Month: May 2019

For the fast-forward project, I spent three whole days in the screen printing workshop, and with the help of the practitioners, the result ended up being surprisingly good. But the satisfying art work is not the only thing I gained from this experience.

I’ve never been very confident with teachers or even just someone who’s more experienced than me. And before I came to this country, my relationship with teachers was basically me listening to them talking, instead of communicating. So when I first arrived at the workshop feeling not very sure about my draft, I hesitated to tell the technicians what I really intend to do, which I thought was not achievable and might not look good. However, the technicians were all very friendly and I could tell that they see me as an artist, instead of a kid who doesn’t know anything about screen printing, whose place I put myself into. This is very new to me. It’s not like being treated as a student, a learner does not make me feel good, however, the way they looked at me actually encouraged me to ask questions and speak up about my problems and new thoughts. And when I asked about the old-fashion CD player in the workshop, one of the technicians, Simon, gladly shared a lot of his thoughts and experience with music, which drove away my nerves in the workshop, so that I got to work in a more delightful and casual atmosphere in the following days. And for the first time, I had the feeling of working hard for my own wish instead of working hard to prove the teachers that I’m qualified for something, which I always felt back in high school.

I couldn’t believe it when I heard that people loved my finished work and planned to hang it in the corridor, I felt as if my child grew up and became a wonderful person. And I was very proud that I stuck on the plan which I thought was impossible after speaking to the technicians. I realised I always assume that I’m not good enough, hiding my real thoughts and just humbly listening to tutors, but communicating with them and bravely telling them what I think, is actually the better way of improving and further developing my ideas.

My project will focus on evolution, birth, motherhood, as this is the way that lives survives and continue our journey in this world. My starting points are:

Blade Runner 2049 (Whether cloned human is able or allowed to have children)

Sense 8 (The other form of mother)

Alexander the Great (The influence a mother has on her child)

Mother! (How mother is used)

First Reformed (Anxiety of the polluted environment where our children are going to live)

Lucy (How a human brain evolves)

Cloud Atlas (The connection between the past, present and future)

 

The museums/galleries/exhibitions I’ve been to so far:

English as a second language

Random access memory (Global warming)

A fortnight of tears (Mother, insomnia)

Natural history museum (evolution, life sciences)

 

The museums/galleries/exhibitions I’m planning to go to:

Saatchi Gallery

Tate Modern- Dorothea Tanning, Fran West

Science Museum

Barbican Centre

 

And anything to do with the mother and child relationship, human reproduction etc. I intend to learn more about the importance and people’s attitude of birth, reproduce so that I can make my own prediction.

 

My plan for the outcome is an interaction film or augmented reality installation art.

1. An AR installation that shows the connection between our ancestor and us and our children
2. A film about a future child suddenly appears in our present world
3. An animation showing/predicting how we evolve/will evolve in the future

 

I intend to use more approaches other than filming, like screen printing, model making, letter press etc. The work done in the workshops can be in the final video of be a part of the idea development.

 

My aim is to create the work that is suitable for exhibition. As a viewer, I always prefer the works that is interactive, that I can take a part in, hence that’s what I want to achieve. The target audience is everyone, because this idea is (should be) concerned by the whole human race.

 

 

I wouldn’t called this project a success but I don’t doubt this is another exciting experience (sadly the last on in this course). Since September 2018, I witnessed myself turning from a kid who only knew to draw what she saw to a (kind of) real art student who knows to see, research, develop my own ideas and visualise them.  I always found it hard to look at other artists’ works and get inspirations from them, but after the last project, which was heavily inspired by the artist Ellsworth Kelly, I think I improved this skill more and I certainly used it for this project and did a quite detailed secondary research. And I kept my promise to myself and finally did a screen printing! It’s not a perfect work, not even the best work that I have done, and I didn’t get to use it in my final outcome, but I had fun doing it and I love it so much (partly because it’s the work that kind of got me in my dream BA course). And as I’m going to do Production Design next year, I did some models for my film. Again, none of them appeared in the film at the end, but this experience was really interesting, also gave me the sense of how hard to design suitable props to help the story. Also, I think I did a good job collaborating with other people, which is a big progress for myself.

