Critical Evaluation

Before starting the MA course, I still remember I got an email about doing a project proposal as preparation for the start of the course. At that time, I had no idea as I didn’t have a clear topic. My works explore things in varies fields. The similarity of them is closing to our daily lives and to ourselves. In Hong Kong, when people talk about art, they always say an idiom, “art is too profound for them to understand” (藝術既野我識條鐵咩 ngai seot gei je ngo sik tiu tit me). They think art is so far away and unrelated to them. Even now, the idiom still has an impact on me. As I hold a belief that art can actually close to us and it is. Art is surrounding us. So I started to think about what does everybody has? My answer was emotion – the starting point of everything. 

 

One of the most precious things I gained from the course is I find my own direction in my art practice step by step. In the first year, I started my project with the physicality of emotion and I focus on happiness. However, I didn’t know much about emotions. So I did research in different areas such as psychology and I found interesting ideas. Moreover, I try to explore the concept of happiness from different perspectives by doing works in different medium in these 2 years. By more works I’ve done, for examples “Happiness Gas?” reflecting how people pursue their happiness nowadays, “What makes them happy?” questioning the relationship between our happiness and social standard or the mask, “There is no art to find the mind’s construction”, revealing how we use our facial expression to disguise our actual feeling, my art practice is developed deeper and further to explore human desires by looking through from emotions. I found the disguise of emotions can be an interesting way for us to understand ourselves more. I won’t forget how excited I was while I was writing the blog, Breakthrough, as I know I am making a progress to the path to be an artist. I understand it is a long journey and I know far from enough on emotions. I will go on to have further development.  

 

Apart from that, I have changed the approach to my practice from myself being not sort of them to part of them. I consider this change as self-growing. As I wrote in the reflection of Symposium 2, “I always think I could see things more clearly by the perspective of an outsider so I could always be calm and rational.” It affects my art practice but I was unconscious about that and the video “What makes them happy?” is significant as I never asked myself. Until I felt lost after I finished Unit1, I realised I am not able to do it actually. I was inside the mist of lost and I couldn’t see myself clearly. I know I can’t stay away from personal emotions anymore. This “discovery” makes me know more about myself. So I decided to face my feelings by doing the interactive work, “Lost”. I put how I felt as the core concept of the work. If I want to understand more in emotions, I must understand more about myself including actual feelings and thoughts. So, I become more open to part of my work like the smiling videos, “They told me to be happy” and I am happy for the change.   

 

For the future plan, I think I will find a job related to my techniques first so I can learn more and accumulate life experience as I feel like I am I newbie in society and I understand I do not have enough life experience in talking about humanity in deep in this stage. But there is one thing I can sure is I will keep doing art. I remember Jonathan asked what is my dream in a tutorial. I said a full-time artist but then I cried and said I wanted to give up. After the 3 week challenge, I understand deeply, in fact, I don’t want to give up as this is something I like to do. Giving up is an easy thing. But if I choose not to be, I will keep going. And I would like to set a goal for myself that my works can inspire someone one day.

 

放棄是件容易的事，但既然不想放棄，我會堅持下去。

Some thought about the mirror

In the feedback of Symposium 2, Gabby said she thought my work was sort of not a part of the emotions. And then I answered her from sort of not a part of it becoming part of it. I think she said the change of me in these two years. At that time, I was thinking about the blur mirror and I realised that I did not write about my thought in the blur mirror.

As I wrote in the reflection of Symposium 2 (link) , “I always think I could see things more clearly by the perspective of an outsider so I can always be rational.” Sometimes I will put myself in somebody shoe to understand something but I won’t do the same to myself. This is the approach of how I see things. It affects my art practice as well but I was unconscious about that. I think that was the reason I looked like I was not part of the emotion at the beginning such as my works, “Happiness gas?” and “What makes them happy?”. I think the video, “What makes them happy?” is more significant as I asked different people what makes them happy but I didn’t ask myself what makes me happy.

I always tried to look at the things related to myself as an outsider. I thought I could pull out my personal feeling until I was lost. I tried to look at myself by an outsider perspective to help myself but I couldn’t see myself clearly. I realised I could not do it actually. I was inside the mist of lost as well. No matter how hard I tried, it was the same. I didn’t know what I want at that time and I realised I am not able or not able yet to see myself as an outsider. I understand myself more via this incident and I found that I had have confronted myself. So I let myself to face my inner feeling by visualising as “mirror”. I think this is the obvious turning point I let myself open my heart and become part of my works.

