UPDATED Quantam Entanglement (Mindmap, Research & Process)

When I first received the brief and did some research, the first thing that popped out to me was Quantam Entanglement as I found it interesting how two matters can affect each other across distance even if they are not in contact with each other.

I then branched out to the more physical ideas like Pairs of things or the Night and Day cycle, things that have opposing ends etc. before going into metaphors and literature like Jane Eyre vs. Bertha Mason, Prince and the Pauper and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

The last one struck me because I think that it’s very representative of Quantam Entanglement where when you have a good side of that person, you’re bound to have a bad side of that person and if Jekyll is good then naturally Hyde is bad and if Hyde is good then Jekyll is bad.

Hence, I decided to explore Quantam Entanglement via Jekyll and Hyde.

At first, I decided on the keywords: Self vs. The Other Self and Chaos vs. Order and decided on the images of claws, human teeth and footprints.

I wanted to show the contrast between the monster self and the human self hence the differing sizes and shapes of the monster paw vs. the human hand or the human teeth vs. the monster fangs.

After consulting with Ina, she recommend that I used a grid and when I was trying to do so, I realised that these shapes are very hard to fit into a grid and that this was too obvious and not abstract enough.

I also wanted to try linocutting to make the mark as I think that there is something raw about linocutting that is representative of the rawness of human nature that the story of Jekyll & Hyde was trying to explore.

So instead of the sketches that I have I decided to come up with new ones and explored the idea of a ‘monster holding a test tube’ to show both the harmony and the contrast between the rationality of science and the lack of rationality of a monster that is balanced out perfectly in this figure of Hyde/Jekyll.

I then digitised them and came up with more variations.

But the grids are still kind of rough as I wasn’t really sure of how to deal with overlapping shapes until the class where our classmates kindly taught us how to (thank you so so much!!!)

Ina mentioned that from the previous drafts, the mark looked too separated from the circle so I tried to merge them more in the first pic and I found that they look a little too boring so I omitted a part of it also to show the emptiness or lack of rationality that Jeykll embodies.

The last mark with the four square is supposed to imitate traditional chinese stamps with traditional words like these:

https://chinese5art.wordpress.com/category/chinese-fine-art/

and Ina also mentioned that the first draft looks too ‘floaty’ so I merged them more into the borders and they show the sequential turning of Jekyll into Hyde with the number of claws increasing.

With linocutting, the first attempt was not too successful as I tried to use the marks to bring out the shapes and forgot that since I am printing it by flipping it and pressing it onto a piece of paper, I should cut it on the reverse side but I did not so I got this

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And I realised that instead of marking the shapes I should mark the outside to bring out the shapes so I tried it again (and this time reversing it). I also referenced a linocut artist Peter Nevins whose use of curves to frame and shape figures is very masterful and I feel like would help me frame my shapes well too

One artist I referenced was Peter Nevins: https://www.peternevins.com/products

‘Grow’ by Peter Nevins

‘Write’ by Peter Nevins

For the more squarish and geometric one, I use curved lines to frame the curvatures and straight lines to frame the straight areas and formed a sort of weaving pattern to bring out the shapes.

For the circular mark, I used curves to frame the the shapes and I find the weaving pattern very interesting as it kind of exemplifies the chaos yet order (which was one of the keywords I wanted to play with) of the science that Jekyll was experimenting with and that was aligned with Quantam Entanglement.

These are the printing process:

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I’ll experiment more with linocutting in the week to come!

After consultation, Ina mentioned that I should use reference color scheme for the colors that I used to differentiate the various shapes to use the pathfinder tool on.

These are the pictures that I referenced:

And I applied the referenced colors to the shapes here.

And for this too.

After using the pathfinder tool, I got these:

And started to do more linocutting. I decided to practice some basics first so to do some mark making first:

then I carved out the mark that I wanted which from the previous consultations, Ina mentioned that I should work on mark 2. I also felt that mark 2’s curves + straight edges gave me more to play with and I can explore the co-existence and harmony of both weaved curves and weaved straight lines that plays to the idea of two opposing things coming together (reinforces Quantam Entanglement/ Jekyll and Hyde).

And after some printing errors (where the ink is either too clumpy or too faded):

This was the final one that worked well :))

After consultation, Ina also mentioned for me to frame the design within a circle. Initially, she suggested doing so through digitisation but I decided that I wanted to keep it raw so I decided to linocut a circular frame first then digitise the two marks together.

Here’s the circular frame carving!

Here are the marks it produced and I chose the last one as it is the darkest and most complete circle!

I first put a clipping mask on the mark with the test tube to frame it with a circle.

Then mask out the circular mark from the image of it.

Then combine the both and used clone tool to clean it up so that the edges don’t look too abrupt or clean (to keep the rawness of the linocut)

And I also cleaned up the blotches as the bottom left to get the final mark!

From this project, I realised that by drawing parallels between science with literature, I also found the differences between the both. While in quantam entanglement, when one particle spins in a clockwise direction, the other is sure to spin in an anti-clockwise direction, it is not so clear in the example of Jekyll and Hyde. Yes, Hyde is evil and Jekyll is good and hence the parallel but the novel also raises questions as to whether Hyde is completely bad and if Jekyll is completely good and so this poses a difference between science and literature. While the quantam entanglement theory has been widely debated, it is mostly proven true and the theory itself, though doubted, has very little room for differing perceptions and versions of it.  Meanwhile in literature, it is up to the reader’s perception of the story to come to a conclusion if Hyde or Jekyll is completely good or bad (in other words, the direction in which these two particles spin and the conclusion can be entirely ambiguous in which Jekyll and Hyde both spin in both directions).

Hence, this exploration makes me conclude that as much as science is definitive and literature is open-ended (the opposite), they are both ways in which Man explores the world and neither is above the other. Also, perhaps the juxtaposition of science vs. literature also runs in parallel with quantam entanglement in which these two very differing subjects are interdependent on one another. The world cannot be entirely explored in definitive lenses, all would be too rigid and much beauty would be lost. It can also not be explored in entirely flexible viewpoints as we need some facts to ground us. The rigidity of science is enhanced by the open endedness of literature and vice versa hence this exploration, when thought further is really an extrapolation of Quantam Entanglement to the broader subjects of science and literature.