What did you do today?

In groups of three, my classmates and I did a mock interview on approximately what we would be expected to answer. Taking turns, we would be being the interviewer, interviewee and also a describer(who records what was mentioned).

What do you think were difficult questions to answer?

I think there were quite a few questions that I need to think more about it before hand and prepare myself through looking my own reflections and research again.

One of the questions was "Can you discuss the relationship between what you make and how you make it?" I've thought of mentioning how I focus more on the process of thinking about the work rather than the actual outcome, hence I don't restrict myself to certain media. However, I felt like more specific examples should be included whenever I talk about myself and it would have been a stronger answer if I was able to let the interviewer understand what I am really doing.

I am also quite concerned with what to ask if the the interviewer asks me what questions do I have before the end of the interview section. I don't want to give the impression of me doing it on purpose to impress someone, but at the same time, I do want to show that I have interest in thinking about questions related to art.

What do you was rather easy to answer?

Since we often do critiques in between or when finishing a project, I'm actually quite confident with questions that asks me to describe my work. I think working on series of projects also allowed me to know more about my own self through the work, so talking about the relationship of the work and myself wouldn't be as hard as others.

Anything that you've received from your peers or gained through the process of interviewing others?

I think it's pretty important for me to really prepare beforehand, and to think thoroughly on my interest before going to the interview. As an esl student, it might be better for me to drop down some important keywords and jargon that I was looking into when I worked on my project, as I might tend to not remember the terms when being nervous during the interview.

I also think that I have to know what it the key point of my works and thoughts, as interview usually only lasts for ten minutes, and I shouldn't overspent my time on vague and irrelevant informations that cannot show my characters and ability.

I was quite disappointed with the planning out for the park project in these two days, as I was being told that I had to finish my editing before Monday and hand in the work on that day. Since we had two more days before the exact exhibition, I was expecting the class to be having final critiques before the show. Out of expectation, I realised that many of the rest actually didn't finish their work til I don't know, Wednesday or Thursday, and the deadline is somehow postponed due to misunderstanding or so. Since I forced myself to actually finished and handed in the work before Monday, I basically wasted the whole week without doing much improvements or effective work except for re-arranging the things I did in my sketchbook and workflow.

I was expecting more constructive comments and having critiques to be done, so by next week, we can actually have more time on preparing portfolios, instead of recalling something that has passed already. If not, at least give clearer instructions in terms of when actually will our final outcomes be due. In that case, I could have replanned my schedule and perhaps do more experiments, or collect more footages to enhance my actual piece.

P.S. This is just a personal opinion towards the last few days and perhaps if the project were to be done again next year, there could be a better planning out for the timetable.

Any obstacles what I've encountered as I edit the video?

When I was almost finished with the editing, I tried to export my file so to check if anything crashes and needs to be re-arranged. I realised that the outcome I get from the exported file was completely different from what was displayed in Premiere pro, and from what I expected it to be. I think this is probably because the effects I chose is not accurately shown in the preview as the file was being compressed. 

What did you do about it?

At first, I did wanted to try to convert it back to what I see in the preview, by dropping in the effects before adding into premiere, e.g inverting the colours before hand. I eventually decided to give up and actually keep the exported effects. This is because of a few reasons:

1. The color scheme of the actual outcome fits pretty well with the background, and they pop out more effectively than white/black.

2. Over processing of the clips of the drawn lines may lead to less accurate movements from what I tried to mark down.

3. It brings more of a distorted, electronic tone to the lines, hence building up more disturbance than just white lines.

What else did you look into that led the changes of your work?

I also tried looking into the possible titles for my work. I wanted to hint its relationship with identity as my work started off with the concept of Theseus paradox. However, I felt like directly using the term "The Ship of Theseus" was too cliche and I also didn't want it to be too obvious, so I went back to looking into the concepts and hoping to find more inspirations.

