A conversation in a group session several days ago marked the beginning of my thinking process for this project. As we were sharing experiences and practices, I talked about my appreciation of the communicativeness of performative art. Nevertheless, I somehow feel resistant to the actual participancy, as I’ve always been questioning my sincerity and commitment when performing. Therefore, I started to think about the possibility of me ‘being and not being there simultaneously’, which I soon referred to as ‘mixture of presence and absence’.

From my perspective, the lack of physical existence of an artist/performer is not supposed to be counted as a total absence, while his/her work could still be conducted under given instructions. Hence, I pushed forward this state to the extremes of the disappearance or largely weakened existence of creators. In this case, I am expecting a self-operating performative piece that might lose control and gain its own unpredictable being in a sense. Moreover, as to looking outside the box, I will probably seek unpredictability in other fields apart from art realm, for instance, the rapidly innovating technology and ceaselessly accumulating human desire.

I try to ravel out the tangles of my thinking and construct the basis for the motif. Roughly speaking, I decided to work on performer/artist’s absence with unpredictability. Such themes, in whichever field, were normally realized via social experiments, self-functional machines, and advanced computers. However, this is apparently beyond my reach, neither will it meet my expectations for a conceptual piece. I need to translate my thoughts into a practical and intriguing format that likely contains varied motions.

The Dying Swan from Alexander McQueen 1999 S/S served a perfect example for me in that the finale performance as it depicted a delicate balance and abnormal relationship between human and machine. In full view of the audience, two industrial spray robots teased a helpless model, becoming dominant while putting the vulnerable lady in an obviously passive position. When going through the background information, Rebecca Horn’s interactive mechanical pieces High Moon and Spray Machine constituted the main inspiration. All these have contributed to addressing the issue of a conceptualized outcome, with the use of human body or other various elements in addition to a simple structure.

It feels completely different to conduct a project theoretically, textually, orally and practically. Therefore, it’s always significant for self-examining to explain the concepts and action plan to others. Not to mention that it’s the first time for a personalized project regardless of a given brief. Meanwhile, I am also at the risk of overlooking the time limit and practical conditions. A group session at this moment really benefits a lot as I can take feedback from others into consideration to proceed my thinking and practice.

In my turn, I introduced my proposal and plan to peers while reviewing my words and thoughts in mind synchronously. The focus of my work was the unpredictability and human passivity, mainly within the scope of performance art. I also wanted to highlight that both in format and content, including a work without subjective participancy and the randomness in the real world. When doing the talk, I had a slight feeling that I was too ambitious to cover such a board range of ideas. Not only my group members confused and lost but also, I myself had difficulty organizing my words at some moments. Despite that, they still offered me inspiring references. The group session served a reminder for me to re-examine the achieved while seeking opinions from others from time to time.  

Initially, I assumed my final outcome to be a motional structure like Rebecca Horn’s body-oriented pieces. It’s supposed to be capable of self-operating within a certain range. It also corresponds to my motif to some level in that, I do want to spotlight the potential threat and unpredictability of mechanical culture, the possible conflict with them and human. However, having given it a second thought, I sensed that how I convey the idea of ‘randomness’ is way too broad. Also, using a crazy installation to represent uncontrollable machines, there left no space for imagination and deeper thinking. I will probably come up with different mediums while the ideas need further modification.

After researching the artists, especially those performers that composed my initial inspiration, I was, admittedly, quite disappointed. I think I am just too used to prioritizing concepts and references and consequently holding such high expectations while appreciating other works. I am upset by and tired of the explanations for some well-known pieces that are filled with plain, pretentious, formal nouns. I was having difficulty finding detailed highlights while the initial intentions seem too general. Maybe it’s my lack of essential knowledge and experience that leads to such ‘shallow’ conclusion. Nevertheless, this does alert me to the significance of narrowing down the theme with practical approaches.

So far, the initial ideas of unpredictability and restraining human existence have led to a vision of functional, seemingly mechanical structures. When referring to mechanical culture, I sensed my way of realization was too obvious while lacking the necessary creativity. From an outsider’s perspective, the idea of an automatic functional structure seems derived from a ‘robot revolution’ or AI film, which deviates from my aims and is oversimplified.

Freeing myself from ‘robots’ therefore became essential as to sparing my focus. The 2015 documentary Behemoth, titled after a mountain-feeding monster from the Bible, has gained its reputation for a detailed depiction of the out-of-date heavy industry in Inner Mongolia and damages caused. I think the name ‘Behemoth’ is, specifically, given to the industry for over-consuming nature resources while severely injuring the environment and frontline workers. I thus derived new ideas from it, ones with broader insights into the unlimited power affected by multiple factors including both technology and human nature. Due to its broad range, I eventually adopted it as my title to highlight an extensive focus with a mixed sense of elegance and despair.

I re-watched one of my favourite fictions, the 2013 low-budget Coherence for its major focus on theories related to realities from quantum mechanics. One of the most remarkable relevant thought experiments, Schrödinger's cat,  constituted the indispensable information source in the film for all the question-answering and problem-solving. When looking into the film Coherence (2013) carefully and in-depth, I divided the information I got into three main categories: evidence, methods, and events.

For the evidence part, I focused on how those eight became frightened and finally aware of the truth that they were experiencing something uncanny.

About the methods, by which I mean those ‘codes’ and visual marks that they came up with to help identify each other. I found something similar between the box in the film and the one in Schrödinger's thought experiment. They are both sorts of a system that can indicate or generate realities. From the perspective of a normal viewer, it’s almost nothing more than a box with random objects inside. But somehow it gained the ability to authenticate, translating the mysterious being of ‘reality’ into acceptable elements by visualizing and reducing the dimensions of it. This helps me to re-think about my work. I was trapped in my disorganized ideas of how to conduct my project but now I am offered a new direction. I am considering simplifying the final outcomes while only using common objects in a conceptual way. But at the same time for the rich content, especially those scientific and social elements, I still need to address the problem of expressing them in an artistic way.

The events provide me an opportunity to build a connection between the parallel universe concept and my ongoing research of unpredictability and unstableness of human and society. In the film ended up with a chaos of them aggressively interfering with themselves and their friends between different realities and things were heading for a dark end. Except for some versions of the world where they had no idea of the coherence and were just sitting together lovely, the rest of them were so scared of being replaced by selves but also eager for a start-over opportunity. They viewed themselves and friends from other realities as total strangers and invaders, and even tried to eliminate their existences. Meanwhile, when their disappointment and dissatisfaction towards their previous life were magnified by that sudden event, some of them wished to make up mistakes or exchange to a better version of life by replacing another self. For me, during this mess, the impulse and sensuality inside human nature were profoundly enlarged and presented. It provided a perfect example of possible disasters existing in different realities. Everything could go wrong simply because of the unstableness.

To transform all the information I got from Coherence into relevant usable materials, I started with the characters' fear for its similarity with the passivity and vulnerability I assumed for my project. Like all of us, when all the parallel universes began cohering with each other, I believe none of them was capable of distinguishing the original reality. Human is always little creatures in front of such an overwhelming power. Thus, what terrified them in the film became similar to what is supposed to terrify me in the final piece – what I call, the ‘manipulator’. It represents the unpredictability, the independent existence of a piece itself, and now possibly a more advanced power from our surrounding, universe, nature, reality, etc. However, I also feel a need to specify the motif with accompanying action plan, in which case what I mentioned above seems too broad in lack of details and practical possibilities.

Meanwhile, in terms of conveying ideas, I sort of combined a motional structure with the authentication system consisted of simple visual marks. Considering from the perspective of the practicality, the visual marks for identifying different realities ought to be the outcomes, the results, generated by the self-operating system. The chain effect composed of a sequence of stages should have high sensitivity towards any delicate changes around.

As one of the interpretations for Schrödinger's Cat thought experiment, the many-worlds interpretation not only was adopted by Coherence as explanation, but also inspired me to include the possibility of parallel universes and split realities in my focus and preferred motif.

With more focus on the ‘realities split’, I gradually felt that my previous title apparently differs from the developed motif. Behemoth, the mountain-feeding monster from the Bible and the documentary accusing human of over-consuming nature resources, only highlighted the unlimited, uncontrollable power. It’s not suitable anymore for making a more accurate and elaborate depiction of a mixture of unpredictability and parallel realities.

When asked to give an initial title, I took the idea of Schrödinger's cat experiment and came up with a new one: Does Schrödinger's cat eat mice? I felt like asking this question that sounds like nonsense to all, including those researchers who conducted the experiment in the first place, everyone who paid attention to this intriguing issue, and last but not least, any normal persons like me. Derived from a purely theoretical thought experiment, it’s controversial whether humans are qualified enough to answer this ‘inessential’ question. From my perspective, the inability to do so exactly proves our vulnerability and passive position in this reality/universe. The title itself can serve part of the thinking process, even part of my piece.

After focusing on the film Coherence (2013) for the whole weekend, I drew three key points that are either relevant to my previous idea generation or inspiring for the next step. I tried hard to combine all the separate concept parts to avoid the problem that happened a lot to me: stacking ideas together on a superficial level.

