Ken's Documentation Blog

Remade in China Week 3 Journal

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Last Sunday, our team discussed our ideas for the art installation and I recorded them on paper. We also interviewed some of the community members and Angela recorded their words as some of them are speaking Shanghainese which Huaze and I didn’t understand. In this journal, we separated our works, and each of us was in charge of writing one part. I was in charge of part I, Angela was in charge of part II, and Huaze was in charge of part III.

I. Installation

For the journal and the idealization process, our group (New Garden) came up with three ideas that revolved around the concepts of the role of plastic in our environment and daily life. These include the creation of an enclosed space, a buddha statue, and the created experience of a secret garden. We thought about how our interaction with these physical objects or conceptual experiences and how replacing it with trash can advocate new meanings. All of these ideas will be listed below.

Idea 1: 

Name: Plastic World

What it is: The plan is to create an open half-sphere which will serve the purpose of an enclosed space that is approximately 2 meters in diameter and 1.2 meters tall which is created through tying water bottles together. This enclosed space will have an entrance in which the viewer/audience can crawl inside to experience this space. Within this space there will be mini human models that are formed by trash, mainly plastic, to show the nature of inhabitation on earth by humans. 

Materials: Plastic bottles, litter (any e.g. plastic bags, paper bags, utensils, etc.), and strings.

How the materials are collected: We have already collected this trash and it is in a locker.

Concept: The concept of this installation is to first propose how plastic consumption causes us humans to become plastic in the first place, represented by the humans. To explore the effect of plastic on the world, we created it to be a smaller space, that’s hard to get into to represent our excessive plastic usage. This surrounding also represents how we are surrounded by trash to raise awareness of trash creation. Lastly, the interaction of crawling with the installation signifies the difficulty of living in such a world as it has already been shrinking our possible living space. This difficulty also brings with it, discomfort of entering such a space, reflecting the nature of trash as obstructive to our personal lives as well as to the world.

Idea 2: 

Name: Plastic Religion

What it is: The plan is to create a plastic interpretation of a Buddha statue meditating, approximately one meters in height. This is created with tying water bottles together as well as using trash for establishing this centralized core. This object isn’t one that interacts with the viewer physically, but interacts mentally with the viewer regarding the status of plastic as well as the relationship with religion.

Materials: Plastic bottles, litter (any e.g. plastic bags, paper bags, utensils, etc.), and strings.

How the materials are collected: We have already collected this trash and it is in a locker.

Concept: The concept of this installation is to first create the interpretation of plastic as a religion in which the materials that make the religious statue are plastic itself. This is meant to create the sensation that plastic, as a material, is something that is worshipped and widespread among society. Moreover with Buddhism being a more recognized and followed religion in China, it is meant to create a sensation of discomfort about the presentation of Buddha as plastic as it seems unjust and rather provocative to create this representation. It is thus argued that this discomfort should create awareness of our plastic consumption as it creates inquiry into what the role of plastic is in our lives. Is it trash or has this trash become our religion?

Idea 3: 

Name: The Secret Garden

What it is: The plan is to create an conceptual secret garden utilizing the fake walls of IMA studio and creating it to be like a laundry line where all the laundry is hung up. Rather than laundry, trash is hung as a part of the experience to get into the garden, exposing the audience to the trash of the garden. Once they reach the garden, it is a space where plastic is used to mimic a garden.

Materials: Plastic bottles, litter (any e.g. plastic bags, paper bags, utensils, etc.), and strings.

How the materials are collected: We have already collected this trash and it is in a locker.

Concept: The concept of this installation is to create a garden made of trash to illustrate a reality of a lot of greenspace in the world. Even in our experience of going to the new garden, there was trash everywhere. In this sense, we wanted to create the plastic garden of trash to promote awareness of this idea. Furthermore, the plastic plants in the garden are to show how plastic has become a part of our greenery and nature. It creates the narrative that plastic is the environment itself through the plants. Hence, in doing so, the focus of the garden becomes to be more of an awareness space of how trash consumption contributes to such an environment. 