I come across the "Sacred Emily" written by Gertrude Stein back in 1913. There is one line where the poet wrote "Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose". The line was derived from how back in the days, objects were determined and labelled as what they are because of their use in poems and literature. A rose is always known as red, beautiful and represents a sign of love. In my understanding, the sentence tries to state that if memories are taken over, the object actually loses its identity, and questions the basic matter for the term.

What did you and your peers discuss about the compulsory text B?

My group discussed on our opinions on "When artists decide to document their performances, they assume responsibility to an audience other than the initial one, a gesture that ultimately obviates the need for an initial audience" and the focused on whether its a necessity to watch a performance piece live or not.

What do you think about it?

Our group has vary comments on the questions. Some of us suggests that the documentaion of a performance is an evidence of showing what’s happening. It is important as it proves the existence of an event and make it more "real". However, more of us thinks that when something becomes photographed, a complete different emotion is evoked. In general, we believe that photography could be also perceived as something thats not real and could be fabricated, until you see the actual live performance. So there is a need

for live performances and live audience to exist. 

We also discussed about the situation in Tate Modern, where one of my classmates commented it as a Factory that focuses on academic and radical traditions. After being told that Tate Modern only collects photographs of records of performances, we thought that there is also a purpose of learning when it comes to seeing documentation photography. People come to know about what happened and why through the looking through photos and the description text, instead of wanting to witness the occurrence of the event. In a way, we felt like this is why documentations of performances becomes more detached and removed from what it is in live.

Did the passage somehow lead you to approaches that you find interesting? How or how not?

  I did wanted to consider doing more with performance pieces, but not within this project. I felt like it wasn't a good decision for portraying my concept of identity uncertainty as I am currently more focused on the change within space, using sounds, rather than a persona. However, the discussion did give me more concepts on how I might want to construct a performance, if I were to do this for another project. 

In live performance, a lot of external factors are included within the process, e.g. pauses and disruptions that cannot be removed or trimmed away. Basically, since there are a lot more incontrollable factors within live performances, it makes the piece unique and original every time it is being re-constructed; a same performance never occurs twice. This concept brings me wanting to experiment of performance that are extemporaneous, hence emphasising more on the originality of each piece. 

What new ideas did you come up with?

I also felt like the color tone for my light paintings to be very interesting, as the unnatural reddish lights emphasises an unrealistic space. So I tried adding stope frame animations on top of the zoom ins of the photos. The graphical line animations would be colliding with each other and also masked into different sections, just to test for the effect. I also tried using building in texts, which was a poem that I wrote when I was brainstorming about the concepts of identity.

What is successful/not successful about it?

I find it successful to use a very vivid colour as the background. This is because it is able bring out the simple graphical lines out through and evoke a sense of uncertainty. However, the background itself seems to be too flat as I wanted to portray more of a virtual space and a flat image. The choice of composition doesn't bring me to an uncertain virtuality, and hence a reselection of the composition is needed. Also, I personally do not enjoy the involvement of words, and it seems to reveal too much to the audience. Bringing in lyrics also leads to too much elements going on in one scene, and it made the piece confusing to understand.

How do you think it can be applied into your final outcome?

I would be keeping the methodology of applying animation on top of an image. Other than removing the poem, I'd also like to change the composition of the background. Rather than directly using a footage, I think I will try to base on some sources that I collected, and collage a virtual space. I need to remind myself to keep it simple so that there won't be too much things going on at the same time.

What did you do during the weekend?

Inspired by my previous work, I wanted to try creating light paintings that resemble sounds. I did a lot of trials on making noisy lines and how the movements of sounds could be referred as the trace of lights. I used the torchlight on my phone as the light source and created a difference of red and white light using my thumb(to cover or not to cover the emitting area).

Was it effective? Why or why not?

I find the lines interesting, yet not effective in terms of what my project is working on. This is because the medium strict restrains me from working in different locations, as a stand and a dark environment is necessary to create the effect. The length of capturing sounds is also unsatisfying, as long exposures would lead to very bright outcomes and nothing could be seen at all.

Any new inspirations?

