Yesterday I got a chance to talk with Matt Lewis, my personal tutorial for communication pathway.

Before seeing him, I managed to update my storyboard as shown here.

There are quite some interesting points from the discussion with Matt as follows,

• He suggested apart from books and the internet, I could also conduct my research via experience the physical world or by having conversations with people.
• He emphasised about the ‘experimental’ aspect of the process especially when I’m aiming for MA Animation at the RCA. I might want to explore more about stop-motion animation.
• He also suggested getting to know more on software like Dragonframe. I”m new to that!
• I asked him about the steps to take further and we talked about adding sounds. He suggested Freesound which I did visited and downloaded some as uploaded below. He noted two categories of where it could go for sound which are ambience and the character.
• He saw my storyboard and thought of this film called “Film (1965)” and recommended me to watch it.
• I also told him about wanting to try to create the film in black and white except for the window and the character parts to be colored.
• He finished with the advise to go share my works to people, that is also a part of a research 🙂

After the discussion, I think I would like to aim for around 3 minuted animation to be submitted for my future application portfolio. Coming with the idea of telling a long storyline (combining different projects from Graddip course) with different media and techniques in the production.

Here is the silent film, “Film (1965)” directed by Samuel Beckett and Alan Schneider.

I watched the film and below is what I gained from the experience,

• I think it’s about a man who become so obsessed with avoiding the ‘eyes’
• The intensity builds up when the story moves forward, from avoiding eyes contact from strangers, a monitor, pets, to maybe his family portraits he thought of in his private moment or finally to even an illusion of himself projected on the wall in front of him.
• I like how the actor’s face was kept away from us during the storytelling before reaching its peak.
• Also how it’s made to look like the camera is some kind of menace causing anyone looking into it to collapse or look away.

Digging deeper into the making of the film, it seems as if the film is based around Bishop Berkeley’s principle ‘esse est percipi’ (to be is to be perceived) according to Michael Brooke <michael@everyman.demon.co.uk> from https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060410/plotsummary?ref_=tt_ov_pl

I got interested in the “to be is to be perceived” philosophy, so I looked further about who is Bishop Berkeley. It turns out he is George Berkeley, a Irish Philosopher back in the 1600s. (It’s interesting to note here that Samuel Beckett is also an Irish.)

Cited from https://www.britannica.com/biography/George-Berkeley he is “best known for his empiricist and idealist philosophy, which holds that reality consists only of minds and their ideas” Also from the same site, there is this one sentence that caught me hooked cited “”To be,” said of the object, means to be perceived; “to be,” said of the subject, means to perceive.”

Anything mind-related is also a subject of my interest. To sum up here, maybe in my story, when Chailek realised he is being perceived by someone behind the window, it reminds back of his ‘existence’.

Here is also a link to some sound I chose to use with my work.

For the feeling of loneliness : https://freesound.org/s/152508/

For pouring water : https://freesound.org/s/336385/

Since Monday we were given a brief about our next assignment as a group which is to record a Podcast together discussing our concept and production of our Manifesto Zine, which is a publication that would gather all our individual works or responses towards Surveillance.

Today we did also rehearse our Podcast discussion together as well to prepare for the filming on Thursday. We tried to also expand the theme of Surveillance into the format of the discussion itself for example we chose to have two hosts leading the discussion whose characters are quite commanding or how we would finish the film with a disturbing alarming sound to simulate being hunted down my thought polices.

As for the Zine, our team member, Wooli, came up with an idea of putting our works together in a box representing a gift box. I think it’s pretty exciting in terms of breaking the convention of how the format of a zine should be. Below is her own design pattern of a box that isn’t formed yet. How nice!

As for myself, I’m thinking of maybe using a QR code to represent the digital communication (actually, I believe it’s Wooli also inspired me about QR, thanks again!) in folding papers in possibly a shape of a window. And link the code to the animation uploaded on the cloud. Let’s see how it would turn out.

There are also some other references I explored for the format of my individual pages to be put inside the box shown here. And also, the theme of my chapter would be ‘gratefulness’ let remind myself that as well.

I’ve come up with words to describe the story as follows,

“Chailek, the little plant the protagonist of the story, is doing his work during the day alone, watering his plant, reading books, and talking to birds. He finally gets exhausted as the day goes by and fall asleep when the sun is also setting itself. The camera shoots into his face, he is having a night mare probably from his inner fear of being alone. He finally wakes up, panting heavily, looking around and see no ones. Tong isn’t home yet, he thought. He turns to the window, and there is this window with the yellow light. He wonders if someone there is somewhere behind it. Maybe he is being watched over all this time? He feels somehow safe. He look at it for some time, hoping there might be someone showing up, then gradually, he falls back into sleep yet again.”

and the GIF I’ve made so far which shows Chailek in the first scene during daytime.

