I would like to share the later progress of project 6 up until the final publication shooting.

At first, in thinking about images to be used for my own pages, I also payed with objects that I used in my film. I thought of using the information on the label as a background to put in QR code into my film, but later on I chose not to since I think the focus would have been too much on the information of the object that it might divert the idea about relationship between objects and myself.

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In choosing the materials, led by Sheng Ye, one of our group member, we went to select papers from John Purcell Paper shop. We chose the same type of papers for the inner layers of the publication include the inner jacket but in different thickness in order to create different worlds when the reader navigate through the pages. We prefer the color of the paper to be not too yellowish, I personally like that in terms of how it would help showing the color of the work well.

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This is samples of my own page on the final paper, I really like the quality of the paper since it sits between matte and glossy for me. By having both qualities, the color is rich but still, the texture is not too glossy that it does not show much of reflection of light.

We have prepared many versions of mockups starting from using papers provided in the school. We printed the papers onto A3 sized paper and cut it with a cutter.

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Pody helped with the binding with thread and needle. I think it produces much feeling of a traditional publication which goes in align with this philosophical theme of our group that seems to be timeless question comparing to technique such as staples.

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Towards the final publication, we printed the inner layers with a photocopier/printing machine but the jacket from the printing lab. We planned to print around 8 copies, one for each of us, one to be submitted, and one for extra spare. Below are the inner layers,

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For the jacket, at first we thought of using an opaque paper from the printing lab, but the color is too white comparing to the innter layers, so we decided to have two layers of jacket, an inner one with the thickest paper bought from John Purcell to produce the same texture with the inner three layers, and we would have an outer jacket printed on a transparent paper from the printing lab. I like the transparent paper since it gives a mysterious feel of something that could be seen but not clearly.

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For the folding process we also have this plastic rod to help make the seam become more neat. Sheng also helped with the smashing machine to help flattening the publication.

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At first we also thought of having a title embossed with a letter S so we tried to lasercut the letters in wood and also on test paper. We ended up did not use it. Personally, even the letter could represent ‘literary’ the ‘s’elf and ‘s’urrounding, however, it might be a bit too narrow in order to capture the sense of the philosophical subject.

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We did quite a number of mockups to test also the layout and the working of the texts and the readibility.

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This is how the final product look like. I like the idea of having different texture of papers creating more complex narrative to the publication.

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We prepared three types of jackets; all bound to the contents inside, only the outer jacket detachable and both of the jackets detachable.

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We chose the version which the outer jacket is unbound. I like how the outer jacket acts as an introduction and a credit to the contents inside but then it could be lifted off so that the reader might become more focus with the contents inside later on.

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Regarding the launching event, we are discussing ideas such as we might all carry our physical publication in case of when any audiences want to understand more, we can use it to explain and have conversation with the audiences, we can also ask the audiences how does she or he think about her or his identity in relationship with her or his surrounding as well similar to an interview.

Today I would like to blog about the latest progress of a group work which has its rough title as SS which comes from Self-Surroundings. Our audiences would be those who go through existential crisis. Our aim of the publication is to ask questions revolving around self and surroundings to our audiences.

First of all, here is the timeline for our group work. Basically we divided the task into the creation of digital layout, print format and digital format.

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For now we have produced a mockup as shown below,

In order to lead the access point to the center of the pages, we used the jackets. On the left jacket we would show our group manifesto which was originally written by Sas, our copywriter, then we revised together with Nathan, our ADAS tutor. The text leads the reader from the innermost part of the publication to the outers with questions asked at the end of each layer.

Here is our group manifesto, Thanks again Sas!!!!,

What does it mean to be a ‘self’ in this world? In this publication, we pose that question and explore what it means to us. The works in this publication reflect our thinking surrounding this topic, starting out with questioning ‘the self’ through works that;

• explore an entity’s relationship with objects and how this shapes it’s being, and
• build a quasi-profile of a person’s identity, to question the relationship between displayed or selected identity and if this is indeed true.

Through this investigation, questions begin to emerge: Who am I? What am I? Who are we? What are we? We offer the reader to opportunity to ponder these questions, as they consider our work.

