BUYNBCT

a blog to document my progress through BCT @ AUT

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Studio IV - Blog Index

Deconstructing Gender: https://buynbct.tumblr.com/post/184450725225/if-im-being-honest-this-entire-concept-came-from

The Facts: https://buynbct.tumblr.com/post/184451776560/the-facts

The Origin of Gender: https://buynbct.tumblr.com/post/184454918280/the-term-gender-wasnt-coined-until-1955-by

The Approach: https://buynbct.tumblr.com/post/184816006340/the-approach

Drag Shows: https://buynbct.tumblr.com/post/184819656435/though-many-elements-of-the-project-are-still

Camp Fashion: https://buynbct.tumblr.com/post/185632716980/the-very-timely-camp-theme-of-the-met-gala-was

Impact of a Reveal: https://buynbct.tumblr.com/post/185632718265/rachel-has-been-taking-on-the-design-role-of-the

“What does gender mean to you?” https://buynbct.tumblr.com/post/185632720295/what-does-gender-mean-to-you

Design Concepts: https://buynbct.tumblr.com/post/185632722300/design-concepts

Implementing technology: https://buynbct.tumblr.com/post/185632731360/implementing-technology

Final Concept Drawing: https://buynbct.tumblr.com/post/185632742975/final-concept-drawing

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Final Concept Drawing & Open Studio Setup

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Implementing Technology

Led matrix representative of the pride flag.

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Design Concepts

Costume design is something I never thought i’d involve myself with, so I don’t have much knowledge or experience on the matter. I thought this project would be a good opportunity to expose myself to something new and learn from it, so I wanted to be involved in the design process with Rachel and contribute as much as I could. Rachel had drawn up a range of different concepts, and we went through each of them firstly so I could understand what she was envisioning, and to also discuss it’s relation to what we are trying to portray, if it achieves that, and if not, what could be changed about it? These conversations acted as a critique to help refine concepts of what could be created.

As mentioned before, I wanted to experiment with some designs myself. I chose to adapt the 10th and 12th drawings (in the first image attached), using the eye as a centrepiece for both designs, as I thought the symbolism attached to it encapsulated a large part of the queer experience; the feeling of constantly being looked at, analysed, and discussed as if our existence is something to be debated. 

Being able to experiment with costume design was enjoyable, but I ultimately left it up to Rachel to freely experiment with her ideas as we began to run short on time.

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What does gender mean to you?

The concept for this project is based on the belief that the gender binary is unnecessary, but the weight of the concept lies in the affect it has on those who reject it. For this reason, i’ve asked some queer individuals the question “what does gender mean to you?” to gather some opinions to further inform myself on the subject. I’m just one person and can’t claim to know all there is about gender, especially when I identify as cis-female, so the input of others has been very informative.

I have not restricted this to only transgender/non-binary/gender-queer individuals, as a lot of people in the queer community tend to bend stereotypes of what it means to be feminine and masculine (this is prominent, but not exclusive to just the queer community).

"I think gender is in some way a choice and should be fluid. I don't like or agree with gender roles or stigmas, but when it comes to biological sex I understand where that is like “you're one or the other” because your physical and mental health is profiled, examined, and taken care of based off of your biological sex. If your brain is a woman and you're in a mans body, it is only justifiable to take the steps you feel are necessary to transition so that your body is as you believe it should be."

“I think gender is just gender and it shouldn’t really matter that much. People should be able to do what they want, because it doesn’t affect other people.”

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Rachel has been taking on the design role of the project, and is working on drawing up some concepts. I’ve been working alongside her with some of the decision making, and we’ve discussed the possibility of having some kind of reveal to make the wearable not so one dimensional, and to play off the concept it is attached to. We’ve decided to name this project ‘Expose’, which means to “reveal the true, objectionable nature of (someone or something)”. This is essentially what we’re trying to do with the discussion of gender; to reveal the objectionable nature of an extremely subjective topic. 

