Homage Project: Uncage Me

Paying homage to Michael Murphy’s intriguing artworks, Uncage Me employs a similar technique in expressing the three-dimensionality of the two-dimensional subject. Uncage Me highlights the dualities of presence and non-presence of social media (in this case, Instagram), both in the digital realm and in real life. The presence of social media reveals prevailing condition where many users open up their lives to the eyes of many through the online platform, intentionally selecting photos to create and alter the impression that other users have on them, i.e their alter-agos. The non-presence presents itself as the unknown, the emotions and thoughts hidden away from screens, never to be shown to others. On the other hand, from the little Instagram social experiment, the synergistic relationship of the presence and non-presence further accentuated the non-presence of an individual in the realm of social media. The manifestation of stereotypical beliefs of an individual without a social media account rapidly escalates. Uncage Me thus attempts to express these dualities through creating perspectives that are either recognisable or indistinguishable, and also to reassess the stereotypical beliefs of one’s non-presence on Instagram. Through various interactions with the artwork, the process of “freeing” the subject also alludes to breaking the boundaries of social media to comprehend and appreciate the genuineness of understanding the individual.

Confined within four vertical square faces of 3x3 grid, the six layers of images are projections of different highlight/shadow tones of the image I chose of myself. When viewed directly from the front of the artwork, the layers seem to form a rather distinguishable face, enclosed in a square with grids similar to that of on Instagram.

Moving away from the artwork at an angle, the face gradually distorts and becomes increasingly indistinguishable and unfamiliar. This alludes to the unfamiliar side of the subject, in this case, myself, to the others. What they see on Instagram about me is just what I chose to portray myself as, but what they do not really know about is everything else – the emotions and feelings, the experiences that I have during the days and periods when I do not post anything online – that matters so much more in understanding me as person as compared to the limited and altered information that I have chosen to include.

Looking from both sides of the artwork, the image presents itself as separate layers that are uniform in shape and size as compared to viewing it from other perspectives. The unfamiliarity and imperceptible layers represents the other side of the subject that people do not know of beyond what is seen, inferred and understood from social media. People may or may not be interested in going beyond the intentional (and potentially falsified) portrayals of an individual in order to understand him/her better. It is ultimately up to them to decide to take the initiative to get to know the individual better.

Just like retrieving information from a vertical document drawer, if one ever takes the initiative to understand the subject better, he/she would be able to understand the subject beyond what is shown online. The layers each contains messages at the back that reveals the true feelings and thoughts behind the façade. This goes to show that, just by viewing from various perspectives of the subject is probably insufficient. What matters most is to take action – to talk, to communicate, to understand – before any pre-conceived judgements are made.

Uncage Me is probably less successful in illustrating the effects of social media – the presence and non-presence – on our lives due to the limitations of the medium. It is, however, a better choice not including the effects in because it might create confusion in understanding the artwork and thus losing its essence. On a flipside, Uncage Me is probably successful in conveying the message of “don’t judge a book by its cover”, and the dynamism of this artwork requires users to make his/her way around it to understand the artwork. However, since the movement around the artwork cannot be forced or controlled, whether the audience sees the hidden written message behind the layers, is perfectly alright. It is intended that not everyone would be able to see the bigger picture and then scrutinise the artwork. Similarly, in understanding an individual, one should take the initiative to look beyond what is presented and take action. It is only through getting away from superficial social media platforms that individuals would start understanding one another from various perspectives.

Homage Project: 2D to 3D – A Matter of Perspective

I recently chanced upon a piece of artwork when I was sourcing for inspiration with regards to which medium I should use for my Homage project. I decided to do something physical (i.e. a sculpture, model, etc) because I’ve already done something that mainly involved technology in the previous assignment of “I am... I like… I want to…”. I guess I should try to do something different this time instead.

 The artwork that I saw was a 3D life-like sculpture by artist Michael Murphy. His creations are mainly made using recycled materials, including stainless steel, acrylic, and bullet-proof glass, to create multiple layers of coloured 2D contours to create stunning masterpieces. When I first saw the pictures of his works, I was really intrigued by how he actually created those layers to look as if they are floating. I guess I would really be pretty mind-blown if I were to see it with my own eyes. The artwork is a really dynamic one, in a sense that it requires users to move around it not just to experience the various perspectives of viewing the artwork, but also to understand the construction and thought process that was put into its creation.

 Michael Murphy’s artworks resonated a lot with the little social experiment which I have conducted (and still ongoing) in a way that social media influenced its users to really look only at the surface, which in this case, is the flat 2D image that they usually look at on the platform. This isn’t saying that people have become superficial as a result of social media, but rather, we have become less perceiving and only accept what is given to us on the surface. It may be true to argue that, on social media, it would be tiring to really analyse and give some thought to every single picture that we chance upon, and also that probably most of their “private” lives do not matter to us that much for us to scrutinise their pictures and captions. However, the overarching idea that I want to highlight is the effect of social media on its users – how the presence and non-presence of someone on social media would affect the person him/herself as well as what the impression that he/she leaves to others.

