Iteration

By Brenda Lam for ADAD1001

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Periscope lets you explore the world through the eyes of somebody else.

Here is our media platform of choice for assessment 3 - now. We chose to do a livestream because we all thought it was the definition of now- something instant and immediate. But it also played with our initial concepts, because there were unforeseeable problems that made us reconsider what our perception of now was, because the lag of each livestream indicted that someone’s now might be your five seconds ago, but you will still consider it as the present. A work in progress, but our group is doing well to flesh out our concepts and ideas for this project. 

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Things to put in PDF file

Initially, the PDF file was going to be a progress document of our ideas, from initial ideas to brainstorms and research, but our substitute tutor told us that we were better off making the PDF an accompaniment for the actual work. So here were some of our other ideas for what we could put in the PDF instead.

- Things we wouldn’t do for audience participation, when they suggest things for us to do - Include a map of the campus and the trails that we took throughout the livestream, like a snail trail - Write down all the actions the audience told us to do, including screenshots of the video - Embed the screen capture video of the livestream so it can be rewatched - Convert the speeches and sounds in the video to text using a generator, usually ending up like a bunch of jibberish (one for each camera and a general one for the video itself?)

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Brainstorm

What we can do during the video/livestream:

- Draw something - Walk around campus - Talk to people, observe traffic and surroundings - Observe classmates and classroom - explain to audience what to do during class - Hide and seek? - In sync, at one time, all four of us hold a part of a picture to the camera that completes that picture - Set up laptops so audience are free to comment on our livestream and be part of it - Time limit is actually a song, so we sync all our actions according to song, easier to recognise for us (Song: Welcome home by Radical Face), not a set time limit but dependent on the song choice - Boom box? - One person goes to 7-11, buys something and shares it with another person and eat it - One person screams randomly, try scream somewhere the class can hear it - One person runs to coffee shop and try buy a coffee before they close and drink it through the livestream - One person goes in elevator while other runs down stairs??? – sounds boring - Make a new account for everyone to comment and log on instead of ours - Magic minute? Everyone in class tells us one thing to do during that one minutes, gives audience power to suggest an action to do during livestream that I can comment to the others to do - Make a giant game? Split the entire class into three groups, each with one representative from our group, then get each group to direct their representative through posting comments that have a direction that leads them somewhere/catch the other group’s representative/finds a flag

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Assessment 3

Our group decided to continue with the livestream idea, and here were some of the feedback we received and issues we had:

- It was glitchy and needed several restarts to keep it running as smoothly as we can - We didn’t have a set plan on what we would exactly do during the livestreams - There was little audience interaction and they would essentially be watching us walk around campus so it would be really boring - There was a need for formatting for the videos to stay on the same screen - It was a live presentation, so the PDF file would have a few diffivulties in the making and handing in of (I will contact our tutor about this issue and see if we can hand it in a bit late so it accurately reflects our work) - Some group members needed to update software, buy phones, create an account etc for the actual project, but all of us are agreed on the ideas - Timing of the actual work - how long we’ll be out there, what we’re doing, what time we’re doing things - If the group is gone, how do we contact them to come back etc

We will work our way through these issues one by one in class discussions and Facebook, but I think that we have a good and solid plan for our final project.

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(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIaALooetgc)

Our idea of now consists of livestreaming from a phone on the big screen in class, while the rest of the group can walk away and do something else that is captured and shared with an anonymous, live audience. There are a few problems we need to hash out though, specifically what to do when we’re away from class, as we don’t want to be simply walking around doing nothing for the time period we’re away. Another problem is the technical problems, so one person has to stay back and troubleshoot in real time so that the split-screen live stream stays online for the big screen while the rest of the group is away. 

Some ideas for the video: - Someone draws in real time while filming it live - Someone explores campus (don’t go too far away from uni wifi) - Someone stays back and films the class’s reactions (while troubleshooting)

Further experimentation is needed, but right now, the group is very excited about this possibility. 

[thebrelam]

Blind Run

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0BxxMkaKQgUN7cTBsa1pYenBpY2M?usp=sharing

A CONCEPT STATEMENT

Of all five senses that a human possesses, the gift of eyesight is most important to the artist Brenda Lam. The ability to identify colour, look at miniscule details and read words have been vital to her development in life, all 18 years of it. She understands that without her eyes, she would have taken a vastly different path in life. However, her early years of the previously mentioned activities have rendered her eyes impaired, unable to see more than 23cm from her face and so she requires the use of glasses to help her fulfil her detailed projects and reading assignments.