The purpose of this video is to highlight the reactions from the audience, once the reveal is performed. We strive to achieve a similar effect, holding the same ‘shock value’. The way we plan to implement this into our wearable, is to create something that may look dull and plain on the outside, but to reveal an array of colours beneath it (also playing off the design of the pride flag).

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The very timely ‘camp’ theme of the Met Gala was very beneficial as it directly informed us of a term that parallels with our visions and motives with this project.

 As described in Susan Sontag’s 1964 essay “Notes On Camp”, camp embraces elements including “irony, humour, parody, pastiche, artifice, theatricality, excess, extravagance, nostalgia, and exaggeration.” The essay includes 58 points on what camp is, one of them stating “the whole point of Camp is to dethrone the serious. Camp is playful, anti-serious. More precisely, Camp involves a new, more complex relation to "the serious." One can be serious about the frivolous, frivolous about the serious.”

Perhaps my favourite look from this year’s Met Gala: worn by Ezra Miller, designed by Burberry creative director, Riccardo Tisci. What I find particularly interesting about this look – which also feeds back into some of our design concepts – is the element of an impactful reveal, which can be seen in the video linked below. What I learn from this is that you can still achieve a grand reveal that garners attention, even with simple execution.

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Though many elements of the project are still undecided, we are certain that the art of drag will play a massive role. I had only been to one drag show ever, and my love for the art form just exploded when I discovered the show ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’ which is a reality competition series where drag queens compete for a prize of $100,000. 

I didn’t want this highly commericialised show to be my main representation of drag, so I made sure to go out and immerse myself in the Auckland drag scene as much as possible. Over the last month or so, I attended 3 shows that include drag: Woven Womxn, Help Me I'm Dying, and Biohazard.

WOVEN WOMXN:  “ Weaving our stories through physical theatre, drag performance, vogue, costume, pacific and contemporary dance we aim to reconstruct the unseamings of our identities and for anyone else that falls outside of the social gender construct.”

HELP ME I’M DYING:  “ RuPaul’s Drag Race Miss Congeniality and All Stars S2 finalist, Katya Zamolodchikova brings her hilarious new stand up show, Help Me I’m Dying to the Australia & NZ.”

BIOHAZARD:  A dystopic drag show, a feminine infection, an anti-binary bionic uprising. Witness the nation’s most foul-mouthed femmes, pernicious vixens and hyperdermic hyper queens in a night of distasteful and outrageous post-gender performance.

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The Approach

The earlier stages of this project was designed to be abrasive, shocking, and somewhat controversial. The frustration I felt from people’s ignorance was mirrored into the project, and I wanted to generate a response on the matter.      I wanted to approach both homophobia and trans-phobia, and set off researching horrible statistics that really just made my heart hurt. It got to the point where both Rachel and I were just feeling very much drained and exhausted, as each day involved us having to approach something that’s still very personal and raw to ourselves. This made it even harder for us to work on the project, probably because all we were seeing was negativity surrounding the matter. We were tunnel visioned into only seeing one side of the issue, forcing us to rethink our approach to this project. This led me to a list of important questions and realisations, that were pivotal in reshaping a more desired approach that is better for both ourselves, and the portrayal of said issues.

 A fact is objective, and an opinion is subjective. We are revealing a fact, not an opinion. There is research to back up this fact. The opinions of others do not affect the integrity of this fact.

Homophobia and transphobia cannot be destroyed in one singular act, aim to bring it to the forefront of people’s minds, even if it’s just for a few moments. 

It’s much more effective to calmly discuss controversial issues, than to attack them with emotion fueled statements and statistics. 

Instead of simply showing people what is wrong, actually DO something about it. Use the opportunity to educate, reveal something new.

Now, the way i’m wanting to approach things is structured much differently. Instead of approaching issues with the intent of playing off shock-factor, i’d much rather bring awareness and provide education for those who don’t understand some things that I myself, experience and see through my lens on life as a queer person, and have learned from the conversations shared with other queer people that i’ve spoken to. 