II. Community Research Progress

Last week, we conducted a workshop to teach members of the community about the waste problem and how they could recycle plastic bags. After the workshop, we had an additional interview using the 5 why principle taught in class by guest speaker Gabriele Tempesta with the community members who came . A problem we met was that it was difficult to ask more than 3 whys as people started to repeat things or talk about topics that are totally unrelated to the garden. Below were some main points we recorded during the interview.

(Conversation with Mrs. Lee)

Student: Can you talk about your daily routine? Especially the ones relate to our garden?

Mrs. Lee: Every morning, I go to the community space to do exercise and then go to the little garden to take a look.

Student: So why don’t you do exercise in the little garden? What is the problem?

Mrs. Lee: You know, the problem of high toss act has been existed in the little garden. Everyday, when I walk through the garden, I just can’t stop to think about I might be hurt by those rubbish so I walk really quickly and don’t stay at there long. I believe that many community members would have the similar idea and that’s why the little garden’s space could not be efficiently used.

Student: If the problem of high toss is frustrating to you, why do you still go to the garden everyday? Why you still like it?

Mrs. Lee: This is because that one of the people who throw rubbish from high floor has already been caught and the others are warned. Moreover, besides this problem, I feel the little garden is just like my home. It is well designed, and give me a warm feeling. The parking area for cars is quite large and has less probability for high toss problem. I like to go there.

(Conversation with Mrs. Yu)

Student: Can you talk about your daily routine? Especially the ones related to our garden?

Mrs. Yu: I walk in the garden with my mother who is 92 years old and sit on a wheelchair. 

Student: Why do you like to do this activity in the garden?

Mrs. Yu: The garden is quiet and there are usually less people in the garden so I find it to be a good place. To further explain, the walking path is quite narrow. If there are too much people in the little garden, it would be difficult for me to walk with my mom who is sitting on a wheel chair. 

Student: As you mentioned, there are usually less people in the garden, why?

Mrs. Yu: I believe that this is because the garden building program was finished in last winter and the government don’t let us to build a glass house which could make people feel less cold. When people first came to the garden and realized that it was too cold and uncomfortable to stay long, they left and didn’t form the habit to visit the garden frequently.

Student: However, since you have mentioned before that this is not a problem to you as you like how less people come to the garden, I wonder what’s the part you don’t like about the garden?

Mrs. Yu: I don’t like the parking lot and won’t walk my mom to there. I feel the air quality is not good there due to the cars. Moreover, the littering of trash actions from high floors is terrible.

Here are two main problems we concluded that occurred in the little garden

  • Appearance Problems
    • Inconsistency: The grape trellis and the pavilion is not at the same height.
    • Out-dated Decoration: the lanterns are small and old; some of them are broken.
    • Emptiness: The garden still seem quite simple and empty. There are not much flowers in the garden. Many places including the grass area and the downside part of the grape trellis could be added withe more flowers and other decorations.
    • Messiness: there are some trash around the area as well as problem of incorrect parking.
  • Usage Problems
    • Safety Issue: The problem of high toss act threats people’s safety.
    • Environmental Constrain: The climate and weather problem including too hot in summer, too cold in winter, and wet seats in rainy days makes people less likely to come. Too much Mosquitos is also a serious problem.
    • Personal Difference: Different stake holders have different needs. For example, some residents like the garden to be quiet and simple as it is now while some others feel that more efficient usage of the garden would be better.
    • Inconvenience: The incorrect car parking act cause people’s inconvenience as the roads in the garden are quite narrow and could be easily blocked.

In our opinion, the appearance problems are easier to be fixed while the usage problems are more important but hard to be fixed by using the techniques we learnt. Next week, We will discuss about choosing which and develop the ideas of our designs.

