letters!

 

Yoga Instructor

Yoga Poses | Zen | Clean 

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I looked up human typography and I came upon these stunning images in which humans pose with their naked bodies to form alphabets and come up with fonts. And I want to share this with all of you 🙂

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There are so many ways of posing yourself (arranging/differing your own postures) to create unique fonts of your own. I wished I had started this idea sooner so I could create poses myself and photograph and use them. frown

yoga-instructor

Eventually, I used silhouettes and added potted plants and the ZEN to contribute to the calming mood of the exercise.

 

Forensic Scientist → White Hacker

Matrix | Fingerprint | Lab 

This work is pretty interesting too. In another attempt to include mark-making, I wanted to try to use my fingerprints and then highlight the lines which appear to be my name.

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Covered my thumb well with some paint

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And…

Apparently, it didn’t do well and I looked for other possible ways to go about on this project. After my futile research on a forensic scientist, nothing caught my eyes except for the matrix. I then finalised the idea of a white hacker!

I watched the tutorial and learned to make a matrix background of my own!! cool

white-hacker

How did the idea of white hacker come about?
As I search for images, most of the matrix images were mostly either in green or blue. Then it struck me to change the ‘fixed colours’ to white. WHITE in this case, symbolises the profession of a white hacker, while the matrix coding naturally gives association with programming.

 

Wine taster

Wine bottles | Cork | Corkscrew | Wine Glass | Lips | Tongue | Eyes

I let my imagination loose… And I pictured a sea of red wine (depicted by waves in layers) with the tools we drink wine with such as the corks, corkscrew, wine bottles and wine glasses, floating in the sea. It was a great image in my head and I even wanted to submit this as one of my finals but…

wine-taster

 But the difficulty I didn’t manage to overcome in this piece was to finding/ tuning the tools to form the shape of the alphabets of my name. The corkscrew was meant to be an ‘A’ and the wine glass ‘Y’. But I sought opinion from my friends and they couldn’t tell the alphabets effectively, hence resulting in me scraping the idea. cry

 

Sleeper

Bed | Counting sheeps | Zzz | Snoring | Pillows & Blankets | Dark Eye Circles

Dealer

Poker cards | Casino | Chips | Dealer gloves

2D II Proj 1 – Que Sera: Research

After discovering Project 1 will be mainly on typography, I was a little excited, but also panicking slightly!

I didn’t have much knowledge on TYPOGRAPHY so I googled and went on pinterest to know more about it, and for inspiration! 

 

picture2  picture1

 

Typography basically a style of arranging text. It can come in so many different forms such as arranging different icons/visuals to form text and even creating a whole new style of font. laughing

 

Visual References

I quickly brainstormed for my job ideas and looked up for visuals that could be associated with.

 

Lawyer

Hairwig | Balance | Hammer | Books | Court

Singer/musician

Musical notes | Piano | Music score sheet | Multi-instrumentalist

Doctor

Stethoscope | ECG | Medicine | White uniform | Organs | Blood Vessels

Director

Director’s chair | Slate | Camera Equipment | Studio Lighting | Loudspeaker

TaiTai

Poodle | Make-up | Bags | Nail Polish | Heels | Mahjong | Car Keys

Astronaut

Galaxy | Spacesuit | Rocket | Mars Rover | Moon | Asteroids | Satellite

Yoga Instructor

Yoga Poses | Zen | Clean 

Forensic Scientist

Matrix | Fingerprint | Lab 

Wine taster

Wine bottles | Cork | Corkscrew | Wine Glass | Lips | Tongue | Eyes

Sleeper

Bed | Counting sheeps | Zzz | Snoring | Pillows & Blankets | Dark Eye Circles

Dealer

Poker cards | Casino | Chips | Dealer gloves

 

Reference Artists/ Inspirations

For further exploration, I looked up different font styles and below are few which inspired me!

 

Typography on music notes
http://luc.devroye.org/music.html

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Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia-based art director who made the music note-inspired typeface

I was then inspired to try and spell my name with this font!

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Human Typography
https://djstormsblog.com/2013/06/21/pinch-martin-tremblay-human-typography/

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I am really passionate in film and photography, and when I first saw this I was so amazed. I love it! This is really creative, to use just our natural bodies to form alphabets. A great idea, and this has inspired me to include bodily gestures (in yoga).