In her latest work aptly titled ‘Blind Run’, Lam chose to forego her glasses for a week as part of a (personal) social experiment. She went about her daily routines as best as she could without her glasses; walking carefully to classes, squinting at Powerpoints and socialising with blurry people. The work is an hourly photo-documentation of her week of interacting with a familiar yet different environment. Lam further explores the idea of humans and the environment in an abstract sense, reimagining the relationship between herself and the environment around her simply by removing a vital element.

The documentation was taken with Lam’s old smartphone on the hour, but not every hour due to human flaws. She chose to only take one photo on the hour, resulting in some blurry and plain photos, but it only serves to add to the human element of the project. There were some difficulties regarding the documentary, as she was unable to take photos every hour because of situations that required urgent attention involving kitchen knives.

True to the title of the work, Lam had no prior experience with projects that involved herself partaking in an experiment or a project that involved a long period of time. Furthermore, she states that she had ‘decided on a whim to just go for it’. Thus, the end result of the final work means that there was no active research done during her spur of the moment decision to complete the project, but she did draw inspiration from an old class activity that involved the absence of thumbs for an undetermined period of time.

Furthermore, there are parallels with other projects, namely Tehching Hsieh’s ‘One Year Performance (1980-1981)’ in which he documented himself at a time clock and exposed a single frame at each punching. The project Hsieh conducted was more rigorous and strict than Lam’s experiment, as he committed to waking up every hour to take the photo, even in the middle of the night, whereas Lam only took photos during her waking hours. Nevertheless, both projects play with the idea of projects conducted over a period of time that tested the artist’s boundaries.

Interestingly, Lam also explores the idea of limitations of various systems; her eyes, the camera she used for her documentation, her memory and online limitations. Her eyes were limited from a young age and it was only recently that she decided to pay more attention to the absence of sight as a conceptual idea. The photos were uploaded onto the Google Drive, rather than posted online by themselves, due to the limitations of a popular blogging website had errors with uploading multiple large files. Lam also chose to upload the photos raw, resulting in a few blurry photos. More importantly, the camera used for the documentation has mysterious purple-pink streaks that show up occasionally in the photographs.

“The photos act as my memory for the week; they remember what I did every hour. (The stripes) were a bit accidental, but the camera can only do so much as a substitute for my eyes,” she states. “Another thing is memory, because you can never really remember everything perfectly, but you can do your best to try. That’s what this whole project is, now that I think about it. My eyes are trying to see, the camera is trying to take photos and my memory is trying to remember the events when I look back at the photos. None of it is perfect, but we’re trying. I guess that’s what makes this project human in a way.”

Marks K, 2014, The man who didn’t go to bed for a year, The Guardian, <https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/australia-culture-blog/2014/apr/30/tehching-hsieh-the-man-who-didnt-go-to-bed-for-a-year>

Ardia M, NYC-based artist Tehching Hsieh: when life becomes a performance, Culture Trip, <http://theculturetrip.com/north-america/usa/new-york/articles/tehching-hsieh-when-life-becomes-a-performance/>

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Research - Tehching Hsieh

‘With a 16mm camera, i have documented myself at the time clock. I exposed a single film frame at each punching.’ -Tehching Hsieh

A performance artist, Hsieh’s projects involve an extreme physical and psychological elements to them. His work, One Year Performance (Time Clock Piece) was a methodological approach to observing the passing of time that involved him being present at every hour to punch the time stamp. 

‘He set himself the task of never sleeping or leaving his studio for more than 59 minutes.’ Over the course of the year, Hsieh managed to make most of his clock ins, only missing 133. However his quest to witness the passage of time is clearly taking a toll on him, as his eye bags grow darker and his hair grows longer in the photos as the year passes. 

Hsieh has done more one year performances, one of which involved him isolating himself voluntarily in a small cage underground, while another saw him boycotting buildings altogether, living in the streets. 

Marks K, 2014, The man who didn’t go to bed for a year, The Guardian, <https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/australia-culture-blog/2014/apr/30/tehching-hsieh-the-man-who-didnt-go-to-bed-for-a-year>

Ardia M, NYC-based artist Tehching Hsieh: when life becomes a performance, Culture Trip, <http://theculturetrip.com/north-america/usa/new-york/articles/tehching-hsieh-when-life-becomes-a-performance/>

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Assessment 2 - Blind Run

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0BxxMkaKQgUN7cTBsa1pYenBpY2M?usp=sharing

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The Art of Wasting Time

A Concept Statement

Humans will be inexplicably associated with time; we are obsessed with it, we are controlling it, we are being controlled by it. No other organism on earth is capable of comprehending the very concept of time. Not us. We hate wasting time and will find new ways to count the minutes. For us, simply watching time pass us by destroys us. 

