Today I continued my exploration of my character through various media. Besides the ‘leaf hair’ and his nose, I also changed the body, hair and added eyebrows.
These mock ups led to a thinking about how a symbol represents a character, and also, how each elements such as the colour of his body in blue, or the use of screws as his hair could also act as a symbol for any possible interpretations as well.
Today I went to the school base room to further work with Artefact project. It was a process of trials and errors to discover ideas and develop understanding along the way.
Currently, my exploration of interest was with the ‘symbolic’ quality of an object, so I played it further with my current model of my character Chaiglang that I made a few days before with materials I found from my flat room.
I changed and played with its parts to see how recognition of an object or this case, a character, works. I also questioned about ‘what contribute an object as a non-human?’
The process turned into an exploration of addition and reduction of the character’s figure elements, which I also treated them as symbols. How symbolic language is used in trying to recognise a certain character for example, for my character of Chaiglang, he has a very big nose, would it still be him if the nose is changed from one to another material? Also, if there is no nose at all, will this object still be recognisable as him?
I used the hard end of a banana peel as his nose, I also changed the nose from two different bananas to observe any differences. The result didn’t show much difference, he still looks mostly the same.
Since banana’s colour would change according to its ripeness, I questioned also how the colour of the banana skin would affect the interpretation of my character.
I continued experimented changing other elements like the leaf hair, to see whether the whole object could still symbolised him.
Below is my current workspace that gathered ‘symbols’ of the current projects.
On yesterday, we were given exercises to think about the possibilities of an object when being given a role of a curator of a museum. Our group which comprised of Pody, Beatrice, Christina and me explored ways in which we could reinterpret what an object is. We didn’t actually came up with any particular name but I called it myself as a Museum of New Meanings.
We all picked items from all around the classrooms and these are what we had gathered,
For me, familiarity, the past or memories are what became as a common theme or ideas in my selection of the pieces. For example, a moon cake box that reminded me of my family since we used to have it on moon cake festivals or an image of clean chicken bones which reminded me of chicken which is my usual favourite food.
Connecting what I learned here to my previous interest in ‘symbolic language’, it might suggest that objects could be used as a symbol of its owner.
In the afternoon, we began to physically organised our objects into various ways started with organising by ‘sensory’ attributes first which are colour and then texture.
I also translated the perception of colours and textures onto my sketchbook to explore what kind of idea could open up. It seems as if each object has disappeared into any particular defined area of categories instead of appeared with individual meaning.
Then we thought about more abstract way of categorisation with how object is moved and manipulated by human. For example, a sheet of receipt could be moved by just a wind with no human interactions, but for an umbrella, it needs human to move it in order to function.
So we decided to create a GIF to emphasise the change of an object before and after being manipulated by human.
Also, with tutors advised us to also consider the space and furniture given to be involved in exhibiting the objects and building context around object investigation, we tried to use chairs as a display stand for an object and installed them in a way to let 2 objects facing each other.
We also made use of the light stand and also the space near a window for our exhibiting of objects.
We learned from this exercise with thinking by making, we tried things and we asked questions and we changed. At the end, we summed it up into a theme of trying to find a way to create new meanings to an object. What if we juxtapose two objects together? What if we let the audience interpret it with a context that is set up in any particular way? or What if we think about an object in consideration also with human intervention and time.
I think what we learned from this exercise mainly is to deconstruct any established meaning of objects, make use of any understandings our of such experiment, and create new meanings leading to new objects.
The title of this post resonates to the important lessons I received today from a debrief session with Clare.
“You get to it what you bring to it.” is actually extracted from Ad Reinhardt’s quote which I discovered from the book, experimental animation from analogue to digital, and also something Clare similarly mentioned about today in the workshop. It kind of sums up what I learned so far from looking at objects, an idea or an understanding might come up by questioning or reacting to it.
We started the session by sharing our impressions from the visit to the museum from the past 2 days. Interesting points are for example,
For me, my impression firstly would be ‘overwhelming’ since for me, as long as we pay enough attention, anything could become interesting. I mean ultimately, isn’t human a ‘meaning-making machine’? So as long as we let it run for a while, you’ll get enough meaning to get going.
