Wang Yinfeng

Assignment 1: Recreating an Old Photo

Preparation: For the first assignment, my main objective is to familiarise with the use of light in the process of photo taking. Thanks for the help by Nadia and Vincent, I spent an enjoyable noon with them recreating the old photo generously offered by Nadia.

Process: For the first step, I observed the direction of the light source from the old photo. I noticed the light most likely projected vertically down suggested by the shades of the trees. Hence I decided to recreate the photo around 11 am when the light is straight up and the contrast is relatively strong.

During the shot, I found an area below the tree and ask Nadia sit in the shade where the light is coming from the back of the top. Nadia is so cooperative that she recreated the same gesture from the old photo and made the whole process easier. With the post editing, I managed to get the similar yellowish tint of the old photo.

Reflection: Because of the unfamiliar of Naida camera’s viewfinder, I adjusted the focal length wrong and it causes the portrait a bit out of focus. I will take this as a lesson learned in future.

4D II PROJECT 3: TIME, SPACE AND BODY – FINAL

ARTISTIC DEVELOPMENT

For the moment I chose to work on this project alone, I decided to seek for my inner peace because it is the only way for me to gain the courage to understand the outside world.

After a long time of struggle, I eventually manage to collect the answer. There are three most important things I need to do to relief my anxiety and depression.

1.Keep hoping.

2.Accept to be ordinary.

3.Self-Forgiveness.

To showcase the development of my mental journey towards this answer. I create a narrative as a form of poem initially.

ARTISTIC STATEMENT

Here is the poem，also my artistic statement：Three Things

First,

breathe with your hope，

when the sun rises every morning.

Let it go，

a handful of regret.

Have a slice of bread,

to swallow your anxiety.

Don’t worry.

No one has passed your future,

or stopped at your presence.

Second,

Don’t fight against your mediocre.

You’ve wasted your adolescence so

be true to yourself.

Indeed,

We all are the same.

We all under the same

the same sun.

Third,

Have a long conversation with yourself.

Record the feelings left in your life.

The world won’t change for you anymore,

Be isolated,

or fuse into it.

If you feel helpless,

lift your arms

and hug yourself.

Artist Research

As for the first and second projects, I explore video and sound art respectively. Hence for the final project, I decide to boldly exhibit in the form of performance art.

I have done some researches on several excellent performance artists as well as their skills and practices in their works.

Tino Sehgal

A British–German artist who describes his work as “constructed situations.” He is also thought of as a choreographer that makes a dance for the museum setting. He uses the raw materials of voice, language, and movement to build pieces of art. For “This Progress” (2010), he filled the rotunda of the Guggenheim with a corps of “interpreters”—children, teenagers, baby boomers, octogenarians—who, according to a set of rules devised by Sehgal, engaged each visitor in a conversation, delivering him to progressively older interlocutors as he spiralled up the museum’s ramp.

The piece, which made intimates of strangers, was exhilarating. “This Progress” reflected Sehgal’s desire to redefine art as the transformation of actions rather than of things. “What my work is about is, Can something that is not an inanimate object be considered valuable?” Sehgal said recently. He is, in a sense, an architect of interaction. His works are collaborations, new builds on human turf.

His art is ephemeral. Moreover, he forbids the creation of any of the by-products—photographs, videos, catalogs, wall text—that normally derive from work. His pieces leave no physical residue. To see one, you have to either visit the museum or consult a tertiary report.

Tris Vonna-Michell

A British artist who performs narratives and constructs installations through the layering of these narratives, photographs, and mementos, presented using antiquated technologies and slide projection.

Here are the collection of his arts

http://www.t293.it/artists/tris-vonna-michell/

A performance cycle – Tris Vonna-Michell, 2010

He performed a sense of time and history in ceaseless talking and bring an illusion for the audience as if they travel back to another time and space with the performer. In this performance, Tris Vonna-Michell kept high concentration all along as if he is no long a person, but a record machine that is playing the records of the performer’s past.

Terence Koh

A Canadian artist whose work spans a range of media, including drawing, sculpture, video, performance, and the internet. Originally working under the alias Asian punk boy, Koh designed zines and custom-made books. His recent work has expanded to include durational performances, MacQueen, Kathleen (March 15, 2011). “Shifting Connections: Terence Koh.”

http://bombmagazine.org/article/4959/

Koh’s work has been associated with New Gothic Art. In nothing to doo, his first solo show at the Mary Boone Gallery, Koh, “dressed in white pajamalike clothes, slowly circl[es] a beautiful cone-shaped pile of rocky solar salt — 8 feet high and 24 feet across — on his knees.” So Roberta Smith described the work in an appreciative March 2011, review. “This is performance art reduced to a bare and relentless rite in a space that has been stripped down to a kind of temple. (Its regal proportions help.) … Maybe the work is an extended apology for past bad-boy behavior.”