• Unpredictability (not that obvious);
• Reality split;
• Passivity of human;

Having titled my project Does Schrodinger’s cat eat mice?  I seemed to be trapped in the physics field which I know so little about. It’s essential to me right now to simplify and visualize the concept, avoiding going too far while making mistakes due to my lack of professional knowledge. As I mentioned before, the random number and glow sticks in the film used to identify reality reminded me of utilizing actual objects to form an ‘authenticating system’. At the same time, I also attempt to combine it with unpredictability, which basically means that I have to come up with a more complex – or it doesn’t have to be – and intriguing functional structure that can convey the motif behind. That’s when I thought of Dominoes.

I used to set up simple dominoes using the materials collected from my house – books, chairs, bottles, strings, badminton pats, etc. However, since all movements were designed to follow the predicted route, it seems to disobey the very key rule of my work. Therefore, changes must be made. I looked up the dominoes online, finding that all the dominos are marked with a certain number of dots, just like one surface of a dice. So, I see both dice – a classic tool to generate varied results, and numbers – what functioned to defy the original world (film Coherence) in dominos. I finally have a clue how to display a mixture of ‘unpredictability’ and ‘parallel realities’.

Keeping in mind the importance of simplifying my piece, I was thinking utilizing dominoes as the main component in charge of most movements. As they keep falling down, causing chain reactions and perhaps eventually triggering the final part (if there is another part to mark the next stage), the combination is performed to the audience. So here come more detailed questions:

• What triggers the falling of the first domino?
• What will happen next?
• Are different stages representing similar motif or communicating respectively?
• Where is the artist if passivity of him/her is vital?

Today we had a group session for both those who already finalized their PPP and us who are still in progress. I love sharing ideas with others while taking a close look at people’s uniqueness so I truly had some pleasant time.

During my turn in ours, I introduced mine including concepts of unpredictability, split realities and artist being restrained, centred around Coherence as the most appropriate example. I added a new piece as reference, The Other: Rest Energy by Marina and Ulay to explain how I perceive a performative piece as individual existence. In that piece, neither of them was controlling the performance while the tension fled their hands and became, regarded by the performer, ‘that self’. Based on my explanation one of my peers recommended me Hugo Ball, a performance artist and founder of the remarkable Dadaism. He was said to be a pioneer in performance art, whose creation might contribute to my piece.

After the group session I realized how Marina created tension between her and Ulay and handed over the authority to it could mark a new stage of my idea development and research. Although I started my exploration with the intention to present a complete absence of the performer, physically and spiritually, a reversal of positions and how artists get restrained and manipulated are of the core value. Letting the character of an artist off the stage is aimed at the freedom of the piece, no matter whether its creator is present or not. Actually, the fact that a helpless artist captured and slaved by his/her work can strengthen the irony and drama effect. So maybe I shouldn’t limit myself by insisting on no engagement of myself with my work.

Today I also finished my research about Kaiji Moriyama and Bryan Lewis Saunders. Kaiji is widely known for his performance Yamaha Artificial Intelligence Transforms a Dancer into a Pianist, in which he utilized a movement detecting and data analysing system to translate his movements into phrases to play on a piano. Such transmission across formats seemingly transformed both Kaiji and the piano’s roles. With detectors and wires attached on the back, Kaiji moved as if he was told to move. He looked like doing his job to dance, to produce data for processing, like a mining worker digging out raw minerals for the manufacturing industry. Meanwhile, to the audience the piano is ‘playing’ itself, programmed though.

This is why when I first saw the video roughly I thought the dancer was moving to the rhythms, the idea of which could be borrowed for letting myself controlled, while it’s exactly the opposite. The artist himself changed his character but remained in charge to some extent. 

Today I went out for a gallery visit which turned out to be inspiring in some sense. From the first drawing collection to the final natural installation, I was exposed to varied perspectives along with a range of impressive methods. I think I kept in mind unconsciously yet deeply what the course leader said in a casual talk: don’t only stick to those that you think are relevant. I set out for several exhibitions I sensed to be intriguing in some way. However, I also got rewarded with unexpected aspects that proved to be highly stirring.

The second one in the morning, Katsumi Nakai at Ronchini Gallery happened to be the first surprise. The changeable wooden pieces made of multiple colour layers extend the definition of ‘painting’. Less sophisticated than I thought though, they still reminded me of enriching the content of a single piece by enhancing its dimensions. This could offer a great solution to the problem I might have of separate and messy outcomes. At the same time, I was totally impressed by the outstanding visual effect out of combining normal bright colours. It just corresponded to my thoughts of ‘simplifying for more’. The dominoes were supposed to be placed on the ground one by one in the previous plan while at this moment, I sense that an advanced structure composed of them could create a better vision. I want to adopt the feature of dominoes as ‘generator’ without showing too much of the actual them.

Another one about Ryan Gander helped proceed this idea through the flipping cube. seemed veiled while seen from a distance, yet still hard to ignore with the delicate flipping sound. At the same time, the slowly moving white lines of small wafers really stood out on the dark surface. All the details added up into a neat but sophisticated installation, what I want to achieve in the outcome making. Also, the cube connected with both the Schrodinger's box and the one in Coherence, as well as the most important, my own ideas of an authentication system. Invisible in the darkness and accompanied with the surrounding audio, each subtle flipping panel seems to represent one option, one possibility. It’s like a mixture of my previous plans involving the box/'container’ and the dominoes. A good example as it is, I will also pay attention to not copying/imitating too much even though it looked extremely relevant.

The last exhibition I went, Theatre of the Natural World, enabled me to expand my understanding in that it built up a tremendous natural world in an institutional environment. I found it so fresh and new that each single site-based installation could actually engage audience physically and emotionally. I was always used to focusing on particular topics while making specific reflective pieces. The way that Mark Dion stacked objects collected from both human and natural culture created enjoyment for people of roughness and elegance. When it comes to my own work, I really appreciated the engaging narrative told by the pieces but haven’t thought through how to realize that, especially when my science-like and conceptual, artistic concept is not likely to generate poetic emotional response.

I also took an insight into chaos theory which my tutor suggested me long time ago. I drew some inspirations about that for some dynamic systems, changes to initial conditions can lead to totally random results, like the butterfly effect. This process is exactly I wanted to achieve about my exploration of uncertain possibility(changes) leads a piece(system) to unknown (random results). During the research I got to know Double Pendulum, a simple physical model of a dynamic system within chaos theory. I built a small and two-dimensional one in my sketchbook, looking forward to applying it to final making in some way.

About Tuesday and Wednesday:

• Did you achieve what you set out to do?

On Tuesday I finished my research about artist Kaiji Moriyama and Bryan Lewis Saunders and obtain new inspirations from other performative and sculptural works like Marina's The Other: Rest Energy.

I also made a complete plan for my gallery visit on Wednesday. I settled down the order and route based on their locations, transport time needed and my preference.

On Wednesday I eventually went to five exhibitions at five different galleries (which means my visiting plan worked really well). Since most of them are quite private and in a small scale I got to enjoy all the pieces without disturbance. I also collected formal introductions for the exhibition with other materials from the reception or gallery workers. The written materials are of much significance to me. On the one hand they let the works understood more thoroughly by bringing the initial ideas and intentions directly to the audience. On the other hand, offering varied perspectives for examining, they benefit me even more because I am going for an art criticism course in BA.

• If not, why?
• How can you make better use of your studio time?

It turned out that sitting in the studio for whole day long for only one type of work (e.g. research) could be really energy-consuming and time-wasting. I think I ought to divide my missions into different categories and proceed each of them in turn to avoid mental tiredness.

• Action plan via workflow for today.

I am expecting a draft for my final outcome within this week. To achieve that I found an exhibition which I supposed to be related and inspiring. So I planned to visit October Gallery for the exhibition Portal and seek more direct association (It just opened today and I really want to finish this part before my progress tutorial tomorrow).

Before or after that I want some draft and thoughts for my final outcome on my sketchbook.

Besides, I will also finish my current research in different aspects and organize the gallery visit from yesterday. Ideally I will complete the research and reflection sessions about them for my progress tutorial tomorrow.

• What do you intend to achieve today?

An exhibition and more direct inspiration in terms of the formats for my final outcome.

Draft for final outcome in sketchbook.

• How will you achieve this? What do you need? Break it down AM and PM sessions.

To go for it.

Before noon I am going to final-check my trip and maybe find out some information like previews. I also want to organize my current progress and the remaining work for the following time.

After the exhibition, in the afternoon I need to turn the experience and material into supporting ideas, mainly in sketchbook.

At night I will work on research organization and reflective writing.

This morning we were put in pair to share each other’s working progress by answering the questions above. I had a lovely talk with Emma whose project is titled Destruction to Enrich.

At first I just prepared to slightly introduce to her my current working state. But when I started telling more about my concept she became so into it did some serious thinking about my core motif ---- many-worlds interpretation and quantum mechanics.

During this lovely conversation we kind of re-considered my project and the questions asked in some theories from my research. Take Schrödinger's Cat for instance. The original thought experiment ended with the boxing being opened and a state of the cat being alive or dead while Emma asked me: what if they found a Christmas tree in the box, not the cat they put in at the end?

