Foundation 4D 1 – G1

November 22, 2017

For our final 4D project, it’s a group work!
i grouped with Gladys and Jamie.

Upon receiving the project brief, we were told to work on an object/location within the compounds of ADM, and we began brainstorming.

Unanimously, we all came up with the same thing!
We decided to work on Vending Machine – the best place to go for our hungry souls. We wanted to make the vending machine interactive, fun and to promote healthy living!

Our idea was planned with the mindset of having a collaboration with Health Promotion Board (HPB)

We will have a vending machine that vends out healthy food, instead of the usual unhealthy snacks and drinks.

For example, instead of having potato chips, we have veggie chips! Or if we have salted peanuts, we can change to almonds instead!

However, the buyer will not know about the change in product, until they selected their choice.

To explain better, we built a small vending machine prototype, with iPad as our machine screen.

Watch the video to see how the vending machine works!

The whole process starts when a passer-by walks past the vending machine. It will light up and greet the passer-by, attracting their attention and asking if they want anything. Next up, it will show the panel of food, letting the customer select the choice he/she wants.

Upon pressing, a surprise animation comes out, and we can see the changing animation of the original product changing into a healthier alternative!

It will then vend out the healthier alternative for the customer, ending with a quote to promote healthy living.

During the process of vending, we will have a unique jingle for each product – to keep the customer occupied while waiting.

We intend to have the interface appear more futuristic, while keeping the elements of it quirky and fun.

After presenting to the class about our project, it seemed pretty well-received!
Although it was voiced out that some customers might get angry for not receiving the item they wanted, the issue was resolved, as we intend to place a line of text on the vending machine stating “What you see might not be what you get“. Furthermore, our plan of collaborating with HPB will come into handy, as if used for a HPB roadshow, the audience will know this vending machine is promoting health!

All in all, I am satisfied with how the vending machine worked out! Although we kept changing our ideas, I am glad that we stuck to this final idea!

Initially, we wanted to host a competition between all the food in the vending machine, like a pageant contest. But we realised that the contest has no purpose, and if someone is there to buy food, they might get irritated by the long contest process.

But our final idea, has a clear purpose on promoting health and is a shorter process than our original!

And thankfully, we had a 3D vending machine prototype to aid us with the presentation of our project, if not, it will be difficult trying to explain our idea!

November 21, 2017

One work that caught my eye was ‘Fake I Real Me’ by Corinne Mariaud. It consists of 3 pictures of South Korean women who cares about their outer appearances alot and has had plastic surgery done before to look ‘prettier’.

When I first saw them, I found them to be creepy looking as their eyes looked too huge (almost to the extent where they look like dolls) and devoid of emotions. It makes me a little crept out. They look beautiful but to me, they looked beautiful in a ghost like way. When I first saw it, I thought it has something to do with beauty standards and plastic surgery. I think it touches on how looks have become more and more important such that some would go lengths to physically alter themselves. I think it is a critique on pressing beauty standards and increasing superficiality in our society. I think the simplicity of the work made it possible to gather such information-it is just three women and the most striking thing about them is their flawless beauty. I think the fact that it is very simple portraits of them that adds another layer to the artwork because portraits like this typically show people in their most natural state (poker faced, expressionless) but there is nothing natural about their features since they have gone under the knife before and emphasises on the fact that these are alterations to what was natural.

After reading text, I confirmed what I had inferred but I think that it might be because I am interested in korean culture and know what is the korean beauty standards. If a viewer does not have prior knowledge, it may be hard to understand the work. I think that if the artist added perhaps marks (the ones they draw on you before they cut you up for plastic surgery) that are not so visible from afar to the face and obvious as one approaches the artwork, it would be perhaps more effective but it may be too obvious and take away the subtlety and simplicity (which I find to be the stunning point) of this artwork.