Clare also mentioned about finding the point of departure in order to get us going from what we learned from past two days. For me, at first I picked out 10 images of objects I found fascinating as shown here,
Then I thought of just two most recent objects I looked at yesterday which is a buddha statue and a netsuke, a Japanese toggle, that I found prominently caught my interest. Then I found out about the ‘symbolic’ quality behind these artefacts. How Buddha statues give meanings from the expressions on his face or the gesture of his hands. Or, for the Netsuke, I personally perceive them as some kind of symbol for interpretation.
Clare also talked about how we could do a parallel of thinking and making in the process or the project. How as Chuck Close has put it, that idea comes out of the process, form the work itself. So she asked us to clarify just one thing that fascinated me for the objects I gathered from the V&A, and of course I chose the word ‘symbolic’.
Then she asked us to think about the physical material of the object plays a part in our sensory perception of it. So I thought of how those items of the statues and the netsuke were made from natural material like wood, ivory or bronze. How they have some level of sophistication in the appearance.
So I came back to my room, and started to make something out of materials I have in my room. The aim is to create something symbolic that reminds me of Chaiglang, my plant character.
I also would like to share my sketch of Chailang in story boards I got from yesterday as well. It’s interesting to see how my developmental work has changed just only for a day as well.
Today I visited the V&A museum again for further exploration into what might be a subject of my project going further. Since this is still at a very beginning phase in finding ideas, I will share the findings in this post first then I would explore themes of subjects of interest further in the Research page for the next step.
So, today I focused my journey on South East Asia and Japan rooms. It might be the connection with my upbringing culture in Thailand and also the influence from Japanese culture with my life that drew me into investigated these two rooms in particular.
The collections are categorised mainly to Buddhist sculpture and the arts of the court and the nobility. My first attention was to the Buddha statues since they are what I’m familiar with most since I’m also a Buddhist. Normally they are objects of religious belief as to pay respect as as symbol of the Buddha, but today I tried to look at the object for any hidden ideas or messages through lens of an artist or designer.
One thing that came to me was about the variety in hand gestures, clothes and facial expressions of the buddha statues. I just realised how symbolic language were used within the objects to make meanings.
Since the collection is placed within the same area with other South East Asian countries, I got to also observe other countries’ Buddha statues and noticed the difference in the design.
I also got interested in the shadow puppets from Indonesia. It could be from the non-human quality of it.
Then I went to the Japan collection room. The room holds so many objects from Japan, this may lead to questions around international relations.
I found what attracted me at first were objects from popular culture.
Then I walked further and discovered what made me really excited about, it’s called a ‘Netsuke’, it is a toggle that holds containers for a man when dressed in Japanese traditional form. The artefact was then developed into miniature works of art. For the ones shown below, they were made between 1700 and 1870.
I really would like to explore further into Netsuke, on what kind of people use it? Are there social classes involved? since the object looks exquisite and might be of high value.
With some guidance from our visiting tutor, Ian Ray, today we set out to explore objects within the V&A museum.
We were given some clues into what to think about when looking at objects as follows,
I spent some amount of time in the Rapid Response Collecting which holds objects in response to important moments in recent history of design and manufacturing. So actually thinking in terms of communication, by the act of collecting these items of the museum, it is as if the musuem use these items to speak to us about how it interprets the world.
And, as the sign board saying that ‘Design is a mirror to our society’, I started to understand that an object could be more than just its material value, it could also embody social, political, technological and economic relations.
In the afternoon, even with some research done beforehand yesterday, I was at times let go of fixed destination and followed my instincts as if I was a flaneur within the museum and discovered bits of this and that along the way.
There is an interesting idea about how we choose to present our object to the viewer as well since the presentation itself could also become a part of an object which means affecting the experience of it.
Some more thoughts when ‘expanding’ the definition of objects,
I might drift more purposefully tomorrow to see collections that refers to South East Asia where my country is in and also Japan and as briefed from Matt, focus on social, cultural, political and non-human relations in particular.
Today is the first day of the Artefact project. We are tasked to respond to a number of objects in the V&A museum as a catalyst to come up with a new work of art or design.
Artefacts are objects that are ‘made or shaped by humans’ and have ‘cultural or historical importance’. We are told to look deeper into each object’s quality or set of qualities and make use of that to reinterpret into our discipline, which in my case, I’m thinking of an animation again.
Again in this project, I would choose one character of Maihua, my plant character to work with as a vehicle of my story. The theme of the project fits well with Chaiglang, the middle brother of the five siblings. He has a passion for all kinds of knowledge and is always curious with the world.