It’s an intriguing question. According to the many-worlds interpretation based on the experiment, there was one moment, either when the radioactivity was detected or the observation took place, that caused the split. That basically assumed that the split happened after the cat was put into the box (the moment when the experiment was first installed). So the cat, no matter dead or alive, remained in front of the viewers after split in all the realities generated. But based on Emma’s question, if the observer saw a Christmas tree showing up in the box eventually, the split happened ahead of all the preparation works, because they did use a cat but somehow got a tree afterwards. This actually reminded me of the chaos in the film Coherence that the two guys out with red glow sticks came back with the blue ones. As the viewers outside all the confusion, or from a God-like perspective, we should be aware that different parts from different universes are already mixed up.

(In the assumption of Emma, the cat and Christmas stand for different realities and the coherence already took place).

So the conversation went to the fact that the in such a situation, the split happens every moment and thus generated numerous realities already. To apply that conclusion to my project, I am supposed to show apparently countless possibilities some of which may be quite hard to present. For example, it could be normal in one of the universes that the action of dropping a cup will bring an elephant to your room and this is something too random and seemingly meaningless to the audience.

Before I left for the exhibition I had my proposal final-checked by my tutor, who suggested me add more bibliographies about quantum mechanics and look for more collaboration and association between art and science and provides several more references like NESTA and National Physics laboratory.

I am currently considering creating a system of dominoes as the main composition of my final outcome, which requires strictly designed structure and thorough experiments. After finishing material organization and related research and reflective writing, I will be searching for the possible materials (like glow sticks, LED, dominoes, dice) on Monday and Tuesday while making sketches. At the same time, I will also proceed some research based on the recommended artists and works from previous group sessions (Hugo Ball).

On Wednesday I will probably go to see three exhibitions on my list already and complete and related organization and reflection.

On Thursday I will be doing further designs and sketches or experimenting with the materials if everything goes well on Monday or Tuesday and they are purchased and delivered already. If not, I might continue research and plan for my trip to National Physics Laboratory.

Friday depends on working progress.

Weekend:

• Visit National Physics Laboratory and complete related works.
• Make sure I am ready to start actually making or at least experimental, progressive outcome-producing (materials and designs prepared).

Ongoing:

Reading bibliographies and watching films.

Feedbacks from today’s progress tutorial:

• Strengthen the connection between researches and my thoughts and works. This is actually of much significance to me right now. Apparently I do enjoy the research and always tend to enrich my concept by referring to various theories, cultures and even non-art materials. On the one hand I benefit from them for expanding my knowledge with more possibilities in my works. On the other hand, I could easily get stuck in ideas especially when they are not closely linked. As the most stand-out problem revealed in my previous experience I need to address, it’s distracting and energy-consuming for taking me normally weeks to narrow down the final motif. I immediately start looking back on my research page and re-organizing the texts. I used different colours to indicate the key sentences for different functions while examining the writing. It turned out that doing so not just enhances the research quality, but also helps sort the materials by relativity and usefulness. With a more thorough idea in mind, I can now stop wasting time on those less relevant references, select and apply the usable elements to my actual practice.
• More progressive and experiment documentation. Even though I am already aware of and attempted to avoid it, there still are possibilities that my concept-driven project ends up with a weak outcome, especially visually. I am asked to proceed my outcome making with accompanied documentations that reflect my working states. I will pay more attention to it from next week with previous research done by this weekend. It will certainly be a reminder for me to update works in time and focus on my weakness ---- the visual effect and sophistication.

Today I took a break from my work and went on a trip to Horniman Museum with my friend. However, the experience proved to be helpful and applicable to my project eventually.

As a natural and scientific museum, its collection mainly focuses on species as well as human culture by topic. Impressed by and totally enjoying the exhibition, I not only appreciated the pure beauty of nature and history but also felt the puniness of human. The specimens and exhibits represented a fraction of the profound universe which we know so little about. People always thought they could act on their initiative until the world proved them wrong. Such passivity – one of the real features of human from my perspective – constituted my concept as a leading role.

This is when I recall Jill Baroff’s drawings from an exhibition I visited on 7^th March. Her circular repetition drawing actually used tide data from different oceans as the basis, which, in some sense, is to let natural power lead her through all the creation. I see this as the worship of nature. It reflected a certain level of people’s awareness of their puny position.

Therefore, I push forward my research to astrology – a lively example of the worship and self-cognition. Appearing in ancient time, it sometimes included people’s rough studies on those celestial bodies via stone carving, etc. I thus think about utilizing the figures of them in terms of the installation part, somewhere in the structure, especially the container. Also, astrology reveals the fact that people depended their fortune on star movements. In their mind, the unknown universe somehow became the god who got to control their fate. As a key component of my piece, the container itself represent the object of admiration and worship as it, controlled by the string though, determines whether there will be substance pouring onto me, which is kind of my fate at that moment.

 Plus, the repeated circular fine lines in Jill Baroff’s Circle Tide Drawing kind of reminded me of adopting fine line drawing and combining it with the double pendulum. I am considering drawing on a bigger surface as part of final outcome and making all the process ‘random’ by using not only pens but also the two pendulum arms.

We are not supposed to attend the class as the tutorials are going on these three days. I missed the notification for some reason and came to Archway with only two other unaware students. Anyway, I spent the rest of the day in computer room working on sketchbook and workflow and then had a great talk with one of my friends.

Apparently at this stage most of us are still working theoretically and someone like her already got a rough plan with draft. When it came to my turn to share my current ideas and making plans, I described my sculptural/performative piece consisting of moving installation, dominoes, myself and probably audio/video:

I myself will stay within the piece in a specific position with dominoes around. Once I triggered the whole designed system, the chain effect will lead to a hanging container just over my head full of substance like liquid or powder.

About this piece I feel the final part of the hanging container deserves the very focus as it perfectly depicts a superposition of:

1. The substance pours out onto me;
2. The substance doesn’t pour out onto me;

This special yet abstract state will be achieved by, as I assumed, the randomness I plant inside the arranged dominoes. No matter how complex they will be I am expecting a potential ‘fault’ – one tiny part of the structure fails to move forward and consequently, the whole thing stops at that moment with nothing following. Meanwhile, I will cover my eyes and ears, preventing myself tracking the process with my most used senses. Therefore, I started the whole thing, fearing and guessing what my one simple movement will result in, under the threat of a hanging ‘attacker’.

This is what I finally came up with, a sequence of movements showing three key concepts: unpredictability, reality split and the passivity of the artist.

 She replied with some doubts and confusion, pointing out that that it sounded too complicated and distracting, even though it’s already the simplified version. The dominoes part, she emphasized, may especially account for that.

In addition to the plan of my work’s major body, I also showed her the small model of double pendulum in my sketchbook and explained a little of chaos theory out of my own understanding. As far as I know, chaos theory shows a specific focus on the whole journey of a slight change turning into total uncertainty. At the same time, however, it still obeys some common comprehensible rules. Take the butterfly effect as instance, the insect eventually caused a hurricane by flapping its wings. With some factors exaggerated, it’s still rooted in the current nature science study. The point is, as I comprehended, the chaos theory actually indicates a theoretically trackable development, differing from the complete randomness.

As I was introducing this to her, it recalls my memory about the conversation between me and Emma that the possibility of Schrodinger's experiment ended up with the cat turning into a Christmas tree inside the box. The fact that the cat was still a cat accords with common senses while the only argument is around its state of being alive, dead or both.

Thus, I started to proceed my thoughts about the new ‘discovery’ of the limits of chaos theory. I turned to the double pendulum model in that if we track its trajectory, we would find out that all movements take place strictly within a certain area of space – a circle on a surface and a ball in real space. The final pattern created may visualize it in a very veiled way.

I also mentioned that I might read the sentences in the accompanying audio like:

The cat is a cat;

The cat is a Christmas tree;

The cat is a comet;

… …

To be honest, this was just random thoughts out of my research so far. However, Nan suddenly felt it was so conceptual with a strong contrast of the limit and the limitless between the limited double pendulum and limitless descriptions and statements about the cat.

A clearer draft for my final piece occurred as I organized the conversation and thoughts from two of us. I’ll keep the mixture of both me and objects, performance and installation, while replacing the dominoes with an enlarged double pendulum. I set a ‘clue’ which is physically a string tied to me or the pendulum and the hanging container. With me drawing chaotic fine lines with the pendulums, the movement will lead to the possible pouring which also stands for an overwhelming power I have no way to resist. The audio mentioned above should be accompanying all through.

(As I largely changed my previous plan, the working plan made last week doesn't apply anymore - now I have to reconsider the materials needed and spend the gallery visiting time on developing new ideas. At the same time, after checking on the official website I found out the National Physics Laboratory isn't open to the public on a daily basis. Plus, such a long journey isn't worth the time.)

For a period of time I’ve been stuck in my project. Yesterday I just sorted out what I wanted to achieve to proceed to actual making. However, as the final draft is combined with several parts each of which refers to one significant aspect of my motif, I tried to avoid it from being separate. To address that as soon as possible I want to seriously re-organize my thoughts textually in order of development:

1. Performance out of control and the unpredictability inside;

      (Alexander McQueen – ‘Dying Swan’)

2. The complete absence of the artist;

    Uncontrollable humanities and society;

    Self-operating, (performative) system;

      (Mechanical Culture)

      (Dominoes system & structure)

3. Coherence: Quantum Mechanics;

    Multi-factor authentication;

    Parallel universes;

      (box: random objects for identification – dice, LED, glow stick, etc;

      (unaware of the point of the end: when to stop? When to happen?)