 Moving away from the angle directly perpendicular to Michal Murphy’s artworks where the entire face can be seen, the face gets increasingly distorted and unrecognisable. Eventually, the layers form vertical strips of uniform thickness which are completely indistinguishable of a face. What is left is just the unfamiliar and the unknown, the construction and architecture behind the artwork, ie the logic and structure that constitutes to the masterpiece. It is as if we are being thrown into another space or forced to see an artwork that does not make much sense. Within this single piece of artwork, we see a world-renowned Steve Jobs that we are able to recognise easily, and also an entirely foreign side which we do not know of. Both perspectives – not including those that form distorted perspectives of the artwork – create a sense of duality: the known and unknown; the familiar and unfamiliar; the presence and non-presence. Relating back to social media, the pictures that we see on these platforms only show the side of the person that we are familiar with and are within our expectations. What social media do not really show is the personality and emotions deep down – the aspects that define an individual. While social media creates platforms for individuals to showcase their lives and make their life events public, it does not directly correlate to the transparency of their personality and emotions to the world. What is shown online is determined by us, so every photo and post uploaded online would be intentionally crafted and presented to probably garner the kind of “support” or recognition from other individuals. Those do not truly reflect who the individuals are, as much as some would like to say #nofilter #realstuff.

 Therefore, I would like to pay homage to Michael Murphy and adopt a similar approach to create a sculpture that would illustrate my concept better and more clearly. I think it is going to be pretty tough thinking of which face to use and how to even construct the sculpture given the materials and limited means that I have. Nonetheless, I really look forward to seeing this project come to life!

Source:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2049855/Face-The-extraordinary-3D-sculptures-peoples-heads-recycled-goods.html

Homage Project: “Pics or Something Happened”

“Pics or it didn’t happen” usually refers to the response given to unverifiable acts that are brag-worthy or extraordinary. In the local context, youths usually use the phrase “no pic no talk/chat”, but both phrases meant the same. With the advent of digital technology and social media, the phrase “pics or it didn’t happen” manifests itself even more so deeply in our lives. The proof for our act is just one snap away with our camera phones, or sometimes photos could be digitally manipulated to provide a false proof of committing the act.

Citing the same question of “are memories real if they are not shared?” from the previous Homage post, the phrase entails a similar idea of having a picture as a proof for the act that is to be shared to others to claim that it actually happened. The once fleeting nature of memories is now added with an element of permanence, in a sense that the picture as a proof being shared around is being eternally stored not only in the digital highway, but also in the minds of those who have seen it. In other words, memories can be stored, whether subconsciously or not, when someone else sees a digital copy of your “memory”.

This reminds me of the Pensieve in the Harry Potter series. The Pensieve is a magical instrument that is used to view memories stored in vials. Memories can be duplicated and extracted in the form of a silver thread from the minds of humans and reviewed later on, not just by yourself, but by the others too.

I could relate this idea to the use of social media, specifically Instagram, where photos uploaded are seen less of a memory for some, and more of a fame-gaining medium en-route to being popular on a virtual world where 99% of the people know about you but you know nothing about them.

  The Instagram Experiment

I actually did a little social experiment on myself a few days before the forum discussion by deactivating my Instagram account to see the effects on my own life and also on the others.

 A little background on my life in relation to Instagram: I used to be quite obsessed with Instagram back when I first started my account at 19. I had no idea how to edit photos using the existing filters on Instagram. I gradually began picking up the skills of shooting pictures in a square frame and downloaded other more useful photo-editing apps to edit my photos better. Instagram slowly and unknowingly sunk its deep-set roots into my life. Then, whenever I take pictures from my phone, I would take pictures both in the standard ratio and in square mode. Sometimes when someone volunteers to take group photos of my friends and I, I would request for a few taken in square frame. My life, has thus been framed within that square border.

 Instagram back then, was a means for me to selectively store visual memories that frames my life as a fun/beautiful/active journey. Every picture was carefully chosen and edited to not only because I would like it to present the best of me, but more importantly to cater to the general tastes of my followers so that it would be able to garner more likes and gain followers. The way I take pictures and store memories has thus been inadvertently altered by my obsession with Instagram. It would be too serious to conclude that Instagram started to determine the way I lived, but I do not deny the fact that it has adversely impacted how I view pictures/photographs and its significance.

 I gradually became less obsessed with Instagram with the neverending work that tertiary education entails, but I would still use Instagram more than 10 times a day on average just to check on updates in my “following’s” lives and watch random Stories posted by them. As the frequency of my photo uploads dropped, I noticed that the number of followers decreased as well. It is kind of interesting to see that people whom I do not know start to get bored of my life because I did not update about my life on Instagram.

So I decided to deactivate my account one night and I didn’t expect to see someone asking me about it the first thing when I woke up. Here are some of the more interesting texts that I’ve received from my close friends:

One of my few friends whom I went travelling with. 

A friend who likes to joke about anything in the world.

