Category: Digital + Sculpture

The Awareness of Sound

First of all, I’m interested in the fact that we often take sound information for granted and prioritize visual elements. I noticed this phenomenon during a course I took last semester called “Hearing the Moving Images” which focuses on analyzing the music and sound effects in moving images such as movies and video games. In many of the readings that I read during that class, no matter if they are talking about a movie-related album or a particular movie, the analysis of the actual sounds and musical elements are surprisingly missing. Also, when making a video myself (in “Communications Lab”), I often forgot to think about the sounds in the video unless emphasized. Sound information is often-time left out and visual information is usually what we focus on.

The Contemporary “Onlooker Mentality”  (“看客心理”)

Secondly, I also found the “Onlooker Mentality”  (“看客心理”) interesting. This is a term that is translated from one of the most important themes in Lu Xun (鲁迅), one of the most famous writers in modern China. It is used to describe a phenomenon in modern China where people are very numb and indifferent to what the people around them are suffering from and how badly the country has been invaded. Although this is a term brought up about a century ago, I feel like it’s something that is still happening in contemporary China, given the current situation. For example, a recent incident where a woman is abducted and trafficked to an underdeveloped village speaks directly to this “onlooker mentality”.

The incident: The “husband”, who is also the person that abducted and trafficked and chained the woman, and forced her to give birth to 8 children in a very short period of time, is praised by many people on social media for being so good at raising so many children and work “so hard” to let his children get educated (people on social media don’t know about the victim at first). On seeing that, many media companies went to sign contracts with him to make more money out of his story, even though they saw what happened to the victim. Fortunately, thanks to the efforts made by people online and some NPC members, the local government finally sentenced the “husband”. However, there are more women being abducted and trafficked in this village and maybe more in other places in China. But how many people, like the people from the media companies who just want to make money, neglected the severe problem and just be so indifferent? 

The Consolidation of Stereotypes in Social Media

I’m also interested in how many people on social media develop their fame by consolidating stereotypes, be it regional stereotypes or gender stereotypes. I found this interesting because when I was watching videos on “bilibili” and “the red book”, I found that many posters send videos that are highly stereotypical and they are all very popular. For example, I saw some videos like “how a girl would react when she…”, “what would a person from Guangdong eat”, and they are all in videos that are very stereotypical. Thus, I wonder how and why social media, especially these videos, consolidate stereotypes and what harm does it make to society.

Discuss your first project based on the reading, research on other artworks, and write a blog post

Concept of Project 1

I choose to use balloons as my major objects to make changes to. I’m planning on putting some disposable chopsticks inside the balloon to stretch the balloon out. And then the balloon would be put into a wooden box to make it looks as if the balloon is occupying the box because the chopsticks are stretching it.

By making this project, I want to indicate that we are often passively shaped by society, the culture, and even the people around us, into what is considered as “normal”. It could also be extended to indicating anything that is “stretched” by an undesired force into an unnatural form.

Inspiration & References

I learned it from the reading “Forms of Readymade: Duchamp and Brancusi” by Rosalind Krauss that readymades use given objects and deconstruct them to give the objects with new meanings and deprive them of their original functions. In both Duchamp and Brancusi’s artworks, materials are very important factors to think about before making the artwork. For example, Brancusi likes to polish his sculptures because the reflection of the environment around the artwork is a very important part of his artworks. Simultaneously, how the objects that are chosen to make the artwork is positioned and structured is also of great significance. For example, if “Fountain” by Duchamp is not positioned upside down, its goal of arousing the audiences’ “cyclical form of a quandary (Krauss 78)” won’t be achieved.

Thus, when conceptualizing this project, I paid close attention to the materials used and the position of objects.

For materials (objects), I took reference from the German conceptual artist Hans Hemmert, who is famous for making artworks out of balloons.

Hans Hemmert makes use of the unique soft but elastic properties of the balloon to make a lot of his artworks. In his works, I see the great potential of the balloon as it could be seen as both the separation and connection of the two spaces–the space inside the balloon (“Saturday afternoon, at home in Neukölln”) and the space outside the balloon (“o.T. – Yellow sculpture fitting to Julie”). Whatever the things inside do to the balloon could be seen by people outside, and vice versa. The elastic nature of the balloons could be interpreted and utilized in many ways.

Thus, taken from Hans Hemmert’s idea to utilize the balloon’s elastic nature, I decided to utilize both the inside and outside spaces of the balloon: the chopsticks stick out from the inside and stretch the balloon to an irregular shape to indicate the unnatural force that someone experiences; a box restricts the balloon from the outside to “regulate” something into the “norm”.

As for the positioning of the objects, I pay special attention to how the chopsticks inside the balloon are positioned because the chopsticks are the objects that mostly create the uncomfortable shape of the project. I plan to use 4 chopsticks to create 8 projections on the balloon. Each side of the box would have at least 1 projection and 2 for the opened side, which is intended to indicate that the force is trying to make the balloon fit the whole space of the box.

Work cited:

1. “Forms of Readymade: Duchamp and Brancusi”, Rosalind Krauss
2. “Interview with Hans Hemmert“, Anita Malhotra

Project Concept

There are mainly 2 ideas that I have come up with so far and they both share the same concept. That is, as people leaving in society, we are often passively shaped by society, the culture, and even the people around us, into what is considered as “normal”. However, this process of being shaped by the environment around us is usually not the best way to live a life. Instead, perhaps finding the inner passion and vitality in us is what could make us full.

Idea 1

Changes

For the first idea, I would like to stretch a balloon by using some clips. The clips hold tight onto the balloon and some strings tie the clips onto a frame to make the balloon stretch to its limit.

How

1. The clips that I have are not strong enough to hold the balloon when stretching it, so I think I need some glue to attach the clips to the balloon.
2. The frame that is used to tie the clips would be made out of wood I suppose.
3. To stretch the balloon requires a very strong force, so I think the frame and the strings (maybe iron wire) should be quite strong in order to manage it.

Idea 2

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Changes

For the second idea, I’m thinking about putting some disposable chopsticks inside the balloon so that the chopsticks seem to be stretching out the balloon from the inside. And then the balloon would be put into a wooden box which is open on one side to show the balloon.

How

1. I would put the chopsticks inside the balloon when it’s blown and then release some of the air to make the chopsticks stick out a little.
2. Because the balloon would easily blow up when maintaining the status like the picture on the right, I’ll have to find a way to strengthen the balloon so it doesn’t blow up so easily.
3. For the wooden box, I would make it out of the materials in the woodshop.