I was worried about the mirror that people may do the same if they know programming before in the group exercise in low residency. But now the process I’ve been to make the mirror makes things different. At least, it is an important and unique for me as it shows how I step out to confront my emotions and express them to the others.

Symposium 2 – Comment & Reflection

Thank you very much for everyone’s comments. They are so valuable and I summed up all the comments below:

Online:

• Amazing idea
• Like that with your practice you are also trying to understand what emotion are – even as a self-discovery but in a very rational and grounded way. Like you are not smashing mirror to understand what anger is. Its like unveiling fake emotion
• The notion of a mirror which does not allow you to focus is really very interesting
• Simple and clever
• Deep and analytical works. Happiness is something we all want to attain so you have tapped into that, it is very universal. Love how you explored the idea of emotion, it is courageous and especially tapping into your own, brilliant journey
• So cool, so deep so exploring emotions and yet so simple
• Courageous encounters
• A good title is needed to help people get it straight away and that would be enough without a long explanation
• Smiling can be the greatest act of courage of all to see the world in a single smile
• Great idea for the final show, well produced and considered
• The amount of things and ideas you explored is great and refreshing
• If we present too much, we will lose authenticity
• Look into what it means to smile – it is seen differently in different cultures
• Smiling too much is also a characteristic of when we can’t say no to people or move away from toxic people. And it compromises our happiness
• In Paris, if you smile too much people are like what is wrong with you
• love the depth of simplicity of your work

Live:

• Exploring fake emotions rather than real emotions make it more interesting
• See when people take a picture and they change their face
• like the idea that people showing their best
• I agree about the fake emotion but I feel like your work is about real emotion and what is it?
• Try to look at movies to like to see how people to be happy
• Try to look at acting
• Have you tried to have someone take pictures of you when you smiling? Just to take the difference between when you are forcing yourself and when you are taken
• Technical question: how to make the program
• Love how diverse things you’ve worked on different thing you try, film and the coding, going out and invite people to do balloon stuff. Kind of exploring different which is very good
• Smiling defensively
• It’s interesting how you approaching because you are visiting emotion and you are not sort of part of it  (me: from not part of become part of )

---

Thanks again for all the comments! 🙂 There are some of them I would like to talk a bit further.

Exploring fake emotions rather than real emotions make it more interesting

Happiness is one of the emotions people desire most. We always connect smile to happiness. Smile is one of the easiest expression for human to recognize and it is common nowadays. However, it is one of the easiest emotion to fake as well. In some situation, we may use our smile to disguise something or pretend to be happy. By exploring in fake emotions such as the fake smile, we may have a glimpse of what behind our emotions or even our desires.

Smiling Video

I am happy that I received many comments on smiling videos. They related the video into more layers, such as smiling defensively, smile to say no to people, the greatest act of courage and smile in different culture. I think one of the reasons is smiling is close to our daily lives and we use smile in different situation. It is easy to link it with different things and scenarios similar to the smiling video. Take the book, “Smile Revolution” by Colin Jones as an example. He proposed smile as socialization and lubricate social interaction. Smile may actually more powerful than we thought.

Approaches

For the approach of my practice, Paola said I use a rational and grounded way in my practice and Gabby said I look like I was sort of not a part of the emotions. I think that is a great point for me to remind about my approaches. As from the beginning and also the work I did, their main inspirations comes from our daily lives, for example, the news (e.g about laughing gas), the people around me (my friends talk about their recent) and my daily observation. I always think I could see things more clearly by the perspective of an outsider so I can always be rational. I thought I can pull out my own feelings to look at people and understand our desires/humanity from their emotions. But when I did more works, I realised that is not easy to do it. I also have my own emotions and sometimes it is difficult to pull all my feelings or thoughts out.

Title

Besides, I agree with a good title is really important. I and Jonathan discussed it as well in the last tutorial. I need to think of a good title to people gets it straight away especially for the smiling videos.

