I took this morning to the Kensington Garden, no sketching, no listening to airpods, and no reading Kindles. Just immersed myself with the ducks and the round pond. And it was amazing. To witness ‘life’ happening in front of me. I believe this is my major source of inspiration which I’m going to archive them into my research tab.

It’s a wake up call for me to become aware of the presence yet again. To become more objective to what it is as it is. You see a duck, you hear its voice, you feel the cold, and that what it is. No loneliness, no anxiety, no stress or dramas. Only nature as it is.

I finished by first cut of my animation with sound added.

I chose the transition into and out of the film from iMovie effect which looks like grid which resembles the blocky form of a QR code that needs to be scanned before entering the film.

I also tried this version of circles appearing and disappearing but decide not to use it since I would like to keep the shape language in the film in more of a ‘rectangular’ shape.

For sound, I intended for naturalism sound effect for this first tryout. Only the breathing part at the latter half that might sound a bit out of sync with the gesture of the character.

The baby cry at the end when Chailek looked into the window did satisfy me a lot since it is the only human voice (except the breathing) in the film which happen at the moment I found most important which could lead to a very interesting interpretation for the audiences.

For me it works like a twist of the story that instead of the paranoia we perceive from Surveillance, behind it is just life as same as us.

So this is the second edit I made with a voice over of my own breathing for the sleeping sequences for Chailek. I like it more than the first one since it matches better with the images.

I got this chance to show my individual work with Lee and there are interesting points to explore further as follows,

• What sound could I bring into the film in consideration of ‘what the images are doing currently’. Currently I have this idea of putting in a crying baby sound when Chailek sees a window to represent some life forms out there which could change a perspective of a window representing creepiness.
• How should I start, transition and finish the film and the sequences. Currently there are some glitches happening when the sequences change which could affect the experience of the film.

The most important thing to remember is to treat the work as an ongoing exploration than a finishing project that needs some finishing up.

So today our group had a group tutorial with Claire and Lee and we got something to think about a lot when it’s finished.

So I think basically, we need to be very cautious about everything we decide to execute since it all has meanings and implications. Also, it’s important to questions a lot on what is already happening there and where we might want to move forward in a way that is constructive and not disruptive to it.

It turned out we might want to go back to the box-shaped Zine instead of the puppet-shaped one with individual pages hung from it since it might be a little bit too distracted from the theme of Surveillance. Also, in my own interpretation, the tutors shared much about how should we ‘design the experience’ of taking in information of the Zine like how orders also affect the meaning of everything.

There was also a mention about our Manifesto fabric material whether it serves well with what we were trying to say. It reminded us to think more about the ‘audiences’ of the Manifesto, on who is the receiver? how would he/she be distributed the message? how should they be dealt with? kept? disposed? everything matters. Like above picture shown, I prefer the one on the right in terms of it aligns more with the concept of invisibility of Surveillance.

In going back to using a box for our zine publication, we prefer it for following reasons,

• It implies free order in receiving information inside the box which resonates well with our individual works that tells different opinions towards Surveillance.
• We believe the form catches more attention than typical book-liked format. Which for me feels like it goes well with our aim of wanting the audiences to become ‘aware’ of the topic.
• We thought that the box could be distributed by any means possible.

As I mentioned before about our Group Zine, after I got inspired from my colleague, Wooli, mentioning about QR code for accessing my animation, I tried to come up with some idea that could make use of it.

I came up with an idea of layering sheets of acrylic after attending a Laser Cut tutorial and thought of applying this into my work. The keyword that popped into my mind when trying to figure out what could be the most prominent symbol in representing my story is a window, so I adapted layers of acrylic into a form of a window.

With also inspired from the materials I found in a classroom of white and black coloured acrylic, I thought of using the first upper layers in white clear acrylic and the last one in black coloured with QR coded engraved on it to represent mystery.

I prepared the file in illustrator as shown below with the aim to refine the design to make it as minimal as possible in order to build up curiosity to the story behind the code.

Then, with help of Annie, our great technician! I managed to cut the pieces neatly in two sets of black and white acrylics with a Laser Cutter.

The result is really satisfying since my iPhone managed to read QR code on the acrylic.

With spares of two sets of two colours, I ended up with the original idea of placing three clear acrylic on black coloured one.

I got this invisible fishing thread from my team and thought it could go well with the ‘invisible watcher’ theme so I used it to bind my acrylic sheets together.

I’m still deciding whether to keep the long thread untrimmed since it reminds well of Chailek hair shape or to trim it neatly as if it is a Surveillance system that works in orderly manner.

So I gathered all the sequences together in one GIF as shown below. Just to see first how would it look like when all shots were played together continuously.

For the first edit below, for the last sequence when Chailek experiences nightmare, I felt there should have been more ‘breathing’ while asleep shots to make it feel more realistic. Also, after he woke up from the dream, he turned to the left but then to the window which I thought that it would have given him more of terrified feeling by adding shots of him turning to the right as well. So I did more shots after this edit.

After adding more ‘breathing’ shots and the turning to the left shot, here is the second and my latest edit which was uploaded to Vimeo already to prepare it for my QR code test which is the method I intended to use for audience to access my GIF from our group Zine. I’ll talk more about that on the following post.

I just finished the drawings of the latter part of the story shown below.

