THEMATIC APPROACH
The understanding of body parts – making use of different parts of the body to portray the concept, idea, or keyword.
- DANCER
Typography: Humans
To relate my whole project as one, I decided to create a night setting and as I shoot “ZIYU”. Due to the lack of manpower, I had to work within my means and edited myself multiple times into the artwork.
However, I’m not exactly satisfied with the outcome yet, thus I will be trying out variations but still stick to this idea to see if other methods may work out better!
- NARCISSIST
Typography: Dada/collage
I’ve always believed that everyone is a narcissist to a certain extent. As for me, I think I may be a little bit more narcissist than an average person…… ^.^” but I embrace this fact! So I browsed my photo album and compiled a folder of images to form “ZIYU”. With dada art, I would be collaging 2 different set of images, playing with greyscale and coloured image to show the letters Z-I-Y-U clearly. Some classmates suggested that I should stage some images to contrast the letters even more; for instance, greyscale images on the background to be straight face or blank expression while the colour images that will be forming the letters would be with big smiles and contrasting expressions.Another concept of mine would be to put my current self as coloured images forming Z-I-Y-U and as for background, it will be greyscale of my younger self. This concept would portray another meaning behind the selection of images – to show that when we were younger, we weren’t sure of being vain or to dress up more and stuffs, so that would be quite dull, thus B/W at the background. As for now, I love myself and how I look more, so the poses, expressions and the whole look and feel for the letters would be outstanding and vibrant; hence, explaining the growth of myself as well.
– images are compiled but not collaged
- NOCTURNAL LIFESTYLE
Typography: Neon lights/digital
Beng a commercial dancer cum student is quite tough on the body as dancing usually happens in the evening or night while studies in the day. During holidays or competition period, it is clear that I turned into nocturnal mammal as I usually start my day at about 4pm, and end dance around 4am, then shower, rest up a little and sleep till late afternoon again. So with studies in the schedule as well, I usually only get 2-3hours of sleep a day, which is really really damaging on my health, but I do enjoy all that trainings and performances, so I named this nocturnal lifestyle instead of lack of sleep!So my concept is to snap a picture of my tired eyes after practices end at 4am or 5am, and that would be the background of the picture. Z-I-Y-U would then be included in neon fonts as it gives a more saturday-night-out feel (like bars or theatre or places people usually visit at night).
I refer this idea to Dan Flavin, an artist whom does a lot of projects on neon lights, I learnt how he places different coloured lights together and made use of colour theory. He also had varying methods like reflections, the abstract placement of lights and so on, white I would experiment on the my eyes – Z-I-Y-U multiplying on the pupil of the eye to portray a look of the contact lenses.
Useful link : https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-10-artists-who-work-with-neon - TRAVELLER
Typography: digital/positive and negative space
When I think “traveller”, I’d picture a pair of legs in the motion of walking; a camera; a luggage, a many many smiles! My initial idea was to use dingbats and play with positive and negative space, like Shigeo Fukuda.
However, if I make use of this method, it would be off the thematic approach I have in mind for this project. Thus, I will adopt this idea, and make use of my friend’s leg as I direct this photoshoot and still play with positive and negative space, except that it would not be dingbats, but it will be real physical humans and items.