A genuinely concerned friend who is bored doing nothing everyday.  Just to clarify, the term “dying” is often used among my friends to express our exhaustion and deprivation as a result of the heavy workload, not to be understood literally. 

One of my closest friend who understands me a lot and gives the most unorthodox advice.

­­There are two similarities across the people who texted to ask about my Instagram: 1) I have interacted with them long enough to be considered as close friends 2) they associated the deactivation of Instagram account to my overall well-being. The first point is pretty self-explanatory because I suppose no one would bother to ask an acquaintance if he has deactivated his account and it would be awkward to do so. The second point presents an interesting view on how people, specifically my close friends, thought that something bad has happened to me and thus the deactivation of my account. Several words and phrases with negative connotations appeared in the texts, such as “distraction”, “stress”, “escaping from present”, “serious”, “are you okay?”. I pondered upon these words and phrases and the possible reasons for them to think so.

I came up with a few probable reasons that are related to how we view photos on Instagram as “someone’s life” and the degree in which social media has become so deeply rooted in our lives.

1.      We selectively upload memories, usually in our best selves, to showcase the positive side of our lives. Imagine us being the moon and the viewers being the earth – they could always only see one side of us. The other side of us that is not exhibited publicly is deemed as mysterious and it is by choice. When the account disappears, so does our positive side, in some way or another, as seen from the perspective of other users. They begin to question the basis of our happiness and overall well-being and naturally associated the updates on Instagram to our lives. For someone to deactivate his account, I guess to many people, it means sh*t really happened.

2.      Deactivation of account means taking a break off a tremendous amount of distraction and giving your brain a rest from overloading with useless information. Deactivation simply alludes to the act of going into reclusion. This probably means every time you are browsing through Instagram, you’re subconsciously being obliged to learn about the lives of people whom you follow. And this might potentially lead to people giving quick judgements just by looking at the pictures. Sometimes it could be quite tiring having to keep up with the latest trends and updates of people’s lives, even though most of them are not of concern to you.

3.      Deactivation of account also means part of you has gone missing, the part of you that your friends has been so used to looking at is no longer there. The selective memories that you have chosen to show has already been embedded in their memories as well. Without the account, it probably seems to them that part of you is no longer there, thus the influx of texts expressing their concerns.

  So I asked myself, while memory storage of our lives in camera devices exudes some sense of permanence, what does selective storing of our memories and updates in life on social media alludes to? Similar to the usual storage in devices, sharing of memories on social media creates permanence, but the sense of privacy as we share our memories on new media immediately diminishes the moment online users view the photos. The memories shared online therefore are inadvertently imprinted as part of the others’ memories.

“Pics or it didn't happen” resonates so much in our lives on social media now. However, the little social experiment that was done made me realise that social media has its roots so deeply set in our lives that it bothers people when your “life” isn't there for them to follow. It seems to me that “pics or something happened” probably resonates better in this context. It is kind of chilling how social media has come to extend its effect not just on exhibiting the existence of our lives in the vast virtual world, but also the non-existence of us there. What was not seen or noticed from before becomes apparent; what was previously considered as private and genuine now becomes public and superficial; the non-existence that was not felt back then, becomes obvious now.

Social media therefore presents itself as some sort of duality whereby the existing and non-existing (or once-existed) create a synergistic relationship. For example, I would be given a judgemental look from others if I told people of similar age group that “I don’t have Instagram (or Facebook) because I don’t see the need to.” They would immediately feel a distance between us because there is one outlet less for them to get to know more about me, or worse, they might think that I am weird because I am an outlier of the trend and do not possess what they expect the others to have. In other words, one’s presence on social media highlights the non-presence of the other in the same platform, thereby accentuating its effects, which in this case, is associated with the character and overall well-being of the person.

Random Blends: Interceptions

Upon Arrival:

The exhibition presented an intriguing yet delightful multi-sensory experience through provocative expressions, thought-provoking concepts and ideas that challenge stereotypes and societal norms. It is really impressive to learn from a few students that I have spoken to, that the exhibition was curated and managed by them, and the inception of concept of certain students only started in Week 3. I feel that Random Blends is a great opportunity to showcase not just their talents, but also their determination and tenacity to complete their works within such a short period of time. The works are really insightful and at times visually captivating and thought-provoking, thereby creating a visual and intellectual connection with the viewers.

Unpretty – Photo Journal

Ryan Ang

On first look, the photo journal by Ryan Ang presents an alluring composition of texts and photos through varying the sizes and using colours to guide our visual sequence. He highlights the arduous journey that the drag queen, Izzy, faces throughout his life, as a biological male with a female bearing. I would like to think of Izzy as being true to himself without putting on any wall of pretense just to conform to societal norms. What he feels inside of him is thus exuded in his appearances and outlook in life, only to be marginalised by society. Consequentially, he was forced not to reveal his true feelings once he put on the mask of coloured powder and ink. He may enjoy every move he dances, every catwalk he struts, but behind the mask, he is just like anyone of us, like every human who wants to love, and to be loved.

