3/5 Final Project

Preference...

No. 1/ Idea 2 - Meaningful and related to my art research and interest. Challenges: Less time - Need more time to look for the visually impaired character/dancer/performer. Need to get approval. Will try to look at hospitals near my location and inquire. 

No. 2/ Idea 6 - An art education project that I've always wanted to make, which also has the potential to become a series of online teaching classes.

No. 3/ Idea 1 - Projection of self, that may relate to many other foreigners and/or women struggling in NYC. 
________________________________________________________________

Initial Idea & Notes

Dice: Story Telling/ Internet & Social Media/ Dance

a/ Story Telling: Story Telling through reciting a poetry, story telling through body gesture, story telling through instructions and education.
b/ Internet & Social Media: Final video will be posted on Facebook and I will inquire people's opinions.
c/ A dancer will be filmed to dance under my directions with her artistic improvisations.

Idea 1/ Make a short video of a dancer that tells a story of a woman as a foreigner struggling in New York City, using only body gestures and various props (fabric, found objects?). Shooting in Time Square trying to hale a Taxi.- Location is easily accessible. Can project different interesting body languages that fuse with everyday life struggles, such as falling off on the street, almost getting hit by a car, or getting hit by a car on valentine's day while getting dumped by my boyfriend... etc. 

Idea 2/ Make a video of a dancer as an instructional dancer and teach a visually impaired, or a group of them how to dance that tells the story of the disabled through their body language and abstract of interaction of the body parts. Story and contrast between a professional and a non-professional. Final video will be posted on facebook, I will inquire my friends' opinions on this work. - Meaningful for me, investigate the idea of the reverse - us as visual artists and educators, are using our eyes everyday, in making this video, I hope I can remind people about other aspects of perception, such as touch, which forms moving sculptures, interlacing the body that becomes moving materials, the body becomes the material.

Idea 3/ Make a video that tells a short story (can be in the form of a poetry) and let a dancer improvise with the story. Capture from a bird's eye view or from above. Post on facebook and encourage others to join us so it becomes a continuous project. 

Idea 4/ Make a video of a dreamlike scene, dancing and breathing in water that mixes shots with the abstracts of actual paint material pouring out somewhere. Music can be sounds of underneath the water, bubbles, and dreamy fantasy.

Idea 5/ Make a video of a person improvise with a poetry that I make about Spring (season, love, state of mind etc.) It may be recited or sung. Post on Facebook and invite people to continue the poetry based on mine, a continuous project to make a series of videos afterwards based on other people's poetries. 

Idea 6/ Online teaching about inventing dance steps and transforming the steps into a graphic dance score, which becomes abstract conceptual art. Broadcast onto Makerspace, Facebook, Youtube. - Have always wanted to make online teaching videos about art. I can fuse art with dance and teach visual art through dance. The dance can tell a story, or vice versa - the art outcome has to tell a story (more difficult as it's abstract).

More Ideas/ from 2/3 Video Potentials

3/4 Laser Cut

Above is my first laser cut experiment. Reminded me of the Han Dynasty (over 3000 years ago) stone engravings in the tombs that I visited in China. Turned out quite beautiful. I cropped a section from my header image and engraved over twice on wood. Might look better if I went through one more time to produce a bigger contrast. 

3/1 Scan

Scanography

I used two found materials in the studio - acetate and colored light bulb to produce this scan series. One is transparent in color and the other is tinted yellowish lime color. I decided to make various experiments by crumbling them up or turning them loosely into a bow or a wrinkled knot, the scans comes out reflecting interesting textures that resembles a kind of soft, organic glass. While the neon pink, green and blue colors gives a sense of futuristic machine lights, it also projects different depths of space. The light bulb reflected various colorful colorful spots that are really intriguing. 


