This page is for my writing assignments.

6 December 2019

Today I’m going to write about my object in the past and memories around it. I chose to write around the project I couldn’t finish, the Maihua (my plant characters) Line messenger sticker project. First of all, Maihua is one of a work I found key to my practice in a way that it was the moment I started to discovered about my serious interest in creating moving images. I remember I first created Maihua character out of feeling loneliness. I was only trying to create an imaginary friend to be on my side. I think the reason of using a plant as my character design is because plant, unlike people, don’t disappoint or hurt me. I think it also comes from my imagination when I see things it strange shapes. I remember I went to a tree market in Bangkok with my brother and found this amazing amazon-liked shop that sell weird plants with strange shapes on the roots. I remember I also named each of the plant I bought home. This fascination in characters may trace back to my childhood that I spent so much time watching cartoon on the television and also play with toys. I especially like toys and collectibles. I remember I use to collect so many Mcdonalds Toys. (Oh how much I love doing this, it’s like I have become more embracing of my own life story) and even though after I had ordained as a monk and I decided to donate them all to children, at the end, I couldn’t help myself even in the 20s, bought and collected new toys again. Maybe it could be related to the feeling lack of love or attention? I also remember played with toys in my toilet, imagine they were on a boat and then a disaster came and they all sank into the water. Also, I believe there is something to do with ‘rather weird’ design of characters that I found interesting. Or, even in animals, I’m fascinated in animals like a Tapir, could it be because I want to be different that other people? this could also relate to my sexuality than I’m gay perhaps. So it might make me feel I need to create a world of my own because I don’t feel connected to the world starting from my own family which has a big business which gave me more pressure into being myself, also about me being a Buddhist also made me feel morally wrong accepting myself as a gay man. The like of strange creatures also led me into enjoying works from Tim Burton such as Frankenweenie, or in characters such as the Koibito Dukan from Japan. Can this also be related to how I see myself as a minority and how when these kind of characters are being embraced, I feel more connected to, like when I saw movies from X-men, when the movies turn these ‘flawed’ beings into someone extraordinary. Maybe from myself being gay, I have become even more sympathetic to myself and possibly the world? Could it also link to how my family even they don’t oppose for this issue, they kind of covertly accept who I am, that I feel much more connected to movies around familial love like how I enjoy watching the starks family in Game of Thrones or how I like the forming of this familial relationship in strangers from the movie Shoplifter.

3 October 2019

Today I’m going to draft an artist statement, to be discussed further tomorrow with Aleya and Nathan.

I will start with answering these prompt questions from Aleya, then I would use the answers to form an introduction paragraph.

Who?

• Who is my audience?
  • My interest is around the idea of consciousness, of bringing awareness to the present moment. At first I thought my audiences could be anyone, but that might be too broad. It could be specified down to people who are mindfulness practitioners.

What?

• What is the intention of my work?
  • My intention is to let my audience becoming more aware of what they are seeing or thinking about.

Where?

• Where do I get influences from?
  • In terms of the idea of mindfulness, I drew inspiration and lessons from Buddhism and also read books from spiritual teachers such as Thich Nhat Hanh and Eckhart Tolle.
  • I also found inspiration from my personal life and surroundings, from talking to people and from the places I’ve been such as my room in London or Kensington Park. I believe anywhere could become a source of inspiration if you slow down and pay attention.

When?

• When did the concept of mindfulness come up?
  • The concept of mindfulness is deep rooted with me from myself being a Buddhist. I have been practice mindfulness and meditation for some time even though I don’t do it regularly anymore. I tend to go for the teachings when I found challenges and obstacles in life as my mental and spiritual aid.
• When did I become interested in animation?
  • I believe animation is a halfway between art and filmmaking for me. I’ve been enjoying the works from Disney and Pixar since young. However, I never quite jumped from a role of an audience to a creator much yet only recently that I found the art of experimental animation which I found liberating as to defy any established concepts of what an animation should be.
• When did I become interested in Experimental animation?
  • It was when I encountered the book, Experimental Animation From Analogue to Digital, which opened my perspective onto another kind of storytelling which doesn’t need to be straightforward in one concrete message, to provoke more then tell a story.

Why?

• Why do I think my work matters?
  • It matters in many levels. In personal level, my work acts as a practice for mindfulness, for helping me to draw my attention into the present and into the process of making. In society level, it could help create a kind of collective consciousness.

9 September 2019

Today I had a workshop about creative writing from Aleya and Kyung Hwa. It was really inspiring in how we could use the act of writing as a form of research and observation of the city in this second project of Psychogeography.

We were assigned around 30 minutes to take a walk outside of the campus and observe the city with various methods. I came up with this writing piece which comprised of words that come to me as descriptions of what I found interested, sound I heard, my own spoken words and also little voices in my head of past memories and thoughts.

19 August 2019

This is the first draft of Project 1 writing assignment, 500 words of critical reflection I submitted yesterday.

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I found out I could do a better research. I need to finish more for each book than just the introduction. Also, other research methods (Futuring, Prototyping and Provoking) that were introduced later in project 1 could also be an interesting method to try for the next project.

Also, there are still some points I wish I did mention in the writing above like how I feel about the result work. For instance, how I feel with the baby sound screaming rather than a piano sound. I might need to plan and structure the writing better in bullet points before starting the draft.