4. Chaos theory: within a certain range;

    Human effort of exploring -> in vain;

    Artist in a passive situation, manipulated;

    Reality split;

      (Double Pendulum / audio: quantum cat / string tied / powder or liquid)

      (stop or happen / behind the artist)

I have to say that I have changed a lot since I got the initial idea but somehow trying hard to highlight a remaining core.

I’ve always been curious about the reversal of the positions of an art piece and its creator. Meanwhile, I realized that inside such an individual and self-operating piece there exists some sort of randomness and uncertainty that go beyond our reach. The unpredictability revealed also indicates the varied outcomes, results that stand for numerous realities.

When put in a passive position, the performer/artist/creator, or simply, the human, is humble and vulnerable. At first I assumed the fear, the anxiety, the nervousness came from helplessness facing a dominant power from another creature or machine. But then I found the negativity can also be applied to the situations when we are experiencing the split, the collapse, the coherence of realities and universes. Are we afraid of the possibility of being controlled and slaved by a more advanced creature, or how negligible we are seen from ‘the god of time’?

At the same time, we, humans are always attempting to exceed the boundaries of our existence, our dimension. Is it achievable? Is stepping into or just gaining a rough understanding of a world with higher dimensions achievable?

Here comes the (current) conclusion of my thinking: I want to experience and express the human emotions, how passive and vulnerable we are when controlled by others, familiar or non-organic and how negligible we find ourselves to be facing such overwhelming power of time and space. Our vision is so limited in front of the permanent universe and uncertain reality.

• Did you achieve all you set out to do?

No.

• If not, why?

When I made my action plan for this week last Friday I was considering building up a dominoes structure with ‘scientific’ materials like wire, LEDs and other objects like dice and glow stick. So, I was supposed to search for those materials online and probably make the purchase. And on Wednesday there are three exhibitions that I wanted to go for inspirations for the outcome. However, I explained my work to one of my peers with some feedbacks from her, which changed my mind quite a lot. The final work designed later turned out to be more performative and conceptual, reducing the scientific and structural elements. During the past two days I found more extraordinary connections between my new plan and previous research and worked on the writing with organizing my thoughts, while attempting to figure out a presenting format. I might go to the exhibitions in spare time after almost completing the draft or experiments.

• How can you make better use of your studio time?

I think I should leave the writings and research to private time while trying to do more sketches and actual making.

• Action plan via workflow for today?

There is one artist I found to be so inspiring with, surprisingly, a lot in common with not only my thoughts but also my imagination about part of my final work. I will finish the research today and apply that to my sketch and plan in sketchbook.

I will keep designing the final outcome as well, starting with the installation part.

• What do you intend to achieve today?

Some more research and possibly reflective writing.

Sketches and designs.

• How will you achieve this? What do you need? Break it down AM and PM sessions.

My laptop and sketchbook.

Materials collected from the galleries.

AM: complete works on my laptop.

PM: more designs and sketches based on the previous preparation.

Since part of my research so far involves astrology and the use of the figures of celestial bodies, I thought of a novel I am currently reading – 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami. In the novel, an extra smaller, light green moon in the night sky is used to identify the uncanny reality the main characters are in. So basically, moon in that novel is the only sign to notify the characters while hanging so high in the sky. It played the role of a hard-hearted yet almighty god that is far to reach. This potentially convinced me of using the figure of the moon on the hanging container looking down on me from the ceiling. Once it pours the substance out, it also gets to decide which reality I will be in – the one where I am covered with something or the one where everything stays still.

The moon, in real life, also affects the tide on earth, which is somehow associated with Jill Baroff’s tide drawing that I decided to apply into my ‘uncontrolled drawing’ with double pendulum. I found it so interesting that I, unconsciously, created a loop:

• Technically, the container is controlled by the string tied to my hands which will keep moving through the pendulum drawing.
• Conceptually, the moon, symbolized by the container, gets to affect the tide – the double pendulum fine line drawing partly inspired by Jill Baroff’s tide drawings.

I also found some connection between it and Coherence in which the comet caused the reality split, twisting the realities and re-shaping people’s fate.

Today I finalized the draft and matched each part and detail with my ideas after a long-term development:

My work mainly focuses on the passivity of human facing the uncertainty and overwhelming power of realities. I will accomplish that via manipulation by the installation when the artist is in a subservient and worshipping position.

Detailed in formats that will be me kneeling or staying prone on the ground drawing fine lines on canvas through a larger version of double pendulum. Meanwhile, my hands will be tied with a string whose other end is tied through a pulley on the wall to a moon-shape acrylic container placing high on a cylinder beam. While I am drawing, eyes and ears covered, the hand movements, along with the weight tied to the container, will cause the rotation of the container filled with liquid or powder. Once the movement/rotation exceeds a certain range, the substance will pour down onto me, completing the performance. Or I unconsciously keep my hand moves within control and nothing happens, marking another acceptable ending.

(the whole look of me including make-up, accessories and outfit remain undecided)

(pulley with hook, plastic balls with contents, string, accessories, outfit unpurchased)

(make-up will be provided by a friend.)

Me ‘random’ pendulum drawing indicates the uncertain and chaos via a dynamic system. It somehow goes beyond control and gains its own life. And that will trigger the sequence effect, along with the hanging weight, resulting in the container falling down or not, splitting the realities, two of which show a superposition of states. Partly inspired by astrology, the lunar-shaped container and comet-shaped balls represents an undefeated power of nature and the very objective. At the same time, my kneeling or prostrate position (undecided) depict symbolic worship, showing the passivity of human in front of the universe (nature and reality). The total look of me is supposed to strengthen it, portraying a vulnerable and humble human figure. 

The finalized piece also includes a loop I mentioned before:

• Technically, the container is controlled by the string tied to my hands which will keep moving through the pendulum drawing;
• Conceptually, the moon and comet, symbolized by the container and balls as weight, get to affect the tide – the double pendulum fine line drawing (partly inspired by Jill Baroff’s circle tide drawing);

This loop/reversal additionally depicts a vain attempt to explore or rebel against the reality and universe. Practically it’s my movements that determine how everything will go, which, however, is so small and superficial compared with the objective reality. The double pendulum indicates it in some way, for that no matter how much I try, those lines will remain in a circle as flat pattern. This move, in my intention, stands for human’s limited understanding and exploration. The whole vain attempt itself indicates the passivity.

After settling down the final draft for the installation as well as a very rough plan for the whole performance, today I proceeded works related to my own look, including make-up, outfit and movements.

It is, to me, a simple yet crucial part of the whole piece. The movements are already, in some sense, decided to be me kneeling or staying prone on the ground while circling my hands on the canvas, drawing fine lines via the double pendulum.

 The position I will take contains multi-layered meanings:

1. On the whole, it’s a worshipping and obedient pose, which symbolizes ‘my(/artist’s/human’s)’ fear and admiration when facing the objective reality and unpredictability;
2. My circling drawing hand moves are supposed to represent the explorative attempts. Tring to gain an insight into the very chaos through drawing via a dynamic model, I(/artist/human) am still seeking the possibility to expand my own comprehension. However, the fact that I won’t eventually create nothing but just a circle full of lines will put such efforts in vain as I(/artist/human) will never exceed the limits.

About the outfit and make-up, to match the transparent acrylic and white installation I decided to paint my face, or other body parts in white while wearing some white garments. It’s also a way to show my sincerity as human worshipping the god. I am considering wearing nothing but underwear and a doctor coat while reversing the front and back. In this way, I can leave my back completely exposed in the air. If my movements eventually make the container over-tilted, the liquid or powder (probably blood red) will pour down first onto my back, like a holy sword impaling through human body at the most vulnerable part. I assume I can therefore emphasize the negligibility of human through strengthened visual effect with a strong contrast between pure white and blood red (this is based on one result that it eventually happens).

I already talked with my friend and she can help with my make-up. However, I need further and more detailed designs for it.

• Did you achieve all you set out to do? If not why?

• Yes but behind the schedule. I didn’t finish the final outcome draft earlier to leave enough time for workshop making. 

• How can you make better use of your studio time?

• Don’t hesitate and push forward the actual making. Give priority to the task that could only be accomplished in studio or workshop.

• What do you want to discuss during the peer crit?

• Since I’m already pretty sure about my idea and how to proceed my work, it is going to be just quick introductions to it.

• Action plan via workflow for today.

• Group discussion and crit.

  Workshop producing based on complete draft and sketch.

• What do you intend to achieve today?

• If possible, finish the hanging piece with its holder in plastic and metal workshop.

• How will you achieve this? What do you need? – AM+PM sessions

• Just go to the workshop and do it.

I felt that at this stage, I, as well as the others in this class, should focus on actual making perhaps with slight changes to concepts. When it comes to me, the following timetable after weeks of researching and thinking asks for rigorous practice thus I decided to spend the whole day in workshop realizing the installation part of my piece.

As it’s my first time in the workshop making three-dimensional pieces, it took a while for me to get familiar with all the procedures. According to my final draft, the lunar-shape container with its holders plus the double pendulum will be made with transparent acrylic. After purchasing the material, I cut the two sides as well as the long strip out of 3mm transparent acrylic sheet.