Smiling videos – 1st clip

In the pop-up show, everyone participated in had to make a 30-second video. At that time, I prepared a video about I was smiling until I couldn’t hold the smile anymore. I speeded it up to 30 second afterwards so the change will be more clear. At first, I was testing for how long can I smile and how I looked when I was holding a smile for a long time. My face was already sooooooooo tired after a few attempts and the muscle in my face was keep shaking. The time I could hold became shorter and shorter after each attempt. After shooting the videos, I didn’t want to and couldn’t smile anymore in that day.

However, I found the outcome is interesting. At the same time, I struggled whether I should submit it. Because I think the video is too stupid and too simple. Therefore, I asked people for some opinions and feedback. But what out my expectation were they like the video. They see something else from the video which I didn’t notice before and connected with their own experience. However, I still didn’t take my courage to submit it at last. 

Their feedback:

• will curious how long will I smile and
• what will happen next
• their faces also feel tired (just like she was smiling for a long time as well/ she is following to smile unconsciously)
• the more you force yourself to smile (be happy), the more upset you become (faker smile you will have)
• the same feeling of how she feels when she starts to step into society to work (the frustration of wearing a “mask” and smile to everyone)
• simple but the message is clear
• try to take more with different background

Breakthrough!!!

Recently, I look at the works I have done and digest the information/comments I have got in the research paper presentation, the group tutorial and the group exercise in low residency again. Also after some discussions with classmates, I’m so happy that I find the connection between all my works and also the “actual” direction to my practice finally. I hope it is not too late. But it is definitely a breakthrough to me as everything become clear now!

Last year, I was aiming to physicalise emotions in a concrete way in order to understand more about emotions or evoking people emotions. So, I decided to start with happiness. My research paper is also related to this topic, the physicality of emotion in art. However, when I did more works (e.g Happiness Gas?, There is no art to find the mind’s construction in the face), I found myself is more offtrack to this direction. What I am trying to achieve in these works, are not evoking people emotion, visualising emotion or making them understanding more about emotions. They are reflecting our reality. Besides, through making works and writing the research paper, I find I’m more interested in the questions raise behind our emotions instead of physicalising emotions itself. (I think I explained in the research paper presentation)

Moreover, the exhibition by Tania Bruguera: 10,148,451 has a great impact on me. After the exhibition, I’m more sure that physicality of emotions or the imitation of emotion in artefact way to evoke people emotions are not what I want to do. At the same time, I found hard to explain the direction I am heading to then. I still remember Jonathan asked me the connection between my works in one of the tutorials. I found hard to explain the relation between them. I knew what I expressed in my works separately but I couldn’t link them together. I only knew emotions are their key.

Therefore, I explained my project is about emotions and the current emotion I focus now is happiness in presentations. Actually, I felt a bit strange every time I said it. Because I did not think it is suitable enough to describe my practices. Although all my works are really related to emotions, especially happiness, they are not evoking people to be happy nor explaining how good to be happy.

But after more and more reflections and discussions, I figure out the direction in my art practice finally. What I am trying to do in my works all the time are expressing the reality and humanity by using emotion as the medium instead of just emotion itself. It is also the link of all the works I have done! From the daily observation and researching, I discover more phenomenon or problem happened in our society. I take emotions as the medium to reveal them/ express my point of view to reality. It is easier to see the connection when I list the works out. I find that I keep going to this direction unconsciously. I am happy that everything becomes clear step by step.

Link to work:

Happiness Gas? & Reflection of Happiness Gas? 

The inspiration for Is She Easy & Is She Easy?

What Make Them Happy? & Reflection

There is no art to find the mind’s construction in the face

The happy temple

Happy Cycle in 3-week challenge  & with sound ver.

Mirror

 

So I will make a new version of the proposal again and will post it later. 🙂

Happy Cycle with sound

Recently, I made the sound for the Happy Cycle. I think the work is completed now.

I chose the sound of clocks and metronome rather than the actual sound of footsteps. As I think the tik-tok sounds can make the idea, people looping in their emotion cycle endlessly, become stronger. With different sound of clocks, it shows people keep looping in their own time and space. Therefore, I edited the space of sound as well to emphasise the emptiness in the space. 

