Kaoru at ADAD1001

@kaoruadad1001

UNSW Bachelor of Design

52 posts

Assessment 3 Final Work: 11 Days in May

Ephemeral daily routines are unconsciously and instantaneously erased out of my memory; eating, texting, socialising and so on. Only the crude, physical and emotional “base” leaves a shadow in the database of brain. My work is a collage made from the pages of my diary entries. In this project I explored the theme of documentation and memory, building on assessment task two. I documented eleven consecutive days of my daily life by sketching each day before I go to bed. Each page depicted all the experiences which I could recall at the end of a day. This investigated the documentation process done by the brain of the everyday but also exposed the curatorial process which my brain carried out unconsciously, by physically outputting the data. At the end of the eleven days, I re-documented the days by recording myself while I reflect upon the events flipping through the diary. The method of documenting by drawing allowed the experiences to be replicated effectively, considering that eighty to eighty-five percent of our perception is mediated through the visual perception. I used the sketches as a guide to unfold the preceding events. Then the recording was edited, leaving audible only the substantial experiences which I could voluntarily recall with strong sentiments. Listening to the edited audio, I re-documented again by making a collage out of the diary pages, only ripping out the experiences which I could recall from the audio. The fragments are arranged on a diary page of one of the days which I forgot to journal - the canvas is the essence and the evidence of the occurrence of eleven days in May. My final work is the end product of the documentation done by my brain of the eleven days; experiences which I will vaguely (possibly) remember, edited, curated and refined.

Assessment 3 Experiment 5

After listening to the audio recordings of experiment 4, I am tearing out the parts of the journal which I can remember from my memory, drawing out the events which left a strong impression in me out of all the documented days.

Assessment 3 Experiment 3 & 4

Looking back at the eleven-days diary, I re-documented it by recording myself talking about the events (Experiment 3) which were depicted on each page. In this tracing of memory documentation, I used the sketches as a starting point to reflect on the things I have done. At the same time, I realised that I have omitted daily routines such as brushing teeth, putting my clothes on, drinking water, going to the bathroom and showering. This was more evident in the diary documentation, as things as such daily routines could be assumed from the images. I further edited my recordings, accelerating all the what I consider as “dregs” of my experiences, only leaving the parts where I express strong emotions and am free/not limited from the information of the diary unedited/audible; something I have “curated” for the documentation of memory (Experiment 4). As I document/edit on, the experiences are reduced/refined/processed. Maybe I could further process them, leaving out all the memory dregs as my brain automatically does.

Assessment 3 Experiment 2

For my second experiment, I documented eleven consecutive days of my daily life by sketching the events of each day. Each page depicts experiences which I could recall at the end of a day. This is to see what my brain has unconsciously documented under such routines (Although there might also be an unconscious curation when I output it as sketches). I chose the method of journaling by sketching, because I think it is the simplest way to share and convey my experiences to others (including myself), and is also considered that visual perception is the most dominant sense as 80 to 85% of our perception is mediated through it. Other methods could include photographing/filming, but I found this hard due to the practicality of my phone/camera and ephemerality of such daily activities.

At the end of the 10 days and looking back at my journals, I realised a few things. My memories are mostly centred around the basic needs of human. This was an interesting contrast to my stereotype of the concept of “notable” memories; friends, family, people, celebrations, epiphanies and deep emotions. In the middle of the eleven days, I completely forgot to journal for about three days, due to exhaustion and physical labour. During that period my friends were by my side, supporting me, yet they are not recalled/mentioned even once in my diary. (I realised this as @vic1002 pointed out) Especially on the nights I was tired, my diary entry exposes the things which give me strong impressions. I even forgot about the fact that I forgot to journal, and on the 30th of May, I journaled on the blank 3 pages allocated for the forgotten 3 days without realizing that it was out of chronological order. I would not have known about this unless I did this documentation process. I guess that is exactly how our brain document our daily lives too - we unconsciously, automatically document, curate and edit experiences. Thus, memory is in a way curated exhibition of our life. The drawing styles change depending on the “experience” of the experience too. When I am taking the documentation process (sketching), a certain experience of the day is stored as a memory in a certain mood, and that largely affects how/what I want to depict.