Bending the strip to fit the lunar-shape piece proves to be the most troublesome task for that I had to heat up the acrylic strip and bend it part by part myself. Because the two side pieces were not thick enough for modelling, I made a wooden model of the same shape with the thickness of 25mm, the same as the width of the strip.

Today I proceeded piece-making in the workshop, most of which was bending the strip to fit the circular edge of the side pieces. Since I only had one wooden model of the same size for bending, using the heating gun and shaping by hand is too rough to make it sophisticated. At first, I consulted one technician for a better solution to heating while gluing them together, in which way I could keep modifying the shape while it was melt and changeable. However, she said the only available liquid glue as I described couldn’t hold the pieces if they didn’t perfectly fit. Finally, I had to go with glue gun at the risk of the area around seams being really messy.

The process and outcome turned out to be tough as I thought and disappointing. When I tried to re-heat the seam to make them fit, the glue melt at the same time so the whole thing fell apart again and again. I had to hold them in my hand and went back and forth between the heating and glue guns. As hard as I tried, I still failed to achieve what I expected.

At last I had no choice but to use the glue gun to fill up the seams which resulted in total mess. The sticky melt glue left unremovable traces after hardening. After some thinking I came up with a temporary solution in order to cover my failure to sophisticate it and make it on purpose. Since the lunar-shape was inspired by the moons in 1Q84 and astrology, while comets also appear in my research, I could make use of the mess, develop it into patterns mixed with the surface of the moon and comet traces.

I also started to work on the larger double pendulum. I bought a 40cm x 40cm square stretch canvas as the basis on which I was going to make two pendulum arms out of acrylic.

The making plan I made for today is to finish the components of the double pendulum (mainly the pendulum arms and the joint wafer) and the acrylic hanging frame.

I supposed each frame is made of long acrylic strip bent in half and then hung onto the beam with small fine rods. When I first consulted the technician with my sketch, I was told that the rods as I planned are too long for the oven. He suggested me go with metal strip which is easier to bend. However, I want all pieces in the installation made of transparent acrylic to harmonize with each other.

When dealing with the strip for container I found out the heating gun might also be a great choice to bend the strip for frames. After checking the sizes available I decided to use the 1000x150mm transparent acrylic, which means that each frame will be 500x75mm after being bent.

I also completed the making of two arms, one joint wafer for the double pendulum. The ends of them are polished in circle, making it match each other when conjoined.

So far, I’ve had the lunar-shaped container, two frames pierced on top, two pendulum arms and one joint wafer. I basically fulfilled the plan and prepared all the components for assembling tomorrow, the last day to use the workshop before Easter break.

In the afternoon the whole class had a peer critic. We looked into each other’s works, going through sketchbooks and workflow to examine while understanding more deeply the final assessment.

The project I and my partner assessed is a collaboration project of fine art 4D and fashion communication. So unlike normal fine artworks, it involves a lot of pictorial materials with a strong visual effect. The two girls focused on Latino culture and how it’s perceived by people in a modern society. What I found accomplished well included their various approaches as well as views of research. They didn’t stick to only their own topic but went refer to different cultures from a broader perspective. Also, the images did contribute to making the ideas better comprehended. I should learn from this as I always gave too much priorities to the conceptual part thus ignored the practical effects.

However, in terms of the textual part, including the evaluative and reflective writings, I sensed that they haven’t done the job well considering I didn’t see much supporting analysis on the workflow page. A detailed plan for final outcome is also missing.

In my assessment paper, the two main problems are:

1. Lack of timely and updated documentations;
2. Lack of diverse research methodologies and experiments;

• About the first one, it’s true that I spent a long time working on research and generating, polishing my ideas and plans for final outcome. The actual making didn’t happen until this week when I thought I’ve made the final decision. That’s why rare evidence could be found in sketchbooks or on workflow page. By the end of this week all the installation making will be done, thus I will complete previous documentations while updating the current working process;
• I sense that I should take a critical attitude towards the second issue. I am used to narrowing down the motif thoroughly and coming up with a detailed plan for final practice. Therefore, I indeed lack the necessary experiments as I will normally go straight to what’s settled. The remaining works at this stage are to assemble all the components for hanging container and double pendulum canvas and designing my make-up, outfit and movements. The second part has much space for me to experiment with different materials which I will definitely pay more attention to.
• Meanwhile, I also feel that maybe it’s because the two girls who assessed my works are doing a collaboration around Latino culture. For them numerous materials like (what they mentioned in my form) music, colours, patterns, textiles are already part of their research and probably part of their final outcome. My project, in comparison, is more conceptual, theoretical and even scientific. It’s beneficial yet not that necessary for me to work in a similar way.

Also, they suggested me put more images in reflection session on workflow page, which, after I had a study support tutorial, proved to be unnecessary and not expected.

In the morning I finalized my transparent acrylic installation including the lunar-shaped container, the hanging frames with a beam, double pendulum fixed to the canvas. I also modified the current models after testing them including leakproofness test and size measurements.

About covering the glue mess caused when I attached the strip to the side pieces, I tried to create interlaced glue traces based on the surface of moon and comet traces. I tested with one side two days ago to see the actual effect. When the glue has hardened, it turned semi-transparent while creating a solid texture that feels quite well. The transparent container covered with semi-transparent glue traces thus puts on a mysterious look with unique lustre under lights. So, I adopted this solution and finished the other side.

Since the container is supposed to hold the liquid or powder and pour them out if possible, it’s significant for it to be leakproof to hold any substance before being over-tilted. After several tests I finally sealed the whole container with extra glue. However, I found another crucial problem when testing it with water. At first, I left a hole at the downer end of the strip as the exit for the liquid or powder. But I soon found out because of the moon shape, any liquid will flow along the circular edge. In this case I can’t figure out the exact location for it to drop onto me. To address this issue I replaced the original end with an attached tube to lead the liquid. Since I left the model in the studio for the weekend I will conduct further tests next week. I also left two notches on the inner edges for the string to hang the weights.

About the hanging frames, because there was no suitable size of rods, I utilized a thinner kind of tube instead which can perfectly fit into the thicker one. The final step for this part was quite simple. I cut off four thin tubes to hang the whole frame onto the studio wooden/metal beam (undecided). I also fixed two thicker tubes into the frame for the acrylic beam to place the container on it.

I already have all the components for the double pendulum including the inner and outer arms, a joint wafer and two extra tubes to fix them onto the canvas, so finalizing this part only took a few minutes. In addition, I placed another long tube at the end of the outer arm to put a pen inside.

Both two frames and container have a thicker tube attached, to assemble them together I made a long thinner tube with one end widened. Until now I basically completed the installation part of my final piece.

In the afternoon I had a study supporting tutorial with Pauline. I booked this mainly to have my workflow pages and sketchbooks roughly checked for improvements. It lasted for nearly one hour during I obtained some beneficial feedbacks.

During my progress tutorial, I was told to strengthen the research part by showing more associations with my own project instead of just analysing the works. According to Pauline I definitely need to work harder: I tended to introduce a piece or an artist in detail before turning to the inspiring part and the actual connections. This, somehow, took up too much space and thus shrink the truly valuable writing. Pauline asked me to repeat the reason why I added one piece to research collection without an introduction. When doing so, I suddenly realized that even I only thought about explaining my own thoughts, some details about the art work were naturally included as I couldn’t say something without referring to the piece itself. This was so inspiring and helpful right now when I kept working on reorganizing and modifying the all of my research and reflection.

About reflection session I was told to be truly honest towards recording and documentation. For example, I mentioned the true reason I decided to cover one container in my work with glue traces was to cover the mess while I also connected it with inspiration from the moon surface and comet traces. Pauline suggested recording it as problem-solving instead of trying hiding it.

I asked another question about whether I should put more sketchbook scanning and images on reflection page based the advice I was given during the peer assessment yesterday. Pauline said the reflection session is supposed to left for writing and materials that are unable to be present visually on paper like progressive videos and audios. So, I will continue what I’ve kept doing about reflection. As I just finished workshop making this morning and haven’t completed documentation in sketchbook, I decided to book another tutorial after it’s almost done or at least in progress. Other small tips were also given like re-sizing the pictures on research page to leave more space for writing; appropriately highlighting text and using signals; expressing thoroughly since the examiner may not go through each writing in detail, etc.

Over the last three days I’ve been focusing on organizing my works with documentations so far. Since I spent almost whole last week in workshop, pushing forward the installation producing process, after it’s finished, I started to re-arrange the pictures of progressive outcomes in my sketchbook. As I learned from the tutorial with Pauline, sketchbooks serve the function of displaying all the ideas generation, practical developments along with the accompanying researches.

Admittedly, sketchbooks were seldom used to assist in my projects as I tended to accomplish the idea developing in my mind and go straight to actual making. Also, the previous projects were framed within a certain range and lasted much shorter. The current eight-week personal project, on the opposite, gives the extreme freedom thus requires a neat timetable and efficient working plan. Therefore, now I can see more significance in the use of a sketchbook and have been practicing for thought recording, idea developing, draft and sketch along with documentation and feedbacks.

At the same time, I decided to adopt the opinions from Pauline the re-examine my research and reflection page. Going through the previous writings, I eliminated most general introductions only related to the works themselves and enlarged the explanation and association parts. I tried to restrain myself from mentioning all the details and gave priority to what I was most interested in and inspired by. By doing so, I found it beneficial as well to combing through all the materials, re-constructing and strengthening the framework of my piece.

