Reflections – Musings

Hair Dictionary | reflections

(Some context: this was the work I did for Astrid’s VC4 class where we are to create a dictionary for our potential FYP topics)

Trichotillomania is a pretty small topic but hair, woah, hair is a huge huge topic.

Love it, hate it or fear it, hair has been so prevalent in human cultures over at our span of time on earth that it is intertwined in so much of the human condition. So much complexities and ironies lie amongst a pile of dead cells growing from your scalp. It is never “oh, it is just hair”.

I separated my dictionary into two parts. The first a preface of sorts. Why do I want to do this project, why hair? It was more on a cathartic self- expression and exploration piece and while doing it, I realised how much hair had played in my struggle for approval, an identity, and self love growing up. I imagined that this preface as a documentation of me treating myself as a word, what defines me, what are my origins, what do other people define me etc.

I’ve chosen this part to be illustrated as I wanted it to be 100% me and with illustration something that I am most comfortable with, it just felt natural expressing myself through this medium.

The second part of the dictionary is a tad more straightforward, I’ve collected main words and from those main words and its definitions, I categorised events, knowledge, cultures , etc etc into those parts. At the end of the book there are a list of artists that inspire me and how they treated the medium of hair or deal with issues of anxiety, identity and trauma.

As much as the first part is 100% me, this component is 100% not me, in the sense that it contains themes, ideas and culture that are not mine. While the book is clean for now, I’ve included lots of white spaces to eventually turn this book into something JJ Abrams did for his book titled S.

The additional notations, highlighting scrapbooking done in a single book all by different personas and minds is just beautiful to me. It reminds me of the past where we could write and notate on books we own. I find the process slowing allowing more of my personality and thoughts into the book, slowly digesting these information into something that could amplify my own.

I am super excited to do so to my dictionary once I get more and more information about my topic during my FYP process.

For the fun of it, to probably just start off FYP where this project ends, I’ve also included a hair-o-graphics which documents (roughly) the hairstyles that I’ve had over the years and why they are done so. It compliments the first part of the dictionary and I guess it helps in explaining Trich to most people.

Overall, this dictionary experience is as cathartic as it is rough to make, over 80 pages in and I still feel that there are still a lot that I have not discovered and read about yet. Even so, it made me understand why people treat hair with almost god like importance or why they choose to remove it completely. Our human obsession with those dead cells is never only just hair but rather it as a common medium to express the multiple facets and complexities of our emotions.

In the end, it is only just hair right?

Dear Data postcard | wastographics

(N.B I haven’t been tagging these posts right last time hence I’m reuploading them in hopes that they appear in the class pages again!)

I like the idea of accumulation small things leading up to larger things. As such I thought about the butterfly effect / chaos theory that Joanne had discussed for her time project, the choices of one person or thing will eventually lead to another and accumulate to something.

When I first pitched it to my partner about this, she felt that I was a little pushing the blame to others and I was like yeah …. sorta

Legend

While doing this, I’ve decided to note the places I’ve spent the most time in as I wanted to prove that going out would be a large factor as to waste consumption but I actually realised having takeouts or tabaos instead is a bigger role player ( for that week). So my advice to myself is to cook more ( or at least eat at the restaurant/coffeeshop etc. )

Visuals wise, I’m inspired by spot paintings from artist Damien Hirst in terms of using very colourful dots. I was also inspired by the movement of water droplets coalescing when they merge into one another to become a bigger water blob, as such, instead of using the same size of dots, I decided to vary their sizes according to how much waste was generated to give off the idea of accumulation. I liked how that effects creates a rhythm and flow to the infographics visually.

( originally posted on 25/3/2016.)

Project 1 Time | Final work & Reflections

(N.B I haven’t been tagging these posts right last time hence I’m reuploading them in hopes that they appear in the class pages again! ( please visit my page for a accurate timeline of posts though! )

Now that this project is over, it’s time to reflect. I’ve started his project with a very large and pretty unorganised train of thought. With some self reflection, I’ve decided to define time as a huge muddy sea of constants and variables.

Constants: The locations I visit, the timing of which I take the pictures, the subjects of the photo, the life I live, the society around me, the skies I get to see.

– Routines, structure, the inexplicable movement of time as the sun undoubtedly rises and sets.

————-

Variables: When the wind blows clouds over to cover parts of the sun, when a lady refuse to budge from her spot in my shot. How I see the world in a stressful morning, how I respond to it during a relaxed evening.

– Emotions of mine, emotions of others. The movement of nature, the inevitable bits of chaos.

How do we measure time in Singapore? This question still lingers in my mind.

I believe that in a society so obsessed with constants, are variables the only things left that at least give some idea that time has passed?

If we cannot control constants, we should try to be variables, or at least try to take note of the variables around us.

The Sun will always rise and set, but where its light touches, where a shadow is cast onto the ground. No two photos are the same, no two seconds are the same. Everything is always changing every day, every hour, every second.

The book is hence titled “In the light of” from the idiom,

In the light of something:

considering, because of, taking into account, bearing in mind, in view of, taking into consideration, with knowledge of

The title is a play on the fact that, yeah the photos are of shadows and things that have been under the light of the sun. But also taking into account the life around us, how time passes, how constants drive us, how variations change us and how we feel about those things.