The second part of this publication is an exploration of how ‘the self’ perceives its surroundings and how, in turn, this perception influences ‘the self’, the surroundings being physical space, both human made and natural. The surroundings get drawn out through the perception of light, sound and motion, and the corruption of it through illusions.

Through this investigation, questions begin to emerge: What are you? What shapes you? What is and is not real?

The last part ponders upon the larger metaphysical world of life and death and everything in-between. The ceaseless grip of death on ‘the self’ shapes and contextualises our lives, but is there a way for one ‘self’ to escape it, potentially into a digital world?

Through this investigation, questions begin to emerge: Is there even a self without a physical surrounding? Could this disembodiment be a higher form a ‘self’ can achieve? Can the digital have soul?

The goal of our publication is to journey outwards and inwards into the notion of ‘the self’.

Here are some pictures of publication,

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I like how the change from each layer is subtle which mirrors the act of becoming aware that gets ignored easily if we not pay enough attention.

We are given 6 pages from cover to our individual works and 500 texts that introduce our works and practice. Here is the structure of the layout,

We started with a text of around 200 words to introduce our work, follow by a full page of an image showcasing possibly our final work. Then it follows with a pattern of image/text. We keep the layout as simple as possible which I think help in conveying the concept of finding out who we are, as if we are in the same boat searching for identities.

I introduced my part describing about my work and uses this photo as an opening image.

It is from my latest project titled Everyday Object which deals about my identity in relationship with everyday objects surrounding myself. This screengrab is from the Friday sequence which is when objects take over my flat and I have become an object which has its ending of a life cycle in a garbage bin.

Since I have been given three pages left for my works, I chose to put in Monday, Wednesday and Friday sequences to create a sense of repetitive pattern of showing days in an every other day sequence. I used a narrative style of writing as if I’m talking from an object’s perspective. I also used a first person style of writing because our group agreed with such technique in conveying the concept of self.

Here is a sample of Monday’s sequence,

I enter this room with a lot of friends. I don’t know whether should I speak, or sing? I better stay silent and queue up with everyone else. I think I should be in order, but I also want to be individual, maybe I could learn that later. I’m not familiar with this soft carpet, shouldn’t I be on a metal rack or maybe a wooden one.

In responding to the group writing and concept, I tried to incorporated phrases that could be linked to other member’s idea. For example, the text above talks about an object perceiving physical space that surrounds it. I also used the technique of asking question hoping that the reader would also want to ask themselves as well.

I also played with the green screen in hope of producing new photos to work with this publication using objects that were used in the film such as used paper box or bottle. I ended up not using since it could not show the context of my flat which actually is the setting I believe could reflect best the presence of both objects and I. Due to time limit as well, I chose to only use screengrabs for my images.

Here are the photos taken by Nan Zhang, one of our group’s member, thanks so much Nan!!!

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And here, some behind the scene mockups helped greatly by Pody and Nevaeh. Especially Pody, who helps preparing fonts in different sizes on different sizes of papers.

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We have reached the last project which is about publishing our works out to the public, in this case, the Graduate Diploma community.

We are assigned to work in a group of 6. My group theme after considering all of our works, became about the relationship between self and its surroundings in different contexts either physically, spatially, temporal or even life and death.

Below are the format we chose to design our publication. The idea is about placing members who talk about identities at the innermost part, then expanding onto other members who tackle wider themes.

And Below are two other alternatives that we explored during the process. What we liked with this idea is how the jackets, as inspired from Clare!, lead the access point for the reader to the center of the publication.

The next step for me as a project and event manager is to come up with a timeline to keep track of everyone in the group to deliver the works. Also, our pending questions and issues are as follows,

• Who is the target audience? So far I’ve been thinking about those who are experiencing an existential crisis.
• What is the aim of our publication?
• How would we present our publication at the event?

Below are images of my draft plan for managing the workflow of our group.

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It has been a while but eventually, I have managed to finish the film for project realise as shown here which ended up becoming a story about ‘Awareness of the Objects & I’,

From my first plan of doing 7 days of 7 sequences, I managed to only finish 5, so I made it into a sequence of ordinary ‘weekdays’ from Monday to Friday instead. The sequences were made one sequence a day on every other day from 20-28 Jan ’20. All of them were filmed inside my own flat with Canon 750D camera with a frame-by-frame stop motion technique. I also incorporated live-action video into the film to blend in the reality. The film images were combined and edited in Adobe Premiere Pro.

