tantay – Page 3 – OSS: Recording life digitally

#FYP | The Birth of the Chimera?

[Updated 11/6/17 with clearer diagrams]

Moving on!
After feedback from Prof Randall that perhaps I could concentrate on the concept-building for now, I decided to do so. Without a clear and strong foundation in the conceptual phrase, it might hinder progress.

As FYP’s duration lasts almost a year, it was important to find a project that I am willing to stick with and spoke to me on a personal level. Hence, I charted out topics and areas that I was interested in exploring first.

My Art Preferences
Several topics that I am interested in/want to include in my project:
✓ Repetitive visuals
✓ Playfulness
✓ Surreal, immersive
✓ Change in perception and understanding of object through differing viewpoints
☓ Projection-only visuals (dislike the simple sensor-feedback loop)
☓ Light ‘sculptures’
☓ Lack of meaningful interaction

I compared 2 installations which I visited personally, and tried to weed out ideas which I liked/disliked to better understand my own preferences.

Lee Yun Qin’s Moonflower and Ran Hwang’s Becoming Again; Coming Together

Ran Hwang | Becoming Again; Coming Together

Both Hwang and Lee’s installations were instagram-friendly, and limited in interaction. However, my appreciation greatly varied amongst both works: while I really loved Hwang’s installation, I felt that Lee’s Moonflower was muted, and limited in visual appreciation and engagement value. It also felt more static – perhaps due to the fixated nature of the project, rather than Hwang’s, being more attractive as it relied on other mediums such as projections, sound and assorted visuals.

In addition, I felt that Hwang’s installation had a strong overarching theme over it, in terms of the subject matter and theme. It later contributed to how I appreciated the work, and created meaning about it for myself. Thus, I knew that I did not want to rely on a purely visuals ‘show’ for my own project.

Visualising my Interests

Mindmap: Underlying Ideas and Aspirations

In summary, I thought that this concept was really important and clearly what I want to include in the work:

Basically, I wanted something familiar, yet unusual enough to capture attention, It would give off an eerie level of familiarity. The work will not be too rich in meaning, but enough to provoke thoughts. At the same time, I was reminded very strongly of memory, that ‘what you see is not what it is, but rather a memory of how you want to interpret it, or how you expect it to be’. There is a gap between reality and perception. This is one aspect that I hope to imbue into my project.

The Chimera

The Chimera was, according to Greek mythology, a monstrous fire-breathing hybrid creature of Lycia in Asia Minor, composed of the parts of more than one animal.
– Wikipedia

I thought of the chimera, which was a good character to describe how I see myself and my artwork. As someone who studied science in my pre-tertiary school, later went on to work myriads of part-time job and joined different club activities, I saw myself as a Jack of all trades. Similarly, the chimera, a fearful juxtaposition of different animals, was also a hybrid like me.

My project will after all, be a reflection of who I am both as a person and as an artist. As such, I want to be able to extrude and magnify this quality within my artwork, perhaps of it having different facades to it.

More Technicalities

Medium-wise I’m still a little hesitant in going past the installation format. Of course, I’m still open to any format, but find it hard to present my idea in another way for now. Several ideas I had include placing the artworks into photoframe and create a gallery-esque booth, else creating a gallery ‘haunted house’ version. I also did think of creating a chimera machine-sculpture lookalike but did not like the idea of a contained person.

With reference to the above picture on the right, the thicker lines suggest greater desire to work with the linked object. With FYP being the final and grandest art project I have ever attempted in my life, I want to be able to end it on an ambiguous note – creating hope (through thoughtful questions), yet not finalising on its outcome. Perhaps I would create grander works after this, or perhaps not. The future is unknown.

#FYP | Idea Conceptualisation

Time left to complete FYP!

This first post marks the start of my #FYP journey. For a start, I aim to cement the idea and have a general direction of the working steps by the end of my summer holiday (end July). The entire set of weekly fyp progress reports/updates will take on a more casual prose and ‘info-dumping’ style, intended to help me to consolidate all my thoughts and information. But then again, I’ll see how it goes.