iBooks Author

2/10 New Literacies

Takeaway 1

New Literacies 

In the past decade, artists have begun to use readymade resources heavily as their creative materials, not only in art making, but also in music remixing for leisure, professional or commercial purposes. Remixing is a newer ideology that has happened, and has become an inherent part of our current culture. As Lawrence Lessig (2008) observes, “every single act of reading and choosing and criticizing and praising culture is in this sense remix. And it is through this general practice that cultures get made.” He also brought up the term ‘Read/Only’ (RO) and ‘Read/Write’ (RW). Read/Only culture focuses on the usage of professionally produced artifacts, and are produced to view, read and listen to. R/O also includes remixing as one talks about a movie or share our culture with others. On the other hand, Read/Write is a culture when one reads the culture and “add to the culture they read by creating and re-creating the culture around them…” According to Sousa, the actual quality of the music is not as important as creating music culture itself. It would never be exactly the same as the original: “There is always some degree of interpretation, making do, revision of, building upon, experimentation, and so on.” In addition to remixing music, the possibility of remixing writing, digital images and costumes in cost play are also prevalent. While digital remix become artifacts or fragmented hybrids, music remix that contains a large range of usable technologies and resources is also becoming a new form of composing and expression. In addition, the remixing of application programming interfaces (APIs), termed ‘mashup’ is now widely applied that creates new software. 

Lankshear. C & Knobel. M. New Literacies, Third Edition

Takeaway 2

TED Radio Hour – The Act of Listening

Just like looking at images under a microscope, listening to inaudible sounds, such as the sound of the planets, provides us with new ways of interpreting perceiving the world. As visual artists, or even normal human beings, we normally put emphasis on the perception of our eyes instead of our ears. A simple “ding dong” percussion sound that proceeds from the first note to the second instantly produces music. Such example can also be manipulated into different colors, tones and textures. Sound is a crucial element movie making, video, MTV and in our everyday lives. By being more aware of the sounds happening around us can open up our minds and become more acutely aware of ourselves.   

2/9 Sound

Audacity
Experimenting with sound mixing was fun. I recorded my voice, recited a poetry that I made in 2/4 Sound, and overlapped it with ambient sounds of the rain and the wind at 12 am in midnight. I grabbed all of the mugs, wine bottles, stone, bamboo table mat, and metals on my coffee table and laid them out; used an uncleaned spoon and began to swipe through them like percussions. I began to feel eery as it was late and I felt ghostly. So I decided to become ghostly and whispered gently to my phone recorder. I found the classical music towards the end to fit with these "found sounds" on SoundDog website, where we can right click the mouse to download free music.

2/8 Video & Youtube

Journey, 2016

JOURNEY, 2016

This is the first video that I made of myself cutting faux fur, a reversed painting gesture that I have been practicing for the past six years. I wanted to show the violence in the scissors' cuttings sounds that contrasts with the softer sounds of nature that travels through the winds and the fields. Blossoming movements of the flowers are combined using the transparency tab in Final Cut, as well as reversing a couple of them that layers with fabrics - my underwear and clothing. The flowers are accompanied by percussions that moves up a key in sequence, ending in the last white flower that blossoms in reverse - looking through time into the past and the future, becoming a little girl again, while bringing up the idea of a wedding. 'Journey' is a projection of self that is infused with feminine themes. 

2/7 Photo Arrange

Arrangement of 9 images that I find on the internet related to the first image. I used squares because number 9 immediately gave me the instinct to arrange them into a symmetrical, balanced fit, maybe because I use Wechat quite often and the arrangement of photos on this platform is also a maximum of 9 images. 

Initial Image from Bibi's tree shadows cropped into a square

     

I began with Google search, and picked the images that resembles the initial image the most, then I'd look for the second image, imaging what it could also possibly look like.

- Tree shadow

- Wall texture

- Ripple

- Water splash

- Bubble

- Microscopic crystal

- Microscopic texture

- rock 

2/6 Digital Photo

Observation Photo + Photoshop Tools

The observational photo is cropped and collaged repetitively, experimented using various brush tools, transparency, select tools and layers in Photoshop.

Color Changing Glass Window

Idea 1: Adjust the hue of on photoshop and make a series of variations of colored prints.

Idea 2: Make these colored lights as a light changing project and project out from an empty room with windows that shows these colors.

Idea 3: Make a video piece with the color switching idea, combine it with a short poem.

