ARST349
What question/problem did you choose?
Who am I?
Why did you choose this topic and why does it matter to you?
Have you ever looked at the mirror and wondered who/what you are looking at? I chose this topic because it happens to me quite often. I also have a friend who has similar experiences in much longer time scale. So I wonder who am I, the guy on the mirror or the guy who is behind it all.
Give some details on the question/problem – explain it in depth.
To me, I am the thing that extends much beyond what I see in the mirror. (Whatever one wants to call themselves) It is almost like the guy in the mirror, whereas for anyone around me, I would be the guy on the mirror. It seems really interesting how we perceive each other, how it the way one looks become meaningless over time. It almost seems like, when I am looking at someone I don’t know, I just see a part of their body. On the other hand the better I know the person, the more I see. At some point it, the outlook and the real person converges and I find it really interesting. Today we are not improving beyond the skin. We rather have shorter more superficial interactions because otherwise someone will see who we really are, than we want to look like or who we would like to portray ourselves as.
List out 10 tangible places/people/things that are associated with your question/problem.
- Mirror
- In a family photo
- Strip Club
- Fashion show
- Fashion Photo Shoots
- My friend x
- at a conversation
- advertisements
- Space
- Desert
Influential Artist: Kiki Smith
I want to evoke a similar feeling of under the skin. Who knows maybe we are all different even though we wear the same.
What question/problem did you choose?
Time flies.
Why did you choose this topic and why does it matter to you?
I chose this topic because in just a couple of days, my undergraduate career and “time” at Bucknell will be over. A concept that seems to have a life of its own will have dictated the end of these four years and mark the start of new endeavors.
Give some details on the question/problem – explain it in depth.
As graduation approaches, time, or lack there of I should say, has been something that I’ve been reflecting about my last year at Bucknell. Four years ago I was naive to think that I had all the time in the world to enjoy my college experience, to create long-life friendships, to take all the fun classes with the cool professors, to go abroad (which I did), etc. Time and its limits were not on my radar. Now, four years later, I look back and it’s actually overwhelming. Where have four years gone? I am preparing myself to face what my peers and I refer to as “the scary, real world”. Am I ready? Maybe. Did I use my “given” time wisely? Sometimes. Were only four years enough? Most definitely not. Although there are those days when I wish I could just hold time in my hand and stop it, I have realized that regardless of how I feel or how much more time I want to have, time will just keep moving forward.
List out 10 tangible places/people/things that are associated with your question/problem.
1. Clock
2. Pocket Watch
3. Roman Numerals
4. Empty Hands
5. Wood
6. Firefly Wing
7. Firefly Wing (Detail)
8. Gold
9. Road
10. Desert
Influential Artist: Nurvz Austria
Artwork: Unknown
Attribution: I chose this piece to draw ideas for my project because it is based on the concept of the scape of time. It shows our human impotence against this “thing” that we always seem to want more of but yet it dissolves in front of our own eyes.
Thesis: In a world in which 3D printing technology has developed beyond what it was ever expected, a new utility is achieved through the raw reproduction of man. Testing of this technology is performed in small partially translucent rooms that give the produced no understanding of where or what they are. This future represents a time in which machines are replaced with organic.
Description
The culmination of the Independent Study will be a series of sculpture juxtaposition that describes different issues in society. These issues are not only general ones that we generally observe on media such as politics, environment, equality, but also include some of my experiences with art-making and my life on campus. Each juxtaposition will be a combination of seemingly unrelated elements that would become bizarre and expressive once they become fused together. By juxtaposing the objects, the content of each has a chance to interact, alternate and create meaningful expression.
In terms of style, juxtaposition is a suitable method for this final project. Firstly, it allows for simple background so that the audience can truly focus on what is happening. This will simplify a lot of composition problems and help me truly focus and able to make a series in stead of just a sculpture set with multiple camera angles as before. The amount of details that I can put on a single object can also increase significantly and that I don’t have to worry too much about big composition as a whole (which takes a lot of time evident in the second project. Secondly, juxtaposition allows me to make a better compare and contrast and fuse different elements however I like. And finally, juxtaposition is inherently expressive. Thus, it allows me to put my own opinion and emotion into the artwork. (My previous sculptures address quite big and general problem and don’t have much of individualism.
Collected Images
Sketches
(coming soon)
Intellectual researches
Intellectual researches for this project will be two days spent on enhancing the visual quality and the depth of the last two projects. Both projects have interesting geometry, yet doesn’t quite reach its full potential in terms of ideas. The colors from both projects don’t have strong impact to the viewers, but there are plenty of room for improvements.
Skyline
For the second project, there is a big imbalance of the amount of details in different parts of the artworks. There are a lot of details in the center, but most of them are similar and only serve to distracts any possible patterns of other parts. The buildings almost complete obscure the beautiful circle arrangements. These amount of details provide a nice contrast with the background, but the overwhelming contrast doesn’t provide any useful implication and makes the whole picture looks even more melancholic. The clock is supposed to bring the surrealist effect to the scene. But the overall tone of the picture is so dark that the clock brings little effect to the renders both visually and conceptually. Three hands are already enough for a reference to the clock in the pictures. Thus, possible enhancements for this project are:
- Remove the clock geometry
- Add more stuffs into the building parts to better represent the idea of unsustainable growth.