I like to result here in terms of the contrast between the digitally drawn animation and the photo behind. Wondering whether is it too flat and needs some light and shadow on the character or not.

On yesterday, we had progressed our Manifesto project as a group in terms of identifying our aims and categories that would form up a zine publication.

Our aims are as follows:

• to create awareness around surveillance
• to provoke questions around surveillance
• to help people live with surveillance

and, our chapters would be categorised by emojis that represent attitudes towards Surveillance for each of our team member.

I also agreed with this emoji execution since it feels current to the digital age and also more abstract and open to further interpretation comparing to words.

Before we concluded to emojis, we were struggled with trying to find the categorisation that we all can agree with that is not too broad or specific. We even thought of using colors to represent our moods, using our sentences from our Manifesto or even with the media we plan to execute our individual work.

We also started our booklet as the first draft for our group zine by combining images chosen individually by team members. This process of various ideas clashed together to form a new one is what I really love about working as a group.

So right now, an emoji for my category is this one -> 😌 which represent ‘gratefulness’ since I would like to focus on the positive benefit when looking at Surveillance issue.

So I always thought we need to execute 3 individual works, which now it seems that we don’t necessarily need to do that! So I think I will scope down to just one idea.

So far those three ideas are

• a story of hidden surveillance cameras found in old photos
• a story of chailek, a living plant, sleeping in his room while someone is watching him with some hidden agenda
• a set of vanyl cards etched with an illustration of candid shots of myself having food

And, now I would like to pick the second one to develop further since it could produce an animated GIF that I may help me gain more experience for upcoming animation works.

Also, from an experimentation on the previous post about how would I create images for this method, I think I will go with using both digital illustration and photographs as a mean to produce since I have never done it before so it’s challenging.

Somehow, I would like to make sure with the tutor on whether my subject right now is still relevant to Surveillance or not. Right now the story is about the mystery from a window looking at my protagonist with some hidden agenda. It may be something creepy or something good. But the act of looking from a window somehow resonates with how we got surveilled in other occasions whether by the Government or organisations in my opinion.

Mentioning about something good behind the window, it reminds me of the movie Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close somehow, when the grandmother of the boy lives on the opposite building and they use radios to contact each other when they need help from each other.

Another day with an experimentation for one of my execution methods for my Manifesto, Surveillance. I thought of using my room in London as a reference point for this piece. The message is about how we might being watched all the time from somewhere by someone.

I would do it as a GIF animation showing the scene gets dimmer and dimmer as the day reaches its end. Although, I’ve not come up with a decision yet on whether which technique should I use to create an image, for either using the photograph as realistic as it is, or illustrate it.

I also drew Chailek, my character into the piece, to relate myself to the piece.

This is a post for my latest experiment with Adobe Illustrator after a tutorial introducing the program. I’m not much a fan of the program actually since works produced here seem kind of rigid and lifeless to me. However, I wanted to challenge myself.

So I began by looking for sketches in my sketchbook that seems workable digitally and found this eye monster interesting.

Since it’s an easy shape I just use it as a reference and use pen tool to draft it up in Illustrator. Then I used Gradient, which is the tool I really dislike honestly to create the effect inside the eyeball.

And, again, for the reference of how our eyes really look like, I used personal photos for references. I think personal photos can produce and outcome that feels very related.

Then I thought of the idea of moving the pupil around and then export into JPEG and used Photoshop for the animation.

I experimented with different speed and found out a random of quick and slow glance works the best and seems most natural to me.

I like it. He looks cute and friendly to me now which is something I want to come up with when trying to look at surveillance issue on the other way around. It definitely gives more realistic sense into it, since we possess both good and evil sides in us.

I visited Tate Modern two times on this past weekend. On Saturday, I visited the Artist Rooms : Ed Ruscha. I got inspired by the way he used words with pictures so much. Also, how he plays with it with concepts behind.

There is one room dedicated to book publications of the artist that I like very much as well due to its cleverness. There is one book that titled as ‘Colored People’ but when you open it, the pages were filled with photographs of cacti instead. The execution might seem simple but it is the idea behind puzzling the audiences that interests me.

I also love this title called ‘Various Small Fires’ that on the first page, you’ll find it says ‘Various Small Fires and Milk” and when you flip through the book inside, there are literally photographs of small fires here and there which ends with, of course, a glass of milk. This straightforward representation of language into visuals also surprisingly catch my attention somehow.