Complex installations, and the exploration of natural ecosystems. “An Art World Provocateur Returns to New York With an Unexpected Subject: Bees”

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/25/t-magazine/art/terence-koh-bee-chapel.html?_r=0

Much of his diverse work involves queer, punk, and pornographic sensibilities. In 2008, he was listed in Out magazine’s “Out 100 People of the Year”.

Process:

For the soundscape created for my performance art, It not only serves as an acoustic stimulation to bring the audience into other spaces but creates situations for the narrative.

I inherit the idea from my project to which transit from the indoor situation into the outdoor environment. Through reacting with the sound transition, it symbolizes how do I interact with the local community as a new immigrant from another social background. The meaning can be further developed into reflecting people like me: foreign students who live and study in Singapore. To explore how they struggle to rebuild their social circle as well as adapt to new cultures.

For the performance, I purposely recorded at the late night to capture my authentic state. I suffer from insomnia for quite a long period and only late night can bring me peace and concentration to be true to myself.

Reflection

Video recording and editing is always my weakness, but through the learning process of this Semester, I strive to learn new skills as well as explore many artistic ideas for future development. For me, 4D art is previously obscure to appreciate, but now I can understand the concept behind the art. Perhaps in future, I can still have the opportunity to create more sound and video art to enhance my skills.

Process and Development for Final Zine-Neighbourhood：Woodlands Old Town Centre

Ideation Phase

The initial idea in my mind before developing the zine from the research is to make it a photography based zine since I took many interesting pictures on site-Woodlands Old Town Centre.

The neighborhood has a mystical sense of Nostalgy and horror, which seems very appealing to me. First I assume the pictures I took are impactful enough to show the unique characteristics of the neighborhood. However, with Shirley’s suggestions, I decided to make a photo based zine with illustrations of ghosts to emphasize on the creepy and desolate feelings.

Process and the final zine

Since I prefer Eastern style, I finalize the idea to reveal the ghost town with all the Chinese devils occupying the neighborhood.

In order to create the ghost town feeling, I decided to play with the color channel of the photos as well as searching for some ghost element and putting into the pictures.

One example of color channel altering process was shown below：

Adding some floating silhouettes on the background to create the horror atmosphere.
Play with the color channel and overlap with the original photo to create surreal kind of feeling.
Adding the ghost figure to fit in the narrative.

For the text, I chose to put some introduction poem quoted from traditional Chinese ghost fantasy novels to introduce these ghost.

The reason I chose to use the Chinese characters is because Chinese can best fit in the pure Chinese style for the zine as a whole.

The final zine isshown below:

4D II Project3- Time, space & body #Artistic research#

My research mainly focuses on three artists and one of their representative art pieces. Their works inspire me in a way that they give me a general sense of concept and composition of performance and installation art. This can guide me to explore and express my ideation for my project.

Ho Tzu Nyen

Ho Tzu Nyen was born in Singapore in 1976. He earned a BA in Creative Arts from Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne (2001), and an MA in Southeast Asian Studies from the National University of Singapore (2007). He works primarily in film, video, and performance, and has recently developed environmental multimedia installations. He has also written extensively on art. Ho appropriates the structures of epic myths, invoking their grandeur while revealing them to be not merely stories, but discursive tools. He is particularly concerned with those moments when contemporary figures imagine and invent the past in order to serve the needs of the present. These conditions are especially salient in the context of Singapore, which was established as an independent nation in 1965. A series of occupations and settlements by regional groups constitutes the history of the strategic port archipelago prior to 19th century British colonization. A desire to redress the country’s unaccounted-for history indicates the rise in nationalism that has emerged in parallel with accelerated economic development.

