Reflection: What makes them happy?

From the footage I collected for “What makes them happy?” so far, there is some similarity among different people even though they come from different countries and different ages. Some answers were something physical like food or shopping while some are more mental, such as hanging out with friends & families or achieve a goal. But sometimes it can be as simple as sleeping. What surprised me is one of my friends recorded a 2-minute video to me and explain the change of what make him happy since he was small. What he said actually is the same as many young adults in Hong Kong. We are affected by the “social standard” a lot. I hope the video, “What makes them happy?” can also make us think about the question, “What makes ourselves happy?”.

Emotions are one of our core. It is also our private feeling. However, even our happiness standard is easy to be changed according to the external circumstance such as materialism, family and social pressure. How can we be ourselves under these pressures?

I remember in the mid-point review Lyu and Step suggested questionnaire/ survey will be better than video footage. The reason why I use video as the medium is it need not set a concrete structure on how they can answer it. They have more freedom on responding to the question and from the video, I can see their reaction and also the facial expression which questionnaire cannot do it. Although there is some similarity among answers from different people, actually everyone has different opinions and hold a different value towards happiness. Therefore, it is hard to quantify the result of the survey. Besides, from my past experience in conducting questionnaire, people may not take it seriously/ even do not do it too. Therefore, I decided to make it a video work.

 

What makes them happy?

“What Makes Them Happy?” is a video work exhibited in the Impromptu pop up show in March. Thank you very much for our coursemates and also our curators. The idea of video installation was super cool!

 

The story of Liu Zi Chen & Inspiration – What makes them happy?

The reason I would like to collect different people video about what makes them happy is coming from a video about a Chinese internet celebrity, Liu Zi Chen (劉梓晨). He made many plastic surgeries on his face and photoshopped exaggeratedly on his selfies.

Liu Zi Chen

Therefore, many people also called him “Snake Boy”. In the video, the host asked Liu that when does he feel happy. And he thought a while and answered that he does not feel happy or has a happy time in fact. He thought to make himself famous and getting more people to know him will make him happy. He did many plastic surgeries and photoshopped his photo in order to make himself look like a celebrity to be famous. Although he achieves his goal now, he finds that he does not feel happy at all. 

The screenshot of the video

Although many people disgusted with his photos or think he is a monster, his story is also reflecting our society. He is not the only person who does these things to make himself famous in the digital world. Before we point our finger on him, we should think about what distorted value in our society makes these teenagers doing these. It also reflects our value on beauty nowadays and gains “like” in social platforms. 

From Liu’s story, he made me think deeper about what makes us happy. In this generation, is the digital world become the most important factor affecting our inner world? A “like” can make happy or even being lost. It also makes me curious about what makes other people feel happy. As when we grow up, more things and more difficulties we have to face. The standards from society affect us a lot too. Do these elements also affect our “standard” of how to make us happy from society?  

Besides of Liu Zi Chen, laughing yoga is also one of the reasons why I would like to make this work. As I interviewed my sister, the coach of laughter yoga, she said there are some patient really forgot how to laugh for a long time and the activities of laughter yoga becoming so powerful to them to get back this basic feeling. So, I’m thinking maybe this video can do the same way to make people also think about what makes them happy. Therefore, I start to collect footage of what makes people happy and see if I can find something interesting via it.