The next artwork is ‘The Optimisation of Parenting part 2’ by Addie Wagenknecht and it consists of a mechanical arm rocking a baby cot. My first impression was that it felt lonely? I felt quite sad because I would expect seeing a mother beside a cot but inside it is a mechanical arm and there is a lack of parental warmth which I find a pity. I thought that it would be about the lack of time resulting in parents turning to machines to take care of their children and a critique on the reliance on machinery. The juxtaposition of the cozy baby’s cot and the rigid mechanical arm (between life and a mimicry of life) directs me towards the direction of machinery replacing us in carrying out tasks even the most intimate and the consequences of it.

After reading the text, I realised that I was partly wrong. The artist is much more optimistic and even supportive as she stands in the shoe of a busy parent and question if small tasks like rocking a cot can be handed to robots. The artist also questions if this will affect the child’s growth.

I think that if she wants to emphasise on the parent being relieved of her duty, she can add a pair of female hands alongside the robot’s doing her work and the lighting can be less harsh. The harsh lighting makes it look sad and devastating.

November 21, 2017

Interactive Artworks

http://www.notabenevisual.com/works/in-order-to-control/

The first interactive artwork I’ve chosen to discuss about is called “In order to control” by NOTA BENE and it consists of lines discussing the grey areas and ironies of/debates on morality being screened and projected on the floor. Viewers who step onto the projected area has their silhouettes projected onto the wall before them and their silhouettes are filled with the same lines on the floor.

I think this is a very interesting artwork as it gets one to consider the slippery slopes of morality and the hypocrisy of the righteous. In projecting the words onto the viewer’s silhouettes, it catches their attention and also implies that they are guilty of these slippery slopes. I think that projecting the lines onto the silhouettes makes it feel sort of like a personal attack/accusation and gets one to really ponder and think about these grey areas.

The second art piece is ACCESS by Marie Sester:

IN this work, web users track strangers with a light beam that follows them around and the ones being tracked are in the dark and hears a sound that only they can hear.

This artwork touches on surveillance and I think that is a very important topic as the value of privacy becomes more debatable with the emergence of social media (also, safety vs. privacy, how much should the government know about you?) The light beam that follows you around (like a spotlight, a mark) makes one feels anxious as spotlight typically means all attention is on you. I think that anxiety that one feels can open up deeper discussions on vigilance and surveillance in today’s society.

November 20, 2017November 20, 2017

Image Sound and Memories Process and Research

When I first thought about memory and the idea of portraying that through space/physical settings, I wanted to do something personal like my house. When I heard that the story can be told from any object, I thought about a few ideas:

Being a cereal box at the lowest shelf of the supermarket (interesting to see the legs of people: a child’s, a woman’s etc.)
Telling in the POV of a memory itself: a girl has another ‘copy’ of herself which is her memories and she pushes her memories away (for some reason: don’t want to remember her heartbreak, wants to let go of someone etc.) but embraces her (memories her) to be part of herself in the end
Being a peephole/door
Use apples to describe a relationship that derails and ends up badly, with the girl concluding that “you were the apple of my eye” (punnnnnn)

I decided to use the peephole as I thought it would be interesting to say a story from the pov of an inanimate object. Furthermore, when I thought of memories as a theme, I came to want to do on the idea of letting go of someone and realised that this story is always told either from the pov of the person being left behind or the pov of the person leaving. I realised that by being a peephole and using the door as a metaphor for the threshold between reality and memories would be quite powerful. The threshold is between reality and memories such that once someone crosses over, that someone chooses to ceases to be a part of your reality and to confine his or her presence to only memories.

I needed a house with a peephole and had to borrow my friend’s.

When I first started, I didn’t think carefully enough about the peephole’s Pov and realised that if she is to tape up the pov the peephole has to be able to
“turn around” and see the inside of the house (at first I envisioned the images to only show the corridor/ a little of the inside of the house).

The first house I went to, I didn’t take any sounds as it was too noisy and I thought I could borrow another house for the sounds but it didn’t sound right to me so I took the images at the second house instead.

House 1 pics:

House 2 pics

For sounds, I took mostly ambience noise.

Ambience noise in this work symbolises the world outside and when she fully closes the door, you can hear the ambience noise decrease then snuff out completely, giving off a sense of isolation and loneliness.