‘The Art of Wasting Time’ by Brenda Lam is a time based piece that critiques humanity’s talent for self destruction. A black laminated sheet of paper depicts a globe in white paint, with a block of ice suspended over it. As the heat of the sun melts the ice, the globe slowly changes and contorts to depict a different image to imply the effects of global warming on our earth.

With a superficial awareness towards global warming, Lam sought to raise an awareness of time. She was inspired by her frustrations with working with a limited time constraint, a late postal delivery, Tumblr’s ‘urgent’ updates and a block of ice that was required to melt. All of these factors worked against her impulse to deliver projects on time, and this poster was a result of her rebellion against time.

The poster’s superficial meaning in global warming is easily identified by many. This leaves people to assume one meaning and ignore the possibilities of other meanings in order to not waste time.

Lam invites people to sit and watch her work melt, a physical passing of time and a psychological waste of time. The poster hints at fading completely, leaving people to watch in the hopes of witnessing the poster fade completely, but the end result never fades. The colossal waste of time in her work mirrors her frustration with working with such tight constraints of time, and allows us to consider the mental and psychological environments that time puts us in.

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This is what the poster looks like after it’s been exposed to water. This was a mistake, because it was meant to disappear completely. I realised after spraying it with water that I put the paint on too thick, so it won’t disappear completely and will only fade a little at the edges. I even submerged the entire poster, but it still had no effect.

This makes me really angry, because I didn’t have enough time to experiment completely with the paint properly and I didn’t have enough time to restart the poster because it was already overdue. I’m just feeling really frustrated at the moment.

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Before and after shots of my final work, simplified. The first photo was before the ice melted onto the poster, and the second photo is what it will look like after the ice melts all the water onto the poster.

Unfortunately, I have an old phone with a glitched out camera, and there was no other way for me to take the photos with.

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Here are some photos of hydrochromic ink in action. Seeing as how my own shipment of the stuff is delayed, I’ve made myself feel a little better by looking at the same product that’s coming to mine and how it’s going to work, what’s it’ll look like etc etc.

Still, deprivation of ink is now becoming a thing for me. And I will be late handing in my poster, hurray.

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Paper Thin(k Again)

Two weeks ago, we were given an A4 sheet of paper and told to make something. Not anything like origami swan or a drawing of a cat, but to redefine the idea of what paper can do.

Working on my own experiences with paper cutting and the intricacies of delicate sheets of paper, I know that paper is surprisingly strong when put to the test. It can hold its shape really well, and will not break as easily as people think. So, I joined forces with my dear friend, Shelley on a quest to find out how strong paper really it.

Spoiler alert: Very strong.

However, photos are missing simply because I forgot to take them. However, I will say that 2 A4 sheets of paper were able to successfully support a large plank of wood, a Macbook, an Acer laptop, a full water bottle and two sketchbooks/diaries. It was a struggle for us to lift it all at once, let alone two measly sheets of paper.

Better think again.

[thebrelam]

All Tied Up

Our class activity prompted us to think about our bodies, and how we are ‘contested, censored, regulated or exploited’. We were told to create a wearable invention that would alter, challenge or question the ideology that affects our behaviour and the body. In other words, we saw it as a challenge to create something to wear that was anti-productive.

My first thought was inspired from a question that has been long debated within my family; Would you rather have no teeth or no thumbs? Obviously, there is only one answer here, but I’ll let you decide for yourself. However, I would like to heavily hint that humans evolved specifically to handle tools, and that we have become the superior species based on our abilities to handle tools and hunt efficiently.

But what if we didn’t have thumbs? Would we revert back to the days we ran on all fours, only eating to survive and hunting with our teeth? Or would we simply adapt to our new situations, because humans are anything, if not adaptable.

The task proposed was a difficult one; tie one’s thumbs to the hand with twine and go about your day without thumbs. Hell, why not a week. Or even a year?

Hell, why don’t you use different materials too, why not? Use a hot pink string, use invisible sewing thread, use sturdy ropes, use leather and chains. What’s stopping you? Certainly not your thumbs. Nor the rules.

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Hydrochromic Ink Poster

I’ve decided on the hydrochromic poster idea, but there were a few changes that I was deciding on.

1. The message conveyed. My tutor mentioned that my initial idea for using text on my poster was maybe a bit too standard and an ‘in the box’ idea. I agreed, and decided to change my idea to a meaningful image or motif of some kind that still conveyed my message about global warming and melting polar caps.