  Revisioning

Hafiz Karim, Arumi Ho

Through the use of visually attracting boards to be seen through different coloured lenses, the artwork attempts to challenge the way we view the world. We are often stuck in our own stereotypical ideals of one another and thus creating a delusionary bubble around us. This series allows viewers to be able to observe different images from the same board, alluding to the different ways in which we are able to view the world, just that often times, we just stick to one – the one that most conform to. This series also succinctly projects problems that we face in society today in terms of stereotypes, societal conformity, consumerism and the way we judge one another ever so quickly. I think that this series of artwork is really successful in bringing up the prevailing issues in the world nowadays and reminding people to view matters in different perspectives.

  Behind the Mask

Antonius Satrio Triatmoko, Brandon

 Behind the Mask is a 2D maze where players have five lives and are subject to hauntings by monsters that would inflict a one-life damage on the character upon contact. The monsters represent fears and the background music is pretty apt for the game. The seemingly endless maze reflects the spiralling effect as experienced by someone who suffers from depression. Although the degrees in angst, frustration and anxiety as experienced during the game was incomparable to a depression victim, this game has certainly involved not just the user’s mental concentration on walking through the maze, but also the perpetual and sometimes abrupt emotions associated to depression. To be honest, as I advanced the stages in the game, I began to experience varying degrees of helplessness, anxiety and frustrations because of the repeated distortion in the space and increasingly trippy music.

  Thoughts upon departure:

 As a non-CNM student, I feel that the most of the works exhibited are pretty refreshing and engaging, specifically Dandelion by Weiquan Lu and New Game by Nancy Mauro-Flude. However, I am not so sure if the concept of the exhibition curation is to create contrasting spaces on both ends and a central space that presents a sense of duality as presented by the works Dandelion and Revisioning. The exhibition spaces, in my opinion, could be better utilised if the curation itself engages with the visitors through a series of panels or artworks such that there is/are sequence(s) that they could follow. My friends and I felt really lost when we arrived there, not because no one attended to us, but because of the arrangement and curation of artworks along the walls. Curation, after all, affects human circulation and interaction around, and with the artworks, and could potentially create a really pleasant experience for the visitors. As an architecture student, I felt that the kind of pre-mediated experience that was mean to achieve while viewing the exhibition spaces, is somewhat lacking. That being said, it could be due to the size constraint of the exhibition spaces and probably the time constraint to come up with an experiential exhibition curation. Nonetheless, I feel that the  impressive interactive and though-provoking artworks and concepts are truly commendable.

Homage Project: Forum Discussion

The artwork created by Rosemary Lee, The Cinematic Imaginary, intrigues me a lot in a sense that the mirror does not just reflect the images projected from the projector, but also the surroundings of the exhibition space, thereby adding on a layer of reality within the realm of the imaginary. The rotating mirror also creates intervals of time such that there are moments when the viewer is not able to see what is reflected and sees the direct projection on the walls instead, and times when the viewer could partially see the reflected projection as the mirror slowly rotates to its sides. The movement of the mirror thus incorporates the element of time in the artwork, tying the reality to the imaginary which are perpetually in a tug-o-war.

In the article posted in Week 10 about the Sungei Road flea market, trash are seen as treasures there, regardless of how old or dirty they are. Each item, whether stolen or gotten via legitimate means, holds some sort of memory and history to it. It got me thinking about the assignment which require us to talk about the 10 items that hold certain memory and significance to us. Like the artwork by Rosemary Lee, the items that we collect are usually forgotten on a day-to-day basis in the background. But sometimes as we look at these items, our time seems to stop, and travel back in time to the specific point in our memories where the items are involved. We transcend back in time and space and begin to immerse ourselves in our memories. I think it is a really beautiful trait that humans have -- being able to recall our memories as and when we can given a slight push or trigger. Thus, I would like to create a homage to Rosemary Lee's The Cinematic Imaginary and add on the element of looping memories like a mobius strip, in which we constantly transcend between the reality (as in present) and the imaginary (as in the past). Is it important to "store" your memories in an object such that those memories would be recalled from time-to-time everytime you look at it? How has modern technology (eg. camera phones, digicam etc) and new media (eg. Internet, Facebook, Instagram etc) influenced the way we store our memories and experiences?

The forum discussion has been really insightful and I’ve received some constructive feedback from my peers that I thought were pretty interesting. It is also inspiring for myself when I read other concepts and ideas and some got me questioning about the norms and society as what it is today. After consolidating the feedback given to me, I've decided to work on the concept of how technology, specifically memory-storage and social media has influenced the way we view memories in relation to the objects that triggers the sense of nostalgia upon visual/olfactory contact.

I would like to highlight several points that were brought up to me during the forum discussion which I thought was pretty intriguing:

--- Living in the Moment

“Are memories real if they are not shared?” and this relates to our anxiety to rush to document and share experience on social media. I found this question especially riveting because I have always been interested in concepts and ideas pertaining to “one’s own experiences. This question adds on an element of a third party that we could argue as the testimony for our memories, be it through verbal sharing to our close ones or on a social media platform to public and/or a specific audience. I guess it is pretty true for many of us nowadays to store our memories in a digitalised form in our phone galleries, on Instagram, Facebook etc, as opposed to in the past, before the prevalence of mobile phones, when we exchange letters and cards, and photographs came in negatives and printed copies which could be framed up and placed somewhere visible.