The Cloud of Unknowing

Ho Tzu Nyen’s multichannel video installation The Cloud of Unknowing(2011) explores the expansive subject of the representation of the elusive and amorphous cloud. Inspired by philosopher Hubert Damisch’s thesis on the form’s aesthetics and symbolism, A Theory of /Cloud/: Toward a History of Painting, first published in French in 1972, Ho’s work incorporates a set of eight compartmentalized vignettes, each centered on a character that stands for the cloud’s representation in historically significant Western European artworks by artists including Caravaggio, Francisco de Zurbarán, Antonio da Correggio, Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini, Andrea Mantegna, and René Magritte, as well as the Eastern landscapes of Mi Fu and Wen Zhengming. This incorporation and blending of cultural, historical, and philosophical references, both Eastern and Western, is prevalent in Ho’s practice, which references painting (EARTH, 2009), pop music (The Bohemian Rhapsody Project, 2006), literature (The King Lear Project, 2008) and philosophy (Zarathustra: A Film for Everyone and No One, 2009).

Ho’s practice speaks to the predicament of representing and interpreting contemporary art from South and Southeast Asia, and specifically from Singapore. In 1963, Singapore gained independence as part of the nation of Malaysia during the immediate postcolonial and postwar period; however in 1965, due to mutual differences, Singapore separated to become a country of its own. For this reason, and given the physical and cultural migration from South and East Asia into Malaya (the pre-independent region of Singapore and Malaysia), the sources of Singapore’s historical and art-historical narratives are entwined with that of its neighbors, and are often represented in terms of cultural and traditional assimilation and transformation. Ho’s art confronts foundational myths and historical geopolitics, and deconstructs the idea of modernization via Western influence or beneficence, by presenting viewers with a paradox. In it, Eastern and Western forms appear at once disjointed and seamless, coexisting in a fluid aesthetic interpretation that allows for the complexities of influence and adaptation to drift through each other, akin to the eponymous cloud.

Contrasted with the substantial figures of the work’s eight characters, each of which struggles against the burden of physical and material existence and the trappings of obsession and clutter, decay and disrepair, are their unexpected confrontations with the ethereal cloud. Ho’s installation is titled after a mystical treatise from the 14th century, written in the tradition of the Christian Neoplatonists, whose authorship is little-known, and which was intended as a primer for aspiring monastics on the art of contemplative prayer. In Ho’s work, the metaphorical limits of human knowledge that the medieval spiritual text anticipates as inevitable in the search for the divine are represented in the form of terrifying, surreal, or sometimes illuminative encounters with a corporeal “cloud of unknowing.” But these encounters with doubt and uncertainty, as guided by the gnostic text, are transitory, and the spiritual traveler is exhorted to keep the faith and trust that understanding will arrive. In Ho’s work, the binary division of Eastern and Western thought, belief, history, and representation, would appear to have collapsed, suggesting the possibility of new insight.

I Like America and America Likes Me

Joseph Beuys, 1974

German artist Joseph Beuys first attracted attention with his groundbreaking Explaining Pictures to a Dead Hare (wherein he quite literally did that) but it was I Like America and America Likes Me that exposed him to an international audience. For his first show in the U.S., Beuys flew to Kennedy airport in New York City, where he was met by a stretcher and covered in felt, presaging his preoccupation with the material. He was then loaded into an ambulance and taken to his exhibition space at René Block Gallery. For three days, Beuys shared the space with a wild coyote, performing actions both necessary to preventing harm to himself and carrying a symbolic weight for the viewer. At the end of the three days, by which time Beuys and the coyote had essentially become friends, the artist was once again loaded onto a stretcher, taken back to the airport by ambulance, and flown back to Germany. He never set foot on the ground in America and saw nothing of the country but the gallery.

Action

For Native Americans, the coyote had been a powerful god, with the power to move between the physical and the spiritual world. After the coming of European settlers, it was seen merely as a pest, to be exterminated. Beuys saw the debasement of the coyote as a symbol of the damage done by white men to the American continent and its native cultures. His action was an attempt to heal some of those wounds. ‘You could say that a reckoning has to be made with the coyote, and only then can this trauma be lifted’, he said. Beuys believed that performance art could evoke a spiritual response in the audience, ultimately providing a healing process. He sometimes compared his role to that of a shaman. His performances or ‘Actions’ were ritualistic, incorporating powerful symbols of birth, death, and transformation. The objects that he used were often exhibited later as works in their own right.

Nature

As a child, Beuys was fascinated by nature, obsessively cataloging all the plants and wildlife in his area. At the same time, he was enthralled by northern myths and folklore, in which creatures are endowed with mystical power. This reverence for the natural world persisted throughout his life and his art. He identified closely with certain animals, seeing them as guardian spirits: ‘The figures of the horse, the stag, the swan and the hare constantly come and go: figures which pass freely from one level of existence to another, which represent the incarnation of the soul…’ In the 1970s, Beuys became involved with environmental politics and was one of the founders of the Green Party.