The further step would be editing it together with the previously done GIF with appropriate timing for each movement and see how it looks like. Also, adding more sounds.

For this latter part, I recorded myself as a reference point for drawing the facial expression of Chailek having a terrible nightmare during his sleep.

The reflection of the ‘Window’ is cropped from the photograph used in earlier scene for more convincing story.

Right now I feel as if Chailek is ‘hypnotised’ by the Window into his sleep. Let’s see how it feels like again after I edit everything together also with sounds.

So on past Friday, after lectures around critical thinking and other research methods, our group formed together to discuss our Group Zine which is due on the upcoming Friday with also a Presentation.

One of our team members, Wooli, who is leading in the design of the Zine came up with more idea of how to present our Zine as a ‘subscription box’. For me, this idea is interesting since it would become something rather than paper format publications. She also shared about the story of 1984 and George Orwell, which I think was actually the reference point of our usage of ‘Big Brother’ in our Manifesto.

For me I’m open to new ideas but I’m concerned mostly on how to mix everything up into one cohesive story so that we can present to the audiences easily. However, at the end there is one limitation that our individual pages inside the Zine should be bound or attached together, so we decided to let go of the box idea and sought for new solution.

I tried the ‘listening’ research method by asking fellow student from other groups, June, to share how was it for her group work and she showed me this long folded print. (Thank you June!) It liberated me from the limitation of thinking that there are only two ways of bounding the pages either with thread or staples, so talking to people really did help for idea generation.

I shared this back to the group and Wooli (thanks Wooli!!) again thought of this amazing idea of a ‘puppet’-liked Zine after hearing about other methods we can also think of when building up a Zine.

Our works would be individually inserted into ‘pockets’ hung from the same foldable long paper (which would be kindly produced by our two fashion students, Rika and Jessica).

I think it is amazing since it answered to both bounding our works together and also leaving room for our individual works to be executed separately with more freedom. Also the ‘puppet’ form of is kind of a metaphor of how Surveillance works with our lives.

I can’t wait to see it comes to life on this upcoming week 🙂

Critical Thinking

Today on Friday’s lecture, we had a discussion about what it is that makes up critical thinking and making in art and design.

For me this is really interesting, because I myself question the word ‘critical’ myself since I found a lot of tutors and also the school itself mention a lot about this method of working.

So from what I understand from the lecture, it basically means “asking questions” or to challenge anything with a “What if?” as Adam, one of our lectures put it.

There is one slide talking about ‘language’ which caught my attention very much since I also believe in this idea. It is a quote from Matt Fuller saying that “Language is thought standardised.” or by Judith Butler saying “Language when exercised through speaking or writing exercises a binding power.” and Matt, our tutor gave an example of our speeches in wedding ceremonies which make lots of sense to me.

There is one thing I got during the lectures though, that in order for artists or designers to think ‘critically’, I believe first of all, we should understand first ‘what makes us what to think critically?’ like whether do we care enough to ask questions about any particular matter? Because for issues that I personally don’t feel related to, I find myself not asking any questions to it at all.

Other Research Methods

Matt showed us more about other ways of doing critical research that could take us off the Internet world and more into the real physicality world. I find this really fascinating since for most of the time, I got stuck with either my own little world inside my head or on the screens. The methods could be as follows,

• Futuring : How you picture or imagine something in the future at present.
• Provoking : How you ask questions or come up with statements that cause further discussions or some arguments.
• Prototyping : How you try something out, and something happens.
• Co-Making : How you work with others.
• Listening : How you obtain information from other people.
• Immersing : How you just spend time with something ‘not knowing’ what is going to happen, but focus on being surrounded by the things you’re interested in.

Our Manifesto group which deal with Surveillance, set out to do some experiment on above research methods in various ways. Some went to ask a security person how he thinks about Surveillance, one person spent time sketching people as if she was the surveillance camera herself, and, for me and one student in the team, Caio, went out to count the number of Surveillance cameras installed inside the RCA’s Whitecity building.

What I got from this research are as follows,

• We found out so much less cameras than we though there might have been.
• By intently search for the cameras, I can feel the feeling of ‘paranoia’ being formed. The more you search for it, the more you want to search for it and somehow it feeds into some negative attitude towards it.
• However, after I finished the searched, I feel kind of relieved knowing that I know now where are the cameras located and it liberated me as a victim of the situation somehow. Like you feel more aware or ‘in control’ of whatever is happening around you.

We also shared what we learned to the other group and also to one of our tutors. The tutor mentioned two points that worth noting that we might want to generate questions to ’employees’, whether how do they feel about Surveillance since they might be the audiences we overlook. Also, she shared us to build a prototype and share it with people, since they might give you some feedbacks or some ‘critical’ resources you didn’t expect coming.

I just finished the longer GIF of my individual work as shown below.

The process is still similar with what I did with the first sequence of Chailek watering a pot plant. Digitally drawn in Photoshop with photographs as background. However I experimented with black and white this time, to emphasise the feeling of loneliness and to connect Chailek to the Window on the top left.

I thought of whether should I add in shadow under the character but decided not to so that the character would feel more out of place than the settings which is something I don’t normally do.

I’m satisfied with the result so far and looking forward to inserting sounds into the animation.

Seeing the buildings in black and white now reminds me of Roma from Alfonso Cuaron, whether I could also learn from his beautiful cinematography on how to use light and shadow and also compositions.