Back then, there was no need for us to present (or flaunt) our lives and experiences to our friends and even strangers whom we do not even know. Things which we hold dear to were kept close and private to us, and memories were shared amongst the close few and stored in physical vessels. These vessels are akin to Aladdin’s magical oil lamp: any form of contact with it would enshroud us within the realm of our memories.

Now, people often rush to whip out their phones to snap moments which they thought would be memorable. This reminds me of a picture I chanced upon recently, about an elderly who was just living in the moment while the rest were busy snapping away. I suppose there is absolutely nothing wrong with people snapping photos, it is after all, a difference in lifestyle.

--- Sense of Permanence vs Transient and Fleeting Moments

This brings me to the next points: memories could become less precious to people due to the ease of accessing them over and over again and the inherent nature of memories is fleeting due to the some sort of permanence imposed to them, via recording these memories, and consequentially memories become less precious and sacred. I feel that memories, in general, are indeed transient and ephemeral. Every second that we anticipate would become history in the next second. Similarly, we could only make so much out of the present for us to be able to create a certain (period of) memory. I feel that we do not exactly create memories immediately after an event. Memories should only be called memories when they can be, and are recalled before. And this brings us back to the first point: if memories can’t be recalled, are they still real to you? It is no wonder that people now rely heavily on modern technology to record their lives and various mundane and significant happenings around. While their main reason for doing so could be to “create and store memories permanently”, probably there is a sense of fear at the back of their minds that they might forget about the event entirely if there were no actual visual records about it. Linking back to the points, I think that memories do not necessarily become less precious or sacred, but rather, the ability to recall memories diminishes drastically due to the permanence imposed. Whenever we want to see it, we know where to find it – all stored as a series of unidentifiable and confusing letters and numbers in the phone. While the permanence allows for the ease of recalling memories by storing them all in one device, our minds are gradually attuned to not safekeep our memories in different individual vessels. Even if we may do, we might also take a picture of the physical vessel to store it permanently in our storage device. As such, even the most fleeting moments in life could be captured and stored eternally. The device now becomes the medium through which we transcend space and time to recall a myriad of different memories, just like the spectrum of colours shone through a glass prism with a ray of white light.

  The examples that were brought up during the forum discussion were also visually captivating. Japan-based Nobuhiro Nakanishi’s  Layered Drawings is a series of artworks created by photographing a scene or object repeatedly over time, then laser prints each shot and mounts them onto acrylic. 

Change is captured in each frame, and once layered, they become sculpture installations. The overall effect shows movement and the subtle passage of time. The sense of permanence, in this case, is accompanied by the physical experience of exploring and walking to and fro the artworks, thereby creating a loop of scenes, as if in a Boomerang clip. This permanence then creates a temporary limbo for the viewer to delve into, albeit in a linear fashion in which he/she could only proceed front to back, left to right or vice versa.

Another example is a piece of work by Julius von Bismark, shown for the first time at transmediale.10, uses the materials and devices of filmmaking to create an uncanny experience of space and time. The Space Beyond Me recreates a process in the human brain in which virtual three dimensional images are reconstructed from two dimensional information; a principle that enables us to vividly imagine a place where we have never been before, or a time that is already history. In the gallery this takes the form of an immersive installation, where a 16mm camera, which has been converted into a projector, beams a film onto a circular screen that is painted with phosphorescent paint. The small phosphorescent crystals memorise the projected image chemically, analogous to the human mind. The past is projected into the present as an ephemeral image which fades from view like a fleeting memory. In this landmark work, historical instruments and contemporary digital and robotic technology combine to create a transient experience of futurity. This artwork presents more of the fleeting and transient aspect of memories, and time here becomes an important factor in which memory is stored.

  Tying back to the concept of how technology has influenced the way we view memories in relation to the objects that triggers the sense of nostalgia upon visual/olfactory contact. I suppose my homage project could relate back to Lee’s concept of a perpetual tug-o-war between the present as in consciousness and the past in terms of memories, such that time, be it of permanence or ephemeral, becomes an important factor.

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10 Objects: An Abundance  of Memories

10 objects:

Many of the objects that are meaningful to us often bring us back to the distant past, as memories that we have subconsciously stored in our minds and to be re-visited in the later part of our lives. To some, these objects allow them to reminisce a one-off event like how they have come about obtaining the objects as a consequence of something else. But to me, I prefer to view these meaningful objects as time-travelling devices which temporarily transport me to another metaphysical realm within my mind while interacting with these devices. The memories that they bring up in my mind are not just pertaining to that particular event that happened, but a series of before-during-after events that trigger a multitude of experiences and encapsulate a myriad of emotions. As such, I thought that placing the items in chronological order would enable myself to understand these items more in-depth in relation to my growth as from a small kid to a young adult.