Yard by Allan Kaprow, 1961

Allan Kaprow, an abstract-expressionist turned installation artist, coined the term “happenings” in the late ’50s, alongside contemporaries (and friends) John Cage and Robert Rauschenberg. His first happenings engaged the audience in overwhelming, often playful ways. Yard is perhaps the most significant of these early works, consisting of rooms full of rubber tires over which audience members jumped and forms covered in tarpaper audience members had to crawl through. For Kaprow, a former action painter, the action was as important as the paint. “Life is much more interesting than art. The line between art and life should be kept as fluid, and perhaps indistinct, as possible,” he once wrote.

Synopsis

Allan Kaprow was a pivotal figure in the shifting art world of the 1960s; his “happenings,” a form of spontaneous, non-linear action, revolutionized the practice of performance art. While Kaprow began as a painter, by the mid-1950s his interest turned to the theoretical, based primarily on the shifting concepts of space as subjectively experienced by the viewer. Kaprow emerged from the group of artists known as the Rutgers Group, based out of Rutgers University where Kaprow taught art history and studio art. Kaprow was among the many artists and critics who focused on an intellectual and theorized view of art, rejecting the monumental nature of Abstract Expressionist works and instead focusing on the act of their production. In particular, his influential essay, “The Legacy of Jackson Pollock,” (1956), called for an end to craftsmanship and permanence in art and instead demanded that artists shift their attention to “non-concrete,” or ephemeral, modes of production.

Key Ideas

Kaprow’s happenings changed the definition of the art object. “Art” was no longer an object to be viewed hanging on a wall or set on a pedestal; rather, it could now be anything at all, including movement, sound, and even scent. Kaprow stated, “The everyday world is the most astonishing inspiration conceivable. A walk down 14th Street is more amazing than any masterpiece of art.”

Kaprow was very clear that his works were connected with art and not theater. He stressed that his happenings were in the same category as the action painting of Abstract Expressionists and not with scripted scenes involving actors playing parts. Kaprow’s pieces involved spaces he physically altered, with sights and sounds as deliberately composed as any canvas by Pollock or Rothko.

Kaprow rebelled against the prescriptions of Clement Greenberg, both in his art and in his writings: formal aesthetics, Kaprow believed, were no longer relevant when the art left the canvas. Kaprow’s work was based on an “aesthetic of regular experience,” a transient and momentary experience felt by the viewer being as significant as a painting on canvas.

Project 2 Zine: Layout Research

Aim

My aim of making this zine is to trigger the sense of nostalgia and belonging from the bottom of viewers’ hearts.

Concept and Ideation

A series of heavily photo-based pages will be created along with illustrations created upon the understanding of these photos.

Layout Reference

For combination between typography and photography, I will choose those which can be used for photography zine. Typos can serve as both information and decoration purposes.

Typography in photography.

Typo on the edge of photo.

Typo scatter in and out of photo.

Negative space of typo with photo

For the layout of the photography itself:

B&W photo against a W&B background.

Overlay

Photography split with illustration

Illustration in photography

For typography itself:

Color contrast

Formal

Spatial

Text repetition

Also, I could insert layers of paper strips to add more visual design elements into my final zine.

Foundation 4D II Project 2: Soundscape

https://soundcloud.com/yinfeng-wang-453593842/let-the-train-take-me-away

A journey on a train towards nowhere.

Nowhere better where I am.

Concept

To explore my desirable state of mind in contrast to the current one.

To portrait pictures of my various mental space and the transitions among them in this sound narrative.

Ideation

Self-personality evaluation

Impetuous, Extreme, Cynical, rebellious, pessimistic

The world in my eyes

Full of artifacts, noise, and fakeness.

The beauty of the world, on the other side, magnifies all those hideousness and hypocrisy which are intolerable for me.

Personal emotions against these flaws

Panic, fear, perplexity, willing to escape.

Narrative

Start Transition

Wake up In the lift(Spatial transference into mental space)

Climax End

Helplessness from the world Towards Nature and Authenticity

Symbolism and Sound Transformation

All sounds are self-recording except the final train sound – Symbolise the world around me and my imaginary world

Characteristic of the sound pieces

Sound symbolized my daily life: Get up from bed – drinking water – walk into the lift.