To complete my final outcome, I need purchase the rest of the components including string, hook, pulley, the hanging weight, my outfit and make-up. I contacted my friend and we decided to meet at Archway on this Friday experimenting with all the make-up. So I planned to prepare the materials available before the weekend and test them with the main installation I left in studio on that day as well.

After searching for the appropriate hooks and pulleys, I didn’t find the kind I imagined before that consisted of a glue patch at back and a light hook where I can place the pulley. However, I eventually found a set of both hook and pulley all made in heavy metal. The ending part of the hook is a short stick that I thought can be attached to a larger piece of acrylic. In such case it can be stabilized when installed onto the wall. Or if tape or string is also usable, I might consider using them although they seem looser compared with solid joint part.

About the hanging weight, I wanted to utilize heavy metal balls and self-paint them. But eventually I purchased some hollow transparent plastic balls. They can be separated in half to put in contents. This part was inspired by heavenly bodies, especially the comets, and is thus supposed to be visually symbolic yet not too distracting. The options I am now thinking about for content are solid objects in small-scale, liquid and powder. I have no idea about what objects to use and after several hours of testing with water, the ball seems not leakproof enough. They are only hung as part of still installation thus not supposed to cause any changes to the final performance, which will be easily affected by the dripping liquid. That’s why I kind of decide to use powder, or other solid substance suitable.

My previous plan was to try on and pick the ideal make-up or body paints with the help of my friend and to test the hook, pulley, string that I use to install the other pieces together yesterday in the studio. However, it was severely postponed due to an unexpected suspension of Northern Line underground service and Archway studio being closed. I guess I have to make use of these four days to focus on continuous research, purchase and preparing my materials for assessment.

Currently, I’ve finished almost all the handcraft works and transferred the focal point to performance part. About this I used to picture me kneeling on the ground with hands tied and back facing the hanging container. For the outfit I considered raincoat, surgical gown or doctor coat to match the main colour tone of white or transparent. I wanted to utilize them also because they are, in different situations, used for protection. This added a certain sense of vulnerability to me. I would wear them afterwards in order to expose my back as a gesture of showing the weakness. However, having done more researches on artists like Grzegorz Gwiazda for character design, I now tend to abandon the idea of wearing an actual coat and prefer some sculptural body decorations. For instance, I would probably use large-area body paints along with garments, mainly on the upper part of me. When it comes to the lower part I will perhaps wear nothing but a white underwear or brief as the body paints may extend over the whole body. My conception of nudity as, again, a weakness-showing gesture might account for these thoughts.

I am also looking for more performance art, those using human body as the medium in particular. Ana Mendieta’s Untitled (Rape Scene) (1973) has aroused my interest and imaginations. Maybe a more intriguing position can better interact with the surroundings while the core intention of it is to show the passivity, vulnerability and weakness. Ana’s work recreated a crime scene with herself being the victim. In that way she succeeded in stirring viewer’s anxiety. So perhaps I should act purposively to match up my role and position. For example, bending over and kowtowing, or, twisting my body and squirming might achieve what I expect. Further research with new thoughts about this is needed.

I started to pay attention to Hugo Ball with Dadaism after one peer of mine recommended him as a pioneer in performance art. When I got to know about his sound poetry I realized his works might contribute to both my performing and background audio making. I think I will look into it along with sound art more thoroughly, hoping to push forward my practice in this part.

While doing more researches for my final performance, I suddenly became confused about whether I had gone too far. Although showing the vulnerability of human is of much significance to my piece, I still feel I’ve paid too much attention to designing my figure and movements. Somehow, I overlooked the importance of them corresponding to the other parts while serving the elaborate theme of unpredictability and human passivity. In this case, on the one hand, I did obtain more ideas after researching other sculptors and performers of make-up, accessories, my whole look movements. On the other hand, the current draft has been too dramatic to fit into a configuration that does not only spotlight the body moves. Hence, I am feeling an urgent need to simplify my look with fewer positions or actions. The very tension between me and the installation deserves all the attention, not my eye-catching appearance and behaviours.

 As the submission and assessment are approaching I start looking back at all the achieved and unachieved, conducting a mini self-evaluation. When I went through some of my peers’ workflow pages, especially the research session, I perceived a lack of first-hand materials in mine. I know this is mentioned in my peer critic feedback, however, as I always tend to focus on the highly conceptual motif, it’s unlikely for me to discover effective inspirations from surroundings.

Developed from part of my last project exploring the relationship between performance and its documentation, artist’s/performer’s position in his/her work has been vital to the current one. Both my ideas and researches are thus limited within art and culture realms excluding several references to science and society. In a superficial level though, they are too ‘academic’ that I overlooked the possibly beneficial experience from real life. I figured more efforts are needed in this aspect in order to enrich my learning process.

The installing test turned out as expected to some extent. I tied the string to the upper hole pierced near the top of the container hung on the beam, then reeved it through the pulley. The hook and pulley were supposed to be fixed at a proper height onto the wall, to create an appropriate angle for the string when it’s holding the container from the back to keep it in balance on the spindle. However, the whole set of them, made of pure metal, was overweight and thus kept falling off the tape. I used to consider making a support frame out of acrylic to enlarge the area for fixing, but the thickness of the acrylic sheet I have – no matter one layer or two overlying – won’t match the diameter of the hook. This basically means that the hook wouldn’t able to fit in the frame with a fixed thickness. if I insist utilizing such a frame to fasten the hook more firmly, I could bend while heating a second sheet to make it perfectly surround the hook and then attach both of them tightly to another flat one. This needs more time in the workshop, which is impossible as I am trying finishing all the testing, performing and documenting by the end of this week. So eventually I decided using several U nails (I’ll go out to find them tomorrow) to fasten the hook directly to the wall.

I need a clean wall to place my pulley, which is supposed to parallel with the beam for hanging due to the setting orientation of my installation. A great performing location in the studio is so hard to find for that, apart from the limited quantity of the beams usable, most of the movable walls are colour painted by other students. The patterns are troublesome as the whole set of my installation, as well as my make-up and garment, is coloured either transparent or white. I finally made an initial decision to use one movable wall I found to install my pulley while the container will be hung on a parallel beam above. My position is to face the pulley below the container, so the camera will be filming from my right side, making the street-facing wall of the studio the background of my performance. The windows might influence the final effect, but whether there is a need for re-arrangement depends on the actual effect.

It’s obviously a tough job to keep in balance the container placed on the spindle and to stop it rotating by holding it via the string with proper strength. The length of the string needs taking into serious consideration as well for directly determining how dramatic the rotating of the container my subtle hand movements will result in. After some testing with the help from another peer, I realized I should first put the weights onto the container, after which the length of the string tied from it all the way to my hands can be decided. The weights testing will be conducted tomorrow or the day after.

I also did the filming testing in the studio. The size of my container and its hanging height require a camera with broader spectrum, therefore, the one I planned to use may not work properly. I soon found out that the loan store in KX is closed until 16^th April while hiring a camera plus a tripod online is unaffordable. I think I have to go with my own phone and, a supporting frame for steady filming needs to be hand-made before the performing on Thursday 4^th April.

Here’s the list of the missions to be completed before the performing on Thursday 4^th April:

1. Test and finalize the make-up design;
2. Get the properly sized U nails and install the hook with a pulley at the fixed location on the wall;
3. Test the weight and fix them onto the container;
4. Make an iPhone frame for filming;
5. Perform and document it with the help of my friend;

When I considered including astrology and ancient worship into researches, it occurred to me that the ethnic beauty of them could help improve my whole make-up and body language for the performance. For instance, I could look up related sacrificial ceremonies with, perhaps, dancing and body paintings from several primitive tribes. Nevertheless, as I already thought it through before, they are, by no means, one of the focuses of this project but more like extra intriguing findings. So, I eventually decided to go with the simplest design of covering paints all over my body. The one I used worked really well on skin, creating a unique lime-like texture once dry.

Today I finished the rest of the field testing, remaining preparations, then conducted the final performing accompanied by a series of videos and photographs for documentation and the secondary display. Deriving the ideas from comets, I hung on the container two transparent acrylic balls half-filled with water, properly weighed as supposed, to help keep the container in balance on the rod. At the same time, two U-shaped nails were firmly nailed on the moving wall to place the hook with the pulley. After checking the testing scenes, I turned back to the wall between our studio and FA 2D’s as the background and soon set everything in position, including the frame, container with weights hanging, hook with pulley. The container was empty yet but will soon be properly filled if my whole installation functioned exactly as I imagined.

However, the rehearsal ended as a complete failure, disappointing but at least alerting me to the deficiency and my lack of cares for the details. The hook -pulley set’s looseness made the whole installation extremely unstable. In the previous testing, without weights and water, the container rotating around the rod was quite easy to be held in balance when given the proper strength. But as it became heavier, I had to pull the string hard enough, which was to neutralize the weight but would lift up the pulley as well. This little flaw I overlooked led to a total collapse for that once the pulley changed its position, the calculated length, the strength I put on didn’t work for this new state at all. Eventually, the container fell off out-of-balance in no seconds, dropping the balls with water burst out over the ground.

