Yesterday was the day for the presentation of our Manifesto project. There are 5 groups presented in the room I was in. Our group topic is Surveillance, the others are Cyber, Narcissism, Content Addiction and Sustainability.

All of them are amazing. I was inspired especially with those who do a continuous process of investigating and exploring. Like for example, there is one student who is in Narcissism group who collected data of her surroundings and then use those as a resource for visual works. Or another one used human fingerprints on iPhone screen to create somewhat like a sculptor.

Taking that as an inspiration to my own work, I might try to let go more of an image of what would be done in my mind and let the things happening at hand to guide me. I might have to ask “what if” more with my future works and see what it might produce.

For our group presentation, there are key points as follows,

• Some tutors asked whether why we only focused mostly on ‘visual’ surveillance. That’s interesting. For me, I think it might be because it’s the most obvious issue to tackle. And for that reason, actually it might be the one that we are already being aware of. So I think it is a very interesting point to keep in mind that next time, we might want to consider an issue in some aspect that might be hidden somewhere.
• There seem to be positive feedback on how our group has come up with nuances in the response towards the topic. I believe in the virtue of this as well, to always be open and thorough in stating our opinion since personally, I also believe there are always two sides (or even more than two) to consider for any given issue or topic. And that feels like we came to the right direction in trying to find a Zine format that allows our works to be separated.
• Benji, our school alumni, mentioned on our statement that we chose the paper wrap package in order to avoid any misleading interpretation that it was actually contradicted with what we ended up produced since there are still some form to be interpreted, which are the manifesto printed on a letter that was attached onto the front of the package. This is a reminder to investigate it more delicately when we tried to explain or understand why we do what we do.
• For my own work personally, I got asked why I chose the character (the little plant character, Chailek) as the protagonist. I think I said something like because it feels personal to me, and that the actual reason for him being born at the first place was to become my friend out of loneliness.