Ideas for my major practice

For my major practice, I would like to work with a topic which is closely related to human relationship at some points. Consider my interest in people's different cultural backgrounds, plus the previous practices throughout the semester so far, I have finally decided to work on the theme of time-management. This is a contemporary area to be studied because it is closely related to everyone's daily life, their social habits etc.

I would like to take different approaches in order to respond to people's interesting and unpredictable time-spending behaviour.  

I would like to work on case studies of my friends, family members and so on, work out a unique set of formulas for each of them and deliver them in the forms of charts, graphical graphs etc.

In addition, I am looking forward to building up a three-dimensional design which allows the audience to interact with. It will be a lantern-like bubble, the idea is similar to entering a fitting room, the audience walks into the site to be surrounded by curtains (each curtain represents a major category that people usually spend time on), closing them according to the division of time he will be spending on the categories. 

Due to people's different preferences, each participant will form his unique time-slot bubble.

Through my practice, I would like to deliver the message of the importance for having good time-management, and to urge the audience to be fully alert of the many factors to be taken into account before they take decisions on how they spend their time and the consequences.

Workshop with Anna Gerber

During the two day workshop with Anna Gerber, I had to choose a matter which has constantly influenced my practice. After all, I came up with the fact that I have always been obsessed with 'collection'. However, simply defining the issue was not enough, what Anna was looking for was a much deeper level at understanding the reason of being influenced by this obsession.

Her concern had reminded me that it is essential to observe things and research at a much deeper level in order to allow my practice step up to a professional level.

After thinking hard and analyzing the 'obsession' from different angles, I had finally concluded that it was the continuous nature and potential in expansion which led to my excitement towards collection of things.

For my final execution, I showed the potential in continuity through a hugh spider-gram of my human connection with friends. I thought of human network because human relationships have always been an interesting area to me, it is something worths explored and investigated into. 

Final Designs

Since the undelivered bracelet was meant to be sent to my friend, I would like to narrate the story throughout the whole design. I tried to place these photocopied images of the bracelet in a box stamped with different dates, the ideas and thoughts in the design are as the following: 

photocopying the bracelet=reproduction of the bracelet:

this bracelet itself is no doubt a product for sale, 

an item to be manufactured and produced repetitively for many times

bracelets with different materials on top:

since the bracelet was something ready to be sent as a gift to a person, 

there was authorship in the bracelet, and so there was aura in it. 

Different materials serve as different periods that the bracelet underwent when it was delayed to be sent off in a parcel    

  

Apart from responding to the concepts discussed in the Walter Benjamin text, I had also taken human relationship issues into account in the creative process. 

I expressed the emotional aspect (friendship between the two people) of the story by storing the bracelet images into containers which were filled with different food, such as candies, onions, lemon, chillies. 

They symbolize different stages that a friendship would encounter. 

This is an interesting project as the design is a response to the text. On the other hand, I have gone through many experimental attempts in terms of materials to be used and presenting my idea through media that I did not come to mind before.

Experiments

In order to give more authorship towards my work, I made my work a more personal one: I picked an undelivered gift to my friend- a bracelet as the major object to undergo the reproduction process for my final design.I had been experimenting with different materials throughout the process. 

I put items such as net, plastic bag, clear plastic etc. on top of the bracelet to enhance to vagueness of the images under the reproduction process.

On the other hand,  I applied the same photographic reproductive method (on the apple and leaf previously) to the bracelet to show the loss in aura of the bracelet.

Response to Walter Benjamin's text

Amongst all the ideas that Walter Benjamin discussed in the text, I was interested in the idea of the loss of aura in the production process most.

I had attempted to present the idea of the loss of aura:

 using 2 cameras and taking photos of each other screens to show the idea of a reproductive process.

        

The images became more and more blurry one after one, the uniqueness of the apple and the leaf was lost once the reproduction process had been carried out, the aura could not be reformed in any way.

                

 

                                                        

Triangle Project

Triangle Project with the MA Fine Art students is a good cooperating experience.

We met a lot of students whose practices seemed to be really different, and each of us was allocated a partner to work with. The most difficult parts out of all must be the time constraint and extreme ideas from individuals.We had to compromise with each other in order to look for the best solution for the final outcome.

My partner Beata, had very much engaged in sculpture as her practice while I usually produced graphic prints and books. After sharing our previous practices with each other, we had better ideas about the possible ways to produce our co-operative piece of work. 

The more we talked the more common natures that we found in our practices. Both of us like to work with a wide range of materials, and there are always hybrate and playful elements in our work. At last, we decided to maintain the playful spirit from both of us and each of us started one drawing on a wooden board, after that we give the board to each other and finished off the work according to our own wills.

 

Since it was a project to be finished within a very short time, we had to consider about efficiency and budget issues. Some members in my group were adventurous and they proposed to produce our group catalogue in the form of a CD with recorded tracks of conversation of the five pairs of us.

I hesitated when I first heard about this idea because I was not sure if it could work out successfully. Due to the limited time, we decided to give it a try and so we started the recording and planned for the layout of the package of the CD.

I have learnt a lot from this project and I realize good time management has always been helpful and contributing not only in the creative process but also in our daily life.

Everyone works so differently; I am surprised that sometimes individual working habit and time-consuming pattern can be very extreme. After all, time constraint is certainly one of our greatest enemies in the design process, I am really interested to look into the study of handling time-management.

"JKEA" PROJECT