Before I dig even further into more research or reflections also the figuring out in how to collaborate within three members, I started to sketch something out as a mean to balance the process in the second project.

Currently, my interest towards the navigation within the city would be about how Nature brings to our sensations. How sights, sounds, smell, touch and taste(!?) work in response to Nature within the city context.

I will continue explore the medium of an animation, but for this project, more into the experimental edge within the animation spectrum. I would question more onto the materials I use, how it could help communicate my messages.

My protagonist of the story (either to be defined as narrative, documental or experimental still) would be Yinglek, one of my plant characters which is a very conscious character which I think fits the exploration of this project.

Below are sketches onto how the natural environment makes an impact on our experience within it.

On Saturday, I went to the Natural History Museum for some research related to a life of Nature, whether we could find something inspiring for our project ideas.

At first I thought whether it was the right choice coming here and instead focus just within the parks, but then since it is still in the first week of the project, I would like to give it a try.

I spent some time sitting outside the Museum at the big lawn to observe people interaction with the Greenery. How the Nature affect their function whether it is sitting or laying down on the floor. For my current assumption, I think of Nature as something to slow us down or make us pause to enjoy the present.

Currently, what I tried to understand is what is it in the nature that draws me into, even when I’m in a city, I want to go to a park everyday. I want to find out what is it in Nature that inspires us possibly. What kind of sensation it brings to us that somewhere else in the city cannot offer. Maybe the quiet sound or the natural smell?

We went to see this room that talked about how we preserved the plants and the origin of how we even named them. Why we are so curious about them? Could it be because the vast diversity of them that attract us?

We were given new insight that could be of use in the future that we can set an appointment with the Museum scientist to discover further onto the collection of plants in the UK or even from the whole world. Also it might seem more of a scientific research onto the plant, maybe we could get some inspiration from their stories and come up with something.

Here is the link to more useful information related to the Natural life in UK.

https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/british-wildlife.html

In the afternoon, we were tasked to read sample pages of Psychogeography text by Merlin Coverley (2007) within our Pairs and with our tutors, Matt and Benji.

The text was quite hard to read but somehow, gave many keywords and key person for further research in order to understand more about Psychogeography and how does it relate to our project.

From what I understand, it is about how psychology or put it simply, our mind and emotions, affect our journey onto any geography which in this project context, onto London city.

One major activity within this topic is about the ‘act of walking’. Personally, I find walking as a mean to travel from A to B or other times, just wander around which for either cases, it kind of let my mind and my focus drift into here and there wherever I encounter. So, I got this question about how about when we not doing that? when we stop and pause for something in front of us, whether it’s memory that pops onto your head, something visually interesting you find during the journey or someone you might know. Since I enjoy the mindfulness which could be reached easily through slow moving act, I want to dig more into what makes us pause.

Other two members of my team also has their own interpretation or responses differently toward this topic. Ping Ping interests in the perception of a Park as a Nature or not Nature and June interests in a Park that acts as if it is a poem of a city.

There are interesting key persons and topic to further research as follows,

• Iain Sinclair, a writer and a filmmaker
• A film called Flaneur and I
• White Chapel Reader
• Patrick Keiller and a film related to London he made

After the session, I also had a chance to discuss further with Benji about where to research more into the notion of ‘pausing’ and these are what he thought of,

• Chantal Akerman and her film, Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles which is about her doing some activity for a long period of time
• Pauline Oliveros, an American Composer and her piece about Tuning Meditation which can also be found on Spotify. It is somehow related to awareness.
• Jim Jarmusch and his film, Coffee and Cigarettes. Benji gave an interesting sentence about this film which is ‘Smoking is a Punctuation.’
• George Orwell on his book titled, Books v. Cigarettes. This one is also interesting since my last project has also some influence from the author idea.

Yesterday, apart from being introduced into our new studio space that we can make use of during the study, we got a chance to know more about our visiting tutor, Kyung Hwa Shon.

What I learned from her as as follows,

• There are lots of keywords of her interests such as stillman, ghost-liked, cloud, becoming, memories, imagination, montage, multisensory, dynamic, misunderstanding, creative writing, gaze and inbetween which I find interesting since she seems to repetitively mention these words a lot and you would notice some connection or patterns that show these elements or words in her works.
• There are so many precedent artists that inspired her, both Eastern and Western and also in different media from films to writings.
• Her interest in the Zne koan, “The Sound of One Hand Clapping” really caught my attention.
• I like the way she goes back and forth with her process and use of materials, it feels really philosophical to me. How she goes between hand-drawn and digital or drawings and installations. Also, in the process of working between research and practice. Because I tend to lose my self into either one side of the spectrum while actually, I also believe in the ‘balance’ in things.