Transition sound：Lift going down.

Abstract sound：Knocking, scratching, rubbing, fan rotating-Mix with-

Noise of people talking——Symbolize the imperfect world.

Sound of nature—-Symbolize inner peace and self-forgiveness I yearn for.

Also, the soundscape follows chronologic order in a sense that everything will eventually go into peace at night. Ironically, that’s when I am sober.

Challenge

It is an extraordinary challenge to find sounds in accordance with minds.
The technical problems to produce original sound effects for real to surreal transition.
Difficulty pushing the soundscape to the climax.

Project 2 Zine Research: A nostalgic glance at old Woodlands Town Centre in its final days

PRIMARY RESEARCH

Interview with an employee from Yanji. She said she was from Malaysia and she has already worked here for 15 years. Nothing much has changed around the Old Woodlands Town Centre for these years.

Clips with different colors and numbers on it representing different dishes and table numbers for easier service.

Another interview with the cleaning auntie from Malaysia who’ve worked here for 8 years. She said most customers are residents nearby, and workers between Singapore and Malaysia.

Madam Fadzlun, 56, a shop owner selling Tupperware goods lamented that rental cost is “too expensive elsewhere”.

“We’ve gone to talk to our Member of Parliament for help on this, but nothing has been done yet. The number of walk-in customers has dropped over the years, but we can’t do anything,” she shared.

Similarly, Joanne Nyang, 50, who owns a stall selling dried goods said she has yet to find a suitable shopfront.

“When the time comes to move out, then we’ll see how it goes. I’ve stopped ordering more stocks already, just in case,” said Mdm Nyang, who’s been working here for over 30 years.

At a sprawling clothes shop just down the road, shop owner Ho Chee Kiong, 54, shared that he’ll take things as they come.

“If we’re able to bid for [a suitable] location, then we’ll bid for it. [If not], then we’ll see how [it goes],” he shrugged, adding that he has no preference for the location as long as the rent is cheap.

At the very same shop, Mr Ho, 53, who declined to give his full name, said, “It’ll be a pity to see this place go. I’ve been here for so long, from nothing, to when I eventually got married and had kids. It’s been 26 years.”

SECONDARY RESEARCH

History of WTC

In the early seventies, kampong in Woodlands were cleared as plans to develop into an industrial and residential area. By 1972, Woodlands welcomed the completion of its first 1,300 housing units. The establishment of Woodlands Town Centre followed and became the focal point for the residents and workers.

During its heydays, the Old Woodlands Town Centre was bustling with activities both for locals and the visitors from Malaysia. Retail shops selling textiles and electronic goods were popular. The hawker centre, kopitiam and prata houses were filled with people, and more

choices in food were offered with the arrivals of fast food restaurants such as Kentucky Fried Chicken and MacDonald’s.

One of the highlights of the Old Woodlands Town Centre was the intense competition among its money changers, who offered one of the best exchange rates between Singapore Dollar and Malaysia Ringgit.

The Feature of Building

With many low-rise brown mosaic-tiled buildings lined up with retail shops, the concept and design of the Old Woodlands Town Centre is similar to that of the Bukit Merah Town Centre and Bedok Town Centre. Like its cousin in the southern part of Singapore, the Old Woodlands Town Centre started to lose its shine and attraction after the mid-nineties.

Reasons for the gloom

The size of Woodlands expanded rapidly as hundreds of residential flats sprung up. In 1996, Woodlands MRT Station and its underground bus interchange opened at the Woodlands Regional Centre, which replaced the Old Woodlands Town Centre as the central hub of the new town. Three years later, the seven-storey shopping mall Causeway Point was completed.

Today

The original Woodlands Bus Interchange, established in the early eighties to serve the residents in the northern part of Singapore, was thus replaced by the one at the Woodlands Regional Centre. The old one was converted a bus terminal, providing short intra-town services for travelers between Singapore and Malaysia. The services were soon discontinued and space became a temporary parking and pick-up points for Malaysian buses ferrying the workers.

Today, the Old Woodlands Town Centre is considered part of the Marsiling Estate.

Cinema

During the peak of his business empire in 1980, departmental chain giant Lim Tow Yong opened a branch of Oriental Emporium at the Old Woodlands Town Centre. It became a paradise for many, as thousands would flock here every weekends to enjoy shopping, dining or catching a blockbuster at the Woodlands Cinema.

