31 Oct

I think 3D project has a very interesting beginning that we use something found in the newspaper as the theme or the reference of our work, which is kind of challenging since you have no idea what you can find.

What I learned from the lecture is that there seems to be no limits of what a 3D piece should be like. There is even one piece of work inspired by a song from my favorite musician Kate Bush. The artist basically just visualize the scene from the song.

I chose one sheet of newspaper about a Armenian-American was detained at the airport when entering US for his Middle East features. I immediately came up with the idea reflecting people judging others not from their behavior but just their appearance. I planned to do something about how people connect what they see at one moment to other things in their memory or subconsciousness.

The general idea is to to use visual images to trigger special memories or other associations. I planned to build up a little room which only fits one person. There is a screen on the innermost wall with a one pair of earphone and a box near the entrance. The person has to put on the earphone and put his/her hands into the box before the screen starts to play. Once it starts, the screen will play a short silent video of a falling knife about to cut the hand placed in the same position as the person puts his/hers.

I want to experiment with the automatic connection between the reality and people's imagination. The audience's hands are placed in a little box ---- no knife is coming at all ---- but  you just can't help thinking that the hands which are going to be cut are yours. This is what I want to show from my installation ---- to show the audience how strong the imaginary connection created by yourself is. 

2 Nov

I was supposed to started yesterday and finished my project by today's morning. But after a second thought, I wanted my work to be more associated to the materials I collected. Although we were told it's totally fine if your final outcome is too far away from your initial idea, but I still wanted to reflect the problem inside the news since it is actually a serious issue in the current society.

I re-started the project yesterday and choose focus on the news itself. It's about a well-behaved citizen being suspected just because his race. The reason behind this kind of situation is the frequent terrorist attacks happening around the world with a higher level of security as a result. The race is another reason considering some areas are where most of those terrorists came from.

First I wanted to choose the viewpoint that we shouldn't judge others from their appearance. But then I questioned myself : will I be a little alerted in the same situation just like the officer?

I am afraid the answer is yes and I think that's the exact answer from a lot of people. It's an automatic reaction after seeing so much news about the terrorists and almost nobody can resist this sought of emotion.

I applied these thoughts into my project and decided to adopt a more neutral point of view. I wanted to make something reflecting the fact the those terrorists make the whole world alerted to some races and countries, something expressing regret for those suspected people but also understanding why people take up such attitude.

Having gone through some researches I want my work to interact with the surrounding environment more, not just to be placed somewhere. I want to use the ceilings, the walls and floor as the presenting space. So it should be separated into different parts but work as a whole.