Project 1 I Time Mindmap and Proposed Idea

Mindmap

Idea

There are many instances when I feel that time flies very quickly and vice versa (I’m sure there are other people who feels the same way too, just during different moments based on personal experiences). Thus, I decided to explore on Time Perception as I felt it is an interesting topic that most individuals could relate to in general.

Through my research, I found out that human brain is the core towards how we perceive time. When mental impression is created, it brings about temporal illusions and distortions in the perception of time due to various reasons/experiences. There are different forms of temporal illusions such as the kappa effect (the brain expects constant motion), chronostasis (similar to oddball effect where the brain experiences unusual events that requires it to pay more attention and time to process it),emotional states (happy vs bored) and more.

One of the reason as to why individuals might perceived time to be slow is because when the brain receives a lot of new informations, it takes awhile to fully process it. The longer the process is, the longer the perceived time would be. For instance when one experiences a life threatening event, he would record the experience that he receives and processes it. This mental action requires a lot of attention and time thus, he would perceive time to be longer than it really is. Contrariwise, when the brain do not need to process so much new informations, time would be perceived to be faster as the process is faster.

Therefore, my idea is the play of perception through typography to depict time as something subjective towards individual experience base on the action of looking at illusionary typography posters. Some who have come in contact or are familiar with illusion stuff would be able to process it faster than those who did not. The ultimate idea is to show how individuals perceive time differently based on the different informations that they have processed in their brains.

Time Device

Initial materials & Model structure

The idea is to use water pump to generate water to push the cup that is going to be attached onto each side of the windmill.

Process of Making

During the process of making the prototype, we realised that the windmill does not work well and decided to use wooden and plastic sticks to build the main structure instead. We managed to build it and had a test run on it. However, it did not go as well as expected due to the current/power of the water pump and the lightweights of the cups. Thus, we attached small wooden sticks at the bottom of the cups and even reduce the number of cups from 6 to 4 in hopes that it would spin well. Still, it did not work and we decided to try out various angles to position the cups. Due to much trial and error that we’ve done, the tape that we used to secure it was no longer strong enough to hold the entire weight of the structure which includes the water that is poured in the cups. By then, I felt frustrated and disappointed as it did not turn out the way that I’ve imagined it to be. The process was long and tedious and I was not seeing any light at the end of the tunnel.

Last Resort

We decided to just change the material of the entire structure to acrylic instead as it is much sturdier and chances of success is higher than the current one. We managed to laser cut the acrylic and it spins! Like finally.. However, there was a lack in consistency due to the little gaps between the slits that made the water leak. We sealed it with glue and it somehow solved the problem. Yayy!

Final Product

In conclusion, I felt a sense of accomplishment as we managed to make it work by making use of the existing materials that we have. Like what we’ve discussed in class, if we have the chance to improve it, we would change to a better material and maybe even change to a stronger water pump that would allow the wheel to spin faster.

Field Trip Reflection (Time of Others)

Through the visit of Time of Others at Singapore Art Museum, I found some interesting works that caught my attention for its interpretations. One of it is Calendars (2020 – 2096) by Heman Chong where walls of the room are filled with picture calendars. It was rather overwhelming at the initially stage; however as I began to look at it in details, I started to recognized some of the pictures as I’ve been there before (ADM and other public spaces). The placement of images of spaces in relation with the year of the calendar was rather thought provoking. Somehow, I felt like I was in a time machine as I’m looking at pictures of the past yet being at the present and going to the future where the calendar dates. Personally, the idea of time in this context was rather conceptual.

Another work that was rather captivating was Ringo Bunoan’s Endings and No Endings (2013) that utilize pages from the books to interpret time. Endings is where by the last page of many different books are framed individually and randomly arranged together. It seemed to demonstrate the many different possibilities of outcomes and endings that depict the end of time. While No Endings is where books without the last page are piled up against the wall with the titles hidden. Somehow, it enables people to interpret their own beginnings and like the title of the artwork No Endings, the story would go on forever, as there is no THE END page. The idea of playing with time within pages of the books was quite intriguing yet simple at the same time.

Both works – Calendars (2020 – 2096) by Heman Chong and Ringo Bunoan’s Endings and No Endings (2013) interprets time differently based on their own concept as well as perspective. It is interesting to see how each individual artist use different kind of mediums to express and convey the concept of time.