III. Storyboard

Drawing

The following picture presents the storyboard for documentary. It includes types of media, the name of the file, and the narration for each clip.
The overall organization of storyboard is as follows:

Introduction of New Garden

The overall components of New Garden
The comparison between the Garden that has not been transformed and the New Garden

Problems that we identified:

Lamps: Mr. Yu recommended us to make new lamps for pavilion.
Fallen hangers & trashes: there were surveillance cameras everywhere in New Garden, but the problems of fallen hangers and high-toss actions were not completely avoided.
Tea spot: Mr. Yu desired to set a tea spot in the pavilion and he wanted to avoid noisy activities such as playing chess, which was a common activity in the neighborhood.

Remade In China Week 2 Journal

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Reflection on Guest Speaker (Mr. Yan):

When Mr. Yan, a trash worker, presented to us last week discussing the topic of recycling, many things were learned which included the items that could be recycled and the choice of recycled products. While my initial impression was that all items that could be recycled are taken to be recycled, Mr. Yan showed us differently when he quickly sorted out the items to recycle where plastics and some bottles weren’t even taken into consideration. This is due to the specific facilities for recycling in Shanghai where only certain types can be taken to be recycled at specific sites. Due to plastic having different temperatures of burning, the choice of products to be recycled is also limited. If they were mixed, it would cause plastics to be considered as other or even change the use of plastic from being recyclable to only be single use. Furthermore, I learned that single use plastics couldn’t be recycled and were more utilized for only one purpose. In this sense, I felt that our consumerist disposable society is failing in protecting our resources as we value convenience for trash that would affect the ecosystem. Essentially, from this my view changed from being someone that just thinks that recycling can resolve issues to someone that understands that not everything “recyclable” can be recycled. This essentially changes.my perspective on my consumerism actions where I aim to focus more on using reusable items rather than items for convenience e.g. mugs rather than single use cups. 

Reflection on Reading (Plastic: A Love Story):

With reference to the reading, I feel that it provided me a very good understanding of how plastic was brought in to be used in society, how it was protested, and how such a harmful object is being protected by agencies. Firstly, the use of plastic as a disposable, recyclable object was one thing that stood out to me as it was previously intended to do so. This, however, is countered by the reality that plastics aren’t actually recycled and more so become trash that spreads in our oceans and harms marine life. While plastic was marketed as recyclable, the usage of plastic wasn’t sustainable for the ecosystem especially when it became mass produced and widespread within the system. Due to it being widespread and something that affects the world to a high degree, certain legislative actions were made to stop the actions, most prominent would be the bans of plastic bags. This, however, wasn’t in the interest of the plastic monopolies, hence the agencies began to protect plastic bags from being banned by promoting the environmental benefits of plastic as compared to paper without considering the affects that plastic has on life and the life cycle of plastic as trash that remains for forever. My position from reading this is that I feel strongly about the politics of plastic as this issue isn’t just an environmental one, but it has become a political, economic, and social issue. While I do not promote the usage of plastic, I do, however, suggest that plastic is used in some cases for multi-use products as it is still very much durable.  This way, the advantages of plastic are used. While I do believe that the advantages should be utilized such as durability, the mass production and consumption of plastic as a single-use product essentially creates the loss of value and reason to use a product that harms the environment to a high degree. While plastic does conserve greenhouse emissions and water, the effects it has on the evolutionary and biological aspect of humans and the ecosystem can be accentuated from a microscale to macroscale which would defer the entire purpose of utilizing such a product. Hence, I would want to minimize my use of single use products so that it can cause less issues to the environment. 

Ken’s Meeting Journal:

Participants: Mr. Xu, Angela Zhang, Huaze Shao, and Ken Wu

Time: 2:00pm to 3:30pm Sept. 12

Purpose: Knowing Mr. Xu and being connected to this community, observing and learning about the surroundings, understanding the habits and uses of the garden space, and finding out the needs of the community and the service that can be offered. 