Besides, I tried to export the video in 360-video version. The outcome is good. The pattern I put in the original video change in the VR version (because the dimension in the video becomes a sphere) and I find it is interesting. This is the 360 version: 

Low Residency 2019 – Day 2

Group Tutorial

We had a group tutorial to present our works. Arlette, Danni, Friederike and I were in the same group and Matt was the mentor in our group. Although I did the same last year, I still felt nervous. Actually, it was a good chance for me to practice and review works I have done until now again. Compare with last time, I think I have improved. Because in the past I’m not familiar with asking people questions or giving comments on their works. I think it is related to my background. As most of the time, we would not ask tutor/classmate questions or speak in front of the class. In our culture, if you ask questions in the class, that’s mean you may not pay attention. So I felt a bit hard for me to express my opinion last year. But now, I feel better to ask questions and give some comments which are a good learning process to me (and still need to be improved).

About the works, I found there is some similarity in each of us practices which are amazing. I’m glad that the feedback I received was positive and I got some inspirations on what I can explore more as well, for example, the relationship between happiness and suffer. I think it is an interesting idea and I have thought of an idea on what can I do for this relationship which will do after low residency. 

Gallery Visit

In the afternoon, we visited Camberwell Space, Assembly Point and South London gallery. I got some inspirations in ceramics from the work in Assembly Point (Recently, I’m into making ceramics).

Besides, there was a work in the South London gallery I would like to highlight. It is “I Shall Live for 100 Years” (1985-) by Paula Morison. The artist used 2 websites to count the time she has left to her 100 years old  (right) and how long does she has been alive (left) respectively. As the artist decided to die at her 100th birthday, she can count down the rest of her life clearly. The idea and presentation of the work are simple and clear. However, it made me reflect a lot in our lives. From watching the timer counting down second by second, I can feel our life are fading.

We always think we still have a lot of time to do many things so sometime we will leave something behind. But in fact, we don’t. If everything quantises into numbers, for example, the time we meet our families and friend or as simple as how many movies can we watch in a lifetime, we will know we don’t have much time to waste. Moreover, no one can predict how long can they live. Even though the artist sets her target as 100 years old, she can’t guarantee as well. She takes it as a performance or even a challenge to herself. Maybe it is relatively a sad reflection on life, I will treasure the life/time I still have now.

“I Shall Live for 100 Years” by Paula Morison

The 5th Tutorial

Today, I had the tutorial with Jonathan. I showed my recent process:

The blur mirror

We discussed how to make it become a real “mirror”. We think it will be nice if I can make it like vanity mirror with some light bulbs for the backstage in the theatre as it is used for people to look at themselves clearly while the blurred mirror is doing the opposite. It will be interesting to combine this contrast. Besides, Jonathan showed the Venetian Mirror (2010) by Sam Baron exhibited in the V&A museum for the reference. When the audience walked in front of the mirror, the image in the mirror will overlap with the audience action slow like multi exposure in photography. So, in the next step, I will try to see how will the whole mirror look like if I run in a bigger screen and also with light bulbs.

Story about happiness

Recently, I am writing a story about there is a new temple opened by a host who hopes people can become happy in order to escape the pain and suffer in our world by worshipping the Laughing Buddha. There are a number of people believe that they will become happy if they go worshipping. So, more and more people go to the temple to worship and some of them even become addicted to it. In reality, we really have the Laughing Buddha but Laughing Buddha himself including his smiling face has nothing to do with helping people to be happy and there is no temple can help people to be happy as it actually it is kind of violated the core concept of Buddhism.

Laughing Buddha

I write this story in Chinese at the moment as it is full of traditional background. I’m thinking to translate it in English after I finished. About how to visualise, I have a thought to make it as an animation but I estimate I need at least few months to finish it and I don’t want to spend all the time I left to only do one work. Therefore, Jonathan suggests me a direction to find a way to tell the story in a shorter time like 20 second and another other metaphor can replace the idea of a temple in order to avoid cultural difference. 

VR attempt on Happy Cycle #5

After the 3week challenge I did in last semester, I am thinking to make the animation with a person walking in his/her cycle as a VR. Jonathan suggested I can use 360-degree video to do it and it will be taught in low residency. So look forward to it!