I also shamelessly asked whoever I could to send me sounds of their footsteps as I wanted it to sound natural.

October 10, 2017October 10, 2017

4D project 2: At the Threshold of Memories

This audio visual journal revolves around the recovery of a girl from losing a loved one, told in the point of view of a peephole.

September 19, 2017

Pre Seminar Questions

Sound is vibrations. It is that which can be heard by the human ear. It can be created from anything. Is silence a sound then, if it is the absence of sound? Can silence be music then (as John Cage had put forth in his art), if it is not a sound?
Most fundamentally, sound has been used for communication, to convey ideas and expressions, even time (church bells signal Christians to recite their prayers etc.) Sound has been used as a form of entertainment (different genres of music, concerts, performances, dances etc.). It has been used for therapy. Sounds have been used to consolidate the identity of a culture (national anthems) and hence differentiate a culture from another.
Neuhaus laments that what makes a sound an art today is not its aesthetic value but the fact that it is new. I believe that what makes sound an art is its ability to move people, to evoke emotions from an audience, to convey a message or express an idea as do all other art forms.
DeMarinis stated in the article that there were three sets of sounds that were heard from a phonograph back in the days and that included the intended sound, the background noise and the sound of the working instrument itself. Advancements in audio technology has managed to get rid of/decrease the last two and I think that as technology advanced, our sense of hearing as to background noise has dulled and we often neglect it.

September 5, 2017

Strange Encounter

Si: Her name is derived from the Chinese word ‘撕’, romanised as ‘Si’ meaning ‘tear’ as the Chinese were recorded as the earliest makers of paper.

Li: derived from the word ‘Liquescimus’ meaning ‘melt’ in latin, the language spoken by the Romans who were said to have invented candles

Ai: derived from the word ‘Aistiraha’ meaning ‘break’ in Arabic, the language spoken by the Egyptians who were thought to have produced the first man made glass.

September 5, 2017

Project 1a: strange encounter

Inspiration and research:

The first collage that I found deconstructed the woman’s face, revealing the things that goes on in her mind contrary to her appearance. In the second collage, the skull replacing the face can be inferred as the woman being dead on the inside hence her reflection being that of a skull too. These collages shows a desire to reveal what is on the inside, behind one’s appearance and mask and it reminded me of a book I just read called ‘Norwegian Wood’ by Haruki Murakami. In it, Murakami reminds us that death is often seen as the opposite of life but we often forget that we can carry death within ourselves too even as we live on. Hence, I decided to base my strange world on one in which a person’s inner world is reflected by a person’s outer appearance such that one’s mental and emotional state is not bordered by the skin or can be disguised and distorted by forced expressions.

Characters: Initial drafts

When I thought of one’s inner world, I wanted to bring across the fragility of it. Hence, I searched for materials that break easily and arrived at ceramic and glass. However, I realised that I should highlight the different ways in which people ‘fall apart’ instead as thinking that people ‘break’ in only one way is too narrow minded and constricted. I thought of several materials that fall apart easily-crackers, papers etc. and decided on the portraying the three ways of falling apart as breaking, melting and tearing as I feel like they are the most suitable models of sorts as to the way humans can emotionally collapse or rebuild ourselves.

Characters: Construction

Face:

I used target boards for the face as the term ‘personal attack’ came to me while I was thinking of what makes a person break. It is often the insults or derisive remarks that we receive from another that hurts us. I decided to use the weapons (arrows, pistols and darts) as metaphors for the emotional abuse that we receive from another as they are symbols of violence and brings pain to another. I also like the idea that these are weapons that require a human to operate and hence involves human intention in firing the shots which corresponds to the intentional verbal and emotional abuse that one may inflict on another.