What I learned about Mr. Xu:

  • Mr. Xu is a 72 year old man with a kind and spirited personality who introduced us to the community that he’d been living in for over 28 years.
  • He was previously a teacher at 22 years old teaching in vocational school on the subjects of Chinese Politics and Marxism for ten years.
  • Afterwards, he came to Pudong, Shanghai, for work where it was rather rural at the time, being a land for farming. He’d seen the development of Shanghai in his time of work and is now retired like many other people in the community. 
  • In his free time after retirement, Mr. Xu has attended photography class and was honored as a monitor. 
  • In addition, he is the director of the committee of property management in the fifth building of the community. 
  • His family is also very talented where his daughter is a professor at a university while his son-in-law is a doctor. He has a grandchild who is currently 13, and a mother-in-law who’s currently 92. They live together and experience life together, bringing happiness to his mother-in-law and taking care of her. 

The background information about the community:

  • The buildings in the community are around 28 years old. The buildings served as model houses in which many communities of Pudong are based upon. 
  • The buildings can resist Level 10 Earthquake.
  • Each building has its own garden space, but not every garden space is utilized at the moment. Currently, the sixth building’s garden isn’t utilized yet. 
  • Most garden spaces are grown with weeds and used as a place to throw rubbish where the fifth building had encountered a lot of problems with littering. 
  • The garden we are in charge of  is the 5th building’s garden. While there was a major issue with litter, the garden was reconstructed by Mr. Xu and the people in the community to be the way it is now. 
  • There are 176 families in the 5th building. Half of the space is rented. The residents are mostly retired.

What else happened at the meeting? What did you notice?

  • We noticed a lot of litter and trash that wasn’t managed by the community. This is especially prominent for areas that are neglected or were neglected before. 
  • Some trash included laundry racks which wasn’t cleaned up.

  • In addition, cats aren’t particularly welcomed in the garden as their poop has acidity which makes the greenery die. 
  • Due to litter, a lot of surveillance cameras were installed to prevent littering from occurring. Most prominently, there were cameras that were not only pointed towards the garden, but also towards the building itself. 
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  • There are also parking spot for cars (16 spots, 300 yuan/year) as well as for electric bikes where people can pay 1 yuan to charge for 4 hours. 

     

  • There’s also a 2 garden pavilions that were bought but aren’t the same size. Currently, it’s not being utilized well as people are parking their items in the pavilion and not using this as a social space. 
  • There are some lamps hanging on the grape trellis. Mr. Xu wanted to change them into some new ones, preferably larger ones. 
  • Mr. Xu also suggested that maybe there should be some baskets of flowers on the grape trellis in which the space becomes more like a garden area rather than just a space for rest. 
  • While utilization of the space could be used for playing cards or board games, the preference of the community is to have tea. This is because playing these recreational aspects could create more litter for the garden and disrupt the restfulness of the community
  • There are several automatic sprinkler in the garden which is used to manage the cultivation.

What I would like to learn more about and how to find out?

  • Mr. Xu told us that the government was going to improved the community in the recent days including some walls would be removed. I would like to know how that will change the appearance of the garden or affect us providing the service.
  • We only met Mr. Xu and I would like to learn more about the other community members and their opinions towards the garden.
  • Moreover, I personally would like the plans of the garden, specifically the size of the pavilion space as to plan for better usage of it. 
  • Lastly, I would want to learn more about how the garden is managed. For example, if there is a worker like Mr. Yan who picks up all the trash and cleans up the leaves. 

What would I do to find out about these questions?

  • I think that visiting the garden again and communicating more with Mr. Xu could allow us to acquire these answers

How did you feel about the meeting? 

  • A lot was learned and I feel like we have a general idea of what we could do to benefit the community. 
  • I will personally focus more on the garden space itself when and if we have another chance to meet with Mr. Xu and the community. I would prefer to focus on how others utilize the space and see it be used in their life. 