Upset though, I listened to the opinions from a fellow classmate that I should abandon the idea of keeping it in balance relying on hand-control. The failed experiment just made it clear enough that it’s highly theoretical therefore practically impossible. When I tried coming up with a backup plan, I suddenly realized the collapse somehow proved part of my motif vividly. I was looking for a subtle balance that could be easily broken, which thus poses a threat to myself below the filled container. Although it only happened during a test, it still served an example of an extremely fragile state, which, obviously, collapsed in a second.

Alternatively, having listened to my peer and given a second thought, I tied the container to the beam above with the string, winding it loose around the rod/spindle. Therefore, my hand movements would directly move the whole frame instead of the rotatable container, which hence became a still part of the frame. In this way, I largely reduced the sensitivity to a level that was suitable for the performance. Additionally, the two balls were later placed on the ground behind me, and admittedly, I am still seeking a reasonable explanation for this gesture. Having ensured the new plan was practical, I then finished the make-up with white paints all over the left side of my face, neck, shoulder and roughly the rest of my body, as the performance would be filmed only from the left.

(self-examining) 

Admittedly, the performance turned out much worse than expected. Normally I prefer engaging the human participants – performer in a performance, viewers involved in an interactive piece – to the fullest. I want them fully devoted, physically present and emotionally or mentally infected. This is tightly related to my motif in that the human passivity, one of the key concepts, was supposed to be realized through me, the performer, being put into a passive and more importantly, unconscious position. The extremely delicate balance and sensitive structure were for creating an actual unpredictability. After I re-set the installation, I was able to clearly sense the state of the container and almost aware of when the water would pour out. My awareness made me mentally dominate the situation and left no objective unpredictability, which was the least thing I wanted for this piece.

Apart from the objective difficulty to achieve an ideal dynamic state, I blamed myself for the failure with my lack of progressive practice and experiments. During the whole project, I’ve spent too much time on research and ideas, which on the one hand, did enrich my motif but led to an unpredictable accident. However, I am quite glad about this piece in terms of the making process. While trying to conceptualize my work, the installation part was, from my perspective, pretty well made and pleasant to the eye. I think I do keep in mind the whole time the significance of the final outcome being sophisticated since it was mentioned as feedback from my tutor during the progress tutorial.

(self-examining)

When I first made the decision to title my project ‘Does Schrodinger’s Cat Eat Mice?’, I actually took the risk and asked myself a question without a proper answer in mind. As I proceeded all the works I was supposed to figure out a solution or explanation, the process of which as well revealed my role in this exploration. Drawn from a revolutionary thought experiment related to quantum mechanics, this question would pose a threat to my self-cognition and existence, thus engage me by combining my experience through all the practice. The human passivity, a key component of my concepts, would be presented vividly by my inability to answer, even just to understand this intriguing yet terrifying question. My position in the final performance, on the contrary, served a secondary and direct visual depiction.

Therefore, I am now holding mixed feelings towards my failed performance. It did largely deviate from my expectation as I had to hand-control the whole piece to avoid the collapse of the installation, thus completely losing the unpredictability and sense of different realities and putting me back from the manipulated to the manipulator. However, on the other hand, if I see my practice as efforts to approach an answer, then my failure, in this case, can be a perfect example of the impossibility to do so. I wanted to visualize this inability within my performing, but eventually, the performance just demonstrated it to a greater extent. The performance failed by all means, however, this failure can be seen as another success since showing 'a failure to do something' has been one of the key concepts all through. Technically, I did portray such a situation - with my disappointing outcome.

(self-examining)

Having organized and re-checked videos and photographs of my performance over the several days, I just felt more and more disappointed for its failure to achieve the ideal state as expected – the piece gaining its own initiative while making me submissive. My lack of rehearsals ought to account for that. Besides, when I looked at the whole scene in the taken pictures, I also disliked the sense of separation evidently revealed in the documentations between the installation and myself. Due to the limited size of the raw material I utilized – acrylic sheet, the main outcome, the container turned out to be too small in scale and unimpressive even with ink water in it. The frame, meanwhile, was also too short and thus the whole installation was placed much higher than supposed when hung on the curtain rail, while I was kneeling on the ground. Therefore there appeared a huge gap between me and the installation, right in the middle of the scene. Plus, I made all structures with transparent acrylic while painting myself white, therefore, everything became kind of blurry in the image. It’s quite difficult to catch my movements and the water pouring as well in the videos.

My initial plan also includes a second part – collecting the left from the performance and combining them into a displayable sculpture piece – as further development and, perhaps for the exhibition. This would be where I add the audio and maybe the performing video, becoming the next stage of my project. Since the left installation components are a frame, container, pulley with hook and a canvas with double pendulum attached. I once thought of arranging them close to each other when fixed to the wall near the ground. I still wanted motion elements contained so the dripping ink water might again draw the very focus.

However, as the first one failed, I am now doing some serious thinking of transforming the research, ideas and completed works so far into a new one. I’ve learned the lesson to be really careful not to produce several separate pieces with a disappointing final visual effect. The exhibiting site, the light and background are of much importance to a successful piece.

In the last one, the separated different parts, blurry visual effect, and most importantly, the dysfunctional motional installation altogether constituted my failure. To avoid all the mistakes that rendered my last outcome so disappointing, I tried to make this second piece neater while largely conceptualized based on similar ideas and research. I might refer to Joseph Beuys’s How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare (1964) as what I want to achieve.

While the title, main concepts, research remain the same, I still seek a performative piece depicting a reversed relationship between a creator and his/her work, highlight how a performer in a passive and vulnerable position is manipulated by ‘unpredictable randomness’. At the same time, such uncertainty result in numerous realities, corresponding to the title Does Schrodinger’s cat eat mice? I was intrigued by Beuys’s performance for the way he enriched this piece with simple symbolic objects. Like other remarkable performance artworks, it’s fascinating in a veiled way. So instead of setting up too complex and fragile a structure, simplifying the outcome (even though I already kept telling myself to do so over the last two months) would help. Adopting his position of sitting, I started picturing another performative installation centred around me – a normal self without special dress-up. Meanwhile, I will again have myself manipulated in a way.

The figure of a box, which played a key role in several of my previous references including the film Coherence and thought experiment Schrodinger’s cat, offered me new inspirations. An authentication box, as imagined before, can be a generator as well as a reminder. The unknown results inside the box not only help identify different possibilities but also split them already. Moreover, boxes, from religious myth to magic shows, have always been used to indicate, to determine (like Pandora’s box). Therefore, I quickly had another idea of the final piece – I am going to make a box that can somehow re-shape my physical or spiritual state. And as I said before, I want to focus on small, veiled triggers without extra drama, while letting it lead to a nonnegligible incident. The behaviour of breathing hence became the ideal medium for being visually inconspicuous yet crucial in all means.

My new outcome, as currently imagined and designed, will be a hollow box with pipes attached, one of which then connects to me to control my breath. Despite my intention to hand over my authority over my body to a small, non-organic and non-intellectual cube, the simple geometric shape and vessel-like transparent pipes being conjoined also create an uncanny image. To detail the outcome, a certain number of holes will be punched through the top and bottom sheets to let the pipes go through. Inside the box the order and position of the pipes will be disturbed completely while the lower ends reaching out will be intertwined and wrapped. In this case, when the audience or someone blocks one or more upper ends, neither they and I will know whether it’s the one controlling my breath. The unpredictability and uncertainty, again take control over my piece, posing a possible threat to me. The disorganized pipes going in and out through random holes also represent a coherence – we, like one pipe, enter a chaotic zone and exit, without knowing whether we are still in the same world as remembered.

Since I base my second piece on the same ideas with the very slight changes, it’s necessary for me to go straight to actual making and on-site display planning.

(workshop making) After consulting the technician and taking into consideration the actual effect and how to arrange those holes, I eventually used the black opaque acrylic sheet for the box. The colour transparent sheets turned out to be way too bright thus lacking some weirdness. In this case, nobody would be able to see through the box, making it a total ‘confidential’ system. At the same time, since the messy arrangement of the pipes now cannot be discovered, I am considering filling the box with other substances or objects. They will be no doubt carefully selected to strengthen the related motif. The making process was just smooth yet a little time-consuming as I had to hand-drill 36 holes on both the top and bottom. The pipes and oxygen masks are its way and supposed to be delivered tomorrow.

To further adjust my final outcome for the assessment and possibly the exhibition, I verified several questionable issues I’ve had so far. First of all, I found out the rest of the taught days are likely to be left for us to finalize and install our works, which means I have to conduct the mini performance ahead of time with the selected audience. Due to the enhanced uncertainty inside my piece, I think only a few, or even just one viewer will be eligible enough to help. This actually corresponds to the chaos theory in my research – ‘changes to initial conditions leading to unpredicted results’. Through disorganized pipes and me choosing breathing as the method of visualization, any tiny decision made by a random audience might be dramatically exaggerated with lowered risk.

My tutor also notified me that for the specific process of the assessment, laptops cannot be used to show the video. He suggested me go with a projector for that three days. I have to rush to the loan store in KX on Monday and quickly test and finish the installing.

When staying after class to work on my sketchbook, I noticed one of my peers’ large-scaled installation piece. It’s a confessional-like wooden frame with crimson curtain. The narrow space immediately offered a solution to my site-seeking problem. I asked her whether I can use the frame as the background of my video without showing any part of it by removably re-decorating it. She generously said yes, therefore, I need to find the appropriate covering material and test the actual filming effect.