The film shows stories around objects which also through time, grown more interest into becoming or emulating me. I did not put in narrated sound as intended previously since I would like to let the objects speak for themselves. However, from the result, it seems a little too quiet which might lose the attention from the audience, so I think I could have insert possibly recording of the movement sound of the object in order to create more engaging experience from the watch.

Below are more critical analysis towards each day’s sequence,

Monday: Objects Think

This sequence shows objects tried to organise themselves. I drew inspiration from the remark from Rene Descartes “I think therefore I am.” to question what if an object thinks, will it produce an identity for it? So I only animate the objects adopting human’s behaviour.

For this sequence, I think the organisation of objects work well in showing how they have become ‘humanised’, however, I could have pushed it further letting them organise themselves and placing themselves into spaces like shelves and cabinets in my room rather than being kept back in the shopping bag, to convey the need in the shelter as same as human. I also think that the sequence might have been too long, I could have reduced the number of objects to show in the sequence for a more concise piece.

Tuesday: Objects Resist

For this sequence, it went a little more rebellious in showing tissue papers rolling off from a trashcan. They formed themselves into a wall which was projected with a film of myself using the papers to clean my face instead of a towel.

I think it gave a different flavour comparing to other sequences with objects that I made. This sequence shows a critical issue created from human to the environment, rather than other sequences which might only be seen as narrative approach.

Wednesday: Objects Need a Proper Wash

For Wednesday sequence, the packages that came with the food for my lunch crawled into my bathroom to be washed in the same bathtub as me.

I could have pushed it further as suggested by Kyung Hwa Shon to use the objects flowing above the water to reflect an issue around environment like how we see trash in a river. It is interesting to think about the whole cycle of a life of an object or even trash. I think It is a lesson again for me to ‘dig deeper’ into things or themes that interest me. Before this suggestion, I only feel ‘guilty’ when I buy or consume products that considered out of necessity but I never questioned exactly why did I feel so. I might have to research more about a cycle of a product to know exactly what happen to the packages after being thrown away. Psychologically, this could also be an act in order to avoid feeling ‘too guilty’ as well once it’s more understood objectively. It is interesting to show exactly why throwing away things in a garbage makes me feel guilty, by polluting the earth?

Thursday: Objects Need Expression

For this scene it shows an object that feel unsatisfied with its labels and wish to wear clothes like me to express itself better.

For this sequence, I could have created a more critical or social perspective by comparing how I treat the bottles and my clothes differently, how I managed to keep the clothes on the shelves as valuable products while treated the bottles less important and put them on the floor without much attention or care. What if we care more about daily products, will it make us care more about consumption habit? Is this about humanising the product so we could possibly treat it more with respect and care? When morality is involved and we put more of our attached feeling when we throw them away, will it make us think more when we are about to consume it?

Friday: Or Am I an Object?

For this scene, I showed myself as an iPhone stand and played with the words from Karl Marx about object that said a product becomes a real product only by being consumed. In the film, after I gave away iPhone, I rolled myself into the trashcan as if to end my own duty as an object or a product.

As with also a comment from Kyung Hwa, I agreed with her that this sequence might seem a bit different in the message than the others, but I still would like to insert it in to remind of the nuances when looking from a lot of aspects around the relationship. Maybe, I could add more sequence between Thursday and Friday showing the objects turned into myself and then that self is searching for an iPhone.

From the presentation, Cato mentioned about adding more of intentionality. I could created intuitively, but I could analyse it afterwards and come up with a storyboard. I think that worth trying, since currently sometimes I think I’m too conforming to whatever is going on which might not lead to an engaging designed piece of work. There might need to be a balance or a bouncing between the spectrum of intentionality and intuition.

Teresa and Brook, my classmates, mentioned about seeing more of myself in the work and made it come a little more dramatic or theatrical I believe. This prompted me to think about the process in the making that I could have shown it to my friends for their feedbacks as well since as a creator, I might be too familiar with the piece to understand which part is entertaining or dull and to various people preferences.