This is the file of the other photos/videos we took, click if you are interested in this project:

Fiction Novel

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Brave New World by Alvous Huxley is a dystopian social science fiction novel that revolves around the concepts of happiness, sex and love, truth, and authoritarian control. The novel revolves around a social caste system in the World State where people are technologically produced and are placed into castes – Alpha, Beta, Delta, Epsilon, and Gamma – which determine their intelligence level and role in society. In this world, the means of reproduction are through technology in which people can be mass produced and developed in facilities. This eliminates familial relationships in the world where the people of this world are individualistic and are for the purpose of advancing the state rather than become distracted in inefficient relationships that stall progress. In addition, the world views sex as not a form of procreation, but as leisure and entertainment thus the focus of society is not put on the individual relationships that do not exist, but rather on the collective happiness and satisfaction of society. Rather than traditional foods, this world revolves around Soma, a drug that causes happiness and good dreams, as the source of creating happiness in society. This is essentially the society that the novel revolves upon.

In this novel, Bernard Marx is an Alpha member that has more liberties and travels outside the World State to a place known as a “savage reservation” where they meet John and his mother, Linda. These two individuals are known as savages as they do not follow the customs of the World State, suffer unhappiness, and pain. It turns out that Linda is the wife of the Director of the human production factories who bore a son which is violation of law and John is the son of the director. These two individuals are then brought back to the World State as an experiment, but John often loses control of himself to preserve the life he knows. This includes the right to love, to happiness, to pain, to death, to sadness, and much more, rather than conform to the life of happiness, recreation, and falsehood of the World State. The story ends with John killing himself due to the not being able to attain the love he desires from this society. 

I personally felt that this novel was immersive in the sense that it revolves around real human needs and desires of happiness and love. When an eternally happy world is introduced, it doesn’t create the sensation of a utopia. It creates the sensation of a dystopia. It creates questions for me, the reader. Is artificial unconscious means of happiness actually happiness? Does taking a drug still preserve the reality in which I live or do drugs alter the reality and subconscious creating the illusion of happiness. Is an illusion of happiness true happiness? These are questions that made me feel immersed in the narrative to the extent that it solidified my philosophy and beliefs. It made me trust that this sort of society of authoritarianism and artificial happiness is a violation of human nature. It made me trust in the value of human relationships, whether destructive, obstructive, sincere, and mischievous to have a worth about them. While such a society where relationships isn’t real, the lack of intimate relationships caused this immersion into the narrative as it creates a lot of opportunities of imagination for me. To conclude, in a sense, it sort of reminds me of the colonialism of the 18th and 19th century in Africa in which the West tried to force their way of life on the African countries. They tried to justify the right and the wrong, the etiquette, and the belief systems. I felt this sort of reality within Brave New World as the dehumanization of colonialism is parallel to the dehumanization of civilians in the World State.

Introduction to Service Learning

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I would consider service learning is a balance of academic learning and service where the intention is to provide service to others while learning skills throughout the process. Even in the case that skills aren’t learned, the reflection of the service could cause learning for the individual which is an important factor that differentiates service learning from volunteering or community service. In a sense, there’s sort of a reciprocal relation between the student and the recipient of service where they serve but are also served the experience of learning. This essentially means that I commit myself to providing a service for the recipient, being the people of Weifang Residence mentioned in class, where I am in a communicative relationship with them. I am to understand their needs and provide a service such as a creation of a product that can be of use to them. As for the relationship of faculty to service learning, they are more of the facilitators that provide the students the learning for creating the service while the DSS program is more of a support system that can interconnect the service provider and the service recipient. 

I feel that a simple reason for devoting my time is that I want to learn how to serve others and try to create change within the community that I live in. Being a design student, the initial purpose of design is to help make people’s lives easier, better, or stimulate people’s thinking. Due to this, I should focus on the people for designing which is a major part of this course. Moreover, this course also goes over sustainable design, recycling and design as a whole. This is a major interest of mine to learn sustainable design process which would be a service to the community ecologically if I practice green design more in the future. The last reason that I want to devote my time to community service is that it’s much more directed to helping others rather than providing a service to others. What I mean by this is that the type of service delivered is one of aid rather than previous experiences of mine being the type of consumerist service.