1.      Health Booklet

Almost every baby in Singapore has a health booklet given to him/her after being born. The cover of the health booklet shows which hospital I was born in and the insides are records of my growth and measurements as a baby. It is really interesting to read it from time to time, and wondering how much I have grown since I was a baby. When I was in primary school, we often take it out to compare the measurements during health check-ups. Whenever we find someone else who was born in the same hospital as you, there would be an unspoken sense of pride between us. And somehow my mom got confused at which drug I was supposed to be allergic to: the health booklet writes penicillin but my family doctor said it is aspirin. Oh well… 

2.      PSLE Results Slip

I guess many would think that the results slip is memorable cos I scored well unexpectedly or something. But that’s half of the truth. The larger and more important truth is that I guess that was the only moment when I could remember my mom hugging me so tightly in excitement out in the foyer of my primary school. My family is pretty conservative so like many other conventional Asian families, my parents usually show their love indirectly through all the other means, except through words and actions like hugs and kisses. But we were so troubled after that because my parents couldn’t afford to enrol me into a good school and that was the second time we hugged (again) and cried together.

3.      DSLR Canon 500D

I was really interested in photography when I was 15, but back then an entry-level DSLR was so expensive. After my O Level’s, I went to work as a waiter at a hotel earning $5 per hour (that is really the average rate back then). I worked odd and long hours during my holidays and endured all the hardships. Finally I was able to save up $800 to buy a second hand Canon 500D without kit lens. It felt hard to part away with my hard earned money but it was all worth it when I joined the Photographic Society in my JC and entered the committee eventually.

4.      Chalkboard

I bought this small chalkboard from Daiso to decorate my room when I was refurnishing at 19 years old, before I enlisted. I wrote a quote “Life Is Too Short To Wait”. And it has been there ever since. It probably didn’t really have any major influences in my life, but sometimes when I was feeling down or procrastinating, that quote seemed to work its magic.

5.      Casio Digital Watch

It was a gift from my sisters before I enlisted for National Service when I was 19. I really liked it a lot even though it was a cheap $12 watch, but that was one of the rare times when I felt love from them. I tuned the time to the clock in Tekong (which was 6 min faster than the time in the mainland for unknown reasons) and have since kept that time till now (it’s actually 12 min faster now because the watch ticks faster). It has been through all the tough times of NS with me and I would continue to treasure it for memory-sake.

6.      Grandfather’s Guitar

My grandfather past away when I was 15, leaving my grandmother alone in the house. During a Chinese New Year gathering at her place when I was 20, I was curious about the guitar bag  and my dad offered to give it to me. He said it belonged to my grandfather and my dad, too, played the guitar when he was 18. I took it anyway since I was kind of interested in learning how to play one back then. But now it seems kind of like a heirloom (?)

7.      BMT shoes

This pair of shoes was the first pair of running shoes that I received when I enlisted. Similar to the Casio Watch, it brought me many memories like how hard I trained for my running till my shins could not even take the pressure of walking and how I finally managed to achieve good results in physical tests. It might be weird to keep a pair of shoes since 5 years ago but I guess I’m a pretty sentimental person.

8.      John Varvatos Artisan (Men’s Fragrance)

I fell in love with this fragrance the first time I smelled it. It does not smell like the very musky fragrances that mature guys use; it is light, exciting with a tinge of orange and obviously it doesn’t make me smell like an old man. And this was my very first fragrance that my sister bought for my 19th birthday (yes, a lot happened when I was 19) and still using the same one now. She told me that the fragrance is a ‘coming of age’ kind of thing since I was in NS already (a belief by many Singaporean mothers that their sons would mature into men), so it was time that I stopped using my dad’s fragrance and get one unique of my own.

9.      Penknife

Just like other stationery and tools where there would always be a favourite pen/pencil that we would use, my penknife was passed down to me from a senior along with other items when I started my first year in NUS Architecture at 21. Beyond that, he helped me a lot in assimilating into the school culture well so that I wouldn’t be so stressed and helpless at the beginning. It is also the same penknife that has been through all the blood, sweat and tears (literally) throughout my tertiary education thus far.

10.      Design Notebooks

The sanctuary of all my design concepts and notes; my source of modified inspiration which reveals my helplessness, agony, random eureka moments, sadness throughout the semester. I guess like many other design students, there will always be a notebook/butter paper/file that they would record their processes through the semester, year, and even education. I have been keeping these notebooks since the first semester and I would definitely be interesting to revisit them after I have graduated as a practicing architect eventually.

I am... I like... I want to... : A Frog within a Space

This short film aims to allow viewers to experiences different kinds of spaces from a first person point of view, using the idea of a “spatial film”. The film is accompanied with subtitles that tells a story about a frog in a well and runs simultaneously with a narration that reflects the current situation in life. Unlike Mike Figgis’ Timecode where the image is split into several screens or projections to tell parallel stories, A Frog within a Space prompts users to imagine a separate screen in their minds while reading the subtitles or listening to the narration. As Lialina discusses the possible dilemma of exhibiting films in a movie theatre or an exhibition space, the presence of either the narration or subtitles becomes imperative. Thus, even as the film is muted or devoid of subtitles in an exhibition, the audience would still be able to understand the film regardless. As such, audience may only focus on two narratives, i.e the text and narration, text and visuals, or narration and visuals, at any one point in time throughout the film, thereby encouraging them to switch to different approaches in understanding the film.

