4D Project III- Artists Research

For this project, we had to propose an idea of an installation work that considers time, space and body. Here are a lists of controversial video, sound or performance art installation that I thought were quite interesting to look at and hopefully adopt certain ideas or styles from these artists.

Santiago Sierra 

His works mostly focuses on social issues of our economy today and highlight some of the often ignored problems inherent to a globalised capitalist economy. His works usually encompasses photography, video, text, sound, installation and sculpture. This  reveals the scope of Sierra’s practice and how he articulates his ideas through different media.

Santiago Sierra Installation view, Lisson Gallery, London

Sierra’s work normally takes the form of ephemeral actions or temporary interventions. While adopting a minimal language, he creates ‘incidents’ that highlight the existence of situations of conflict. Many of Sierra’s more recent projects have been the outcome of a particular social context, exposing the reality of that environment.

For the past two decades, Santiago Sierra has carried out provocative actions around the world. Influenced by the formal language of the minimal and conceptual art movements of the 1960s and 70s, Santiago Sierra’s work addresses the hierarchies of power and class that operate in our modern society and everyday existence. Sierra became well known for his actions in which underprivileged or marginalised individuals were hired to perform menial or pointless tasks in exchange for money.

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Person paid to have a 30 cm line tattooed on them,  Regina Street # 51, Mexico City, May 1998 (1998)
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8 people paid to remain inside cardboard boxes, G&T Building. Guatemala City, August 1999 (1999)

Pieces like these underline the situations of labourers’ exploitation, isolation, and repression within capitalist structures. By transforming individuals into consumer goods, Sierra also highlights current socio-political issues while challenging the intrinsic mechanisms of reality.

As a result, the essence of his work can often be found exemplified in the tension that is generated and sustained between the ephemeral performance, its documentation, and the spectator. The latter is hence exposed to the edges of morality and permissibility, but also to the formal and poetic articulation of the voices of those who are ordinarily invisible or unheard.

Wim Delvoye

Wim Delvoye is not merely an artist – he’s a provocateur. An enfant terrible of the contemporary art world, Delvoye’s work is often designed to shock, appall, and provoke. The Belgian artist regularly pushes the boundaries of his craft, forcing audiences to question his ethics – not to mention how we should be defining ‘art.’ He’s since become well-known in the art community for his provocative works employing a range of rather unconventional materials, to include fecal matter.

In 1997, Delvoye began tattooing live pigs in Europe – a practice which was, unsurprisingly, met with widespread criticism from animal rights activists.

In 2004 he bought a farm in a small village outside of Beijing, where animal rights laws are practically non-existent. He systematically elaborated a new concept that he called his ‘Art Farm.’ Here, specialists look after his pigs, while the artist sedates them, shaves their skin, and tattoos them. Veterinarians treat their skin after the process to ensure that their wounds are clean and their skin is properly moisturized.

Wim Delvoye, Art Farm Beijng 2003-2010, Live tattooed pigs

Wim Delvoye, Art Farm Beijng 2003-2010, Live tattooed pigs

The tattoos themselves are based on Delavoye’s drawings, mostly references Western iconography such as the Louis Vuitton monogram and characters from Disney films. By placing these iconic images on pigskin, the artist takes away their commercial value. They become pure decoration – their only purpose is to shock.

The artist sees the pig as an investment. Pig skins value highly in China, so Delvoye tattoos his pigs when they’re young. Buyers can choose from live or taxidermied pigs; some buyers choose to purchase the piglets and let them grow old on the farm. Others choose to purchase the pig’s skin after its death.

Delvoye doesn’t slaughter his pigs for their skin, but he repurposes their lives as living canvases. They are objects of a different form of consumption in life and death. In several different cultures, pigs are associated with filth, gluttony, and greed. But Delvoye compares them to humans, noting their perceived nudity and the texture and color of their skin.

With this piece I think it’s interesting how the artist used this notion of “branding” on a live animal. Often people purchase luxury goods made from the skin of exotic animals but they fail to realise the origin of these animals and how often they are harvested, slaughtered and tortured for their commercial value. I love the juxtaposition of taking something nice and innocent like characters from disney films and luxury brand logos and tattooing them onto a live pig that is portrayed as dirty and a symbol of greed.

Laura Lima

Working across mediums, the artist frequently subjects the body to surprising juxtapositions with objects and architectures. With each installation, Lima consistently reinvents the viewer’s encounter with her work, skillfully considering the nature of perception, social relationships, and human behaviors, while creating profound and startling aesthetic experiences.

Image result for laura lima the inverseRelated image Image result for laura lima the inverse

 

For this monumental, site-specific installation, Lima entangles the gridded support beams of the museum’s Atrium Gallery with industrial nylon rope. Enormous at one end, the braided material dwindles in size until it seems to merge with a female body. Set still and partially out of view, the participant’s body achieves uncanny abstraction, presence, and suspense.

“The Inverse” poses challenging questions, engaging topics related to identity, representation and agency. The female body, and the many fluid ideas of the feminine, is central to.

“The central topic of this conversation is to understand their part and the choices they make in bringing the work to life. Participants are not obligated by a script and are free to inhabit the space as they wish.”

This work brought about controversy when performers for felt pressured to perform sexual acts using a nylon rope at the museum. This is an example of a “happenings” type of performance art that required the audience to do certain things using the props provided.

I think it was definitely interesting to see the different styles and techniques artists used to convey an idea, regardless of how crazy some of them may be. I think I would want to look more into the different ways in which I can bring across a message of an issue such as multimedia installation, interactivity etc. while keeping consideration of the space and audience in mind.