The Shaw Brothers-owned Woodlands Cinema was a popular choice for the residents in the north from the late eighties to early 2000s. Shaw Organisation was the first to introduce the concept of cineplexes in Singapore, offering movie-goers different types of films under one roof. With the success of Prince and Jade at Shaw Towers in 1988, Shaw Organisation began to convert their neighbourhood cinemas into cineplexes. Republic, Oriental, Changi and Woodlands were part of the conversion plan.

Like the old town centre, the popularity of Woodlands Cinema declined in the late nineties and was later outshone by the newer and more dynamic Causeway Point’s Cathay Cineplex at the Woodlands Region Centre. It finally ceased its operation in the mid-2000s and has been left vacant since then.

Today, even bright pastel paint struggle to hide mold and other signs of age on its worn façade. But it’s a place that will be fondly remembered by its residents and customers for a long time to come.

With little upgrading, the Old Woodlands Town Centre has largely retained its appearance for the past four decades. As a town center, it may have lost its appeal and in certain times, look like a deserted ghost town. But it still serves as an ideal resting point for travelers on both sides of the Causeway, or for anyone who yearns for a quiet meal in an increasingly crowded Singapore.

Food centre

The decades-old Woodlands Town Centre is a border town for people passing through to Malaysia or to Singapore. Though it may have lost its appeal after the relocation of Woodlands Bus Interchange in 1996 but the sleepy Woodlands Centre Road Food Centre is still serving as a pit stop for travelers on both sides of causeway who yearns for a good value meal.

YAN JI SEAFOOD SOUP

This stall is undoubtedly the most popular and with the longest waiting time in this food centre. I ordered a bowl of seafood soup consists of chunky pieces of hand-shaped meatballs that are made with minced pork, mushroom and dried sole fish, slices of dory fish and prawns In the addition of crayfish for $12. Their strongly flavored broth derived its flavor from the main ingredients, sun-dried Hokkaido scallops, and dried sole fish bones. The down side, they have to control portions and volume by serving only half a bowl of soup with each order and no refill is allowed. And one Braised Pork Trotter for $8.

Numbers

Built in the 1970s, the Old Woodlands Town Centre is located right next to the Woodlands Checkpoint.
In 1980, the Woodlands Bus Interchange was established at Woodlands Centre Road
With the completion of Blocks 1A to 6A at Woodlands Centre Road
Masjid An-Nur, the large mosque built in 1980 which can house up to 2,800 worshippers in one session.
The site comprises 186 shops, 6 offices, 5 eating houses and 78 hawker stalls. Eligible shop tenants will be given an exgratia payment of $60,000.
Woodlands Regional Bus Interchange and Woodlands MRT Station that opened in 1996.
On 25 June 2012, the Housing and Development Board announced that Blocks 1A to 6A Woodlands Centre Road were earmarked for the Selective En bloc Redevelopment Scheme (SERS). Residents from the 147 flats will relocate to the new replacement flats at Woodlands Drive 70 by 2016.

With residents and businesses moving out of the estate, the old Woodlands Town Centre’s days of glory will come to an end.

The Old Woodlands Town Centre has come a long way from its heyday.

Protected: Project 2 Zine Research Presentation: The Old Woodlands Town Centre

Foundation 4D (II) Project 1: Alter Ego

Final video https://vimeo.com/202657184

Storyline—

Generally my story aims to dig on my personal understanding of love and freedom.

My Storyline has 2 sequences that develop simutaneously yet one is in slow motion which indicates memory and the other one flashes in between the first one, which represents the hint of interference in the character’s brain. Finally the character stands in front of the mirror and finds out the one inside isn’t her, but is me. Actually, I arrange this story such that the it is just me alone from the start and the girl is just my imagination. Or in another word, my reflection.

Concept Development—

From the start, I am trying to develop a girl with every single character that attracts me. She’s Gentle, Genuine, merciful, empathetic and adorable, but as the relationship goes on, the argumentative and unsettled side of her gradually drains my love from her and I finally decide to tolerate her no more and chase after my freedom.

However, when I am calm and think over our relationship. Indeed her argue is because of my indifference and her unsettledness is due to my impatience. Every lovely side of her reflects how desperate I desire to be loved and every flaws of her reveal every flaws of mine.

Actually the greatest freedom is to understand and to forgive.