Going forward, I plan for the presentation to also use the objects that I have collected to create an installation while showing my work to the audiences. Also, I would like to become clearer in targeting the audience of my work for this project which could be for consumers who would like to become more aware of their impact on the environment.

I would like to use this post to update statement of intent which currently is set into a concept that leads to the end of Realise Project.

Since last Monday, I have set out a plan to create 7 short films depicting 7 ordinary days in a week that explores relationship between daily used object and myself. First of all, here is the updated statement of intent to clarify where I am right now,

1. What is the concept/idea?: The concept is about exploring relationship between myself and daily used products from tissue papers to teabags or milk cartons. What is unique about it?: It is a surreal interplay of myself mingling with objects. Sometime objects become myself, sometimes it’s on the other way around.
2. What are the aims and objectives of your project?: To explore the meaning of identity through possessed or used objects around myself.
3. What research will you undertake? How does this research relate to your development practice?: In terms of learning about objects, I look into ideas such as material culture. And, I look into topics such as identities and philosophy of mind in order to understand more about how we create ourselves. I also set out to see precedents who produced works with stop motion with objects or pixilation (stop motion using live actors) such as Jan Svankmajer, Norman Mclaren and PES.
4. How will your experimentation from the previous project become a resolved body of work?: I think by the cyclical process of creating, researching and reflecting in repetitions would help refine it better of what I set out to find forming gradually into a final work.
5. How will you develop the project? I would set out a task to come up with a spontaneously responsive film each day for 7 days representing a routine or habits of living with daily objects. Half of it would set an object as a protagonist, another setting myself as one.
6. How will you achieve your aims? Since identity is a vast topic in itself, I would like to focus with only one tiny aspect for exploration in each day and set aside a time after filming to reflect the works.
7. What will the final outcome be? around 3-5 minutes, for some days, they might be shorter or longer than others.

Reaching week three of Project Realise I have come up with the idea of creating stop motion animation that take place in my own room. Since I feel much presence of myself and my belongings most in my room, I decided to shoot it there. The film would comprised of 7 sequences depicting each day in a week. I intended for such concept to emphasise the notion of routine and the everyday life that we might not be mindful of and that happens again and again in loop.

The first experiment here from last Thursday started with a concept of how objects in general, not specifically the used object in daily product, such as earbud headphones or objects I carried such as bags affect my behaviour (I realised about behaviour after a critique from Ian).

For the start of the scene, I intended to show how my body got affected from the object, in this case the earbuds, by shaking my head as if the music was still continuing even though they were removed. I need to add more sound in order to see how it goes. I think I could have made a more expressive face of one listening to music or my face could have changed to a happier and relaxed one when all my stuffs were stripped of from my body to show how lighter I felt. So actually the relationship of me and objects could be between the object, my mind and my own body.

I changed my clothes from casual to sleeping t-shirt so as to show how sipping a tea affect my mood. This could be about relationship between consumption and behaviour. I incorporated dream-liked element turning myself into a toothbrush to further subvert audience’s perception of what is real and unreal. I think I still need to adjust the pace of each frame to create much more realistic movement such as when the toothbrush is walking to the toilet, the frames could run in a fast and slow mimicking the jumping movement in real life.

I would like to explore more about pixilation, or the stop motion animation of live actor, from Norman Mclaren, which is a prominent figure in animation history whose work called Neighbor used such technique. I will post about such exploration in the Precedent Research tab.

As mentioned earlier, Ian has pointed out themes around routines, behaviours and rituals that I found worth focusing on as to strengthen the concept of showing daily situations that happens in one week. It could also talk about “habit patterns” that occurs around myself and my consumption of daily used products.

For this experiment I didn’t quite narrow the objects down to the daily used products so it might not be effective enough in conveying a strong message. I would focus more on daily consumption products for further film sequences.

Both Ian and Cato mentioned about the elements in storytelling that I found useful in calling attention from the viewers which are wit, humour, absurdity and abstraction. I believe these elements would cause some bewilderment to the viewers creating the hooked feeling for them in wanting to understand what is going on. This could also link back to my interest in Surrealism which deals with the challenge to rationality.