It would be great to research more about her inspired artists that I also feel connected to like the French literary theorist, Roland Barthes, whose writings seem interesting which is related to poems. And, also Nadja whose work is about creative writing.

Yesterday, my team and I went out to explore London to document and interact with the city in order to form some ideas on what could be the topic of our collaborative practical work.

We met at the Paddington Station, which acts as a starting point of our exploration.

We thought of the aspect of the city we were interested in and came up with several ideas, from food culture to signages within the city that communicate to us, to the parks within the city.

We ended up with the decision to explore the parks and gardens and set out the journey from the Paddington station to the Kensington Garden.

In this second project, I intend to use as several methods in document and interact with the city as much as possible, since as a tutor also suggested to us that a method of the research could also affect the outcome of our works, so I believe this would bring about more possibilities in producing the work.

Above are the samples of what I gathered from the site I visited. Immersing in the subject without knowing exactly is also what I tried to experiment. The leaves above came from different Park and Gardens. Time is also a key element in this project. For all the leaves above, each one is in different colours which could mean they were aged differently at the time they fell down from the tree. Can I tell any stories out of that observation?

I also recorded videos of the trees in each park and questioned the relation between the visual and the sound in our experience of nature within a ‘city context’.

Here are the spots within the Park I feel has some stories or questions to think about,

Here are photos of trees with strange shapes that caught my attention and made me pause to look. It causes me to think how nature shapes our walking journey.

I also took notes of the walk map and some drawing experiments.

And below is the writing I did since the morning to narrate the sensation that was at the moment of the writing. Most of them were factual, some information were imagined or assumed.

We ended the research trip with interviews of people within the park of questions as below,

1. Where are you from?
2. How long have you been living in London?
3. What brought you to London?
4. What brought you to the Park?
5. Do you visit Parks a lot?
6. Is Park, Nature to you?

It really is an eye-opening experience to get an information or insights from the people.

Here I used the Map tab of my iPhone to find out about what photos I took and where exactly are they on the city map. We ended up exploring some small gardens and two major parks, the Kensington Garden and the Regent’s Park.

And some photos of us!

We have arrived to the second project out of six of the Grad Dip course, week #6 (of 30). For this project we were assigned to explore London particularly in relation to ‘time’ and ‘space’.

We were assigned to do this project in pairs, which for my pairs, we have three so it’s a group. We are to choose an Underground Tube line and travel the city to explore sites, people, communities, histories, sensations and environments that ‘connects us to’.

We should document and interact with the city with various materials and processes such as sketching, photographing, collecting, filming, recording, writing, to also talking to people.

Especially for Communications pathway, our work should be able to clearly communicate the social, spatial and temporal relations of the site we are exploring. Our outcome should ‘engage with the nature of time and the use of time-based media’ which could be done through film, sound, performance, storytelling, etc. with clearly identified audience and how we communicate to them.

Today, we got a great opportunity to visit two cultaral sites in London which are the Museum of London and the Barbican.

Before entering the Museum of London, we were advised to ‘record the spaces, the journey or the experience’. We should ask what does it mean to us and write notes that aren’t just labels. I think that is more about ‘reflecting’ and being ‘critical’. The tutors talk a lot about ‘Think about…”

For thinking in terms of a Communicator, Matt advised us to response in ‘time-based’ manner. To document the walk and do it across the senses. He stresses about this is not about an object-based thinking but it is more of an abstract thinking which nothing is wrong. He also asked us to think about ‘what is at the edges of the places’, where can’t you get to and what can’t you see. These are very interesting points to consider I think.

I went in with my team member, June and then Ping Ping joined us too. I was really frustrated at first since I was so used to only documenting by sketching and writing labels but later I became a little bit accustomed to it.

Above is a map of interesting visuals inside the museum along with words in bubbles which are spoken words I heard during the drawing. The method was done this way because I would like to explore collapsing two senses (looking and listening) together. The drawings were started from above and then curved similarly like the number 4. All the little drawings were intently placed on one another to create a line of journey.