Inspiration: Basically I draw the character inspiration from Leon, the Assassin. The reason I chose him as my alter ego is because every character who has affinity with me share several things in common. Lonely, sensitive, crave for freedom yet desire to be loved. One thing special on Leon is his awkward relationship with Emma and that’s what I want to further explore. In the movie, Leon was inexperienced, sentimental and severely isolated from the real world. He also serves to illustrate the divergence between Emma’s dreams and her reality. This divergence forces Leon to conform to her idealized concept of a lover and caused Emma’s predicament. In my story, I also share the same dilemma with Leon. I felt panic and finally become impatient with the endless requirements from my imaginary girlfriend.

For the shots, I mainly use close shots on the character with slow motion to reflect my affection on her or can say, myself. I draw reference from Leon which appears to have massive number of shots on facial details of Lando to magnify her personality and Leon’s affection on her.

French mini drama series Brief.

For music selection, I chose the nocturne ( Claudio Arrau ChopinNocturne 2 Op.9 No2) to show the peaceful atmosphere and solitude emotion. Behind the peace, there is a sense of lost which perfect fit the mood of the video.

Initially I plan to add in voice over but I don’t want to interfere with the mood created by the nocturne.

I decide to leave the video without adding any effect to keep the crudeness which is what human eye see originally.

Project 2 “Point of View” Final

Above are my 6 finalized compositions for project 2. Following the direction of making non-digital artworks and exploring new visual concepts. My main purpose in the process of completing Project 2 is to explore the Gestalt principle as well as to establish visual structures in my works.

My 6 solutions are:

A Straight line from the POV of a drunkard is Spin.

A composition showing the world of a drunkard. A general tone of black and white sets up the feelings of deterioration and abjection. The use of pen technique in depicting the drunkard walking gives a sense of sequence as if the man in the middle is moving. The perspective of seeing the drunkard is likely to be the eye level similar with the height of him, perhaps another drunkard which makes the whole composition more interesting. It is obvious that many curvatures exists in this work-on the sidewalk, zebra stripes and even the man’s leg, to highlight the key word, “SPIN”. A spin world full of fantasy yet pathetic for the drunkards who escape the cruelness of the real world.

A kiss from the POV of love is Consumable.

A composition mostly inspired by the Gestalt principle to create two scenes in an love affair using the Law of Figure&Ground.

This work is aim to show transience of passion and desire in love. It is as short as smoke that comes out from a cigarette. The first scene is a couple kissing with each other, which represents the start of a relationship and the second scene above the first is they face back to back which signified the end of the affair.

The whole piece was created by charcoal.

A closing mouth from the POV of a love affair is Fading.

This composition is a further exploration of human love by using lips and fingers as metaphors. Crossing fingers are slowly “unzipped” and clenched teeth are revealed. Peaceful love may not means stable love. Lack of communication between couples may finally leads to accumulating misunderstanding or even hatred. Open your mouth and start sharing your true feeling before love start to fade away.

A shadow from the POV of an autistic is Company.

Again a pure black-and-white composition accord with the sentiment of the solution. Feeling all alone, this work is created for myself to express the scene every night before I go to bed for last one month. Black shadow, the nightmare for most people’s childhood ironically becomes my company hugging me from the back. I use scribbling to generate a vulnerable figure prone in bed, anxious and perplexed. Pure black hands are emphasized by the human figure as if they are corroding the man. This work is to show the desperation and desire for company that autistic people possess within their hearts.

An illuminated city from the POV of an ant is a Starry Night.

The key of this work is to bring the Signified(Illuminated city) and Signifier(Starry night) in one composition by adding one more direction to the composition. Fascination towards stars inspires me to explore what it is like in the eyes of tiny creatures like ant. Actual stars may be too small for them to see. Hence, I imagine city night scene may be their version of star.

In the process of creating the city view, Law of similarity and Law of continuity are being applied.

An unconventional thought from the POV of fashion is Lighthouse.

When I asked myself what fashion is related, the first thing come to my mind is fashion magazine. Hence, this work is created based on imitating the style of a fashion magazine cover with some interesting details in it. A model in a black dress holding the top pf a lighthouse which is projecting light to the surrounding. The name of the magazine is the mirror view of the word “SOLITO”, which means conventional in Italiano. “IL FARO” in Italiano means Lighthouse.

6 solutions from 6 different perspective of seeing the world broaden my mind and help me realize visual art contains more than just visual elements. Imagination can generate hundreds of ways of interpretations.