From an artistic standpoint, I wish to create something that is oddly intriguing. This idea came to mind, as people began to notice the mood board I had started to put together on our wall in the studio space. Most of them said it made them uncomfortable in some sort of way, pointing out the ones they disliked the most. What was interesting, was hearing some people point out how eerie it felt, but they couldn’t take their eyes off it. Hearing this tied together an earlier concept Rachel and I had discussed, which was to create something that was comprised of two layers. The top layer is to replicate this feeling of “What am I looking at? Why can’t I stop looking at it?” by playing off gender bending and perhaps even human bending designs, then to reveal a layer beneath that shows the silhouette to be just as human as the rest of us. 

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The term ‘gender’ wasn’t coined until 1955, by Sexologist John Money, who defined it as  "all those things that a person says or does to disclose himself or herself as having the status of boy or man, girl or woman, respectively. It includes, but is not restricted to sexuality in the sense of eroticism. Gender role is appraised in relation to the following: general mannerisms, deportment and demeanor; play preferences and recreational interests; spontaneous topics of talk in unprompted conversation and casual comment; content of dreams, daydreams and fantasies; replies to oblique inquiries and projective tests; evidence of erotic practices, and, finally, the person's own replies to direct inquiry" (Money, 1995).

It is often argued that transgender people are unnatural, defying the ‘rules of science’. Homosexuality was once thought of this way, but many examples of same-sex intercourse exist in other species, thus disproving this argument (Bagemihl, 1999). However, it is difficult to apply logic and science to the argument of transgenderism, as humans are the only species to assign genders based off of one’s sex. What can be proved, is that there are humans who do not feel comfortable in the skin they live in, and changing the way they present themselves improves the quality of their lives (Ainsworth, Spiegel, 2010).

Money, John; Hampson, Joan G; Hampson, John (1955). An Examination of Some Basic Sexual Concepts: The Evidence of Human Hermaphroditism.

Bagemihl, Bruce (1999). Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and natural Diversity.

Ainsworth, Tiffiny A; Spiegel, Jeffrey H (2010) Quality of life in individuals with and without facial feminization surgery or gender reassignment surgery.

Graham Davies, Sharyn (2006). Challenging Gender Norms: Five Genders Among Bugis in Indonesia. Case Studies in Cultural Anthropology.

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The Facts:

LGBT employment discrimination is legal. People have been fired for their sexuality.

The death penalty for homosexuality is legal in 10 countries.

Homosexual activity is a crime in 72 countries. 

Between 2008 and 2014, there were 1,612 trans people were murdered across 62 countries - equivalent to a killing every two days.

Fifty percent of transgender persons in Australia have attempted suicide at least once in their lives.

A study conducted by HRC Foundation and the University of Connecticut that included 12,000 participants aged from 13-17 found that:

Only 26 percent say they always feel safe in their school classrooms -- and just five percent say all of their teachers and school staff are supportive of LGBTQ people.

Seventy-seven percent of LGBTQ teenagers surveyed report feeling depressed or down over the past week.

Sixty-seven percent report that they’ve heard family members make negative comments about LGBTQ people.

48% of LGBTQ youth out to their parents say that their families make them feel bad for being LGBTQ.

Sources:

https://www.transgendertrend.com/stonewall-school-report-what-does-suicide-rate-mean/

Testa, R. J., Sciacca, L. M., Wang, F., Hendricks, M. L., Goldblum, P., Bradford, J., & Bongar, B. (2012). Effects of violence on transgender people. Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 43(5), 452-459.

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If i’m being honest, this entire concept came from inner frustration that i’ve felt build up after first handedly experiencing homophobia, and hearing the opinions of others that are built upon intolerance and prejudice. I've seen countless comment sections filled with hatred, and even ‘friends' on social media making fun of transgender people, ridiculing those who simply don’t fit into societies standards of what a female or a male is. If I could turn back time and replay these situations, i’d like to separate myself from the instant overload of hurt, and try to have a civil conversation with them. The ideas they would use to support their arguments were often hollow, and I believe they could be torn apart by simple facts. Whether I would have been able to open their minds in the slightest isn't guaranteed, but i’d like to challenge myself to at least attempt to do this from now on. I guess this comes from some kind of inner obligation to ‘fix’ an issue that affects the lives of people around me, including myself.