Invisible Cities

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1. Phyllis Cities & Eyes 4

Phyllis is described as a city which is a joy to look at, but becomes a source of devastation for the inhabitants as they cannot go to other cities. While the inhabitants are initially happy, the essence of being confined to within the boundaries of this city where one loses sight of oneself and sight of their surroundings causes dissatisfaction. They become like a mechanical robot that is forced to follow the same routine each day, being pulled in by the void of devastation and hopelessness. The essence of being imprisoned within the city causes the loss of sight of the physical city where it has the sensation of being invisible other than the necessary path that the human inhabitant must take to work. In this sense the human is disconnected from the world as a part of the world without sensation of the world. 

From this point of view, I think this city could also be an illusion to the perspective of a slave in which they arrive at a new lands only to be notified that they cannot leave and return to their past home. This essence of being confined to Phyllis, to only work for Phyllis, and to follow the routine of Phyllis, all creates the feeling of the perspective of a slave that has just arrived at Jamestown, Virginia. Likewise, this could explain the gaze of people on the man, much like the gaze of the settlers of Jamestown on the slaves. The slaves, in their imprisoned situation, can only focus on the gaze of their routine rather than the gaze of their surroundings as this doesn’t matter to them anymore. 

This is depicted in my interpretive drawing in which I create the drawing to be more of a first person perspective of the man. Rather than seeing a physical object, they are blinded mentally and psychologically by the void of imprisonment in which they can only move towards it. This void is portrayed as having some tints of white, but the overall composition is black to mirror the hopelessness of the man. There are red and green tints within the composition to create this slight intensity of contrast to highlight the intensity of hopelessness felt where the colors are distant rather than close. From this, the general perspective of Phyllis would be that it is an endless void for this inhabitant much like the interpretation I have of it as a slave’s perspective of Jamestown.

2. Zobeide Cities & Desires 5

Zobeide is described as a city that’s dreamed of and pursued by men due to them having the identical dream of a naked woman. The people in the dream pursued this naked woman only to have this naked woman disappear. The people go to this city to pursue the women, but are in dismay that the women doesn’t appear. They change the floor plans to what they saw in their dream, but likewise there wasn’t any luck. Even when new people came, they couldn’t find this reality where they also changed the city to meet the details of their dream. Essentially this creates the narrative of hope and the destruction of hope through the nature of reality. Even as the men wait for their dreams to be fulfilled, they become trapped and pulled by this illusion of desire which ultimately causes the bane of them. 

From this point of view, I feel that this city is more of a narrative of the selfish nature of humanity to acquire the wants of their life where it kind of resembles the desires of past kings and kingdoms to find the fountain of youth. Therefore, I feel that this sort of resembles the Bahamas historically which was proclaimed to have such a fountain of youth that was sought by the world. This is also a metaphorical aspect of the fleets of explorers that the King of Spain sent to the New World in order to find this fountain of youth. Therefore, rather than a naked women being the object of pursuit, it is a metaphor to allude to the riches and wealth that was provided by the King of Spain if such an object was discovered. This sort of dream proposed by the King of Spain would drive many explorers to listlessly pursue this fountain of youth only to be disappointed by the reality that it doesn’t exist and that they become trapped within this pursuit of the dream. 

This concept of being trapped by the city or the dream is essentially depicted in my drawing of Zobeide in which I abstractly portray a human being pulled by the city of dreams, creating this imitation of being a captive of the dream. I utilize this wave motion around the human to allude to the illusion of a reality wrapping around them which refers to the woman in the dream. Having the waves as a wrap around the human would then create the interpretation of being confined by the barriers of their illusion which was true of the men in Zobeide. Furthermore, I depict the human in the drawing to be emitting color as a representation of the craze of human desire to grasp an illusion. Likewise, I feel that this craze of human desire from an illusion or reward is contagious hence the usage of speckles as a reference to a tool of stimulating craze to the surrounding atmosphere. 