Tanis Bruguera: 10,148,451

I went to Tate Modern today to see the exhibition of Tanis Bruguera. The number (i.e 10,148,451) in the exhibition’s title means the number of people who move and migrate in the world last year plus the number of people who have died and are still dying trying to move to another country. The exhibition is a social experiment that experiencing a community-driven response to the global migration crisis. As Tanis thinks everyone has their own responsibility with what is happening about them. There are 2 works in total and they are interesting. One of them is applying thermochromic ink which reacts to heat on the floor. Audiences can touch the floor by their bodies and see the embedded in the floor which is the image of Yousef, a young man who left Syria in 2011.

The room that makes people cry

Another work which draws my attention is in a white room which will make people cry. Tanis worked with chemists come up with a natural and organic compound that trigger people to cry.

When I watched the interview of Tanis Bruguera after the exhibition, there was a question asking her how can people relate to real pain when they just have something that smells and makes them cry like this? And she explained that she wants to see what happen when other people seeing someone cries. Are these people going to empathise with him/her? And is it possible to have the physical reaction before you have the emotional reaction?

Her way to make people cry is one of the exact things I have written down in my proposal that I would like to explore in my project and I think we had similar thoughts in the purpose of doing that: (link: Proposal – ver.1)

“The possibility to create a human emotion/ emotional reaction even in an artifactual way”

“I would like to explore the possibility to make an artificial emotion or emotional reaction. The purpose it not replace our original feeling but reminding everyone directly that they have their own emotion and feelings.”

However, when I entered the room, the strong smell of mint stimulated me to drop tears and I realised one thing. As I didn’t have any special feeling or emotion changed with the tears. It is the same with I cut an onion. Those tears drops were just physical reaction instead of evoking any emotion. The artifactual way to make people having an emotional reaction is hard to help us evoke our emotions. Sometimes, maybe just showing a photo or painting is more powerful to evoke people emotions just like the work of Chan Yik Long. 

Reflection: After the 3-weeks challenge

First of all, I have to say the 3-week challenge is my turning point. I finished 6 works in 2 weeks instead of 9 in 3 weeks. I still learnt a lot from the process.

I admit that I held back in my idea. Because after the research paper, the question raise behind the case studies are attracted me to go further in my artwork but I can’t find the direction. I circled in my loop. Just like in the post: Making art is difficult, I said I fear of not producing quality works. These caused me to overthink, questioned myself and even ability. 

Happy cycle #4

When I agreed to do the 3-week challenge in the tutorial, my actual feeling was like let’s give it a try and took it as an exercise. As the working pattern will be so different from I used to be. In the past, I spent at least a month to planning and doing my works. And it was easy to question myself. So I supposed to feel stressed in the 3-week challenge as the time is so intense and limited. But I have to finish a work per 2 days. In opposite, I felt released as I didn’t have time to doubt myself anymore. I have to trust every decision I made. In these weeks, I just wanted to make works. I also found my working rhythm. I understood I need to rest after doing a week (after doing the Happy Song) to buffer and get new inspirations for the next week.

Happy Cycle #1

Moreover, I thought I will stick to some medium I most familiar with. But at last, I played with different mediums such as Processing, songs, photograph and animation. Some of them are my first trial. For example, I had never tried to edit many songs with the lyrics, “happy” together or using Processing to draw graphics. I enjoyed it and I found that I like making art and actually don’t want to stop. And I’m also happy that I received positive feedback from these works.

I finally learnt that the experience I gained in making art and the process will bring me to the next step. And I have to trust myself and be more confident. Art thinking is good but if I think too much, I will remain unmoved. I have to take action and experiment things in practical as sometime I will learn and find something new from the process. So I have to keep doing work in order to find my direction and also my style.

Happy Cycle #5

Moreover, during the 3-week challenge, I have a new idea for making a mirror that will blur to visualise the time I felt lost. In the past, I didn’t put my personal feeling in the work or even tried to avoid it. I thought the audience does not care about it. But after the challenge, I think it’s fine to express myself because it is my work. I was too cared how the audience thinks about my works and it made me fear to produce work as well. I learn to give more space for the audience and myself to experience instead of pushing them to understand something. Because that is not art.

I really didn’t know I can learn that much from the challenge. I am glad that I really did it and did some good works. And it also proofs that I have to keep going and make more works

keep going!