Project 3 I Research

Bright Button is an interactive wall installation where coloured pins are attached with a different word on it to describe a mood. People could take these pins that reflect their mood for that day and pin it on them. I like how ‘flexible’ colours are used in this context where it transfers the value from one place to another.

Nature Matching System is an eye catching installation due to its bright swatches of which is used to attract attention towards food choice people should make as these are the colours of fruits and vegetables.

“a system of Braille for the colour inclined” is a colour codification code that uses colour dots to represent alphabets in text blocks for the colour inclined. The result was unique and intriguing!

Drogues caught my attention for it’s use of illusion just like the effect I did for Project 1. In this case, the illusions reflect the effects of the different kinds of drugs.

Another example is a small glossary of 20 Words of Design.

My Individual Dictionary is pretty cool as it is illustrates personal interpretation of words using objects and colours. To me, this somehow is an expanded and more detailed version of emoji.

The Lexicon of Unconsciousness is a rather creative approach towards questioning questions. It describes the lexicon book as the brain towards questions.

Slanguage as the title proposed, it is a mini book on slangs. The pages are rather interesting as it reminded me of those paper flyers pasted on lamp posts and boards with tearable telephone numbers at the bottom of the paper.

Project 3 I Mindmap, Proposed Idea & Moodboard

Based on the 50 words that I’ve came up with, more than half of them are metaphoric representation of me and I plan to use the idea of metaphor as part of the project together with the word Colourful, which I’ve chosen among the 50 words to expand and explore on the possibilities.

Colourful encompasses a variety of definition that includes the psychological, physiological, scientific and other aspects of which I would like to focus on perception, under the psychological aspect. Gender, age and culture contributes to how individuals perceive and react towards colours. Though colours give off specific moods (e.g. red = danger, active), personal emotions, memories and experiences does affect how one feel and think about that particular colour(s).

Thus, my proposed idea is to create a Lexicon of Colours using personal interpretation and perception of colours and represent it in a metaphorical way that would reflect my personality. Basically, it is a vocabulary that uses colours to express my perspective as an asian adult. The aim of this is to show how colours play a part in the psychological aspect of life, in terms of personal preferences and perception. The purpose is to communicate the idea that different colour brings different degree of reaction based on the feeling attached to it and therefore, individuals may share the similar or different views as/from me.

Pinterest – Mood board as to how I could present this idea..

Project 1 I Mock Up

Mock up of the 5 posters. I realised that one of the effect works slightly different from the rest and thus, I would like to change the effect to dots instead of applying the same effect to another poster.

The visibility between being placed under spotlight and not under it is rather different. (It’s easier to see without direct spotlight.)

Adjusted the stroke to make it less visible

Project 1 I Illusion Research and Experimentation

Sourced for some inspiration from Shigeo Fukuda’s illusion works where he uses typography as a space/form to create illusions. One thing I’ve realised is that he often uses hands and legs to create such illusions and one of the reasons I think is because both have two rather straight lines which makes it easier to connect.. He also played with plane lines to create different perspective/illusions. Such effect instantly make me think of Monument Valley, which is an optical puzzle game that has this effect but in a 3D version. (It’s super addictive plus it has very nice and simple graphics!)

Meanwhile, printed one of the design to test out how well the illusion would work on paper and I realised that lighting plays a part in the contribution towards how well it can be seen. When it is placed directly under the light, the text can’t be seen as clearly (up closed) as compared to it being placed somewhere slightly far from the direct light. Another thing is, the text can be seen rather easily thus I’ve adjusted it to make it harder to see.

Took some pictures of the first experiment (A2 size, without the adjustment yet).

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.