Anyhoo, I’ve included the photo book for you guys to read!

_____________________

A friend told me that my photos reminded her of Edward Hopper‘s works. If you are unfamiliar with his works, Edward Hopper is a American painter who captures scenes and architecture iconic of America’s golden years of the 1920’s to 50’s. The catch is that his works are without a lot of the glitz and glamour that usually comes pre-packaged with these imagery, but it’s not overtly morose either.

Hopper’s scenes usually depict those of people being indoors. White spaces occupy most of the canvas, nearly empty rooms, characters in the painting ignoring one another, geometric landscapes with blocks of sunlight invading the scene… these are common elements in his works.

A sense of isolation, loneliness, melancholy and serenity could be seen in his works.

( One of my favourite works of his is Rooms by the Sea, 1951)

While the reference is unintentional, Hopper had been influential in some way because of how much of his works resonates with me. I’ve always somehow wanted to be in those rooms and scenes he paints because of how quiet, spacious and isolated it all is. I was pleasantly surprised to find a quote from him that accurately explains some parts of my project.

There will be, I think, an attempt to grasp again the surprise and accidents of nature and a more intimate and sympathetic study of its moods, together with a renewed wonder and humility on the part of such as are still capable of these basic reactions.

Pathetic fallacy, chaos theory; check and checked.

Edward Hopper is renowned for his reluctance to discuss himself and his art, Hopper simply summed up his art by stating, “The whole answer is there on the canvas.”

As much as I have lots and lots of themes and ideologies into my work, I think in the most basic reason we do what we do is ultimately for our love for sunlight and how it made a crummy rigid world slightly more beautiful.

As Hopper puts it,

Maybe I am not very human – what I wanted to do was to paint sunlight on the side of a house.

If he’s not very human, I’m not quite sure if I am too.

(Originally posted on 12/3/2016)

Project 1 Time | Process

(N.B I haven’t been tagging these posts right last time hence I’m reuploading them in hopes that they appear in the class pages again!)

Photos Photos Photos!

“Oh dear… Do I have enough content?” Is a number 1 worry of mine working on this project for about 2 weeks and running. Being a subject of 24 hours is bad enough, being a subject of roughly 4 hours a day is worse.

Certain takeaways that I have learnt from taking photos,

1) Do not ever ever ever think to yourself that “it’s alright, it will probably look the same tomorrow anyways”. It wouldn’t, and a perfectly good shot would be gone forever.

2) Shucks that aunty is looking at me weird, maybe I shouldn’t take this shot. (Refer to point 2)

3) Man! I’m really a hermit huh!

Points 1 and 2 made me think about the butterfly effect or chaos theory:

As American mathematician and a pioneer of chaos theory, Edward Norton Lorenz’s explains,

When the present determines the future, but the approximate present does not approximately determine the future.

What this means is that a single small element of the past could lead to a larger chain of events and changes that is beyond our predictions.

Sure, that day could be sunny, but I could leave the campus later that day, or my phone could have not enough battery to last for the day etc etc…

Several factors have to come into play including the limits that I have imposed upon myself while taking the photos.

a) It must be a sunny day. (it made me hate rainy/ cloudy days)

b) My phone, of which I take the photos from, have to have enough battery/ memory space to take photos

c) No one must be in the photo ( personal preference)

d) I do not have a shaky hand while taking the photos

This inspired me to also document these factors, how many elements does it take to be able to document a beautiful mundane scene? How much of it is fate, how much control I could I have over this scenario?

These photos in some way or another feels to be the collaboration between fate, time and me. After all, I’m just a tiny person trying to capture little scenes of time against the larger factors of the universe that I can never control.

I’ve also created a routine map of the places I often or only visit in a week. (Click the photo for a bigger view.)

It looks really empty for now. Perhaps I should add a few more data such as time spend travelling in those routes, when I’d usually go these places etc etc.

(originally posted on 4/3/2016)

Project 1 time| More thoughts & Inspirations

(N.B I haven’t been tagging these posts right last time hence I’m reuploading them in hopes that they appear in the class pages again!)

We are time’s subjects and time bids be gone. -Shakespeare

Time is unsympathetic and does not wait for anyone. We are only tiny pawns who have to live and act in the moment. In the awareness of our impermanence, do we really appreciate it? Can we appreciate it?

To us, sunrise and sunsets are the same day in day out, especially in our Singapore climate where you can guarantee one of two choices, a sunny dawn/dusk or a rainy dawn/dusk.

With our lives largely revolved around work and/or studies, dawn and dusk ultimately became associated with the banalities of life: dawn with one having to get up to work and dusk with one going home from work.

It made me wonder, do we appreciate the golden hour anymore if we are presented with the same thing everyday?

Sure we will enjoy sunrise at the top of mountains or sunsets at the beach but what about the sunrises we see peeking from MRT windows or sunsets from office buildings?

While researching, I came upon the works & words of photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson.

“A photograph is neither taken or seized by force. It offers itself up. It is the photo that takes you. One must not take photos.”