At first I felt strange producing something I’m not used to and asked why doing this? a lot, but at the end looking at it, I think it grows on me. It feels as if I’m looking into this world with new eyes and perspective which is something really useful in order to come up with new creative ideas. I’m thinking maybe do some animation out of this, possibly play with visual and sounds, to push it further into time-based execution.

Below are also photos of objects I found interesting, most of them has faces and characters. Thinking about time, it worths noticing that people have been associated with figurative representation since long time ago.

In the afternoon, we went to the Barbican and we were asked to ‘record our experiences’ and this is what I’ve got from the walk.

In this drawing, I tried to experimented new way of documenting my journey. I drew a line of direction during the walk, draw any visuals that interest me and also jotted down words or phrases I heard at the area. I feel like, the less you expect or imagine the outcome, the more surprising and fresh the result would be.

Some Gifs of the ‘experience’ at the Barbican.

Yesterday, I just finished the critical reflective writing of the first project. It was a great experience writing in academic manner and also a good chance to look back into your own working process to learn how you did the learning. Not to mention also a chance to figure out where you want to go in the future.

Since this is a new kind of writing to me and also it involves so much of investigating your own thoughts and actions, I struggled a lot. Below are the sites I visited for references.

• https://intranet.rca.ac.uk/referencing-guidelines/
• https://www.oxbridgeessays.com/blog/complete-guide-to-writing-a-reflective-essay/
• https://www.monash.edu/rlo/assignment-samples/arts/reflective-writing-arts
• https://library.leeds.ac.uk/info/14011/writing/113/reflective_writing

It was also the first time I got introduced onto how to cite references appropriately depending on the sources via the MHRA (Modern Humanities Research Association) referencing system.

Below are rough ideas of what should I write in the planning phase.

I will upload the first draft onto the ‘writing page’ of my blog to archive it and see how it goes with the next revision. I still feel it could be improved a lot more since I still got confused on where should write as a first person and where as a third person. Also, how should I structure the writing so that the reader won’t find it hard to read. Let’s see how the feedback be from Nathan.

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.

On yesterday, one day before the presentation of project 1 Manifesto, I got to finish off my zine with some shootings in a school capture studio. I decided to also shot the alternative version of my window zine, the black on clear acrylic ones in order to record my journey in the making as well.

I’m really satisfied with my zine in terms of it’s interpretation from the requirement of 4 pages turned into 4 layers instead. Also, the flippable manner of this product resembles the sequential storytelling of my animation. The reason I chose the clear acrylic over black coloured acrylic is because I would like to create the mood of mystery.

Our group Zine has been revised again to finally been wrapped in papers instead of a puppet-liked folder or a box in order to quiet down any implications that might be misleading out of the theme of Surveillance as much as possible. Personally, I like it as well since I believe in ‘Less is More’. To only focus on what is necessary.

This method also brings out the freedom for the audience to pick out the one he or she is interested in possibly from the Emoji sticker on each package which indicates the feeling, opinion or the representation of our works towards Surveillance.

I just come up with this interpretation of the one time used or unpack of the papers that it is like how we aim to create awareness of Surveillance to audiences, that once people become aware, our job is done, which is resembling how the paper got unpacked and then removed.

So here is the link to my final edition of my animated film.

After some research of asking my friends both RCA’s peers and friends back in Thailand (You can read more in my individual work research tab) I decided to explore more about which sound should I add at the end of the film when my character, chailek, looks at the window outside of his room in order to create a feeling of ‘safe’ and tried out with piano sound as you might notice in the clip at 1:08s.

For me, the reason I first chose a baby sound might have been because I would like to balance the image that seems a little bit too creepy or suspicious for a window in an eye with some life form as a meaning of life and innocence. But, it might have been also a little bit too contrasting with all the subtleties the story had been progressed all along before the sound and made people fell out of connection.

By discussing my work with some friends, some of them mentioned about whether could the ending be more bold and memorable. I then adjusted two things, by manipulating the image of Chailek sleeping besides the plant pot so that the window with light became much more obvious as the only real source of connection as shown here.

I like the result which makes the connection between Chailek and the Window even more visible.

Secondly, I added more time at each closing state of Chailek’s eyelids onto the last scene when Chailek sees the window and his eyes are gradually closing down in order to lessen the tension of him looking at the window and create more of calm and relieved feelings.