Overall Concept

People nowadays enjoy the convenience of life that may bring hazardous to the environment. So I want to put concern for our environment into my Diptych project. By that I would like to use two images and hope they can generate people’s thinking on their daily behavior that consumes environmental energy.

Conversation

The two images have to be connected and support each other in both existence. I’d like to input a relationship of cause and effect (or before and after) in the two images that creates a storyline that talks about human behavior and its consequences. 

Implementation

I may find different aspects of our daily life that bring negative impacts to the environment. What comes to my mind is the delivered food with lots of packages, and also cardboard packages left from online shopping.

I may arrange the position of the objects, putting the trash in the phone/laptop screen through which we place orders.

Technology and the emergence of computers transform what photography means to be traditionally. When Ritchin said about the “fluidity of the digital”, he meant the ability to manipulate the imaging, and the possibility to change and alter an image that used to be thought as unchangeable. Therefore, photography isn’t necessarily objective; it doesn’t capture what a photographer really sees. An example of this can be seen widely on social media, where online participants posted photos that are photoshopped. Selfies of an influencer on the internet are possibly all being “upgraded”, with the app auto function of “Mei Yan”, which gives users bigger eyes, smoother and whiter skin, and shaper chins. Moreover, after the selfie is being taken with the auto beautify function, the picture can still be upgraded even more. Face and body shapes can be altered. Skin tone can be changed. One can even put makeup on the face in the pictures.

 

In my opinion, photography is a subjective thing from its nature. It tells a story through the eyes of the photographer, which means that it carries a perspective, which is partly but not as general. The angle the photographers posit their lens decides how we view the story following their perspectives to see the world. Furthermore, that photo is able to be edited makes photography even more subjective and be further away from reality. Especially when the one who manipulates the photo is not the one who takes the photo. It is like rumors: when A tells B something(may be the truth or heavily biased), what B tells C can be totally different from what A intends to tell B. Then what really happened? It’s difficult to know unless we really see it with our own eyes. The same can be found in different media that serves as the information channel like books, videos, VRs… The information is conveyed through the eyes and hands of its creators. There is a point of view that hardly is the reality of a situation in general. Unless we are on the scene and view it with our own eyes, it is hard to know the truth.

 

Chieh (Jade) Wen, YEAH RIGHT by Joiji

Concept and Design

The music gives me a feeling of a place that is filled with smoke, is mysterious, blurred and full of grief. Therefore I put in mostly the letters and the fonts that are with curved and smooth lines instead of elements that are sharp and defined. There is a little buzzing noise to the background music, like the radio noise when the connection is not good, creating a vibe that is not clear, not complete and broken. To express that feeling, I had some repetition of dots that gives the sandiness (while at the same time still maintaining the feeling of smooth curve), and sliced the figures in the work. Some of the pieces at the bottom are falling down, while the overall figures are going upwards like smoke, creating a different flow of movement. The three decorated smaller circles represent the feeling when the strong beats enter in the music, like rocks dropping into the water and creating rings of ripple. 

Gestalt gives me the impression that it is playing with our human’s vision. Even though the letters have been sliced, our eyes can still be able to catch the original figures/letters. I think it’s related to the principles of continuity. And the interesting part is using the different amount of space in between the elements to create the gradient to the overall figure. When the dots are closer to each other, our eyes take this part as darker than the other part where the space between the dots is bigger. The biggest takeaway I had for the One Black Square project is that a good piece of design should have a different impact to a viewer’s eyes when he/she stands from far away to close to the design. The overall visual feeling of my design is the curves that go from the bottom to the top, like smoke. And when a vier gets closer to it, the tension of different movements of pieces as well as the flow of the small letters embroidered in the main figures can be captured.

Process

From the mid-critique, I didn’t change my overall design, because I had a complete consideration to the balance of the general image. However, the advice I received was that the work was too straightforward, bold and no details. Originally, I didn’t have the slicing and all the details that were added to the main figure. It was too plain and not interesting. To make it more delicate and refined, I placed more details that provided fun and complexity to a viewer’s visual experience. Also a complete work needs to be balanced and harmonious. At first, while I had all the curvy fonts that echoed with each other, the dots were crowded at the right bottom of the paper, which was a little out of balance. Therefore, I added some to the top to correspond to the design. 

Conclusion

If I had more time, I would like to get deeper into the relationship between the figure and the ground, because I still rely more on the black figures without taking good advantage of the white space. I believe with a more interesting relationship between the figure and the ground, my design would be more meaningful and fun 

 

Filters on Social Media

In the 21st century, with the rapid development of technology, social media has been deeply bound to every person. On social media, people share their photos, their lives, their thoughts and feelings, and so on. Social media can be said to be another form of human expression of self-identity. However, everyone wants to be more beautiful and perfect, and this common goal has given birth to the “filter”. The birth of “filters”. A so-called filter is a tool that can directly make the picture in the camera more exquisite and beautiful when humans take pictures and is a kind of technology that modern humans are very much in pursuit of and love.

The feeling that social media brings to human beings is like the feeling that a filter gives to human beings. On social media, you will see many different people sharing a wonderful and sophisticated life. You will see your favorite bloggers sharing their lives, excellent grades, rich practical activities, fashionable clothes, fulfilling studies, and so on. While gaining satisfaction, you will also unconsciously start to compare your own life. Because people spend the most time with themselves, at all times you are observing yourself, so it is absolutely true, then you will feel inferior – why my life is not like this. Similarly, when you take a picture with a filter, you look so good and perfect in the camera, but when you remove the filter, you start to feel sad because of the contrast.

Life under the heavy filter constitutes social media.

Social media is a new form of filter.

Introducing Human Technology

Think about introducing a traditional custom to a person from another culture speaking a different language. That would be hard, not only because not speaking a common language, but also because of the lack of shared cultural background and experience. What about introducing it to an alien who has a different language system and thinking system? 

In Story of Your Life, the alien whose body structure doesn’t have a front and back, possesses a language that is completely different from human’s. Their writing and speaking language is separate and without a linear concept. Perhaps in their culture, there is no consequence and result. Imagine how we can introduce human technology to them.

When we discussed how we are going to demonstrate what a filter is on social media and how it works, we struggled a lot on how to explain the process of “before and after” of the function of this human technology. Because in the language as well as the worldview of the aliens, they don’t consist of a linear sense. They may not know to read from right to left, nor from up to down. And of course using arrows would not make sense even though it’s the one of the most effective ways to express information in human language. So instead, we gave up the idea of explaining the relationship of consequence and result, and focused on how it would be like to perform such technology. 

We tried to explain the filter inside of a phone screen in this way:

In the image we created, we put in two faces. One represents the real self, and the one with the filter, which is framed inside a box. The latter is a “better” and “upgraded” version of the former. It has cute cat ears, eyes with long lashes, a taller nose and red lipstick on. In this sense, we hope to let the alien understand that this technology we introduce is something that can make one’s face in another space different. And there are some circles at the bottom of the box, which is a cell phone, that represent options of different filters. The biggest circle in the middle shows that it is the one being used. And we hoped to convey the idea that when it’s selected, the filter that shows on the face (or “things” that appear on the face) will correspond to the graphics in the circle.

 

Some color schemes are inspired from random stuff in my dorm room when I was making them. Some are corresponds to the movie and cartoons I’ve watched. For example, the first group at the up right corner is from the Disney movie Beauty and the Beast, and the middle one on the sencond column is from the Disney cartnoon Mickey Mouse. Some are from famous paintings. For instance the two in the middle of the right column are reference from Girl with a Pearl Earring and Impression Sunrise.