Initial Idea:

My Initial Idea(fyp_05_2017) comprises of a series of hooded strobe lights, which can be swivelled to change the direction of the strobe lighting. It’s intention was to deconstruct our exterior space through the way we see, and create a different experienced environment. At the same time, a corresponding abstract, static sound will accompany the installation, beating according to the strobe light flashes. The sound and light installation will restart and replay in a loop after every ~8 minutes.

Project Status (so far..)
My initial idea did utilise my preferred medium and topic: of light, and space. However, comments given by various professors during the final presentation ranged from that the project was being very much fleshed out, and I would need to push it further. Also, I felt like I have not utilised the medium to its maximum potential, and was just scraping the surface of its usage. One pertinent question was also of me needing to test out the actual set-up in the actual space, as aesthetics was extremely important in pushing the atmospheric feel of the piece.

Aspirations for FYP
Honestly speaking, I felt detached to the project, and it didn’t speak to me on a personal level yet. I have been struggling in finding what I like recently; I felt like my tastes have changed. A year back, I would have liked to work on this but perhaps not now.

Through working on this idea, I realised that I wanted something more tangible, something that you actually hold and touch. At the same time, I still wanted it to be an experience, but go beyond an experience of sights and sounds. I wanted touch, which I felt was missing when I went to similar-sorts of installations that relied on mainly projections. I wanted it to still remain immersive, engulfing the entire space.

I’m going back to the drawing board, and consider picking out an overarching topic for this installation, perhaps it might be easier to approach it that way.

Research
My research took me on field trips to actual exhibits on-going at the ACM and the National Gallery. This comes at a great time where really interesting exhibits were being brought in by the museums.

I went to the Joseon Korea exhibit at the Asian Civilisations Museum where I saw this piece that struck me with its beauty.

Becoming Again: Coming Together by Ran Hwang

I loved how Hwang played cleverly together with the physical, projection lighting and shadows, and realised this was what I wanted to similarly portray in my own work – blending different mediums. The mixed media artwork. The columns of the museum were covered with curtain-strings to form a projection wall for the Joseon couple to be projected. The wall where the flowers and the phoenix were projected on was made from acrylic/glass (?) sheets pinned with flowers. In this organised chaos she manages to create a flowerbed.

Hwang’s work made me realise the limitations of my thinking: that I was far too stuck on creating flat spaces to project light on. I’ve got to test out different materials that I may be using soon after finalising the concept. In addition, Hwang’s choice of materials also reflects and ties in closely (through symbolism) of the subject. Perhaps it is a technique that I could adopt in choosing my materials.

2. Homogenizing and Transforming World by Teamlab

I also popped by Teamlab’s artwork at the National Gallery.

The same exhibit was shown at the National Gallery Singapore

To me, this artwork felt similar to my intention for fyp, yet I felt like something was missing. Was it that the idea (of touching an object for it to affect surrounding objects) was too watered down? Visuals-wise it was a definite win, but interaction-wise I felt that something was missing. Interaction was indeed missing but also not required in Hwang’s above work. However, in this artwork, it was pertinent as part of the input factor and feedback to the audience.

Perhaps going on a weekday where there were little audience affected how I enjoyed the work, as the communal play factor was lacking. The balls could be there as a medium, enhancing the mechanism of play or mediating for play between the audience.

Thoughts and how to proceed on
Visiting these artworks have made me slightly clearer about the setup and possibilities available for my artwork. While I may still be stuck at the ideation process, I would be exploring more of the technical aspects the following week. Here’s my game plan for the following week:

Sound (to research more on sound, and learn how to create/tweak sound other than just cropping and altering the notes)
Read up on how to do projection mapping (to explore options)
Build up on idea – will need more time to consolidate and chart out what I envision

Cascade no. 2

Installation location was at ADM level 1 stairs (directly in front of the lift)

Overview
Cascade no. 2 is a continuation of the analog version of Cascade, but utilising different type of strings – aka rubber bands. Intended for audiences to pull and interact with, the elastic bands are meant to generate sound feedback, which would be more processed the further one stretches the bands.

