artist

Jenny Holzer, Please Change Beliefs (1997)

Upon entering the site, I was quite confused at what was the site about with the website changing a new quote every few seconds and the title of the work “Please Change Beliefs”. After exploring around, I realised that this website is about truism and how the public can vote and change the truism they believe in.

After clicking on the truism, I was brought to the next page where I can vote for the various truism that I believe in.

After choosing the various truisms, I was brought to the results page where you can see the number of votes for each truism. I felt a sense of familiarity due to its similarity to various social media like Instagram where users can hold polls to engage with their followers and poll sites like doodle where users can choose a date that they are free in this coordinates in group meetups.

Looking at all the quotes, I can’t help but curate imaginary scenarios in my head to form up the circumstances of each truism and to judge the justifiability of the quotes. This work intrigues me to ponder over whether our beliefs are facts and does it really hold true to everyone. For example, “Even your family can betray you”. While I can’t relate fully to this quote as I did not experienced this before, I can imagine the circumstances that this can happen and hence, this truism holds true.

Adding on, I always see art in the form of visual, performances and audio. With people defining this metascape as a internet art, I was confused at how should one define art? Technically, it does put forth an idea and thinking that is truism and it engages the audience with its input of one’s own truism and voting system, which parallels with the idea of most artworks. But the unique way of representation of this art piece really intrigues me and challenged the boundary of our definition of art. In my opinion, I am still in a dilemma, not due to me disliking or rejecting this work, but I find it interesting and excited that I am trying to evolve my own thinking to appreciate and understand internet art and many different forms of art. I am still in the phase of picking up new things as I go along and understanding the concept and gist of the art scene.

References:

https://art.colorado.edu/hiaff/review4da6.html?id=116&cid=7
https://elmcip.net/creative-work/please-change-beliefs
http://gallery9.walkerart.org/midobject.html?id=10604

Please Change Beliefs: An Analysis

Curating Ideas

Being someone who likes to try new things, when given this project, I found myself to quickly think of these few ideas.

Barista
Florist
Spy
Watermelon Farmer
Doctor
Culture Research Artist

Originally, I was very inspired by the Chinese and Japanese art culture and wanted to have all my 4 designs to be of the same job, Culture Research Artist.

However, after doing some research and thinking process, I find that I should incorporate more diversity into my designs and compositions. Hence, my 4 jobs are Barista, Florist, Watermelon Farmer and Doctor.

CUP NOODLE DESIGNER

My first thought was to do coffee art, hence I wanted my concept to be a barista. However, I have done coffee art before and least to say that it didnt work out well for me the previous time. Hence, I’ve decided to scrap off the idea of coffee art.

Moving on, I was quite inspired by this photo I came across online.

I wanted the milk swirls to form letters however, I tried to mimic the process with nail polish, but it turns out to be a mess and din’t work out too. 🙁

Therefore, I’ve decided to scrap off the idea of being a barista.

As I was thinking of a job to replace this, I had an idea one day while eating cup noodle and was quickly reminded of a cup noodle museum in Japan whereby people could customise their cup noodle according to their preference. Hence, I came up with the idea of being a CUP NOODLE DESIGNER.

I tried using watercolour for this but the colour didn’t turn out as well I thought.

Therefore, I thought of manipulating the words on the the and use illustration for this.

PLANT SCULPTURE ARTIST

My initial job was to be a FLORIST. But I must say this job took up the greatest time and part of my project and I spent alot of effort on this job.

I used mainly script writings initially as it has a more feminine and floral theme to it and gives the readers a more familiar feeling which is what the job entitles.

In the end, I changed my job yet again as the aesthetics of these does not meet up with what I wanted.

Again, I came across a moss writings online and wanted to mimic the style of it.

Therefore, I changed my job to PLANT SCULPTURE ARTIST. This time, I wanted to be experimental, hence, I bought some fake flowers and tried to create something using them.

WATERMELON FARMER

To create something out of watermelon was relatively easy to me as really like watermelons(HAHA) and I quickly have an idea on what I wanted to do.

However, after consultation with Shirley, she felt that I should emphasize the watermelon on the words and suggest I incorporate the text on the watermelon and I proceeded on to making some changes.

DOCTOR

As I was very inspired to do something like a top-down flatlay photography for this, I went to do some research on it. As I do not have a stethoscope, I used photoshop and collage style for this.

I did different text by hand and used photoshop to add into my collage.

Research Critique: Please Change Beliefs (1997)

2D II Project 1: Que Sera Sera Process