Just like every time when I finished a project, I have a lot of regrets despite the relief of finishing the hard work. For this one, the biggest regret is that I didn’t succeed in developing a more interesting way of visualisation as I planned at the beginning. And to be honest, the final outcome looks kind of  similar to the last one I did. But on the other hand, I tried my best and realised how hard it is to combine good story with good and interesting visualisation, which now become one of the most important goals for my future study.

It’s kind of sad that this will be the end of this course and this film is not really the best I can do to give this period of my life a good ending. But it might be a good start for something else and I can’t wait for it to come.

Honestly, this idea kind of dragged me into a new zone where I barely made my way out. I understand how I thought at the beginning, that the way that mother giving birth to child is the way that human (and all the lives) continue their journey. (Well it kind of sound weird here but I’ve already done it so…) But after all the struggles I had, from struggling to find a point to focus on in this pretty big topic, to how to visualise the idea, I kind of feel like choosing this idea is a little bit too unrealistic for my level of study.

I eventually decided to visualise the idea with a film, just like I always do, firstly because I was really tired of thinking about the fancy ways of visualisation as I did in the beginning, as working on the story had already made me exhausted. And also because the topic itself is pretty complicated, and after talking to my friends and the tutors, I found that things like AR, split screens and interactive story are just not really necessary and would probably make it more difficult and confusing.

Still, it’s a shame that I didn’t get to experiment with more interesting ways of telling this story. But I’m already proud of myself for bringing this idea that I had from the beginning to this far. And next time, (as there’s always be) Charlie is going to really PLAY it. (Does that even make sense???)

My idea – inspired by evolution and motherhood – turned out to be much broader than I expected. Even after talking to my friends and the tutors, I still couldn’t narrow the whole story down to any specific aspect, which really troubled me because at the beginning of the project I made a promise to myself that I’m going to use more workshops than I normally do, and unable to have clear focus made me struggle to decide which way of visualisation I should use.

My little craft which has nothing to do with the theme but it’s still cute..

And the after effect work I’ve done out of a music file!!

 

Despite of my unsettled idea, I went to the screen printing workshop and made one of my drawings for the project into a print It didn’t appear in the final out come but I had fun doing it.

I also planed to make my work anaugmented reality installation using my print, but I failed to develop this idea further because I can’t think of anything interesting to put in the AR.

Split screen, projection mapping and interactive video were in my plan too, and I spent a lot of time on the story that I wanted to fit in, but as I went on, those ways just seems unnecessary for my story.

 

In the end, I decided to just do what I’m best at, a film. I shoot it in POV instead of a normal conversation, which adds a little more fun to my video. But it’s still a shame that I didn’t get to explore different ways of story telling and visualisation.  I like the transition of my video, which I made a big effort on, it smooths the cut between two different scenes (almost random scenes).  But I didn’t get to shoot this in professional way, as I promised to myself in the beginning, which is another pity, and something that I’m looking forward to achieve in the future.

The theme Fast forward actually gave me confusion at the beginning, because it’s not specific enough that can make me think of anything immediately, but it’s not broad enough that I can think of anything without limit.

Some starting points that my friends and I came up with some starting points, time, speed, black holes…

Natural History Museum& White Cube

Seeing the evolution of lives and human being in Natural History museum gave me the sense of Fast forward, because I only spent a few hours seeing the process that took millions of years. And a trip to the White Cube and seeing the work of the artist____’s work about her late mother inspired me of the theme of mother even more.

Blade Runner & Blade Runner 2049

Saatchi Gallery

In Blade Runner 2049, the protagonist was caught in the trouble of finding that the replicant might have the ability of having children and he might be that children being born by replicants. And in the film High Life by Claire Denis, the scientist risks her life and goes on the space ship for her experiment because she “believes in reproduction”. That’s when I realized the decrease of the birth rate has caused concerned and our plan for the future has to not only focus on the technology, the environment, also on ourselves.

Some little experiments I did on the class for the theme evolution.