- Delete all windows. Windows create distracting noise that is completely necessary and flatten the geometry. Also, building should be constructed lower. It’s possible that I should RECONSTRUCT the whole building circle to better suit the project.
- Thing about more interesting texture for the tree. Psychotic texture can work very well.
- The background can be embedded with a sunset background, with the sun the in the bright spot. Each block will have a color according to a mosaic image of that background.
The geometry in the final renders were too grotesque and was not well received as the the right image. Since the googly eyes bring less serious attitude, I can use this geometry to bring massive quantity of these windmills in different size and context. These massively cloned puppets will actually turn out to look extremely grotesque and can be used to indicate a lot of social issues that related to violence. One composition I can think of right now is a dictatored windmill trapping a bunch of others in a grinding machine.
I will try to bring the sketches into the project tomorrow. The sketches will have both some improvisation on the previous two projects as well as geometries for the new ones.
In my project I explored the human body, girls bodies specifically, and the continuing desire to alter it through plastic surgery. I also explored the inner battle that many young females go through as a result of the trends and expectations set by the media. Our society is obsessed with looking “younger” and “hotter”, and as of now plastic surgery seems to be the most favorable go-to method. However, seeing that our modern society is continuously evolving, in the future paying a visit to the surgeon may just be a waste of time. Future generations will have the necessary tools to Do It Themselves. I start the composition with just one subject inside the room. Then as we progress, a second female figure joins her. This indicates the progressive power and influences that plastic surgery and body enhancement has over not just one individual but multiple.
Thesis:
With the rate we are consuming resources, I don’t see any utopic picture. I want to fantasize on what would happen at 2400, as in my mind robots became the new labor power, that we adore and reflect on our temples. The sea levels have raised so much that most of the cities by the shores are erased. Now there is pure emptiness in the places full of life once upon a time.
THESIS (edited from original): Because of 3D printing technologies, human limbs will become easily replaceable and soldiers may not be able to leave active duty simply because they are injured. With the ability to 3D print functioning organs and limbs, 3D printers will change the nature of warfare because of easy and fast “repairs” and very little need for recovery time for soldiers.
Thesis: According individuals who are known as bioethics abolitionists, one of the goals of a posthuman society would be to eliminate human suffering, including negative emotions such as sadness and anger. As people work to achieve this goal is is possible that technology that are currently being developed to treat serious neuro-developmental and neuro-psychiatric disorders will be used to eliminate unwanted emotions. As this process occurs, we run the risk of eliminating all emotion from people and creating a monotonous society run more by technology than humans themselves.
Thesis: As humans begin to blur the line between themselves and technology, traits or characteristics could soon become downloadable information like a song. As this soon becomes attainable, a person could download body characteristics from another human, which would create world that is a little unnatural.
Thanks to the rise of popular smart phone apps like Tinder, Hinge, and Friendsy, online dating has become more and more common over the last few years. Of course, there is still a stigma associated with these apps, a slight sense of shame in the presumption that one couldn’t just go out and meet someone in the real world. However, in the post-human era, this stigma will dissolve, as online dating will reveal itself as a much more efficient way of finding the ideal mate, through advanced search engines and match-making algorithms. Further still, technology is developing to the point where entire sexual relationships can theoretically be maintained without ever meeting, replaced instead by a combination of customizable bots, remote controlled pleasure giving devices called teledildonics, and virtual sex simulators using Haptic technology. For now, those with a preference for this sort of relationship are stigmatized as being “Internet-Sexual”, but perhaps we are not far off from a point where growing old with a synthetically-built significant other will not be uncommon.
Thesis: The proliferation of and dependence on technology has fundamentally changed the way we act. So much so, we are becoming a society that is incredibly dumbed down, similar to the plot of Mike Judge’s movie Idiocracy. As a result we are transforming to a mild, brainless form of the very thing we fear will end the world: zombies.
Thesis:
As humanity increases their technological advancements, it, as a species, is inherently becoming a series of enumerated data points. Now, more than ever, humans have a plethora of technology to entertain themselves with, which also gives them the opportunity to portray to the world not what once was a fleshy organic form, but rather a new automaton of wires and units. In this series, I strive to show the downfall of the natural human aura, and the multiple overpowering effects technological advancements have forced upon humanity.
Thesis: Public restrooms, public elevators, and public changing rooms are places usually associated with a type of privacy. By observing human interactions in the current technological world, there has been and will continue to be a significant change in privacy, and what that definition means. The relationship between private and public moments is a line that is becoming blurred by technology’s isolating and socializing paradox. We are living in an era dominated by smartphones and their pitfalls- the constant distraction from one’s immediate surrounding and the people within them. With the constant presence of technology, people become blind to their surroundings and become rather self-obsessed with their own digital presence in this media age. The interactions in these spaces will continue to be prevalent, and individual privacy will continue to become sparse.
Public Bathroom:
Public Changing Room:
Public Elevator:
