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Outdoor class again!

Yahoo~ Love it. Love it. I love outdoor classes it made me wonder how happening the outside world is. Everyday is an ever-changing experience. We learn stuff and try out new things along the way that cannot be taught in class. In contrast, classes in a classroom are so boring and seeing the surrounding 4 cold walls made me feel like a prison cell.  Ideas do flow to us with the help of current technology: Computer. Pretty much we can find any particular picture and video from the Internet to understand what we suppose to know. However, there are some couple of elements in class that cannot be taught.  They are the experience of the encounter. We get to see it real with our eyes and will interpret more than what we can get on just an image footage.


It linked down to one of the installation piece that I liked in this museum trip.


From the SAM Museum Trip, there is one particular section I really liked the most which is the “Payatas” a mixed media installation with excavated dolls, bamboo rods, zinc shed, wood chips and drawing dimension variable by Oscar Villameil.

   
This installation piece intrigued me by the looks and the chilly atmospheric feel. The moment I stepped into the room I was so caught up by the thousand of Barbie doll head being stuck on to the bamboo rods. Some were badly damaged and smeared with red paint. Other heads were burned and gave off a bad burning smell that filled the room. “Nothing seems to be quite right” I told myself.  A Barbie doll represents the hopes and fantasies of a girl dream. What I saw was the idea of discarded dolls being ill-treated very badly and not just one but many. It filled the whole experience of the encounter that I felt that humanity that we ourselves do not even see it and now the discarded dolls are speaking on behalf of us.


This seems like a connection of what I have learned in the Allegory of the cave by Plato. He quoted “…the effect of education and the lack of it on our nature.” This is what the world has been badly affected until now.  We learned, we see, we studied and we know by footages of images (Photograph). We assumed and we believed in what we have seen.


Ask yourself.

Do the photograph really speaking the truth? Do they really shown it all or being manipulated by others that do not want the truth to be seen?

We have been living in a world of uncertainty. We only know just the tip of an iceberg but actually there are more hidden below.  Education on the book, the images in the book we will only know just a surface of it. We don’t feel anything until we experience it on the field.


Back to the Payatas’s installation.~

Oscar Villamiel used a very powerful medium, remains of discarded dolls. These discarded dolls speak up for themselves. It created an experience of encounter of space, place and time for the viewer in this enclosed room. I took some of the photos of the installation however, the photo lost much of the capturing moment that I felt.


Side noted.

The house was filled with great quantities of the discarded dolls. I was alone. I felt a lot of eyes were watching at me. The Hatred. The Abandon. The Rejection. The Mishap. They cried for help and were trying to reach out to the world. It still chilled down to my spine as images still vividly in my mind.


In Summary,

All in all, we will learn more outside with the nature than in a classroom. In Photograph, what we see is what we get. Photographs have been controlling our thoughts and dream. We used it to share and connect to our world. Photograph made wonderful memories, nonetheless it came down with a condition “ The uncertainty of truth” you will not expect to know what you suppose to know.



Pek Chong Hui Howly
G4                DN1004

Read the Chapter “In Plato’s Cave” of Susan Sontag’s book “On Photography”. Write a couple paragraphs about which statements hold true in the Internet era? What has changed since then? 


Overview
Susan Sontag’s book “On Photography”, the chapter “in Plato Cave” she talks about how photographs affects our lives, control our lives, package our lives, dream and represent our ideal lives as to ourselves. 


What i see “Photograph” as?
Susan Sontag stated that “Photographs really are experience captured, and the camera is the ideal arm of consciousness in its acquisitive mood. “  

I agree to the fact that it is based on experience and mood captures, nowadays we portray ourselves on social media like Facebook and Instagram. It is what we used as part of our life to associate and link with the Internet era.

The Past
In the past, Photograph used as a harmless tool to display the surface of the images as shown “Images which idealize (like most fashion and animal photography) are no less aggressive than work which makes a virtue of plainness (like class pictures, still lifes of the bleaker sort, and mug shots). There is an aggression implicit in every use of the camera. This is as evident in the 1840s and 1850s, photography’s glorious first two decades…”

The Present
The use of Photograph changed the way we interpret. It is merely not just a form of experience captures. It is more about giving idealization of lives, which instill the way we think. It has evolved into more than what we expected it to be now. Photograph believes to hold the power of mysterious truth.

She quoted “ The ultimate wisdom of the photographic image is to say: “There is the surface. Now think—or rather feel, intuit—what is beyond it, what the reality must be like if it looks this way.” ……Photography implies that we know about the world if we accept it as the camera records it. ”

An image of a photograph is what we see and what we will get. However, We can no longer interpret as what is it. We must cross-reference with the world that we have known now.

Photograph has changed since decades. It has become a part of us, an addiction to us. She stated “Needing to have reality confirmed and experience enhanced by photographs is an aesthetic consumerism to which everyone is now addicted. Industrial societies turn their citizens into image-junkies; it is the most irresistible form of mental pollution.” Photograph simply not only for commercial purposes. It is now made as an existence of a visual diary, a social media timeline. We use images everyday to tell a part of our story in life and transmitting important messages than just text. As images speak a thousand of words, a look at It can tell a lot to us. 



Pek Chong Hui Howly

G4 DN1004

• Identify and understand your preferred video by Charles and Ray Eames. What is the concept behind it? How was it produced? What are the technical and artistic values and considerations? What does it communicate?

I liked 4 of the films that were shown in the Essential Eames’s Exhibition. The videos are Toccata for toy trains, Top, SX-70 and Chase.

Toccata for toy trains
This video is about the nostalgic element of the old train toys. The old train toys from a very big size object made into a copy version of a smaller scale. Other tiny objects like the humans were also made into smaller scale to make the whole video a unity. The film shot from a toy eye view as if the viewer were inside as one of them. Overall, it is trying to convey to us that the modern era has lost the art of toy making in the attempt to have a perfect little copy of the real thing.

Top
This video is about a traditional spinning top, the beauty of a simple good toy being made and made the children happy. It was being shot in extreme perspectives of close-ups – an expressionistic technique that lets the viewer experience the spinning top as if from the eyes of a child. This video portrays the rich in human emotions with the toy and the toy has feeling too. It made us smile when we see it. (Living thing and non-living thing)

SX-70
This video is about a promotion film of the released Polaroid SX-70 camera. It shows the steps in using the camera, how the SX-70 was produced, the ideology of using this product and mainly experimental. This film wants us to know that the idea is more important than the medium. It is the idea that attempted to get across the viewer to buy the product.

Chase
This last video that I liked was something that sparks in my mind. This video is about the boy steals his sister book. Then the sister chases him to get it back. Looking back and fore of the video, it is not just a story of the chase. It is actually a chase through a set of information in search of an idea. In this case, it is the idea and design of the new structure of the building. (The design)

Out of the 4, my preferred video would be Chase. The importance of the chase is the idea of evolution that set a reality, which we have now. The chase to be new each time we see and learn. Pursue. Set. Achieve. 

• Re-conceptualize the video. Once the main concept has been understood, look at it from a critical perspective: How would you re-signify it in an artistic or creative way? What would you add or express differently? Would you give it a more contemporary twist (yes, no, why)? How would you do that in terms of narrative? How would you express it using your own ‘voice’?

With the advanced use of technology in movies, we have seen a big difference in the quality and the visual. I would like to express the concept of chase through the use of various animation movies, game animatic and Anime. I will use of the same element like part of the dialogue and character. Scene of pursuing in something. Various Characters running around in getting to their goal. I will give a bit of contemporary twist to add in the creative aspect. Adding text to act as a supporting element in the narrative part.

Pek Chong Hui Howly

G4 DN1004

Please write a couple paragraphs about how do you relate this text to your everyday life.

The Derive
I looked up the meaning of “ the derive”. This term is translated into English as “Drift”. The Drift is something that is not planned before on a map. To your destination, by walking through an urban landscape randomly. It creates new route and interests that lead to new experience.

Psychogeography .Vs. Geography
Psychogeography – believe that cities have a psychogeographical relief. The relief is the necessity that we created. We are living in a world with jobs, family, and activity. Each of them will have parts of our emotion and feeling that affects the environment. Sometime we left those stuff behind (taking a break), drift apart alone and exploring new boundaries.

Geography of the city – City’s history itself. The story of the past shaping the landscape into what we have now.

The Story Narration
The drift comes from our living/everyday life. It shapes the way we behave and adapt to our surroundings. It forges us to know the place (aware) and experience different finding. At the same time, it creates a learning course of human interest unknowingly. We are experiencing it almost everyday. For example, taking different route to school. Time and space will affect what we see. We will expose to a different finding each day even if we are taking the same route. The geography did not change but we added some sentiment (emotion). Eg. I walk down the small little back alley happily. Every time I walk there, there will be a sense of happiness in the environment. Maybe the author’s finding – I pick up a stray toy poodle.

This is a simple theory of my definition of the drift.

• Eg. Walking home from work.

The Subject: Us (no change)

The Location: Keep changing (except the final destination)

The Time: Keep changing

The Finding (observation): Keep changing

Pek Chong Hui Howly

G4 DN1004