Category: Uncategorized
Project 3- who are we?
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.
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.
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.
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.
Public Elevator
Post Human
Lily- In Process
Scanning
Project 2 -Post Human-Erim
Thesis:
With the rate we are consuming resources and the consumerist social system, I don’t see and utopic picture. I want to fantasize on what would happen at 2400, as in my mind humans fully mastered their bodies and augmentation became the new consumerist behavior. However a pharmaceutical company had some security issues and all the man kind has been erased from earth.
I have read articles about the society and temples for Greek and Egyptian and some Anatolian civilizations. All these civilizations had been long gone and their structures are still present to present them quite spectacularly. Different pastes used by both Egyptian and Greek are unknown to us, we know the formula but don’t how to produce it. One could say that they were really advanced. We resemble the post human to them. The question is, will the history repeat itself and this consumerist society will end just like the others? I think yes, I have watched the movie 12 Monkey’s a movie taking place in future and some ‘company’ releases a virus. No, more spoiling.
Thesis: 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. Everything today is instantaneous and the expectations of immediate gratification/knowledge is assumed. With such advancement in resources, it is rather ironic that we actually have lost some basic skills of communicating and forming personal relationships for future generations. People, myself included, rely on text messaging, snap chat and other social media posts to stay connected as an equivalent replacement for face-to-face contact with people. Whether it’s the constant click of the ‘refresh’ button on your Facebook feed or your best friend’s newest instagram post, we crave to be stimulated by something ‘new’, and see ourselves involved in that ‘new’ post. Unfortunately this hunger comes at a price: our social skills and our isolation.
My research: The relationship with technology (especially my generation) has been a subject that I have been fascinated with, and I have done a tremendous amount of research in evaluating this relation over the year. For this post-humanism project, I am continuing to evaluate the technology’s role in communication, with a commentary that it has become a distraction. One could argue that we are becoming self-obsessed, and insatiable by the newest information due to technology’s advancements. Technology is becoming a crutch and a handicap for the upcoming population, and we are hiding behind our devices instead of being present in the moment. I took a course last semester that focused specifically on technology in art called “Creative and Critical Approaches to New Media’ that examined how new media influenced the disciplinary lenses of music, visual, art, design and marketing. It evaluated how technology is changing art, since computers and their advancement hasn’t change art, but rather enabled more to happen. We have higher resolutions, longer lengths of films, and more color variety, more tools, options and new ways to stimulate people’s senses. This new vocabulary within the art world is constantly expanding, and today we are seeing a big breakdown in how people use traditional media and performative installations. The art making experience and art genres are becoming blurred with new ‘mixed’ media, just like our daily interaction with technology versus interaction with individuals are interconnecting. This second project will be a series of daily life scenes with a text overlay that comments on our lack of recognition of our immediate surroundings, and the isolating behavior caused by our dependence on technology as a species. The scenes will have an incredibly rich and saturated color palette that suggests a vibrant, lively scene like a digitized image, but will appear almost artificial, zombie-like or robotic because of the lack of presence and actual interaction that is occurring.
March 25, 2015
Sunbath in the Forbidden Lands
Jelly Bunny
Bunny Exercise – Heather
Easter Bunny
Project 1 Trial and Error
February 19, 2015
2/19/2015
7-8:30pm
Today I worked on finishing up the majority of lego pieces. Then I made a separate Rhino file with just three base pieces and made sure they were watertight. Then I saved them to be printed.
The 3D printers were being used by another student today, but tomorrow I will run these test prints and if they fit well together I will print the rest of the cathedral as well.
Royal Ride
Batman’s Vehicle – Andy Loeshelle
February 12, 2015
2/12/2015
3-5pm, 7-8:30pm
Today I worked on creating the Lego style pieces of the cathedral. This has proved to be a bit tricky. I’ve been approaching it as a trial & error kind of puzzle and after some experimenting with the different tools on Rhino, I’ve succeeded in making a few interlocking “blocks”. I might try to print tests of these soon to see if the design works
duckutopism
February 5th-6th, 2015
2/5/2015
7-8:30 pm
Tonight I went to the DSC to print for the first time. I found a small model of a squirrel on thinkiverse with clean edges and no details that would be too difficult to print.
I downloaded the template onto the computer in the DSC, transferred it to an SD card, then sent it to the printer. Later that night I returned to check on its progress
2/6/2015
11:30am
I came back in the morning to see if it had finished. The DSC is closed today so the door is locked, but I could see my print on the table through the window all finished!
February 4, 2015
2/4/2015
3-4:30pm
Today I went to the Digital Scholarship Center in the Library to ask about hours and usage of the 3D printers. I met the assistant director who told me I should talk to Deb Balducci. I met Deb and we discussed my fellowship and the projects I hope to be doing. She mentioned that some of the Makerbots have been having technical issues, and that they are letting fewer people stop by to use them at their leisure because they’ve been so finicky. She suggested that I get in touch with Hunter Vassar, a student who works in the DSC, who could tell me more about when I would be able to use the printers. I contacted Hunter and am waiting to either meet with him or get more information.