The pipes and oxygen mask I ordered arrived yesterday which allows me to push forward the box-making. First I had to deal with the difference in size of the holes since I only drilled the sheet with 12mm drill bit to leave space for further modification while having purchased pipes of OD 13mm. The drilling machine worked quite well with a 13mm drill bit, however, did a little damage to my sheet around the edge of each little hole. But fortunately, the top sheet of my box will be covered by another rotating sheet while the bottom one can barely be seen. Therefore, considering the limited time left I had to focus on other essential parts concentratedly. I quickly tested the top/bottom pieces with pipes. They fit each other as I assumed. Meanwhile, I noticed that the pipes I bought were too firm than I thought, making it not that easy to bend over and twist them. Because the acrylic sheets I use are quite thin, there isn’t much contact area for the glue to work properly. I was seriously worried that the squeezed pipes might crash the box from the inside. The only solution I have thought of so far is to heat and slightly melt the pipes when forming up the sides.

After finishing some fixings I started to build the display stand, for that this cube(200x200x200mm) needs to be put at a certain height for display, no matter in performance or exhibition. My previous plan was to quickly use two or three long transparent acrylic strips strengthened by perhaps tubes in between or little triangles in the corners. In this way, the other elements’ existences can be largely weakened, leaving all the attention to the box itself. At the same time, the transparent material will allow the viewers to clearly see the pipes. However, this plan turned out to be impossible according to the technician as the acrylic sheets are all in 2mm or 3mm, which means it would be too flexible to stand steadily especially at such length. Eventually, suggested by the technician, I decided to make a display stand out of wood and acrylic. The wooden part (200x200x800mm) would be the supporting base as it’s firm enough to stand, while the acrylic above it (200x200x300mm) can be short enough to stand itself and long enough to show the pipes inside. The total piece in display will thus be 1.3m in height, approximately as high as chest for the viewers to take a close look or rotate the top cover to participate in the performance.

I finished today’s making with a completed display stand and components of the box. Considering the need of assessment, and the possibility that the performance may not work as expected, I decided to add videos into the final outcome, not as documents but as part of my piece (see yesterday’s reflection). But unfortunately, we were told today that the safety of anything used to display during the three-day assessment won’t be guaranteed, including presenting equipment. The best solution, as told by our tutor, is to install the work as much like it in the final exhibition as possible and photograph or make an effect diagram of it, then include them in the assessing labels. Hence, my current action plan for the remaining works excluding the outcome making is to finish the audio producing and the actual performing during the weekend, rent a projector from KX and make a ‘preview’ on Monday.

In the morning, to continue yesterday’s work, I passed more pipes through the holes on both the top and bottom sheets. As I assumed, once placed between the top and bottom sheets, the pipes were too firm to be deformed so I could hardly add the side pieces to assemble a complete box. I decided to adopt the method I came up with yesterday which was to heat them up while installing the side pieces. To make the job simpler to be conducted by only myself, I also placed little sticks near the edge of the top and bottom sheets. This was to ensure that once installed, the side pieces’ positions wouldn’t be altered before the glue dried since I didn’t have more hands to hold them while busy with the heating, conjoining and gluing. My plan did work really well as the pipes became really deformable once heated.

At the same time, I came across another problem I failed to foresee – the top and bottom sheets had 36 holes on each of them, while there were only about 18 pipes available (I bought 10m and cut them into 500mm with an extra long one to connect to the mask). However, it’s already crowded inside the box, so I thought it might be a good idea to leave more holes open and, more importantly, more space inside the box for me to adjust the positions, do some fixings and place the player during the display. Furthermore, I thus had to abandon the idea of filling it with other substances or objects as the bottom had around 18 open holes.

While waiting for the glue to dry I started working on the revolving cover to be installed on top of the box. I already pieced one sheet conjoined by two halves (the amount of the material was strictly limited), which turned out to be not working at all when I tried to make another hole (diameter 10mm) in the middle for the shaft, it collapsed completely. Consequently, I had to use the back sheet of the box instead and transformed it into a revolving cover. Therefore, the box has only three sides with one missing at the back, which I later figured was not a big problem as it will be located in front of a wall during the display for the assessment. If it was selected for the main exhibition, I still have more time to make a back.

I also tested the oxygen mask. It’s a transparent mask with a long pipe so I can connect it to my box. The problem was, when I put it on and tried to breathe with it, I found out that the particular pipe for breathing, including the one connected to the mask and the one from the box, was too long for the oxygen to pass through. In another word, I couldn’t breathe anyway no matter I block or not the other end of the pipe. So, it wouldn’t make a difference at all that the audience revolve the cover to possibly block the pipe for me to breathe and thus choke me. Partly because I don’t want to fail my second piece again and there left no time before the assessment. Either will I try my best to fix this problem, or I should free myself a little bit from part of my motif – creating a real threatening situation for myself. Maybe it’s actually very hard to achieve, especially when I try to realize it and engage the real audience with a hand-made elaborate installation. I couldn’t help checking other students’ works. I think most of the performances pay more attention to a one-direction presenting process – the performer performed in a particular way to say something. Even though some of them try to engage the real audience, the interaction is quite simple, mostly composed of basic body movements that don’t require a high level of sophistication. I already learned the lesson from my failed last one: I am not professional enough in the very fine production. The most needed solution right now is to try my best to develop it in a practical way. At this stage I feel like I have to disobey my proposal to some extent but it’s quite common that things don’t go as expected.

I signed up another study support tutorial today with Pauline to further polish my workflow works. My efforts of modifying my research section since the last tutorial were recognized that I eliminated all the pure analysis of the artworks and largely extended the association with my own thinking and practice. Based on this I asked another question that whether I should keep some valuable yet seemingly irrelevant information but highlight them in different colour. Pauline suggested only highlighting the association part and leaving the information like other texts. After all, the former is what the research section is for.

When talking specifically about one research with no obvious association, I explained that that piece turned out to be exactly opposite to what I thought it was. Therefore, no direct inspiration was mentioned. Pauline asked me to go through again what I thought it would be and what it actually was, the thoughts of which, re-organized by me, revealed more of my ideas and intention. According to Pauline, sometimes the opposite thoughts or contradictory information could actually remind me of my own thinking more clearly and deeply and thus strengthen, benefit it.

About the reflection, I was told there is no need to add a subtitle for each day as long as I make clear the crucial parts and can probably highlight them. There were more detailed problems mentioned during the tutorial, most of them about the expression, for which Pauline suggested me re-write some of the key sentences to clarify them.

As I found out the pipe is too long for the oxygen to reach the mask, thus making my audience-engaging performance meaningless, I still went to the archway to do more fixing and adjustment. The first thing I did was to modify the ends of the pipes reaching out of the box because they were pointing in different directions. Therefore, the ends were all uneven and the flat revolving cover was unable to block them. I tried my best with a craft knife but still left many leakage seams. After all, I placed the cover and fastened it with a shaft in the middle. From my perspective, there is a chance that the ‘blocking the pipe and thus choking me’ performance won’t actually take place, in which case the seams will perhaps make no difference as well. This is quite disappointing but I have to accept this and try to further modify the other parts as much as I can.

I also used black rubber tape to cover all the edges. On the one hand, it protects people from being injured by the sharp and rough edges of the acrylic box. On the other hand, it did make the whole box look nicer in that it covered the grey cross-section of the acrylic sheets, making the box neater in pure black. Moreover, I tried to bind the lower ends of the pipes by sowing them together and then wrapping with the same black rubber tape. However, I still felt it will much easier to do this while heating it and hence decided to finish this part on Monday in workshop as fast as I can.

Facing a series of problems related to displaying the outcome, conducting the performance while taking into consideration my current progress, I have to seriously think of a new version of presentation with the video and audio in addition. In my previous plan, I was going to play a video of me having trouble breathing, which should come from a live performance, and an audio of the ‘cat poem’. In terms of the equipment, I was thinking of renting a projector to project the video on the wall behind my installation, even on part of it and placing a player like my phone inside a box. However, as I will probably not actually perform as planned, I am considering an alternative one of me being part of the installation, as a performance. To be more specific, for instance, I will sit in front left of the box wearing the mask, breathing with it and moreover, reading a book. Such a combination is somehow inspired by Joseph Beuys’s How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare (1965). If selected for the exhibition, I will make one more special chair and put it on site and then sit there, doing what is mentioned above for a while sometime during the exhibition. The audience will still be invited to rotate the cover to, theoretically, choke me. To make up for the lack of a real choking, I think I will try to make the mask difficult to breathe with, making me look like slightly suffering. When I was picturing the performing scene, I realized that the projector won’t work in such a non-site-specific piece. Therefore, instead I am using monitors which are movable while serving a solid part in the performance, enriching the on-site visual effect as well.

For Monday, I need to do: collecting the equipment I booked at KX and testing them at Archway studio; modifying and fastening the upper ends of the pipes to fit the cover; heating and conjoining the lower ends; combining the video, audio and my performing with documentation for the assessment;

Ideally all of this works can be completed right in time on Monday. Otherwise, some of them are allowed to be postponed for that the assessment only requires labels with the supposed exhibiting effect. So, those works actually due on Monday are mainly about the video and audio testing. There is more time for further modification and possible fixing and extra making.