On Sunday I visited the gallery again for Olafur Eliasson: In Real Life exhibition. He is a Danish-Icelandic artist that has three important interests which are nature concerns, geometry research and human perception with the world. The first room is a model room, which to me shows how experimentation is really a key in artistic process.

My favourite is this one since the pattern of the black colored materials on the glass globe causes me to feel “curious”.

There are also these two globes with different materials on two seperate walls that reminded me of surveillance cameras. The distorted reflection brings amusement in viewing that I’m thinking of maybe come up with a story of a surveillance camera monster for one of my communication method in expressing issues on Surveillance.

The last room is also interesting since it has this long pin-board wall with printed articles, photographs, questions and news arranged from a-z of keywords.

In summary what I learned from Olafur is how perception through our sense and interactions with artworks really leave impactful experience and realisation on us.

On past Friday night, I experimented a short animated image of my parents to explore how it would look when a line work is done from purely digital, in this case Photoshop. As a part of my preparation into further execution process of the Manifesto project that needs to be done in 3 different methods. Because before this, normally I would draw on papers and then scan into the computer to finish the piece.

I used photoshop for this animated piece, started with a sketch and then adding layers onto it. I always thought I won’t like doing it in pure digital, but this time I opened myself up to new possibilities. The reason is simply also because the tools are not quite available for me now since I don’t have a scanner ready with me at my flat.

Along the process, I tried to adapt what I like with traditional hand drawing into the image, for example, I tend to not erase much and let the lines I did not wish to be there remain, or how I tend to stick to colors or tools that still remind me of pencils, pens or pastel-colored paints.

The result is quite satisfied to me since it doesn’t look that ‘digital’ to me which I’m not quite attracted to. Also, I tried to challenge my self within my own limitation of working with reference in moving those bits I can like the eyes without losing a realistic representations.

I experimented the animated image with different speed to find the right amount of speed. If it’s too fast it becomes too dizzy to read, if it’s too slow, it loses its liveliness.

So I finalised it with a delay around 0.2 seconds with also a pause at the end to add more realistic touch onto it.

I would like to expand it more into a longer animation after this.

On yesterday, we were given yet again a Manifesto workshop with tutors led by Matt Lewis. He mentioned about the reading list that we should familiarise ourselves with for conversations on Friday workshops and tutorials. I think I have roughly categorised my further reading research into 4 categories though which are Manifesto, Surveillance (our group topic), Animation (Art form I want to use mainly for my execution) and Storytelling.

He pointed out how references from the past could be used in our manifesto for example like how the Guerrilla Girls used Confucius words as shown below.

There were some more artist groups introduced but what kept me interested in particular was the Dogma 95, which started in 1995 by the Danish directors Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg. Since it is from filmmakers which is the field I’m interested in in particular.

One more thing I learned is it doesn’t have to be expressed in an aggressive way, it could be done in humorous manner as well for example. There is also one question asked by a tutor that is interesting asking “What do you care about?” Well, mine is I care about true love, but that is my core personal value, for the Manifesto project it might have to be adapted a bit.

We got asked by questions there are important to think about when coming up with a Manifesto and we came up with answers as shown below.

For me personally, I think I’m kind of acceptable of Surveillance as long as it is done in a transparent manner and with consent from the data owners. Because for some application of surveillance related technology such as a baby camera, I think it has its usefulness as well. The issue for me might be how can people be more aware of their data being used and how can they monitor back to the data users with ease.

We also were given samples of different types of Manifestoes to studied onto what kind of social context, targeted audiences or even the styles of writing used in each and compare them and come up with some idea to develop our own.

Each of our team has his or her own opinion towards each of the piece. For me I like the one from Fritz Haeg, London: A Manifesto From Your Animals most. Since it is written in a simple narrative form with also easy to understand language. I have found the use of the layout or the size of the letters also important in order to catch people’s attention and keep them reading until the end.

The sarcastic tone from Fritz Haeg’s Manifesto inspired out team to go with this similar direction and we came up with the first draft below.

It is written as a Letter to the Invisible Watcher for his or her grateful ‘watching over’ behaviours. For me personally I also like this idea of toning down the seriousness of the issue like this even though for each individual, we might understand the jokes differently depends on each person background. We intended to use a succinct writing style in bullets and also start all the sentences with the same “Thank you…” to make it even more impactful and memorable.

Caio, one of our team members is really good with humorous idea so I think we did it great with this assignment. He also came up with the ending as Your Little Brother to relate to the theory of the Big Brother in Surveillance issue.