Project 1—Working with the Found Object
Initial
For the start of the project “Working With Founded Objects”, I looked at the abandoned objects I can find around me, and I found that most of them are broken or been damaged, and are useless and meaningless for their past owners.
They were discarded and forgotten.
This project: Working with founded objects, to me, is to give a brand new meaning to something that has lost its value and meaning, and to make them relive.
This idea leads me to experiment with these objects I found. I decided to first break them down into its raw material.
I started by break a damaged umbrella into cloths and metal stents.
Artist and inspiration
Angus Fairhurst
1966–2008, English artist working in installation, photography and video.
“Unprinted”, Angus Fairhurst cut out shapes of women in magazine pages, using the negative space, and combined several pages together, creating effects of overlapping.
The way of layering up remains me about dissection, which decompose the objects’ outer layer, showing the inner parts, which fits my idea of decomposition of used/founded materials. I planed to take the feeling of zoom inside using layering up collage from Angus Fairhurst, to work with my founded objects
Inspired work
I found that I don’t need to use the real material to present the process of decomposition, but can use some other thing to represent the inner layer of the object.
I planed to first do the layers separately, and then draw pattens I need to cut out on the back, then layer the pieces up, to create a feeling of breaking down.
Experiment On Decomposition of Camera
1.the case of a projector(I used it because it is an founded object which is also a electric device)
2.a photography I took for some old abandoned watch.
3.the metal support under the broken umbrella.
the projector box suggests the outer part of a camera, the watch suggests the mechanic inside of the camera, and the steel part of umbrella shows every thing decomposes into raw materials at last.
Resolved Work
Process of making the sculpture
I turned the “layers” experimented before into a 3D version in my resolved work, showing the camera being slowly decomposed in, expose its inner part. I am quite pleased by the defusing feeling of the resolved piece, but I think it would present my idea better if more layers added inside.
Project 2—Making and Breaking a Narrative
I planed to continue with the main idea for last project, because I think the process of breaking founded objects and remake it into a piece of art is actually breaking its original narrative, and give it a new narrative.
Initial
—Visit the national museum of Scotland
1. Basket (kato mosi kaka) 2. Blouse and headscarf, by Bianca Mosca
This clothes remains me about a type of clothes in ancient china which is called “水田衣”（水田：Paddy field）/“百衲衣”（百衲:hundreds in one）
水田衣
In our traditional culture in China, old, used clothes usually have a very negative meaning, because it brings bad luck, and new things mains good luck(a new start). But the 水田衣 is an exception, it connote good luck.
Parents asked their friends, neighbors for old used clothes to get blessings form them, and to get the good luck form the people originally own the clothes.
水田衣
This process is like breaking the negative narrative of old used clothes, and generates a new positive narrative by patch those up.
I think it is an interesting thing when slight changes add to completely twist the meaning of a thing, and I want to explore this idea further more.
Artist and inspiration
Thomas Demand-Artist Research
Thomas Cyrill Demand (born 1964) is a German sculptor and photographer. He currently lives and works in Berlin and Los Angeles, and teaches at the University of Fine Arts, Hamburg.
Poll, 2001
In Thomas Demand’s work, all the senes are made from paper, this specific chose of material made the daly images looked odd, much like a parallel universe.
This made me think about, how about use another material to build the scenes? Is there a world that is made of paper? Or there material?
Inspired work and experiment with materials
Experiment process
experimental works
To develop further on my idea of parallel universe, I used three different materials to make a plant to see that it tells.
One type of material makes up a specific world.
It looks like they are in their world respectively when they are along, but it seems to have a time line when put these three together, feeling like one grow into another; One world swallowed up by another, and new world borns.
This remains me about nowadays there are more and more plastic (rubbish) gathered in our planet, which might take forever to be decomposed. Is there one day our Earth will turn into a planet full of plastic rubbish?
Resolved Work
I combined the idea of environment protection (plastic swallowing up the world), with the above idea of shift in narrative in my resolved piece.
Final work plan
In this piece of work, I used organic material for the whale, and plastic bags for the surrounding.
Plastic swallowed up the kingdom, swallowed the houses, people, plants, and the last whale in the ocean.
A piece of plastic punctured its back, went through its body, and finally, blossom out of its chest.
It’s a new world.
making process
I made the plastic into flower, to suggest my imagination of a new world of plastic might begin when organic world like ours ended.
resolved piece
I think this photos are too bright, which makes the image too positive, so l tried the back light.
The Last Whale
I liked the idea of plastic penetrating the whale, and how the plastic demonstrates both hopeless (at the bottom, sea of plastic engulf the whale) and hope (flower).
But I think it can be improved if I can make the final piece more impactive by adding more details to the work, maybe make the plastic bag beneath into wave shape; Or maybe add more colours to better show the emotion I wanted to express.
Project 3 —Mapping the Soundscape
Initial
Sound walk and exploring sound pattern
zoom-in of some of the audios
I started thinking about, how sound creates image?
Is the pattern of the sound wave an image created by specific sound?
I found out that sometimes I can “see” the views when listening to some sound recordings, the combination of different sound creates an image in my brain.
So I continued with the idea of the view I see form a piece of sound.
Sound Drawing
I asked some of my friends to send me audios with out letting me know where they are, and I draw the views I see from the sound.
(Related audios at my blog: https://blogs.ed.ac.uk/s2141548_drawn-from-the-city-2021-2022sem1/2021/11/23/sound-drawing/)
I think it is interesting to see that the image I draw is completely different with the actual place recorded.
I planed to add some figures of sound to the work to segregate them from regular landscape paintings.
artist research
Mariana Villafane
Argentine, b. 1972
- sound landscapes 2. Distortions
I liked the way of using simple lines and shapes to creating feelings, and space.
In sound landscapes, the image was trapped in a shape, the shape looks like a container.
inspiration
I try to put my previous works into shape of sound wave.
This made it looked like the sound painted these by it self.
Resolved Work
I found that for most of the audios, image that comes to my mind is view from my house town.
Therefore I used sound recored in the other countries but paint the view in my home.
I think this might suggests my thoughts of missing my home country. Although I am at Edinburgh, the views of my motherland is still full of my mind.
(Related audios at my blog: https://blogs.ed.ac.uk/s2141548_drawn-from-the-city-2021-2022sem1/2021/12/07/resolved-work/)
I’m happy with the colours and lights of the out come, and the idea of putting paintings in a sound wave.
It can be improved if I can add more details to the painting.
I think it will be interesting if I continue with this project, to get a a series of work (maybe form the sound recored all around the world.)