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FINAL PROJECT - BLOG INDEX

GROUP FORMATION:

 http://buynbct.tumblr.com/post/179591801280/bct-year-1-final-proj-group-formation

CONCEPT:

 http://buynbct.tumblr.com/post/179591885110/building-a-concept

REFINEMENT OF CONCEPT:

 http://buynbct.tumblr.com/post/179592583580/what-exactly-is-universally-personal

EXPERIMENTATION STAGE:

http://buynbct.tumblr.com/post/179592694660/the-pursuit-of-a-happy-accident

http://buynbct.tumblr.com/post/179606743360/the-pursuit-of-a-happy-accident-pt2

http://buynbct.tumblr.com/post/179606743360/the-pursuit-of-a-happy-accident-pt3

CONCLUSIONS AND GROUP DYNAMIC:

http://buynbct.tumblr.com/post/179616525700/conclusions-reflections-and-group-dynamic

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CONCLUSIONS, REFLECTIONS, AND GROUP DYNAMICS.

WHO DID WHAT?:

Right up until the submission where we had to label what roles each of us handled, we still had no idea what to write. This is because we really has no dedicated roles, and all took initiative to step up and take care of certain jobs that needed to be done. Many of our ‘roles’ overlapped, for examples, Zane, Gayle, and I all worked on the launchpad and sound design, as we all had some kind of knowledge on that area of work and collaborated to make it the best we possibly could. Vahid experimented a lot with figuring out the best way to set up the subwoofer, but also helped out a lot with the launchpad. Sherry was labelled the “Yvonne” of our group, as she handled a lot of things that we couldn’t even think about, such as posters, photography, documentation, and refinements of ideas as we had our heads too stuck into what we were doing. We all separated into our our ‘sub-roles’ but asked for input from each member for a lot of things that we needed help or opinions on.

OUR PERSONAL GROUP DYNAMIC: 

Any group of people, whether it be large or small, often need a ‘leader’ to take charge. It’s evident in many instances such as religion, countries, and even schools. There is no collective balance; there is always a hierarchy system in place to create order and control. I had experienced this in all the groups I had worked with this year, and can easily pinpoint who took up that leadership role. However, the dynamic we formed in TLOS seemed to function without this singular power. I’m not exactly sure why, but I think it comes down to us having an understanding of each members personalities, and being fluid with respect to the creative process. I’m able to call each member a friend, though i’m aware that friendship does not always work well in creative environments, often because feelings get hurt when opinions are criticised, chipping away at interpersonal relationships. In this instance, friendship was able to be used to our advantage, as we were all open about the fact that we’ll take everyone’s ideas into account and discuss the pro’s and con’s of them, and finally ensuring that we come to a conclusion or a compromise that we can all settle for.

48 hours with little to no sleep and 3 minutes left until submission, but we still had the time to pose for a group photo.

To the members of TLOS, thank you. 

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THE MAKING OF THE LAUNCHPAD

We all wanted to create something that would accept user input, allowing them to control the experience and create their own sounds. During the early stages of this project, I had been working on creating a ‘midifighter’ (for my Physical Computing class) which is essentially a launchpad that is made out of arcade buttons. We through this would fit in perfectly with our project, thought it would need some adjustments to make it more suitable. The launchpad I had made was only 4x3 buttons, and could not accomodate the amount of sounds we wanted to play off it. So, Gayle helped design a 4x4 button launchpad on sketchup, which we then took the the 3D labs to get laser cut. 

Next step, was assembling the box and setting up the buttons and circuitry. One thing that I didn’t like about the earlier launchpad I made, was that there were visible light spots where the led was, making it look a bit messy for my liking. Gayle agreed, and helped figure out ways to combat this. We decided to block the top off with black. We tested out if a few layers of paint or tape would block the light out best, and decided to go with the tape as it’s much cleaner and less time consuming. 