 Eventhough the original purpose of creating light painting was not successful, I actually liked the color scheme of the outcomes, which is mostly red yellow and white. Rather than soft, natural tones, the obviously constructed tones helps me to focus on what is not real, or to be exact what doesn't physically exist.

From here, I wanted to try collaging and recreating the image of a space using the light painting photos that I had. I would also like to test on the relationship between the colours and the lines created from blind drawings. I might try to include jumping lines on top of the light painting images I have, and see how it might crave out a space and when these marks are visually/audibly worn off via time, new lines pop and and refill the duty of sustaining the space.

On thursday, basically I brought photoshoots of my initial outcomes. The outcomes were photo shootings of projections. I tried to digitally invert the color of my drawn sounds and projected them onto an image of the park. I projected different drawings onto the exact same image as I wanted to indicate that they were derived from the exact location( solely affected by the pasture of time).

What comments did you receive?

They liked how the channel changes from sounds I hear with my ears to what I think in my brain and then to the export of lines from my hands. The outcomes look similar as what I could have done with light painting (with long exposure and a light source in darkness), which they strongly suggested me to try out.

I got some direct suggestions such as choosing a more simple background or to blur so that the lines would stand out better. I was also suggested to include sounds of the drawings and show a correlation between what is drawn at this stage and where did it came from. In this way, the audience would better understand what the lines are about and could relate more.

I got a list of artists names from my peers and also the tutor. These artists created works related to mark making and were quite performative. They are Rebecca Horn, Claude Heath, Curtis Mann and Richard Long.

In what way do they help you move on?

My peers suggests me to think more about the possible surface and materials to work on. They mentioned how I could try something like bleaching and scratching off from acetate. I also got something that brings my work to be more site specific, which was to draw with a stick and mud in the park. It puts me forward to thinking about the texture of lines. I think from this I will look into something about the methodology of recording with created tools.

On the other hand, I mentioned how I wasn't satisfied with the fact that the image represents the location, as I think that even the photograph can only represent a single moment but not the space. Someone's response was that it's actually okay to do so, as I can actually try to focus on combining something that's not true(or not constantly existing to be exact), and seek it as how can they cope with what I wanted the space to be.

What did you see from your peer's work that's interesting?

 I really liked my classmates experimental outcomes of her friend camouflaging into the plants. She mentioned about the action of hiding and merging in relates to her personal sight problems (color blindness), and we thought that it might be interesting with the person was actually painted in really sharp colours but then in her perspective, the person is still well camouflaged. I think that the idea was interesting in terms of the difference between how people see the same thing. It brings me to think more about other's perception when continuing to explore in my project.

What did you do today?

I had a short group discussion with half of the class and also the tutors. Each of us had a chance to share our initial thoughts on our project and gave comments to each other.

What comments or suggestions did you get from others?

I received interesting comments on how the Theseus Paradox is relating to the demolishing of original social structure within the park. This is because it belongs to different people and it functioned differently over time, and hence the socially relationship is constantly being renewed. 

At first I didn't think that it is possible to combine my sound drawings and my concepts together, but one of my classmates suggested me not to seek the two things as individual ideas. Because the mark makings of the park could possibly on be the starting point of my project, the final outcome doesn't have to be solely based in the park. I can actually do something similar, such as painting about songs and etc. On the other hand I can also show how the sounds are constantly being renewed throughout time. 

How will you continue your work?

I think I will first focus on graphically animating sounds. I'll try to work on methods to emphasise the time-lapse and come up with drawings from different stages/moment of the park. As a reference, I should also keep a audio format as reference.

I might try to work on stop frame videos, and try to deliver something that used to be there but not exactly anymore.

How did your idea develop during the weekend?