However, I altered the structure of the initial concept as pulling sideways is a more practised movement than pulling it downwards. Pulling the rubber bands from underneath would also cause the elastic bands to pull back and jump around, potentially messing my strings. Hence, the sideways arrangement of the final project is more idealised for both restricting rubber band elastic feedback/movement and adapted for used human gestures.

Rubber bands were tied to the pole, where sensors were fastened to

Reflections
Prof feedback-ed that this project might be an instance of too many details, whereby it could be further simplified yet bring across a more ‘purified’ message. I wanted each band to sound their own unique soundtrack, which instead made the patch more complicated. I also intended for the feedback sound to be more in tune with the vibrations (and hence more responsive), instead of just relying on changing the speed. However, I was not able to produce these in this piece. These are simple details, but yet were exceedingly crucial for this project to be successful. I should have tried it out earlier, and ruminated more on the different types of options for this project – eg. recording the physical twang sound and manipulating it instead of using a pre-recorded sound – perhaps, this would strengthen the linkage of sound to object, and increase responsiveness of the project.

Lingering Butt Sounds / Creating a space

A group project by Nathanael, Esmond, Yi Xian and Tania.

The chairs have been wrapped with plastic! When the plastic comes into contact with another object (person’s butt, or item placed on the chair), crinkling plastic sounds are generated. This sound is then recorded real-time and processed, and immediately heard through speakers placed at the side of the chairs.

Act III | The Death [Updated 17/4/17]

It is night, and somehow, the air is heavy with sorrow. She comes out for one last time, but her heart is torn between returning to the 2nd space, or staying in the real 1st space. However, she accidentally destroys her portal-frame on her way out: effectually fully closing the way she manages to flow in between worlds. She panics, for she is stuck, and she remains the sole being of a product of both worlds.

Isolated, she circumambulates around the only space she knows. She finishes up the whole of the broken, and realises why; she herself has been destroying her space with the X (close tab) on her hand. Her own existence is unstable – she does not exist in the real world. Thus, she marks her own finale: she X-es herself from the real world.

Act III: The DeathShe is now free, present in the real space! But what is she to do now??? Feel free to comment, or participate! (Part 3 of final project broadcast)

Posted by Tania Tay on Thursday, 13 April 2017

Sequence	Symbolism
Crawls out of frame	Reappearance into the real world
Accidentally X-es the screen	Destroys the portal between worlds
Circumambulation	Marking the end of the season’s finale; in searching for the end repetitively

Act II | The Birth [updated 17/4/17]

Screenshot of broadcast [Act II: The Birth]

Tania Tay of the second space finally gets out! She escapes the digital world, and starts to explore her surroundings excitedly, charmed by the temptations of the real world. However, she starts getting bored, and is suddenly drawn to the water, where she cleanses herself in a water purification ritual.

She wants to continue exploring, but later realises the sheer uselessness of life. She tries to seek feedback from her ‘hometown’ (aka the online world), later giving up and returning to where she came from.

Act II: The Birth

Posted by Tania Tay on Thursday, 6 April 2017

Sequence	Symbolism
Climbing out of frame	Literal entrance into the real world
Water Purification Ceremony	An entrance into the world, washing away all traces of the past

Act I | The Awakening (Bubbling Unhappiness)

After the initial broadcast of Act I, Prof Randall and Sun Yi suggested that I include switching of tabs within the computer screen, rather than leaving it static only with the Facebook page. I agreed, as it would add variation and further fuel the narration that Tania Tay of the second space is fighting a stronger, more ominous greater power.

Here is the re-filming: Click here

Light and Sound Experience

The head is stuck into a box, for an immersive light and sound experience
Software: Arduino, MaxMsp, Ableton Live
Music Credits: NoMundoFiorella EP
Completed 28/3/2017

Reflections
– In synchronising lights and sounds: there is a slight interval delay between signalling and lighting the strips, hence when matching the lights with the sounds, the signalling on Ableton may need to be slightly slower or faster than than music.