Connecting the buttons, microswitches, and wiring it up was a tough & time consuming job, but Zane helped speed up the process as he did the soldering while I cut and stripped the wires. I had to ask Tiger for some help with understanding the circuitry properly, as I had left out the 5V connection on my previous launchpad, causing the LEDs to flicker. We got this sorted out, and finished the wiring so that Vahid could get to coding it.

Unfortunately, we were running a bit too short on time to get everything set up properly, as I realised that I had got one thing wrong with the wiring. Stefan advised me of how to fix this easily enough, but there wasn’t enough time to solder it all and finish coding it all in time for submission. Vahid managed to get all the LEDs turned on in time, and set up the keyboard on his laptop to play the sounds. Though we didn’t manage to get this done in time for assessment, we know exactly what we have to do in order to get it running for showcase.

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FINDING INTERESTING FREQUENCIES 

RESONANCE EXPERIMENT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvJAgrUBF4w&t=118s

From this video — and playing around with vibrations ourselves — we learned that there are specific frequencies that look more cleaner and effective than others. So, our next step in the process was to play around with sounds to see what looked the most interesting.

Although I would normally be the one to handle sound design in the projects I work on, I saw how much fun Gayle and Zane was having just experimenting with sounds on the midi keyboards. I decided to step back and allow them to handle this part of the project instead, so I could work on other things that needed to be done. After hearing the sounds they produced, I have to say that i’m more than happy, and extremely proud of what they made. I helped out here and there with some tips on how to do some things on Ableton, and produced the remakes of Stevie Wonder’s “Isn’t She Lovely” and Beethoven’s “Ode To Joy.” These two tracks were chosen because they were both composed by blind or deaf musicians. This ties in with the message we were trying to get across, that even though some are put at disadvantage compared to the rest of us, it should not exclude them from pursuing their passions and dreams. Sound should be accessible to everybody, even if it means changing the medium. For example, Beethoven was known for playing with a rubber tube in his mouth, and even cutting the legs off his piano and sitting on the floor, all so he could feel the vibrations of the music.

Luckily, I was able to find midi files for these two tracks online, which helped saved a lot of time. However, i’m not 100% satisfied with what I handed in, so i’m going to work on refining these pieces for showcase.

ISN’T SHE LOVELY — MIDI

ODE TO JOY — MIDI

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THE PURSUIT OF A HAPPY ACCIDENT PT.3

We gradually advanced to messing up speakers and  adding a bunch of different liquids such as: nail polish, dishwashing liquid, nail polish remover, inks, paint, oil based paint, and cornstarch. 

We also played around with placing highlighters into water and shining a UV light onto it, to create a fluorescent liquid. 

At this stage in our project, we were wanting to be able to ‘print’ the frequencies that that audience generate, as a way to transfer sound into a physical form, as it would give each person a piece of art that is personal to them, as they made it themselves.  As much as we loved this idea, it was too messy to do in our studio environment, and would always need people there to monitor it. Another major issue, was that the paints would mix over time and we would continuously have to renew the water and add new colours, which is very unideal especially for the showcase.

To combat this, we looked at creating a live display of the frequencies, that would occur in real time. This would allow for a much cleaner display, but would still achieve what we wanted to portray with our ‘inputs’. Earlier this year, I had become very intrigued by the works of Jerome Fenderson, who uses an oscilloscope to create intricate images with frequencies.

JEROME FENDERSON - PLANETS:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XziuEdpVUe0&t=57s

This definitely served as a major inspiration for us, but didn’t choose to use an oscilloscope because we wanted to avoid creating something that you can look at and immediately say that they’ve seen something just like it before.

Fenderson’s work reminded me of something I played around with in the previous assignment, ‘Tangible Data.’ During our individual prototyping stages, I played around with using lasers and mirrors to reflect the vibrations of a speaker onto a flat surface. I learned that this was possible, from a video I had watched on Youtube. The next day, I brought in all the stuff i had used for this, and the aftermath spelled out the rest of our project for us.