I looked deeper into the history of the park, about how the ownership has been transferred to different people’s hands, from Lauderdale to Waterloo and to the public, its interesting how the function of the whole area changes so much that it isn’t what its supposed to be from the beginning 

this conclusion of mine led me to thinking the situation in terms of the theseus’ paradox, where it’s said that the ship of theseus runs for hundreds of years as people would replace the planks with new ones once they’ve found out that the pieces were rotten. eventually all planks would be replaced and the question is whether the ship is still the ship of theseus as none of the pieces from the ship was from the original, meanwhile if using the replaced old planks to create the exact same ship, would it be called the ship of Theseus or not.

What analytical observations did you do?

I've tried recordings sounds in the park through converting them into graphical forms. This is because the park reminded me of a movement workshop that i was involved in. It was curated by a Hong Kong dancer called Jo Leung, where dance moves are derived from audio incomes. The conversion of incomes to outcomes of another medium allows distractions to be eliminated and focuses the outcomes to the lines and specific characteristic that the artist captures. I tried to follow and find the traces and origins of sounds and recorded them onto a piece of paper.

Do you think they are effective? Why or why not?

I quite enjoy this format of documentation as it allows me to consequentially capture what is happening, but displaying in on a parallel format. From what I did, I felt like it helped to break down the concept of chronological timeline, hence elements of the park could be portrayed and collaborate with each other regardless of their pass away as time passes.

What did you see when you visited the Waterlow Park?

While in the park, we first had a quick visit to the Lux, and had a brief understanding on the exhibiting showroom and glasshouse. My initial thought on it was to think what would happen if I were to put an un-quenched cyanotype inside the room and allow to gradually change as its exposed to more sunlight.

I later walked around the park and did some observations of the park. I grew interests in the chairs as there were quotes and short information of some people's birth and death on it. It is something that I've never seen in Hong Kong. I went back home and did research, understanding it was called the memorial chair and anyone could donate to have one for someone important. I find it particularly interesting as it seems like a psychological extension of a person's life, through transferring the memory with a person onto a physically exisiing object. But the fun fact is that the chairs are changed/removed 10 years later, so the extension of the memory would still eventually be gone through time.

What did you find interesting from the brief about the history?

 From the talk, I've learnt that the ownership was transferred through different people's hands through out the ages. And since, there is a difference in terms of that, the purpose and function of the utilities inside also converts. For instance, the lake was once for water storage, and the Lauderdale House was for living, holding guests etc.

In what way do you think your work would be related to the Park?

I am well interested in doing more about the transformation of function, or so-called changing identity of the park. I'd like to investigate more on how time leads to physical/mental change of objects/space/people and seek for the answer of whether identity remains the same as all the transformation occurs.

What comments did you receive from your peers?

Immediately after seeing the title, my classmates thought that the video was directly related to illness and disease. As they started to see more things happening in the video, they soon figured out that I was mentioning my homesick feelings towards home. They think that it's quite interesting to use these diseases as metaphors when referencing to the symptoms and situations I'm dealing with.

On the other hand, I felt quite surprised when I got comments from the other classmates. I wasn't expecting them to see the empty space is a blocking out of images as my original purpose was to present removing. Their thoughts on coverage eventually led them to feeling stronger emotions from the work, which I was quite satisfied with.

People were also discussing whether it was about realising or admitting the fact that i start to lose my memories. Since some thought that the objects were covered rather than slowing fading out, they tend to agree more on the admitting side. Overall, they mentioned how this technique could convey strong sense of losing something, and hence it might be a good technique to adapt in my future works.

What's your comment on the mini-critique?

From observation of other's reaction, i think it maybe better if i had i chance to set up my work better since there were audio effects. the audio didn't well play its role to convey sense of tension, as it couldn't be well heard. If i were to display this, i think using a projector and speakers would help to portray a stronger feeling to the audience.

Personally, I'd also like to try to come up with an overall title for my work, as I feel like the titles I had stand better as captions regarding to individual videos, but none of them could generally wrap up my mixed feelings towards home.

What new concepts did I gain? 

I've finished collecting old footages of my home and spent a decent amount of time observing these materials. I've found out that I see most of the things appearing in the photos as unfamiliar objects. This is probably due to their long absence in my life. It gives me a strong feeling that I'm homesick, to the extent where some parts of my memories are falling apart.