 

Type Photography
https://www.visualnews.com/2013/03/08/architecture-b-c-a-photographic-alphabet/

picture5

Peter Defty produced amazing typography through the framing and composition of architecture in his photographs

 (Yes this was introduced to the class in my group’s presentation)

This piece is inspiring to me as it made me realise that alternatively to creating new fonts, we can make fonts out of already present things, and in Peter’s case, architechture. He makes use of negative space to create alphabets, opening many of our eyes to appreciate things in another way now 🙂 

3D II WK 3 – Research: SOUND

UNDERSTANDING SOUND

produced by continuous and regular vibrations, as opposed to noise.

vibrations that travel through the air or another medium and can be heard when they reach a person’s or animal’s ear.

 

How do Humans Hear & Feel

How Hearing Works?

To hear sound, the ear has to do three basic things:

  • Direct the sound waves into the hearing part of the ear
  • Sense the fluctuations in air pressure
  • Translate these fluctuations into an electrical signal that the brain can understand

hearing-2

 

The pinna, the outer part of the ear, serves to “catch” the sound waves. Human outer ear is pointed forward and it has a number of curves. The structure of the ear helps us determine the direction of the sound.

 

hearing-1

The eardrum is the entire sensory element in the human ear.

Once the sound waves travel into the ear canal, they vibrate the tympanic membrane, commonly called the eardrum.

The eardrum is rigid, and very sensitive. Even the slightest air-pressure fluctuations will move it back and forth. It is attached to the tensor tympani muscle, which constantly pulls it inward. This keeps the entire membrane taut so it will vibrate no matter which part of it is hit by a sound wave.

The compressions and rarefactions of sound waves push the drum back and forth. Higher-pitch sound waves move the drum more rapidly, and louder sound moves the drum a greater distance.

 

 

Interesting finds

Human pinnae are not so adept at focusing on sound.
They lay fairly flat against the head and don’t have the necessary muscles for significant movement.
But you can easily supplement your natural pinnae by cupping your hands behind your ears.
By doing this, you create a larger surface area that can capture sound waves better.

 

Information adapted from:
http://health.howstuffworks.com/mental-health/human-nature/perception/hearing1.htm

 

Did you know we can feel sound?

A new study shows that the skin could help us hear by ‘feeling’ sounds.The act of hearing is a group effort for the human body’s organs, involving the ears, the eyes and also, the skin.

In 1976, scientists discovered the importance of the eyes to our sense of hearing by demonstrating that the eyes could fool the ears in a peculiar phenomenon named the McGurk effect. When participants watched a video in which a person was saying “ga” but the audio was playing “ba,” people thought they heard a completely different sound—”da.” Now, by mixing audio with the tactile sense of airflow, researchers have found that our perception of certain sounds relies, in part, on being able to feel these sounds.

 

Interesting finds

The feel of sounds could be exploited in devices for groups such as the hearing impaired.
This additional tactile stimulus could help the person wearing the device perceive sounds. A similar concept could aid pilots in their noisy work environments.

 

Information adapted from:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/skin-hearing-airflow-puff-sound-perception/

 

 

 

FROG vs HUMAN

With respect to sense of hearing

A frog’s ear drum, just like a human’s ear drum, is a membrane that is stretched across a ring of cartilage like a snare drum that vibrates.

The frog’s tympanum (an external hearing structure) is found behind its eyes. Not used to hear, but to transmit sound waves to the inner ear. This structure helps protect the frog underwater.

 

 

north-american-bullfrog1

Male N. American bullfrog, with large tympanum or eardrum. (Photo: Wiki Commons).

 

Information adapted from:
http://infinitespider.com/frogs-make-sound-hear/

 

P.S. For the previous submission, short video and graphs have been put up pls go check it out cool

 

3D II 001 Submission – ONCE UPON A SCENT

001 Once Upon A Scent 

Final Submission for 3D II Proj 1:

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Google PDF

 

The Making:

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  1. Initially, I have cut and gently curved coils of plastic into a heart shape. I liked it and I wanted to preserve its shape because it had a sense of completeness and wholeness on it’s own and it seemed like it didn’t need much extension to the existing structure.

 

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2. From the side, interesting voids could be observed. SO would be the 2 stands of spikes poking and interacting with the voids giving dyamanics.

 

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3. From an alternative view, the SO sticking out seemed rather plain and sparse and didn’t give much contrast. Hence, taking advice from Ms Cheryl, I have added more of that to create a more obvious contrast! 🙂

 

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4. To further improve my idea, I have thought of ideas for its application. To maintain coherence with the theme, I thought of using it as a air refreshener to release aroma into living spaces 🙂 The design is rather small and it would be appropriate to put at most places.