Ian shared about two interesting surreal works which I found interesting in terms of twisting and provoking our perception of reality. The first one is a film called Being John Malkovich which is a drama/fantasy genre movie directed by Spike Jonze and written by Charlie Kaufman. The setting of a room that has a lower ceiling made me realise how I can twist something from its reality by changing its scale. However, I still need to watch the whole film in order to gain more knowledge.

Next, he shared about this music video called, Let Forever Be, by the Chemical Brothers which was directed by Michel Gondry, the director behind one of my favourite films, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Although I might not consider the work as an animation, but it has this surreal quality in playing with perception of the visual effect by mixing the digital visual effect with physical ones. This reveals to me again to look from the other side of not only create an imaginable movement from physical object through digital program, but I can also convert the technique made in digital back to the physical world as well.

For Cato, he mentioned about two pieces as well, the first is a film, Fight Club, which he said mentioned about the dialogue in the film saying that the things you own end up owning you. This reminded me of the phrase I consume therefore I am. (Ian also mentioned about You are what you eat.) I could use this idea for my further project showing much more of a transformation or a ‘fusion’ of the daily used products and me.

He also mentioned about a project called ‘Everyday Plastic’ which is a project by Daniel Webb who collected plastic he used for an entire year creating a though provoking mural work to address an issue around overconsumption that could be the right answer than recycling. Here is the link to my reference article.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/apr/17/i-kept-all-my-plastic-year-4490-items-forced-rethink

On past week I visited to various activities in order to keep exploring into each of the idea I have come up so far for my Realise project. On Thursday, I visited Sir John Soane’s Museum in order to explore the ‘object’s in the museum’s collection. At night, I visited the British Library for a talk titled ‘Mindfulness: Ancient Wisdom Meets Modern Psychology’ by Christina Feldman and Willem Kuyken to learn more about mindfulness which I still treat it as an underlying theme for all of my projects’s influences.

Additionally, on yesterday, I also visited the exhibition from the British Library, Buddhism, which showed a history, tradition and practice about Buddhism which is also my own religion. It’s interesting to see how the religion is perceived from the context outside of my own country in Thailand.

At Sir John Soane’s Museum, I went there without much information or context around the objects I explored, but rather encountered them in a spontaneous manner. I thought about objects through sketching as a method which shown below. I aimed to find relationship of objects and our identities projected on them. I found out details such as the number written on each object interesting in terms of it representing an ‘identification’ for each object. How we give its importance by collecting and numbering them. This led to the idea of giving the used packages I have with numbers or name in order to create some identities on it.

On the other hand, I saw fragments of human sculpture like an arm hung together with other artefacts on the wall. This raised question whether an identity of a particular person can be disregarded when the person is no longer recognised as a person but just a part of him or not.

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For the talk at the British Library on Mindfulness: Ancient Wisdom Meets Modern Psychology, I attended the event in wanting to understand mindfulness from the western context. The session talked about dimensions of mindfulness such as simple knowing which means the knowing of what is happening now in our bodies and minds. It also prompted me to realise how mindfulness could become useful in our society in psychological aspect. For example, the talk told us about how it could be used for us to follow our habit pattern which we could learn to develop a skilful response. There were also mentions that related much to adopting mindfulness as a way to cope with depression. This made me realise my potential audience of my film that relates to mindfulness could be people who struggles with depressions.

Lastly, for the Buddhism exhibition held at the British Library. At first I set out to find some idea on how to incorporate or visualise the idea of awareness into my work but I managed to find out about other interesting aspect of the exhibition of noticing ‘symbols’ that were used in Buddhism sculptures instead. For example, the use of lotus as a symbol for the purity of an enlightened mind or a Wheel of Dharma that symbolises the Buddha’s teaching on the Middle way or the Noble Eightfold Path. This inspired me to think about any symbols that could associate with the act of becoming aware. Could it be the sound of a standing bell for example? (There was one at the end of the exhibition used by striking a mallet onto it.)

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For this post, I would like to update with quick photos from my notebook and physical planner for my current plans and thoughts of project Realise.