What kind of methodologies did I use? Why so?

I've been reading articles and got interested in an event called "Donate Your Facebook Timeline". It's an action where you can get involved in facebook and it's designed to support the Alzheimer's Disease. Mesmerized by how effective it is to gradually take out posts and elements from a person's timeline, I decided to try using a cut, paste and collage method to create a similar effect, hoping that the experiment would convey my current mind of thought.

I tried cutting out objects according to their outlines, starting with unimportant elements from the footage, then slowly moving towards permanent furnitures and the space. Creating stop frames of the edited photos, I combine them into a video where the objects would be blinking and fade out til the end of the video, there is absolutely nothing.

Afterso, I wanted to see if the colour of the background would lead to different tones. I experimented with black, white and double layer. I also attempted to combine with different audio effects, such as white noise or cringing sounds.

How might your work be improved/ or continued to be developed?

I showed the outcomes to my peer and asked for opinions. I find them quite useful and help me to decided what to convey. The following are my analysis:

White silhouette highlights emptiness and helplessness as it shows how objects are fading to nothing.

Black silhouette gives a more distinct force, where it seems like objects are dragged away.

Building up background (Double layer) shows less of a fading effect, it stands more like a process of replacing memories.

Wind sounds : My peer felt like it sounded like the person was standing in the middle of somewhere, portrays an absence of identity/location.

Background music might hint more of a memorial scene but lyrics might distract audience from the composition. Piano music might be more preferable but there would be a reason to why the chosen song in specific.

Resonance, Talking sounds overlapping creates a very distorted space, but somehow too irritating to be included.

Breathing sound, Cringing sounds emphasises the uncomforted feelings of the persona. It can also show the gradual change of mood of a person.

Where the experimentation techniques effective? How or how not?

I feel like all the effects are relatable in different ways, as I think they can show a gradual change of my attitude towards home: Fading, Lost, and Rearrange. I decided to use them separately in different images and create 3 individual animations as final outcomes. With the feeling I get from seeing and editing the photos, I  named my videos as disease symptoms, "Alzheimer's Disease" "Chronophobia" and "Anxiety Disorder". I feel like the title helps me to emphasise my homesick and portray the feeling to the audience.

What were your flow of thoughts?

Started off my project with brainstorming places that I'm very familiar with back in Hong Kong. I figured out that the places I've been staying in for most of my time is my home and my secondary school.  I focused my concept on these two places and went to browse photos that I've taken in these areas to stimulate my thought. Since during Christmas holiday, I wasn't able to go back,my memories on my "home" that I've spent most of my life in actually somehow faded out and becomes somewhere my brain felt like is not to familiar with it. At the same time, my living environment in Hong Kong was pretty from what I'm encountering in London, so the uncanny place becomes the transforming attitude of me accepting the neighbourhood and working environment.

Anything that you've started?

As initial start, I've tried out small experiments on different pathways. One idea was to capture the maps of hong kong and london, and try to transfer my original daily routine in hong kong to london area. I decided to archive this idea as I feel like it might be stronger if i have the footage for both locations. I also felt like I could've done more after arriving to the end point, instead of just recording the "adventure". I also feel like I can try to approach this idea in another method if I were to have a longer list of destinations I wanted to have, regardless originally plotted from UK or Hong Kong. The collection of photos would be interesting to see.

Another idea I've tried was to paint a location of my home where I feel familiar with from memory and comparing it with actual image. I painted and asked my parents to take a photo of the living room. I also tried to use after effects to build in some vibrating effects. I wasn't quite satisfied with the moving image. This is because from the outcome I can only feel slight sense of uncanny, but the main focus of my intention, which is the "fading memories" is not present at all.

How do you think you would push this forward?

I like the idea of using footages of my home, i will try to continue exploring in this direction, but finding more references on conveying  "losing" and "fading". I should be able to gain more ideas when looking into more old footages, or the requested photos taken by my family.