“Of all the means of expression, photography is the only one that fixes a precise moment in time.”

It made me think about how we can never control the surroundings around us but we can always document certain moments. As a photographer I am subjected to this amount of banality, can I make it beautiful?

I came upon Nobuhiro Nakanishi’s layer drawings while researching and is extremely captivated by his work.

They are not so much drawings as they are a photographic installation. As explained in his artist statement,

In “Layer Drawing #001—#081” (pp.12-13), by making up the whole picture with the accumulation of continuous changes of time and movement of each object and scene, he presents in a form the process of grasping objects beyond the two-dimensional visual image.

The pieces look three-dimensional without reality contained in small shining boxes (the image seems to be floating in a small box because 24 slide-mounts are piled up). However, this object is not three-dimensional with depth. It has another dimension, that is, the element of continuous movement produced by continuous changes in the object and scenery.

Nakanishi’s work is interesting because he captures every single second of the scene and amalgamating them to become this big block of time. You could actually see the changes in colour in his works as the elements inside it shift as he is photographing them and I find that really interesting.

Inspired by these works, I’ve decided to choose photography as the main medium for my projects because of how easily it captures the ethereal nature of a single moment of time.

Hence I decide to work/ set myself limits onto how I should work on capturing Singapore’s banal beauty.

All the photos must be taken in the golden hours of 6 – 9 am or 5 – 8 pm
The photos must not be taken outside of my usual routine (I cannot go to special scenic places to take photos just because, unless there is a field trip or special events such as weddings.)
The photos must contain a drastic light and shadow element to it
I must document the location and time of the event

I forsee that this project will not really be a viscom-y project as it is more of a conceptual fine arts work but we shall see.

( originally posted on 18/2/2016.)

Project 1: Golden Hour | Golden years

Time is fickle as it is unsympathetic, it could not stop and will never stop. A reliable constant, a cruel constant.

Golden Hour, Golden years, golden ages.

Time seems to be fraught with our nihilism and our enthusiasm. The hope for a good day as the first rays of light peeps through window grills. Watching the beautiful melancholy of sunsets slowing sinking behind rows of HDBS in a packed train home. Admiring the day’s dying breath, while something gnaws deep inside of having wasted a day or perhaps a year, or a life.

The golden hour is often used in photography to signify the times when the sun is close to the horizon of the earth. The atmospheric light is diffused, colour is enhanced. Sunrise, sunsets, both are good. Although we see it on a almost daily basis, that short period of magic, where light seems heavy and the world looked a tad more beautiful, time becomes a bit more precious.

Time is full of paradoxes, of contrasts. Light and shadow.

Reflections – Time of Others

The exhibition was a rather eye opening experience for me as I find the social political context that most of the works were dealing with was rather interesting. The dissonance between the past and present was often highlighted in the works and how the factor of time affects people and communities. I especially loved how comparisons could be made across works as to how a drastic event in the past affect different communities and how these communities dealt with them.

One work that particularly struck out to me is Vandy Rattana’s Monologue, which largely discusses the effect of time and how it wears down on the significance of events or symbols. The context behind Monologue is a rather interesting one as the artist receives a map from his father which marks the location of an unmarked grave between two mango trees. While sounding like a murder mystery at first, it was later revealed that the man was possibly a victim of a mass killing during Cambodia’s communist era as his body was found not far away from an unmarked mass grave. The dissonance between generations of Cambodians living during or after the Pol Pot regime was rather evident through the dialogue between the artist and his unnamed compadre. Through the monologue of the artist, addressed towards the person in the grave, we were informed that the artist had seen at least seen a photograph of the mysterious man although we ourselves as an audience were not shown this. In addition, instead of sympathising with the man for his tragic passing, Rattana scolds him in a harsh, condescending tone, giving off an air of disrespect towards the deceased. While shocking, his actions are not far off from how the Cambodian community are treating the deceased. It was later revealed how the area of the mass graves have turned into rice paddies for farming are still being used for that purpose, highlighting the indifference of the modern day Cambodians towards the victims of the horrible past.

And the end of it, many questions were still left unanswered in the film. Who is the person in the grave? How did the artist’s father know about him and does the victim’s family know about the location of his grave? Did they even try to find him? Taken onto a larger context though, the same questions can also be asked about every one of the 5,000 bodies found in the mass graves that were left forgotten over the years. While the anonymity of these victims is a rather distressing issue, one also tackle the issue that acts of respecting the dead compromise that of the still living. Should the livelihood of the rice farmers and the communities which feeds off the rice that they plant over the graves be heavily affected when the plot of land is to be turned into a proper burial area or monument?

I loved how for most of the works and the communities involved in them, the significance of certain things, events and people although have died down, but are never truly forgotten. There is always a sort of a new “life” growing from a physical and symbolic death under the effect of time. One could infer that rice plants and the mango trees could grow and flourish due to the nourishment provided by the bodies buried underneath them. As such, it can be argued that there is always progress in time and the dead in some way or another, will always still contribute to the next generation.

p.s I find it amusing that even the work itself is an example, the death of an unknown person once recorded on a hand-drawn map eventually became that of a 18 minute video to be shown on art galleries.