4D – Exhibition Review @Gillman

 

During another trip to Gillman, Robert took us to various exhibitions 😀

The first place we stopped by was “The Making of an Institution”, Ntu CCA, done by different artists in residence.  The artwork that I like the most is the one below, which is Ho Rui An’s “2020×3”. I like how An used a really old project that used slides to project things on to the screen.  This artwork, collected a set of images as a research for the historical foresight of Singapore. The artist extracted from a CD-rom, and realised on the occastion of an exhibition organised in Public Service 21.  It shows illustrations of three national scenarios  in 2020.

The pacing of each slide might be a little slow, but I felt that it suited the mood of the illustrations which were done with bright and vivid colours.

 

4D – I’m Waiting III

Idea

Following up from the previous 4D projects, I decided that I wanted to re-emphasise the idea of adopting dogs.  During my visits to SPCA, (around 3-4 times in 4 months, I constantly saw the same few dogs remaining at SPCA, because no one wants to adopt them.  Hence this time, I decided to show that by integrating the usage of the name cards found outside of the enclosed space in SPCA.

The name cards had some acronyms on it which I didn’t understand so I went to ask one of the volunteers about it.

“Dated” represents the date of birth, while “AA”meant the date of arrival to SPCA, while “As of” is the date the animal was put up for adoption.

This dog, Viking has been at the SPCA since 2011, which made me imagine how lonely it must have felt 🙁

Originally, I wanted to include the background story of some of the dogs but I eventually I did not because I felt that it would have been too much information.

Sketches

Space chosen

The reason why I chose this space was because I need a dark enclosed space to project the video as well as somewhat imitate the dim lighting I experienced there.

initial sketch

Robert told me that the fence was not necessary.

Making of the cards

There were 3 types of cards with different colours. The colour allocated to the dog depends on the dog’s personality.

I used photoshop to replicate the name cards and tried to follow them as closely as possible.

After printing and laminating it, I used a permanent marker to write every dog’s detail that I found on the day I visited SPCA.

Video

pw: qwerty

I decided to change my video for this installation as I felt one dog at a time looks nicer and suited the environment better.

Final Installation

Old Dog Toy

Old dog toys that I borrowed from my classmate Alvin.

Video position

I decided to place the video low  because that is how you view the dogs as well as making the video small makes it seem as if the dogs are a little more vulnerable.

Feedback

Robert said that my final installation could have been better if I had considered to place the name cards at the same height of the video. If I did so, the relationship between the name cards and the video would have been better.  The set up made it seem as if both were from two separate exhibits.

It was also mentioned that maybe the dogs walking around in circles could be a sign of mental distress to the dogs,

4D – I’m Waiting II

Final Video

I’m Waiting II

Continuing on the subject of sheltered animals, I wish to further explore the loneliness dogs feel in SPCA, especially since the dogs are isolated.

I’ve separated the video into 2 parts, to show 2 contrasting expressions from the dogs, where the first half was filmed with the presence of a particular human while the other half was the opposite.

Through this video, I wish to convey the importance for the dogs to have a personal owner in order for them to feel less lonely.


Process

From the video itself, you can see that the first half of the dogs kept jumping/ standing/ moving around in circles, as if they really wanted to go outside.

They were doing so because there was a particular volunteer that would take the dogs out for short walks once in a while. However, she can only take one dog out at a time, hence the dogs could only helplessly wait in the enclosed area.

The other half seemed bored/ staring outside/ sitting on the floor doing nothing. So in a sense, I wanted to let the audience see what the dogs do with and without a human owner.

Original Idea

Initially, I wanted to just split the video into 9 screens, where each box will show 1 dog in one enclosed space in SPCA. However, my laptop was not powerful with enough RAM to handle the process. 🙁 I could not even preview the video properly without lagging even after tweaking the video preview settings. 🙁 So, because the video preview kept lagging and caused me to not edit properly, I needed to change the number of split screens. 🙁

Layout

Since it was my first time trying out split screens, I had to google for YouTube tutorials 😀

So under the effects controls tab at the top left corner, under motions, you can scale down the size of the video. I did some try and error before arriving at the right ratio/ size I wanted.