 

Attached to my sculpture is a handmade base, which can be turned round to view it at all angles.

(I video-ed this down but I can’t upload it on OSS ._.)

 

 

 

3D II WK 2 – Research: SCENTS & MEMORY

Smells <—> Memory

Smells can often trigger and be associated with one’s personal memories. Why? Science. The anatomy of our body and organ structure allows smells to get routed through the olfactory bulb (the smell analysing region in the brain), then triggering familiar memories.

 

smell_1_small

 

Before reaching your thalamus, smells first wind their way through other regions of your brain, including areas controlling memory and emotion. So with scents, you have all this extra processing even before you have conscious awareness of the scent.

Your body also contains far more receptors for smells (at least 1,000) than it does for other senses, like sight (four) and touch (at least four).3 What this means is you can discern between many different types of smells, even those you may not have the words to describe.

Individual perception to scents is different due to visual or audio memories one has personally experienced. Because of this, one scent may trigger pleasant memory in one and unpleasant memory in the other.

 

Interesting finds

  • Aromatherapy

Specific scents can help in therapy using the connection between smell and memory. For eg, green apple scent can help in treating migranes, and lavendar for pain relief.

  • Strengthening sense of smell

The more we exercise, the less likely we are to develop problems with smelling.

 

The Science of How Smell Triggers Memory: http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2015/08/06/smells-trigger-memories.aspx

3D II WK 1 – SCENTS

CHOCOLATE TASTING

Lesson 1 surprise.. We get chocolate treats!

A

  • smells like a creamy dark chocolate
  • tastes bitter
  • stings throat after swallowing, throat feels dry
  • spicy after-taste

B

  • smells like dark chocolate, smells less bitter than chocolate A
  • so wrong… it is so bitter
  • just a little cooling sensation towards the end
  • very very slight sweet after-taste

C

  • smells a mix of flavours, the least bitter of all
  • rough and uneven texture on one side, and the other side a smooth but thick layer
  • crispy (sound element)
  • tastes slight bitterness of the chocolate first, then sweet
  • which was soon overcome by the saltiness of potato chip
  • interesting contrast of TEXTURE, and TASTE
  • temperature different of cooler chocolate and warmer potato chip

 

 

SCENTS

After the sharing of all our items, the 2 below are my final choices:

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Evoking pleasant memory: Medicated Oil
It is the familiar smell of love to me! When I was younger, my mother would use this medicated oil as remedy for many of my illnesses and discomfort. She would apply it on my stomach, and then rub her hands to create warmth and then apply pressure of my stomach. This made me feel much better, and I will always remember these instances from the smell of this medicated oil.

 

A slight unpleasant memory: Hairspray

When I was very young, school starts later while my parents would get up earlier for work. But I would very often be woken up by a distinct and ‘sharp’ smell… That is the smell and also sounds from my mother applying a lot of the hairspray. I didn’t like it as a child because the smell was far from fragrance and that disturbs me from my sleep ): Yet, as I recall this memory now, more about it that I feel would be nostalgia.

 

 

CONSTRUCTING BASED ON SCENTS & MEMORY

PROJ 3 EGO – PROGRESS

I had very little knowledge on the different art styles and the colour schemes and harmony that were introduced for this project. All were very new to me, so I was pretty lost and had no idea for this project ):

Therefore, I first looked up on the net for the different art styles from digital artists i could possibly adopt while researching on the colours.

 

Research & references

  • Low poly art

polybreno_1500

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low-poly-timothy-reynolds-1b

I loved it!

 

  • Double colour exposure

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  • Pop art

rauschenberg

 

  • Grid effect

grid-effect

 

I learnt how to apply double colour exposure and the grid methods from tutorials to help develop my raw photos into more meaningful ones:

heartzzz

different colour exposures to show a thrombing/electro effect

tatt-me

grid effect to give a meaning of an incomplete me

 

In The Making

  • Ideas

My final idea was to have 2 equations showing the imaginary scenarios which happen in my head, while the other 2 depicting real-life situations.

The imaginary scenes would be portrayed using digital drawing and applying really fun colours, whereas the real responses would be photo-based.

 

  • Colours

monochromatic-color-04 images images gray-diningI researched and I loved how monochromatic colours schemes work so well and I decided I would use the monochromatic colour harmony throughout an equation or even within a frame.

 

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