Also, for the approach in animation, I want to try conveying my message or story in a documentative way. So in terms of my practice, I would like to explore more into documentary animation.
However, as with what I believe in the process of making and thinking art or design, this idea could change as I go along the project with new information gain from the museums and also from discussions around communication pathway.
I started to research through the V&A website and found out key ideas related to the history of the museums and its building as follows,
I looked into the collections offered at the museum and found these collections interesting. I then pick out objects I wish to explore further tomorrow.
Photos credit : https://www.vam.ac.uk/collections/rapid-response-collecting
Photos credit : https://www.vam.ac.uk/collections/aestheticism
Photo credit : https://www.vam.ac.uk/collections/japan
I also tried to search for the collection with relevancy to myself by using “Thailand” as place of origin when I searched and I found this sculpture really interesting to check out. It could be because Bhuddism plays a big part in my life and also about this gesture of starving of the bhudda that speaks to me about the suffer in our lives.
So today we have finally arrived to the presentation day. Yesterday we started the experiment of combining our work together at first within the capture studio by shooting my video and also Ping Ping video onto June’s installation piece which is a poster-liked acrylic sheet with papers that act as tickets for people to go to parks.
Then later on with Premiere Pro, we tried to combined our works together but it didn’t look neat enough, so we changed to use June’s video of her work placed on the school’s wall as a backdrop of our works that were edited upon it with Premiere Pro and it became very satisfying.
We took the risk at the end of the project in combining and presenting our works together like this since during the middle of the project our works kind of went on individually. In order to create a more coherent piece we investigated into the commonalities we shared and one thing is about the theme of ‘awareness’.
Ping Ping’s work is talking about how human manipulates nature, June’s work is about how we might have not noticed actually that the city is trying to communicate with use through signs and for mine it’s about how I become aware of time and space through sight and sound.
We also translated the whole piece is if it is about the city speaking to us about nature and come up with the title “Can you hear me?” as a signal into the act of communication and also an invitation into becoming awareness of someone talking to you.
For me personally, I think our works could be viewed both separately and also collaboratively which would give you different experience and interpretation of the messages.
What’s worth noted is also about what we learnt from this project which besides the challenge of working together as a group, we got to experiment with media we never used and one major discovery is about how talking to people can provide such valuable inspiration and resource into our works.
For the presentation, I found out there are two points I think next time I could make it better which is about presenting more of the process behind the work which for my case is something considered very influencing to my practice and also about whether I could also show my work separately as well to also see how it feels comparing to shown together with my colleagues.
For the next step in project 3, I would like to continue and go further with interacting with people in the process of the project and also exploring more into the concept of ‘identifying an audience’ of my work as a communicator since I believe I haven’t done it quite well so far.
First final version, how contradictory it is. Here is my latest work progress with added sound for each sequence.
The whole message of the animation is to convey how we experience time, space, sight and sound of Nature in a city. The more I progress through the project, the more it reveals in itself how my interest falls into ‘consciousness’ and ‘the present’. Relating this interest to the brief of the navigator project, and also what I have observed, researched and worked with so far, the work became about how we drift off from the presence into our mind through sight and sound of our surrounding.
Thus, I explored a new way in communicating about how we were trapped or lost in our mental images, thoughts or feelings with a black screen that tells the duration in seconds as “5 seconds” rather than “00:00:05” which might indicate the whole accumulative time from the beginning.
I still would like to explore ‘voice-over’ into the bird sequence to see how language relate to visual interpretation.
So I have just added the last sequence which is one of the original 10 sequences I planned for my exploration of sight and sound of the city’s Nature.
This sequence basically drew inspiration from the dying brown leaves see scattered around the floor in the city and the parks. It is something considered very common in your everyday life but most of the time when I see it, it reminds me maybe in a subconscious level of the impermanence of life.
I gathered dying leaves from the floor of either parks or pavement and then scanned to use it as texture for my character.
Mimicking the experience of when you walk over dying leaves, sometimes they crack into smaller parts, so I decided to visualize the movement of changing visuals accordingly.
The next step now is editing all the sequences together, add sound and then think further about the ‘timestamp’ in between each sequence that I’m currently on how can I play more with it in order to emphasise the message about the presence or ‘the absence of time’.
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