                     
                     

                      

                      

   

2/5 Digital Painting

Digital tool is an extension to what artists can make, it can be used alone, mixed with traditional tools, or with the most primitive methods to create new forms of art. I have selected three artists, Albert Oehlen, Martin Kippenberger and Keltie Ferris, who have either used digital medium as material that fuse with the idea of painting, or simply make paintings that reflect the idea of the digital world that we are immersed in today. Some are prints that can be argued as paintings, others are installations made from everyday objects that transforms into an enlargement of a computer chip. 





Digital Painting Lesson Plan Part 1

Digital Painting Lesson Plan Part 2

2/4 Sound

Sounds in My Environment

Vacuum of Sounds

I hear sounds of cars passing 

I hear sounds of cool breeze

I hear sounds of time ticking and tocking 

I hear ambient sounds

I hear sounds of no sound

I hear sounds of my breath

I hear sounds of the heartbeat

I hear sounds of emitting light waves

I hear cooking pots steaming

I hear the streets awash from rains

I hear sounds of insects colliding the glass window 

I hear sounds of the universe’s curiosity

I hear sounds of this repeating journey

Again and again, and I wait

As an imperceptible being

Perceiving or not, 

I disappeared into the vacuum of sounds

Creative Potential of Sound

1/ Fabric Friction

Use different sorts of fabric materials, such as cotton, quilt, fur, bamboo mat, plastic sheets and rub them into sounds of friction.

2/ Sounds for Meditation

Record sounds from metals, glass to make ambient and meditative sounds.

3/ Electronic Sounds

Use a computer software to manipulate different kinds of electronic sounds that sounds like nature.

4/ Sound Hybrid 

Mix sounds from two very different genres, with a variety of contrasts in color, volume, texture, space dimension and tonality, and unify them into a hybrid recording.

2/3 Video

Creative Potential No. 1

Hybrid Transformation 

Combining Nature with Art Making Process

- Switching back and forth from one shot to another

Shot 1: process of art making, such as sculpting something, painting something into abstract compositions of a flower for example

Shot 2: Crop away to actual image of the flower but first an extreme close-up, so the composition corresponds to the art making shot, and is also abstract.

- Cut back into the art making activity shot again.

- Cutaway to the actual flower blooming 

- Back to art making, then back to a zoom out of the whole field of flowers blooming

- Loop the video of the flower blossoming process

Record sound from everyday real life, manipulate them into sounds of nature. For example, the subway becomes heartbeat, the ambulance becomes birds singing, the scissors cutting becomes breeze.

Example 2: 

- Switch from drawing crystals to the formation of microscopic water or salt crystals.

- Back to drawing again, then cut back to the actual microscopic crystal shot.

Creative Potential No.2

Digital Poetry

Combining poetry with imageries and sound

- Make a poem about the nature, the current season, make a video imagining the images that may correspond with it.

- Images may not appear exactly the same as the poem.
- The video may be an interpretation of the poem or may be recited.

Spring 

Like joy of autumn’s dripping rain  

The serene air

Blooms flowers of future

Flourishing, flirtatious as fairies

Clouds appear, softly reserved

Revealing variations of the rainbow 

The Opening Ceremony     

                                                Embellishes               

                                                                  
                                                                          Peaceful                

                                                                                       

                                                                                                 Landscape 

Beige colored cream

Squeezes out into a fertile land

Millions of creatures accumulate into masses

Leaping like light, lightly as Angels

Come! Share the gift of love
Oh spring , such beautiful ripples!

Creative Potential No. 3

Go to an exotic place that you've never been before or a place where you'd never thought of going. Shoot new things that relate to any art aspects that you've noticed. Talk about your thoughts about the place that particular aspect.

Creative Potential No. 4

Wake up before 5am and shoot the foggy track while walking along it. Narrate a memorable story while walking. Slice other pieces of memory footages with completely different shots of everyday objects, sceneries, experiment with extreme close ups of those things. Use a childhood song with the everyday things and and ambient sounds with the rail track scene.

Creative Potential No. 5

Shoot someone playing music, perform, dance or play an instrument that corresponds to the video. 

Creative Potential No. 6

Online teaching about how to make art, live broadcast and record to be distributed.