The original 9 boxes

For 9 split screens I used the scale of 3o. I tried out with borders and no borders and realised the borders actually looks more aesthetically pleasing.

For a vertical layout of 6 screens I also used the 30 for the scale. However, even with 6 split screens, it was still too laggy to edit properly.  >:(

Final layout with 4 split screens 🙂 The video preview was still lagging but muchhhhhhhhhhh better than the previous 2 >:(

Sound Arrangement

The sound was not just an unedited overlay of each other. If I did not edit the arrangement it would have been extremely noisy which was not the intended effect.

So it starts out with a bit of barking and then gradually I added more barks/ whines and it dies down again before moving on to the other set of dogs.

For the second half, I just used one audio clip from one of the videos. Unintentionally, there was classical music playing in the background which somehow suited the mood of bored dogs being shown.

Colour Scheme

Part I

original
edited

Part II

original
edited

Problems faced

  1. Lousy laptop processor 🙁
  2. Filming dogs.
    • While filming one of the dogs there at SPCA, I just placed the cameras in front of the dog and walked away where the dog could not see me. However, one of the volunteers came over and told me that I should not film that dog because it was getting irritated as it kept barking. I was taken aback as I was not aware that dogs would be agitated by cameras too.
    • After explaining my project idea to the volunteer, I asked her whether it was just that particular dog that I could not film. She directed me to another section where the dogs are not as anxious and also suggested that I should place the camera further away.

4D Project 1 – I’m Waiting

Brainstorming Ideas/ Concepts

While trying to think of a theme I had a few initial ideas, they were:

Grandmother

  • Her story of her in her perspective or from me?
  • Reached the age where grandparents are feeling more lonely and old
  • The only grandparent I have left is my maternal Grandmother
  • Wanted to capture as much as possible as a form of memory

Hospital 

  • Behind the scenes of what working in a hospital is like?
  • Working at a hospital is much harder than what people normaly think.
  • Patients get frustrated and rage at pharmacists for being slow, but they actually have standard procedures to follow.
  • Such as checking the patient’s previous medical history from other clinics, especially if they  had never visited that hospital before.
  • They cannot just give the medicine as the patient requested.

 

  • Middle road “abandoned” lady’s hospital
  • Former Salmon’s Maternity Home
  • Building still part of the 60s
  • Only an old lady and helper

However,  the former Salmon’s Maternity Home idea was scraped off as the owner is a very private person and according to other news sources, the owner does not allow visitors.

Nature

  • Plants
  • Animals
  • Cats/Dogs
  • Animal Abuse

Decided to go with Animals.

When I thought about animals, the first thing that came to my mind was animal abuse, which led me to think about abandoned animals and finally about animal shelters.  Hence, this made me decide on the topic sheltered animals.

Animals in sheltered homes were either rescued, strays or abandoned. While being kept in their own “pent”, they would probably feel lonely and bored without a family to play with.

Some animals were also just left behind by their owners, such as this recent incident:


First trip down to SPCA

 

During the Chinese New Year week, I went to check the SPCA’s Facebook page to check their opening hours and thank goodness they were open until 4pm.

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First Critique for Project 1

Robert said that the photographs are not consistent and that I should not have multiple angles here and there for a photographic series. Some of the wire fences and bar grills did not work well too. However, Robert mentioned that he prefer the very last picture where the bars are just suggested but blurred in the foreground, as well as the photograph where the dog is in between 2 walls.

My classmate, Alvin also mentioned that SPCA is a very clean shelter unlike the others. The other shelters have to keep a few dogs in one enclosed space while SPCA has 1 dog in each enclosed space.  He recommended me that I should visit the other shelters too.

Although I also agreed to what my classmate had mentioned, I eventually went back to SPCA as other shelters required appointments or the visiting hours clashed with my schedule.


2nd Trip down to SPCA

Taking into consideration of the composition of what Robert liked, I tried to take pictures again but now with a tripod.

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After 2nd Consultation

Robert said he prefer those with just 2 white “lines” / 2 gaps

Editing

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Original                                                                Levels

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Colour filter                                                       Colour dodging the eye

 

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Testing out filters

original  pink

Original                                                                    Pink

orange  blue

Orange                                                                    Blue


Final series

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