Hair:

I decided to put flowers sprouting from their head (hence covering their hair) as representations of their thoughts and ideas. When I think about one’s mental state, I think about mental health and hence decided to use a living thing as a symbol because it can be unhealthy or healthy. I chose flowers because of their variety and aesthetics. For my characters, Si has a single flower while Ai has a bunch of flowers and Li has flowers popping out here and there. I did it as so because I wanted to represent the different styles of thought that people can have-Si: narrow minded, one track kind of thinking (singular flower), Ai: very orderly and organised thoughts (same kind of flowers are in a bunch), Li: creative, imaginative (some blossoming, some not, different kinds of roses shows diversity and variety).

Body

For Si, I used materials that tear namely paper and fabric. I initially thought of only using paper and tissue paper which is the white paper in the collage below. However, I also wanted to give her another level of durability and strength hence the fabric and thus driving at the idea that some parts of us collapse easier than others.

For Li, I used candle and ice as they both melt. Another suggestion I had was snow but I wanted more strength to the material as ice is more solid. This may sound contradictory as I wanted to drive the idea that some parts of us are weaker than others but using ice reinforces the idea that some people can easily rebuild themselves which is the focal point of using materials that melt for her body. The streak of fire and the contrasting image of ice shows conflict.

For Ai, I combined the ceramic and vase from my previous drafts into one body. As ceramic is opaque but glass is transparent, it also gives this character a duality in which some parts of her are clearly fleshed out and other parts still reserved and hidden.

Through them, I highlighted the idea that we all fall apart differently as glass and ceramic breaks once they’re met with force. Gravity can do the trick and no other external force is required. Also, it is hard to restore them back to their original state, piecing them back together will most likely be futile as they will fall apart again. Hence, Ai demonstrates the most brittle of humans. For Si, paper and fabric tears but that only happens with an external force (a hand or a sharp tool to cut and rip) suggesting a higher level of strength. Also, paper can be taped back and fabric stitched back to its original state and it will hold, definitely longer than glass and ceramic pieced back but there will be scars and marks of one having fallen apart, indicating slow recovery, bitterness and the haunting of painful memories. For Li, ice and candle melts not at once but slowly with an external force (fire). However, they can easily be restored without any marks and hence implies speedy recovery and forgiveness.

Improvements:

I would have created male characters instead as I feel that the fragility of men has been underrepresented in media with the constant portrayal of men as masculine and chauvinistic. Suicide rates for men has been increasing and researches have pointed out the repression of emotions as one of the main reason why. Hence, I should have used male characters as a statement to rally for males to openly reveal their brittleness and express their negative emotions without the need to feel embarrassed or ashamed. On the other hand, women have often been represented as fragile and inferior and my work here just serves to reinforce that. (I’m so guilty I’m sorry)

I had a lot of fun and reflected a lot while doing these!

August 21, 2017

Research

Waldemar Strempler

Collage I DID 2013

https://stremplerart.tumblr.com/post/66699205859/collage-i-did-2013-waldemar-strempler-tumblr

What captivates me in this collage is the destabilization of our perception of death. The expectation of a woman’s face (also in the mirror) being let down by the skeletal face replacing hers and her reflection implies that she is dead inside as skeletons typically symbolizes death. The rose in full bloom and the bird in motion, are two objects that are very vivid and charged with vitality. They are full of life and this contrasts with the skeleton and reinforces the idea that she is dead inside. It suggests that death is not just a destination and that we all carry death inside of us. Skeletons are the symbols of pirates hence suggesting danger and despite so, the bird heads towards the bright flower. This reflects our tendency to chase after something we are attracted to even if we see the danger in doing so.

Loui Jover

Deconstructed Freida

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/35325178306653340/

Looking at this collage, I was captivated by the fact that even though the woman’s face is being split up, I was not as disorientated as I thought I would be. Instead, I found it pleasing to the eyes. There is somewhat a sense of harmony and cohesion despite the deconstruction. This is probably because the woman is looking to her right and we can tell so because although her face is deconstructed, the way her pupils are at the far left of her eye indicates the direction she is looking at. The parting of her face invites us into her inner world previously bordered by her appearance. What resembling branches heading in many directions and the curved arrows contrasts her inner world and her portrayal and gives insight into her frenzied and vivid mind that her calmly looking to the right would not give.