2. The image itself (part 1). I thought maybe using an idea of a white silhouette of a human that, when wet, would reveal a skeleton and an internal environment of the human body AKA organs. This would be amazing to see, and really captures the idea of subverting the ‘human and the environment’ as an internal system. However, I couldn’t figure out why the melting ice would have such a profound impact on us. I did think about water being the lifesaving substance that we need, but the poster was also time-based in that it would develop over time.

3. The image itself (part 2). I then backtracked to my initial idea of global warming again, and tried to continue the skeleton motif. I was planning to have a small grid-like depiction of multiple animals affected by global warming, with humans at the very bottom of the poster. As the ice melts, the water drips down onto the silhouettes of the animals, revealing their skeletons (and consequently, their deaths) over time until eventually it catches up to us. I also had the very ambitious idea of connecting the human silhouette on the poster to a heater of some sort that would have a direct effect on the ice melting faster, but I couldn’t work out the logistics or the technology for that. Nevertheless, I decided that it was too complex of an idea, as the animal species would have been indistinguishable due to their silhouettes.

4. The idea itself (part 3). Finally, I decided that I would do a general ‘world’ effect from the melting polar caps. In other words, I wanted to show a global impact from global warming. The world will be painted in white, which would also make for an easier silhouette, and it will simply vanish from sight when the water drips down onto the black poster.

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Ideas for Posters

1. “The word glitch refers to an unpredictable irregularity in a system—digital and analogue alike. Explore the creative possibilities of glitch.“ A poster made of cardboard with standard, stereotypical poster, something that wouldn’t be noticed normally or has a bland poster look to it, then cut a corner out and glue it to the wall at an angle, so it looks like it has been glitched into the wall accidentally.

2. “ Art and design often explore relationships between humans and non-humans, the environment and ecology. How can contemporary art and design propose new possibilities for imagining the ‘human’ and the environment?” Create an unconventional poster by printing an outline of the world onto cardboard or thin wood and cut it out into a circle shape. Then grow moss onto the land masses of the earth using this method; http://www.stencilrevolution.com/tutorials/how-to-make-moss-graffiti/ Then it would look like the world was growing over time. Maybe make a statement about nature recovering without humans or with the help of people?

3. “ Art and design often explore relationships between humans and non-humans, the environment and ecology. How can contemporary art and design propose new possibilities for imagining the ‘human’ and the environment?” Create a floor poster? Paint on the floor with hydrochromic ink, so it will wash away in the rain? The ink is white in colour, but goes clear when it is exposed to water, so maybe create a fun, interactive sort of poster on the ground? Maybe put some shapes on the ground and sprinkle with water to create a stencil. Edit: Forgot that the poster had to be wall mounted. Whoops.

4. “ Art and design often explore relationships between humans and non-humans, the environment and ecology. How can contemporary art and design propose new possibilities for imagining the ‘human’ and the environment?” Using the hydrochromic ink again, but make a statement about global warming? With Nele Azevedo as inspiration, use melting ice to bring attention to melting polar caps and rising temperatures? The top of the poster will be a rectangular block of ice hung on a string that melts and drips slowly onto the paper on the wall. The paper will be white at first (ink is white) and then as the ice melts, the water makes the white ink go clear, revealing words about global warming? Make this fun or thought-provoking?

5. “The word glitch refers to an unpredictable irregularity in a system—digital and analogue alike. Explore the creative possibilities of glitch.“ Inspired by this one guy whose name I forgot but he dug out holes in the ground in a field to exact measurements that made your computer screen appear to have dead pixels when you zoomed in the map. Edit: This guy. http://www.todayandtomorrow.net/2009/03/27/dead-pixel-in-google-earth/ I wanted to create something similar, but it would require me to carve holes into the wall or something, and people would see it with their eyes, and not through the screens of a digitalised device.

6. “The word glitch refers to an unpredictable irregularity in a system—digital and analogue alike. Explore the creative possibilities of glitch.“ Create a QR code that when scanned, will take the use to an error page. Make people scan it by offering an incentive to scan the page, like a free food offer or something along those lines.

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Week 1 - Concepts

What is abstractions? ·         Doesn’t make sense ·         Distortion ·         Concept rather than physical object ·         Reimagining objects as ideas ·         Quality of dealing with ideas rather than events ·         Freedom of representational qualities ·         No limit of boundaries

Redesign a rainbow. ·         One line of rainbow across the sky ·         Original form of rainbow is a circle ·         Maybe different shapes ·         Different colours – greyscale ·         Whole sky is rainbow ·         Out of order rainbow ·         Gradient rainbow ·         Zebra stripes

What is the most beautiful thing in the world? ·         The world ·         Life ·         The space in the world ·         I like genuine smiles ·         Lights