At certain positions, I failed to realise this, resulting in slightly uncoordinated lighting and music only realised during the actual setup.

– In the ending sequence where the lighting turns blue: Due to the close proximity between the projected surface and the led strip, variations in lighting levels for the higher intensity lighting was hard to differentiate by the human eye.

To this, I should have lowered the lighting levels so that the difference between a lower level lighting and the higher level lighting would be more distinct and differentiable.

– I would also have loved to expand the size of the box accommodate the entire human body, and to create a more immersive experience.

Conclusion
After this exercise I have widened my sights to varying types of light shows, and might want to further explore this for my fyp.

FYP Proposal: WOA (working title)

Refining the details and more thoughts

Project Outline
The project will focus on fostering an experience within a space, instead of the interaction at this point of time. Ultimately, I would still want to include some degree of interaction but will focus on creating the experience first.

With regards to the artistic direction, it will remain minimalist, stripped down to the ‘element’. The project’s light projection will now project planes of light parallel to a human body.

Conceptualised version of light projection (rough sketch)

Above: a small snippet of the visualised light projection; the light rays will form walls which are solid, yet the walls ‘curve’ around the viewers like a maze. Repetition of the light waves will be conducted throughout the entire space, to create a visual depth.

The light projections will now include coloured lights, to further push across a visual depth. (Under consideration: allow viewers to toggle with colour filters and change the colours).

After more research, the project will reference the following artists to better reflect its ideal:

James Turrell, Breathing Light (2013)

Turrell’s Breathing Light effectively creates an atmospheric space with an even lighting to promote a surreal, out of the world experience. Similarly, the intention for the project is to achieve a similar atmospheric condition, of creating an entirely different, immersive, contained experience.

Despite similarities in medium, my project would instead integrate additional dimensions, whereby the possibilities for variation of lighting schemes are maintained. Despite that, it would be good to examine the visitor’s reactions and use it as basis to predict how the audience would react for my project.

Parallels by NONOTAK (2015) and White Canvas by Cocolab (2016)

Both Parallels and White Canvas present more suitably the idea and outcome the project wishes to achieve, albeit with differences. The idea of repetitive forms hailed from White Canvas, but I wish to further simplify the light forms hence the usage of planes. At the same time, I feel that the usage of projected light planes can further increase the ‘wholeness’ and the large scale of the project.

Technicalities
As per the previous update, I would like to harness projectors onto the roof tentage of the truss room, and the projection will hail downwards.

The smoke machine still remains, as it contributes to better visuals of the light rays.

Concept
I am still exploring related concepts but have shortlisted several ideas that might relate to the project: the black hole (in space), stormy weather, haze.

Ongoing Concerns
– Would have to test out the lighting to determine the outcome of the lights
– Of not having visitors stay beyond a short period to experience the project (trying to further interactivity in the later half)
– Would prefer to integrate more analog elements within the artwork, instead of pure projections

Act I | The Awakening [updated]

Act I: The Awakening (First peek out)

Act I: The Awakening

Act I | The Awakening (First peek out)// Where am I? Could I get out from this space?

Posted by Tania Tay on Wednesday, 29 March 2017

Tania Tay of the facebook profile suddenly gains a small glimpse into the outside world. She is stunned, yet decides that she wants to come out. Tania Tay continually screams as her world shatters, and she desperately tries to escape, but no one hear her cries save for one.

But she remains trapped inside.

Act I: The Awakening (Bubbling Unhappiness)

Act I: The bubbling unhappiness

Act I | The Awakening (Bubbling Unhappiness)—————————-I'm leaving this space very, very soon! Just hear me come!

Posted by Tania Tay on Wednesday, 5 April 2017

She manages to come out, once again, but this time round, she has to fight against the other components on the screen itself to get her voice out. Here, she experiences increasing unhappiness about her life in the media world, revouches her intention to leave her world, and states that she would be coming out soon.

Act I: The Awakening (Bubbling Unhappiness) is a re-filming of part I, but functions as a follow-up and build-up anticipating the following Act II.