3. Zora Cities & Memories 4

Zora is a city that explores the paradox of time within a city. It’s described as a city that none can forget, yet at the present, it’s a city that none can remember. This paradox of detail is due to the passing of time that has occurred where the city has been destroyed and is lost in the memories of people rather than a physicality of memory. In this sense, the city of the present is empty and only exists in the psychological sphere of humanity. Even as its existence persists the knowledge of this city is lessened and lost due to the lack of contact with this city. This essence of lack of conscientiousness and fogginess towards city of Zora emulates the disappearance of the city overall which is metaphorically described “languishing, disintegrating, and disappearing” physically before disappearing from earth’s memory mentally. 

From this principle of physicality existing and mentally existing, I think this city touches upon the concept of existence in itself where memories, otherwise known as history, are the only things that can allow us to live. When this city is described as having been forgotten, the existence is lost, which reminds me very much of the historical city of Pompeii which was destroyed by the volcano. While Pompeii was a physical city, all details of it could be memorized and be known as it was a physical essence. All the historical aspects of details being the names of the men, wars, and others also relate well to the city of Pompeii. After it disappeared physically from being enshrouded by volcanic ash, what’s left is the memory of it which gets hazier and hazier as time passes until it’s forgotten as a whole. Likewise, there are other cities like Pompeii which are buried by history much like the biblical cities of Sodom and Gomorrah that have had their riches destroyed. 

For my depiction of Zora, I focused on the interpretation and feeling of Zora, this city, as hazy and disconnected with time. Utilizing numbers within the background, I create this impression of the movement and progression of time which is being lost from earth by losing its presence in the mental state of humans. In this sense, I hope to capture the feeling of losing sight and memory of the physical state of Zora where the city doesn’t take the status and presence as a facade but as a haze covered state where the city is merely a mental thought rather than a physical state.

4. Anastasia Cities & Desires 2

Anastasia is described as a city that appears to be desirable and a dream city, but the essence of being part of the city causes you to lose that impression of desire as you become a slave within the city system. This essentially creates the narrative of being a puppet within the puppeteer system where the inhabitants believe that they are completing their individual wills and desires through action but unfortunately are constrained by the system itself where they can only move and operate within the boundaries of the system with the impression of having autonomy. In this sense, Anastasia becomes a rather dark city as the inhabitants are programmed to contribute in what they believe is desirable while in reality it’s a living hell.

From this point of view, I think this city is a representation of modern metropolis in general as the urban cities are seen as gateways to a desirable life only to be met with the difficulties of that life where they cannot really feel the benefits of the city. An example of this might be Shanghai or New York in which people may be chasing their dream of making it big only to find the sad truth that they are only part of the working system in such a lucrative society. For instance, when people go to New York, they may face the reality of having to work strenuous hours without making any progress in achieving their big time dreams. 

This is essentially depicted in my interpretive drawing of Anastasia as a facade to communicate the concept of Anastasia to be a place where one may believe that they see the city only to be met with the sad reality that it is merely a facade, just like how they believe that they could achieve their desires only to be met with the reality of their situation. In this interpretive drawing, I illustrated the city itself as being a place of captivity where the boxes enclose the city from the exterior much like how the people are enclosed by their speculation of success in the city of desires. In this sense not only is the city as a facade a symbol of not seeing the reality from the desire, but the enclosed boxes reflect the speculation of achieving one’s desires which adds another level of enclosure. This sort of city, I interpret, would give off a dark contagious vibe of opportunity, hence the portrayal of the city as emitting this dark desire.

Why is this authentic?

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Artifact: Chauvet Cave Art

Panel of the Lions (Detail), Chauvet Cave

Source: Public Domain. “Panel of Lions, Chauvet Cave.” World History Encyclopedia, www.worldhistory.org/Chauvet_Cave/.