My decision on the period of this experiment to undergo was entirely arbitrary; eleven days of nothing special, eleven normal days out of my life. Yet, I guess only particular moments and emotions will be derived from such daily events as a memory, constructing an album of life as they accumulate.

Assessment 3 Experiment 1

In assessment task 2, my group explored the theme of “documentation”, inspired by Tehching Hsieh’s one year performance.

As I was brainstorming ways to build on assessment 2 for assessment 3, I decided to experiment with various documentation methods and link it to how I associate with time and memory, which is a documentation done by the brain.

This first experiment is about drawing out how I have documented in memory the conversations I had in the past with a group of friends on Facebook messages. We created the group chat about a year ago or so, and we talk now and then about trivial everyday matters. I opened up the chat log (for the first time) and read out the sentences which I have sent to the group chat, starting from the most recent message and journeying back in time, chronologically, finishing with the oldest message.

Such instant messages including online chat and texts/SMSs interested me as they document the crude, the everyday, the very ephemeral and context-specific emotional speeches we share with others. When I send a message to a chat, in that specific moment, I am emotionally active, living in the present, yet as it becomes a past event, it is documented by the brain as a mere noise, like a grain of sand.

In the process of this experiment, the more recent conversation and its context are easily recalled, myself capable of depicting the scenes and events from memory, allowing me to repeat what I have said emotionally, empathetic to the “past me”. Yet as I go back in time, I could not recall what I was feeling or thinking or even the context of the conversation. I begin to stammer and feel awkward and bored reading out the messages I’ve sent. Then simultaneously, I accelerated the video; after all, the instant messages, the ephemeral emotions I’ve shared with my friends are mere noises in the vast ocean of my memory today.

Week 11 exercise 1

This week we explored “Repetition”.

Exercise 1: Write a word at the top of a paper. Swap the paper with someone else, reproduce what’s on their. Repeat.

For this exercise, I first reproduced what was on the page by writing over what was written, tracing exactly what the previous person have written, including the splashes of their ballpoint pen. I approached repetition by the repeating of the system of what the previous person has done - same position on the paper, same colour of ink, same word, same handwriting. Yet, this repetition is still incomplete as I am “trying to repeat” what the previous person has done, while the original word was done spontaneously - the thought process, the context cannot be repeated. Also, as I am not a machine, physically I failed to repeat what was on the page. Although it might seem like I’ve copied the handwriting, there is a small deviation from the original, as our bodies differ.

Then I tried another way of repetition, where I just gave up to mimic the form (handwriting, colour of the pen etc) of what was previously written and wrote the word that was there, following what other fellow students have done on the page. This in sense was a successful repetition, as the previous person and the person before and the person before and the person before and so on... have all resorted to take in the literal information and reproduce the text, and I have done exactly the same process. I repeated the process of repetition. (This process was also seen in the crab page above, where everyone decided to draw a crab, and not use text or any other format)

When I saw the final outcome of the page which I started (with a word “beetroot” on it), I was surprised to see a star in the middle of the “beetroots”. After all, I guess the content did not matter; that process of intaking information from a paper and outputting it, is a repetition too!

Week 11: Repetition

This class task required each group member to take a picture of the same subject over a period of time at certain intervals. For some reason I was chosen to be the subject.. But anyway, we walked around and took pics at 30 second intervals, although some pics were left out of this video because they weren’t in sync.

Week 10 exercise

Week 10′s topic was “Failure”.

Exercise 1: In groups, usinganything—makesomething truly ugly.

For this part of the exercise we ( @vic1002, @cocopanggg , @callumsmith-adad1001 ) made a rubbish bin. We tried to make something ugly in a sense that even rubbish heap could be disintegrated, at it is normally categorized and organized by the rubbish material (recycles, glass/cans, food, etc). It is a failure to fulfuill the purpose of the orderly rubbish bin.