4D II: Project 2 – Soundscape

Artist Statement

My soundscape illustrates a person walking through a forest but encounters a mysterious object or sound that ends up chasing after him. I layered a combination of sounds like the forest ambience, footsteps, breathing, rustling of clothes and belongings etc. I also wanted to create a sense of movement and anticipation as the person tries to escape from the mysterious sound by starting the scenario slow and building up towards the climax.

Concept 

After getting the brief for the project I don’t know why but the idea of thriller/horror stuck to me. I love the use of sound effects in horror movies and the sounds were what often ended up making a greater impact on me than the visuals.

In this video, I reference The Revenant and the usage of sound to build up towards the climax ( which was the bear attack)

Afterwhich, I made a list of sounds that I needed to record as well as the arrangement of sounds.

All of the sounds I recorded were done in hall at around 1am? But there were still a lot of people awake and walking about. The zoom recorder was so sensitive that it was able to pick up doors slamming and chattering from a few blocks away. Hence, isolating and recording the individual sounds were one of the challenges for me.

The ambience sound was probably the easiest to record and given that my hall was in a hilly and forested area, I just needed to go to an isolated area away from other noise disturbances. For the breathing and walking sound, I got my friend to walk about on a patch of grass and got him to vary his footsteps, faster, slower, etc. I wanted to use a combination of sound to create the illusion of running, hence I used a T shirt to rub against the mike of the zoom recorder and hit a bunch of hangers on the drying rack which I thought gave off a really nice sound of movement. As for the “mysterious sound”, I ended up scratching my nails on a metal pole to create an eerie screeching noise. I thought it was appropriate as it was a sound that makes the hair on the back of your neck stand and gives people goosebumps, which was what I wanted.

Another challenge I faced was probably the layering of the sounds. I started off the scene slow with minimal sounds and slowly build it up towards a loud symphony of sounds as the person is running away from the mysterious object. I ended off with just the ambience of the forest to create a feeling of eeriness. However, the layering of sounds proved to be pretty difficult as I had to be mindful of the background, middle ground and foreground and I had to vary the volume of the individual sounds if not it would just end up messy and disorganised. I also had issues with the transition between sounds. I wanted a “pause” in the middle to create some tension but I wasn’t sure if it ended up coming off as awkward.

I also tried to do some panning for movement as the person is running from the left to the right and tried to vary the sounds heard from the left and the right but it might have been a little hard to hear after the sounds have been layered.

This project has been really interesting for me and I have learned so much about sound. I could say that I prefer sound production than video production now 🙂

 

 

 

4D II Project 1: Alter Ego

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password: buckets

Storyline:

A frustrated girl is seen doing her work in her room when she chances upon a bucket list that she wrote a long time ago. She then starts to have visions of various scenarios written in the list, of her trekking up mountains or travelling the world. The visions end with an empty, unchecked list and she realises that it’s all in her head.

Theme:

about regrets and having the courage to take chances in life.

Process/ Research/ Inspiration:

After writing down and analysing my character traits, I found that a common theme of affinity amongst all of them is the idea of courage. The courage to stand up for oneself, seize opportunities and to be confident in ones abilities. I idolise strong female characters that break out of society’s stereotype of them. Hence with this recurring theme in mind i start to draft out my story and what I wanted to portray.

Out of all of the characters, I decided on Walter Mitty because he embodied the idea of someone stuck in his fantasies to escape reality. I wanted to do a self confessional letter type of video with an essence of regret and remorse for ones own reality of life. After consultation, it was suggested that I could do a self confessional bucket list.  I then listed down a few of the things that I have always wanted to do into the bucket list.

https://vimeo.com/108839994

While researching, I got inspired by Vodafone commercial titled bucket list ( how apt). I love the cinematography which was like handheld and shaky with the cuts of scene in between her travelling and her video calling her grandpa as she travels around the world completing her bucket list. I thought the song used ( Tom Odell – Can’t Pretend ) also really played up the mood portrayed in the video. I thought this was also a perfect way of portraying Walter Mitty since most of his “ travels” were in his head, so I could do like a reality vs expectations kind of thing.   

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Storyboard: 

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Challenges:

One of the first challenge was definitely how am I going to show the “travelling” portion considering time and budget constraint. Then I had the idea of using my past travel GoPro footages. Of course because of the difference in frame size, I had to scale the GoPro inserts to fit the larger frame which resulted in a slightly lower resolution. It was also hard fitting the appropriate visuals to those listed in the bucket list because of lack of resources, so I just had to tweak the list to fit the visuals instead. 

Another challenge would be inserting the monologue portion. I was a little unsure of how to insert it without it feeling too forced. It was also hard emulating the emotion through the monologue ( poor acting skills on my part). In the end, I decided to keep the monologue short and sweet.

“ Dear future self, I hope that you are well and that you’re out there, seeing the world, conquering mountains, and chasing your dreams. Love, Your past”

The last challenge would be color grading the video to differentiate between “reality” and “fantasy”. It was my first time really color grading and after many tutorials later, I used cooler tones for the “reality” portion and brighter, more vibrancy in the “fantasy” portion. I was also afraid that my message wouldn’t come through but after asking a few people they seem to be able to get the gist of the story so hopefully the message did come through.

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Reflection:

Filming has never been my forte and I struggled with the technical camera aspect a little as well as coming up with the storyline while keeping my constraints in mind. But I did have fun in the end color grading the film and stitching the clips together was more enjoyable than expected. Moving on I hope to learn from this experience and improve myself for future projects. 🙂