The art installation by Martha Artienza displayed in the Singapore Art Museum for the Singapore Biennale 2016 and the Glass Rotunda display in the National Singapore Museum are chosen for as the opening and closing of the film because both artworks create virtual spaces, not in the form of the Internet “virtual space”, but that of in the mind. The reflection of the ripples form by dripping water droplets creates an extended space beyond the pitch dark room which extends infinitely upwards where the droplets come from. It also gives a sense of anticipation of when the droplets would create ripples on the water that change the reflection into an abrupt burst of beauty. Similar to the screening in the Glass Rotunda, a visceral space without vertical limits is created, wowing the audience who are captivated by the beauty of the infinitely falling flowers and leaves. Beyond the visuals, both artworks triggered my interest when I first saw them and both are pretty successful in creating virtual spaces in my mind, an extended visceral space created from the visual and aural input of the artworks. Thus I thought that it would be apt to bring both artworks into the film with the addition of audible water dripping sounds to enhance the experience.

The series of short videos supplements the viewers’ imagination such that they are encouraged to watch the short film more than once to create different perspectives from the point of view of the frog in a well, as well as a human. The film is thus trying to portray the convenience and limitations of new media in relation to understanding the culture of cities from the perspectives of a frog and a human.

Being told as “a frog in a well” is often associated with negative connotations such as having a narrow perspective, self-delusion and denying to see the world in a bigger picture. Akin to being a frog in a well, many students and teenagers like myself embarked on an endless pursuit of academic excellence and success in careers and often rely heavily on the Internet and book resources. The advent of the Internet and social media has changed the way we perceive things to be, and that the world has gotten virtually smaller now that the Internet has almost everything that one needs. Info servers, databases and everything else is just a click away from the Internet.

As Manovich posits, “we may debate whether our society is a society of spectacle or of simulation, but, undoubtedly, it is a society of the screen” (Manovich, 2010), we are often stuck behind the flat screens of our mobile phones and laptops, browsing through a myriad of spectacular audio and visual materials which often limits the use of our human senses to truly experience art and culture. Being an architecture student, just studying about the histories of architecture and learning about architecture online is insufficient. One may argue that the more one reads, the wider his perception of the world. But how wide would the mouth of well be even if one has read everything in the world?

Just like the borders of the well and the sky that it frames, new media limits the experience within that rectangular frame that one could acquire. Meyrowitz states that “Electronic media have weakened the relationship between information and access to places” (Meyrowitz, 1985), thus the spatial experiences is rather limited by the use of new media. When researching on a particular architecture, the Internet could provide with images, walk-through videos and texts to aid in the understanding of that piece of architecture. The most important factor in experiencing architecture is experiencing the space itself, through the use of all human senses and also intuitive and visceral experiences – something that could not be achieved just looking through the screen of the devices. The same applies to art and culture of cities even in Singapore. Therefore this short film approaches the understanding of culture in cities in relation new media and personal experiences by applying the analogy of a frog entrapped in a space, which in this case is a well. Through reading subtitles and listening to the narratives, the viewers are prompted to create their own spatial interpretation in their minds in relation to the visuals, in attempt to engage them not just visually and aurally, but also an additional dimension of spatial element through their imaginations.

References:

Lialina O. "An Infinite Séance." Last modified January 23, 2007. http://art.teleportacia.org/observation/infinite-seance.html.

Manovich, Lev. The Language of New Media. Cambridge, Mass. [u.a.]: MIT Press, 2010.

Meyrowitz, Joshua. No Sense of Place: The Impact of Electronic Media on Social Behavior. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.

I am... I like... I want to... (3): Approach to Film Narrative

On deciding the narrative of the film, I didn’t really want to bore the audience with a boring story with boring visuals. I chanced upon several screenshots of films added with subtitles, the screenshots in turn create a visual context and the subtitles allow viewers to understand those particular scenes better. On the other hand, I’ve always liked to watch videos of bad lip readings on movies and other events such as the one below:

The visuals, in this case snippets of the movie, create a context that engages viewers, regardless of whether they have watched the movie before or not. It would be more interesting to viewers who have watched the movie before since they have already known about the context, or the backstory to the scenes. The narration and subtitles then provide more information on the scenes, just that in these cases, both the narration and subtitles turn out comical and funny due to the differences in expectations and anticipation of what is to be narrated just by looking at the context.