Exercise 2: Make something that comprises of two elements which can not exist together. Make acontradiction, paradox, anomaly.

For the second exercise I and @cocopanggg paired up and made a pair of (supposedly) beach sandals out of toilet paper rolls. Usually beach sandals are made of water proof material for its function, yet this pair fails to fulfill such purpose. Paper as a frail material in such context, these sandals show potential for a cliched aesthetic which could be appretiated in other situations with the organic colour scheme/material and its lightness.

The Passage of Time

A collaborative, 5-minute video that extends on Tehching Hsieh’s ‘One Year Performance’ (1980-1981) by exploring the progression of time and its fleeting nature.

Artists: Kaoru Kishida, Coco Peng, Callum Smith, Victoria Wang Blogs: @kaoruadad1001, @cocopanggg, @callumsmith-adad1001, @vic1002

> concept statement

Concept Statement

Title: The Passage of Time Artists: Kaoru Kishida, Coco Peng, Callum Smith, Victoria Wang Blogs: @kaoruadad1001, @cocopanggg, @callumsmith-adad1001, @vic1002

Our group looked at Tehching Hsieh’s ‘One Year Performance’, featured in the documentation topic. This particular work is a performative piece which involved Hsieh photographically documenting himself as he punched a time clock every hour, every day, between 1980 and 1981. Resulting in this was a series of 8,267 photographs that was turned into a 6-minute time-lapse video showing his deteriorating condition under extreme physical endurance.

In response to Hsieh’s work, our group produced a video that also explored the concept of time, its passing, and its relationship to the individual. Adopting the camera as a method of documenting reality, each group member recorded a short video footage of their daily activities occurring at the same time on the 15th of April 2016, at 12pm. These were then split up into equal sections and strung together to form our 5-minute video work, ‘The Passage of Time’.

‘The Passage of Time’ begins with the repetitive sequence that alternates between basic routines in life: watching television, shaving, and working. These routines are depicted from a real time, third-person perspective to portray the objective reality. In contrast, the accelerated first-person exploration of a library periodically disrupts the orderly sequence, representing the subjective, personal relationship one has with time. The dialogue between the two perspectives acts as a visual metaphor for how time flies by, and how the everyday becomes a blur of the past.

Time is forgotten as it passes by inevitably. While Hsieh’s work is to demonstrate the progression of time from an objective perspective, our work has extended the idea by exploring the subjective reality. As Hsieh puts it, “Life is passing time, life is free thinking… From this philosophy; you consume time until you die,” and our work affirms this by emphasising time’s fleeting nature and perhaps hinting at its preciousness.

Progress: quotes for the statement

@kaoruadad1001 and I looked at a video about Hsieh’s One Year Performance work. There were some interesting quotes about the nature of time and how it passes, and I thought it was quite relevant to our final product so we noted them down.

“Every minute, every hour is different, you cannot go back, every time is different but also the same thing.”

“Life is passing time, life is free thinking. So that is basically my work, from this philosophy; you consume time until you die.”

We plan on incorporating these quotes into our statement to draw the connection/similarities between Hsieh’s work and our work.

This is the video:

Yesterday I went to @kaoruadad1001‘s place to work on the statement together!!!

Progress: Referring back to the original work

My group chose to base our work on Tehching Hsieh’s One Year Performance 1980 – 1981 (Time Clock Piece). Since our statement would have to include this title, I went back to the weekly resources to look at the slide. I’m posting it here for my own reference.

On the day we chose this piece, I also made a post which is here.

Progress: Statement progress on Google docs

Kaoru created a shared Google document for the group so we can work on the statement together. Tonight I am trying to summarise our interpretations and other ideas so that we can get started with the actual writing.

