When the Ego assignment was first brought out, I knew I would at least address the duality of the realist and the idealist in me. But how I was to do that was the question. I initially started out with more literal representations of the ideal and real with the ideal of nature and the city. Where nature is ideal to me, and the real being the things that I face in human society that I find hard to agree with.

So I started looking at double exposure and attempted basic ways of mixing these together.

After this I felt that I didn’t quite hit the point of colour theory and decided I should take a look at these theories and internalize them more before moving on. Then from that, I decided to change my compositions and to choose complementary contrasts to represent the uneasy struggle between the real and ideal in me.

I also thought about symbols that represented the real and the ideal. So I googled images as usual… and found that one symbol of reality was the symbol of an eye which made me think about the eye being the symbol of the reality that i witness around. If you read my ego reflections you’ll understand what the symbol of the eye means.

I also found a yin and yang kind of symbol. And then it made me reflect and I realized that a part of me wishes to merge the real and ideal to create balance. So from that I knew what I desired to be, that is to be balanced between what is real and what is ideal. Hence the clenched hand on the ideal half of me

The idea of the Plus versus the Times was also developed through my reflection of merging the ideal and real. Merging, is what I desire. And desire is from a want of the ideal. So I found that the nature Plus and the Times really effectively encompass the value of an imperfect me and a unified me.

This is further expressed in my final decision of the colours red and blue after researching on Goethe who talked about warm and cool colours. This also effectively linked to triadic harmony of primary colours of red, blue and yellow. But I will come to that later. It is for the reason of leading to triadic harmony that for this panel, I used these two colours as temperature contrasts instead of using complementary contrasts.

Next is the equation of a better me. [ __ – __ = a better me]. From my earlier progress posts and from my presentation, you’d know that I put in algebraic representations, making the equation

Me – X = AB(an ideal/better me)

Knowing that there was this thing(X) in the way, I thought hard about what it was. Eventually I was curious to see if math could help me understand what it was. So in my presentation, you would have seen how I eventually turned the equation around to find that X is the inability to naturally unite the ideal and the real ( X = Me – AB ). Nature is what I believe in. Nature, Fate, God, whatever it is, I believe that there is something divine that sets things in place. This would lead me to my last equation. But before getting to that, I had to figure out how to visually represent AB(the ideal/better me). Initially I just put the symbols of the eye and heart together and combined the colours of red and blue to form AB in the equation. Then I found that the colours don’t come together well. So I introduced analogous harmony which blended things rather well, but it was still very warm and very obviously dominant in red because the violet that I had was closer to red than the blue that I had. It was only until a week before submission that I found William Blake.

Blake’s use of triadic harmony made things look very natural. Being from the romantic period, the theme of his paintings were very much inclined to nature and were quite paganistic in his illustration of his own myths.

I really like one of his mythical characters that he created whose name is Los. He represents human creativity. Los is regularly described as a smith. He often carries his hammer which symbolically represents creativity as well as the beating of the human heart. When I read this, I couldn’t help but feel how connected it is to my idea of the ideal being represented as a heart! Okay but im digressing now. The main thing that I referenced from Blake is his use of triadic harmony in making his paintings look natural. So I tried adding in yellow into my compositions of AB to show how it naturally combines red and blue.

My use of triadic harmony also pushed my idea further for my last composition on the glass.

As Joy mentioned about me going further from the cut-out, i then started thinking about building a construction to be able to will light, changing light that passes through the cut-out.

This wasn’t easy as i thought about multiple ways to do this. I had to think about composition and relevance to my idea. Initially my ideas led me to a simpler construction of moving the cut-out across the three colour filters instead. But then i felt that moving the filters would give a far deeper meaning and would tie in with the idea of the subtraction colour wheel. Settling with this idea, I tried ways to see how long the string would hold with ducktape to find the best way to tape it down.   

Then i had to give thought to how time should look like. Staying with the idea of symbols I went with the idea of the hourglass and the eternity symbol. However, construction the cutout for time was a real pain. i failed a couple of times before deciding that i should go with the stainglass idea.

These methods of taping only held well for a couple of hours before slacking. I realised that tape should be applied to the bottom of the string to hold the string up since the weight force is pulling the string down. I also changed the slider from the clip to rolls of paper to reduce the weight as well as to spread the weight of the frame to more areas on the string instead of having the weight have a focal pull on a more concentrated point as how you see in the pictures where the construction used the paper clip.

So putting the three pieces from the last equation together, I then thought that it effectively brought through the idea of the ideal me going through time to me in five years where i dont know what i’ll be. And as much as i can change the colour that i choose to be in, my light and colour depends on the light of Nature/Fate/God as well!

After the presentation, I gathered our class’s feedback and stickies and I saw how my presentation format really added good value to my ideas so I’m really glad that I chose to push my presentation boundaries for this final assignment. It is definitely something new that I’ve learnt and I’m really happy that I’m ending 2D for this semester in such a fresh way in terms of gaining new presentation concepts. I also took in the comment that Joy gave about me having my strengths in research. Its something I will heavily consider and I will aim to develop and branch out into other strengths as well.

I have some thoughts in my mind after Joy’s comment on my OSS update and would like to write it here as a record of my reflection.

After Joy’s comment on my progress, I went to read up on “divine” entities and philosophies on divine illuminations. I also looked at the theory of golden proportions. I’m a little upset that i didn’t get to this earlier because I don’t think I can change much of the presentation format that I’ve planned for my work to be in. But time is as such and I will do with what I have. I will continue reading about this to know more before using it for my works. But reading up a bit on philosophies about the divine and about light, it has given me more perspectives to my work.

Reflecting..

What is “real”, I can never see for myself. No one can see what real really is because reality just exists for us to be in it. Just as how as human beings, we cannot know everything because our senses are limited to what we are able to smell and see and hear… I can only witness what happens around me and that is my reality. Reflecting on myself, this reality that i witness does go against my heart most of the time and that is what I struggle with. And while i struggle with this, reality continues to run. Reality to me, is what Nature sets it out to be. Not that Nature has intentions and gives a fate to how things happen, but “fate” is what Nature is. I am only witnessing the happenings of Nature. Even in human systems, everything is derived from the purest form of what reality is and that is Nature.