Another example would be offering an alternative narrative and personifying an object or an animal by viewing things from its perspective:

Just like the previous exercise on a monologue of an electrical appliance, Ozzy Man personifies the lizard and narrates an exciting scene of being chased by its predators in a comical yet entertaining manner. This creates great interest among the viewers as they are visually and aurally attracted to the video. Using both examples, I am thinking of creating a film with the visuals providing the context, with subtitles and narration contributing to the storyline. However, the subtitles and narration could potentially be of different stories but the sequence and context are similar and related. The overarching intention of the film is to distract the audience with visual (subtitles) and aural (narration), such that their focus would shift from one to the other periodically, yet still being able to understand the narrative to a large extent. This creates another dimension of space in the minds of the audience, drawing links from both stories and thereby creating their own version of story through different approaches of viewing the film. Audiences would then be prompted to repeat the film and understanding the film using a different approach and from a different perspective.

24/02/17

I am... I like... I want to... (2): Thought Process | Medium Selection

I have actually shortlisted a few mediums to work with: physical sculpture/model, water colour painting, and film. I then considered which of the mediums could best extract and present the essence of ‘art and culture’. And water colour painting is out, considering that I do not have prior experience to painting on a canvas large than an A6 paper.

I guess physical model could work since I am so used to making models in school, and that it could present the essence well if properly executed. But probably the model would look either too abstract to be understood without explanation, or it could risk being too literal.

The final option I was left with was making a short film. Like water colour painting, I did not have much experience, but considering my interest for photography and the sadness emanating from my neglected camera (because of school), I guess I wouldn’t mind trying something refreshing (for myself). After all, it could be really interesting having to travel to different areas to capture different scenes and interacting with different people. In a sense, I am also learning more about my own country’s culture while creating the film.

Reading several materials and essays on film, what really caught my attention was a quote from Manovich’s The Language of New Media, the “relationship between the space of the viewer and the space of representation – screen as a window into the space of representation that itself exists in our normal space”. The term “window” is often understood as a physical barrier that protects and shield us from natural occurrence such as rain and wind, yet still being able to look into/out of the space where the individual is looking from. It connects both sides visually, yet separating them physically and spatially. What is often overlooked is the ability to understand through seeing, hearing, and sensing. A film thus encompasses these three aspects, packaged nicely within a specific time frame and replayed scenes of the past to the audience in the present.

Lialina also stated in Infinite Seance that “artists tend to choose formless stories, without a clear beginning or ending” because the audience might just hop in to watch in the middle of the film and would have missed the beginning and even the meaning of the film entirely. While I agree to these artists’ decisions to create such films, I guess it would get increasingly boring if, let’s say, one comes to watch the film at the middle, thinks that he/she could finish the later half and leave after watching the first half of the next loop, but ends up not understanding the entire story and watch the entire film for one more loop. My personal experience with such films is that I do not really get the meaning of these films, to be honest, until I read the description at the side of the installation. Since I don’t really like such films, I guess the challenge is to create a film that sparks the audience’s interest repeatedly and prompting them to continue watching for a few more loops. I am not very confident of doing so because I really have no background in filming, but who knows what would come out of this assignment, right?

24/02/17

I am... I like... I want to... (1) : Self-reflection

The first step for my development is to create a mindmap of “I am… I like… I want to…”, with reference to the previous Pecha Kucha exercise. I really like the idea of travelling overseas and learning new cultures, so I guess it could be seen as a main idea to this assignment. Probably I could pick up more prominent points to elaborate them further and make everything look more cohesive.

I think being a “frog in a well” is really applicable to my current situation in life now, at least that is what I think of myself. Living in a multi-racial and multi-cultural society, there are often so many opportunities for us to learn about the different cultures, histories, tradition etc. But more often than not, we choose to rely on the faster way out – research on the Internet or heading down to libraries to source for materials. I only started appreciating art and culture when I began studying architecture, because all three aspects are interconnected. What is so different about the digital art and culture as opposed to the art and culture of society? Are they really mutually exclusive or are there links that can be drawn between those two parties?

In this era of technology, I suppose the influence and use of technology has been so integrated into our lives that it has become part of us. The most prominent and ubiquitous phenomenon is the use of mobile phones and the Internet. The mobile phones, of course, contain a myriad of social media and networking apps that really brings everyone around the world (those with access to the Internet) together on a shared platform. It makes learning about things happening around the world much more interesting than reading a static newspaper, and that the user decides what to know more about. For me, I usually use Pinterest to source for art and architecture inspirations and also follow profiles about architecture and travel on Instagram. Sometimes, I also watch videos on Youtube about world nature and visit travel vlogs to bring my deprived self out of the harsh reality. It really depends on what kind of information the user wants to look for. Since travelling and learning about new stuff is somewhat related to digital art and culture, I guess I could delve further into these keywords and hopefully something new would appear.

23/02/17

Arrival by Kevin Tong

“That’s a lovely picture. It’s so empty.” - Alice in den Städten (Alice in the Cities), Wim Wenders, 1974 (researching domesticity)

source: un-gif-dans-ta-gueule (gifs: link, link)

Art installation using mirrors to create a glitch-like facade

Under the well// Hong Kong2015

Torchwood subtitlers getting creative with their descriptions of sounds.

Badlands - Terrence Malick (1973)