Progress: Looking at the video

Callum was in charge of making the video and once he was finished, he shared it with the rest of us to see. Originally we had a vague concept about time passing, which the video followed, and after it had been produced, the concept was more fully realised. The rest of us were to write the statement for the video, and I posted on the Facebook group to start a discussion on how each of us interprets it and how it related to our concept.

Keep reading

Week 7 exercise 1

In week 7 we explored the idea of perception - what/how we see is dependant on our experiences and is culturally constructed.

As a quick activity in class, I had to make a list of everything that I perceive (a part from what I see). Pondering about different perceptions and other possibilities of senses/how we categorise senses, it was interesting to approach this activity in a way that I wouldn’t normally categorize as “senses”. This was the list I made:

Sweetness left in my mouth from the apple I ate

Paper being torn out

Soft mumbling/whispers of people

Stationaries being taken out of pencil cases

Soft breeze from the aircon

Sound of the breeze

Someone opening the lid of drinking bottle and drinking water

Sound of air conditioner

Someone typing on their laptop

My butt pressed against the chair

My feet feeling the edge of the rack

Sleep deprivation/fatigue from last night

Neck strain

After the activity, I was to compare my list with someone distant from where I was sitting. I compared my list to Bianca’s list, and was surprised. Her list was completely different from mine; it consisted of around 4-5 words, categorising what she sensed such as “sound”, “smell”, “touch” etc. Our whole perception of the question was different. She told me that she could “hear” things, but would call that state of the room as “quiet”. In contrast, what I did was taking the task extremely stereotipically and right away noted down all the things I perceived in detail, as much as possible, assuming that is the sole purpose of the exercise. The value, how we perceived the question was entirely different, the weight/meaning of the question was different for me and Bianca, as our contexts differ.

Anyhow, after thinking about perception as a contextual idea, I would add things like this to the list, recalling what I perceived on the day:

Anxiety, nervousness and tention about being in the ADAD1001 class and getting judged by all the artsy/local aussies

Time passing slower than usual because I want to get out of this overwhelming situation

Agitation/irritation of not being able to express what I actually am perceiving in English words

Clogging/choking in my throat, as words come out bluntly and unnaturally

Week 7: Perception

This week’s activities involved making a wearable that changes our perceptions in some way. I ended up making two:

La Petite Mort: A plastic bag layered with bubble wrap inside that is worn over the head and tightened at the neck. This piece obscures vision but also changes the atmosphere inside. When worn, the surroundings become almost completely white and warms up with the breath of the wearer. By inhaling, the wearer also contracts the bag which causes it to hug the face, which I found comfortable and this brings to mind Dr Temple Grandin’s research on the calming effects of deep touch pressure. The movement of the plastic bag causes a crinkling sound which I also found pleasant (our tutor Peter related it to ASMR), and it helped drown out the sounds in the surrounding environment so I felt my distance grow. I really liked this piece and I called it La Petite Mort (”the little death”) because it looked like a suicide bag and it was such a peaceful, comfortable bubble that I wanted to sleep with it on (sleep being a temporary death, a transcendence).

Dare to Talk: Thumb tacks stuck onto a circle of tape that can be stuck onto the lower (or upper) lip. When worn, this piece changes the wearer’s perception of the act of talking (or just action of opening and closing the mouth) because in order to not hurt themselves, they have to consciously avoid doing so. I could not talk properly with it on. It also plays with pain as a stimulus, from the sharp ends of the thumb tacks to the soreness of the mouth as it hangs open, and even the frustration of the wearer as they are rendered useless. This could be a little less tacky, but I made it in the last minute.

Fun masochistic art!

Oh yeah, it was supposed to be groupwork with @kaoruadad1001 but we just kinda made our own things.. lol.

Wearing the plastic bag “La Petite Mort” allows one to become aware of the unusual internal senses - respiration, blood vessel pulsing, swallowing, blinking... The activities which our bodies perform unconsciously. It shifts one’s focus from the extertal to the internal, shutting down the usual vision/sound/senses, making one couscious of self.

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