Firstly, the picture below shows current mind-map of important keywords within this project. My line of inquiry for this project is around the idea of the relationship between object and identity. Specifically, I look into used objects of packages of daily products I have been collected and explore the presence of my identity within these materials. This also led me into the discovery of such theme as material culture and philosophy of mind, which I would further research into.

Then, I updated my action plans which covers time duration until the last week of this project. Briefly saying, I divided my tasks for this project into 3 main parts which are creation, research and reflection. I also included tasks related to the RCA MA animation application.

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Below is my latest experiment with working around the ideas of objects – identities.

This time, instead of using an object to represent a person by showing a human face as I did earlier with the tea bag experiment, I looked into more of representing ‘human activity’ in an object. I created a story of the package junk parading themselves onto my bed as if they also need a proper shelter as if they are a human being.

https://vimeo.com/384756723

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In terms of the visual, I used my own bedroom, again with previous projects dealing with the context I’m currently live in, in order to ground the story in to as much reality as possible.

Adapting the method of Surrealism in my understanding, I tried to make use of working in ‘spontaneity’ by not predetermining specific objects to play with but instead make a decision of choosing which object to play with at the moment of the shooting. The aim is to create an unexpected result of the ordinary.

I played with the object under the dark to emphasise the idea of the dream and also to create mysterious ambience. Since the images were shot by an iPhone camera, the quality could have been better with a DSLR camera for example. I intend to shoot with such camera for my upcoming work.

In terms of the sound, I narrated into the film with an aim to inject myself into the objects. I would like in future film to create a sound for the object in order to create a more imaginative and dream-liked quality.

With tutorial with Ian, I got to show him this work and I received key lessons as follows,

• In terms of animation techniques, I could play more with
  • The pace of the movement of myself and the objects which can be used as a language for the concept. For example I could play with letting my own movement in ‘staccato’ movement (not continuously and as if I’m a lifeless object) while letting the object moves naturally instead.
  • The camera angle, for example, what if I put a camera inside a fridge as if it is a viewpoint from some product inside?
  • The usage of time, I may use other techniques in showing change that happens through time beside just moving things around, it could be about showing the ‘after scenario’ of event happened as well.
• In terms of storytelling technique, I could further my ‘absurd’ story exploration into something minor but relatable to daily human activity such as what if the coffee cup would like to use a telephone? or what if they try to ’emulate’ my own personality. For example, could it be about the junk would like to take their own selfie photos.
• To think deeper into possible political or social aspects related to the work such as the idea of value systems (what gives each object their own value) or maybe about health-conscious issue, as what we can notice from the hidden message behind why I chose to drink ‘oat milk’ instead of dairy milk as my alternative, can I find these little details and exaggerate it? This pointing out to an issue like health-conscious can also be viewed as if it is some kind of a ‘self-portrait’ of myself, which I believe is in align with my possible recurring theme of ‘identity’.
• In terms of influences from movement such as Surrealism, Ian introduced me about the Dada and its emphasis on performances which is called the Fluxes (later developed into Happenings). It could be an example of seeing Surrealism in motion.

For further experiment, I would like to further my exploration with current films but now adjust or play with ‘little alternation’ for techniques or story as mentioned above.

Yesterday, I continued my exploration between relationship of identity and objects around me. Although I’m still open in thinking about what kind of objects I should focus with, which can be about used daily objects or packages, dolls and toys or books.

In this case, I used teabags which have been collected due to my concern of becoming mindful with reducing waste or reusing used products into something valuable once again.

This time, comparing to my previous short film around Milk Carton, instead of imagining what kind of a story as a teabag could tell, in turn, I explored the object as a mean to find my own identity from it. The result is still too short being a transformation of a group of tea leaves turning into a face of a person. I think this doesn’t represent much of myself yet.

Also, I wish to be able to go deeper in finding a more particular aspect of why do I see myself and in which aspect from these teabags. Or, does it not contain any of my identity but just function as a consumable product?

There is also an interesting journal here about Possessions and Extended-Self that I found might be relevant in the exploration. However, I question whether I could call these teabags as possessions? Since I don’t think I possess these objects for pleasure or with any personal attachment, merely just for educational or creative purpose.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/2489522?read-now=1&seq=16#references_tab_contents