The Chauvet Cave is a Palaeolithic cave in Vallon-Pont-d’Arc of Southern France. This cave contains 35,000 year old works of art that were completed by our ancestors, showing various painted and engraved animals throughout the cave. In this sense, all the work in this cave is dated and preserved naturally from degradation. I’d argue that this artifact is authentic due to radiocarbon dating tests that have been completed, the natural state of nature to preserve such artifacts, and the setting of the cave itself before discovery. Firstly, radiocarbon dating tests have been completed on this work to prove that this work has not just been completed within the years or couple decades as the carbon test estimates the years to be over 35,000 years old. From this scientific means of proving, the authenticity level is high as this process of testing can be replicated to achieve the same or similar results. Next, this state of conservation for the cave paintings can be explained scientifically by the nature of caves itself where the temperature is maintained without having external influence. Due to the air condition being different from the inside and outside as well as caves maintaining a cooler temperature, the cave paintings do have the potential to not be touched for years. In addition, the history of the cave is that the entrance of the cave had collapsed which would mean that humans couldn’t have contact with these paintings. In this sense, as it hasn’t been touched by humans and is preserved naturally by the surrounding conditions, this work has the characteristics of being authentic.

If this artifact had the possibility to be fake, I would argue that people may argue that the lack of observation could be a factor of authenticity. In this sense, people would be skeptical if this artifact were actually real due to the laws in place to protect it from being entered by individuals. This would mean that this sort of cave painting and news could be fabricated to be a protected heritage and history artifact when it actually is a fake to promote the “art” of France. There is also another key factor being that due to this cave never having been opened to the public, there is a lack of verification from the public to determine the authenticity of the cave where the public can only visit a replica of this cave which is unauthentic in itself. From this lack of authenticity, it would be argued that this work isn’t real if the source of observed verification is a fake of knowledge itself.

 

NIME Final Documentation

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Title: 

EMIN – Pilgrimage 

Project Description

The Final NIME Project envisioned by Bruce and me revolves around exploring visual art, movement, and music composition in an avant-garde manner. From one aspect of music composition, we intermingled contemporary forms of spacial music with religious music representing more ancient form of music composition. This connection between the two highlights two factors of our composition: the dynamic nature of time and its relation with musical expression as well as the experimentation with integrating the old with the new.

From focusing on time with religion, contemporary and ancient, the idea of pilgrimage arose which contributed to the musical atmosphere of sacred, mysterious, mesmerizing, and barrier associated with pilgrimage. Our project would then have to contain more hypnotic movements to create this type of pilgrimage mood. This would be incorporated in some aspects of the visual components to be more consistent rather than impromptu. Of course, this type of concept of pilgrimage would also affect the technical aesthetic of stage presence where I would create short circuits to resemble chains that contributed to religious commitment and captivity that pilgrimage also encapsulates. 

The inspiration for this project in the musical aspect has many odes to Steve Reich’s additive minimalism as well as Radigue’s simplistic minimalism in which sound modulates. This modulation is a reference to time modulation that was a very abstract concept of our piece. Moreover, there was also external sources of inspiration that Bruce and I each had where my inspiration was more from Hans Zimmer’s Cornfield Chase which is strictly additive and flowing in composition but always returns to fragments of the beginning which was the presentation of time that we wanted to express as something that moves without reference to direction. The inspiration for the visuals of soft circuits was my communications lab photography project where I utilized strings to represent the bondage and captivity of the individual which fit really well with the pilgrimage concept. As for the table installation, I was inspired by Marcel DuChamp’s Dadaism with the ready mades and wanted to innovate the expression of Dadaism for visual captivation from the audience. Combining these two, it becomes more of a contemporary installation in which the captive (me) playing the instrument (soft circuit and knob) shows this pilgrimage practice. 

Perspective and Context

For this project’s connections to the NIME landscape, there are allusions to Tanaka with the visual and sound connection and sound development with Radigue and Reich. With reference to Tanaka, his artistic and stylistic relationship of instrument and stage presence was realized in our project. With his theory of “the balance between logical and intuition”, Bruce and I first devised the relationship of our instrument to have a natural manner to be played to contribute to part of the composition in which my soft circuit chains was essentially used as the object of logical intuition. While the movements for playing the instruments was more natural and repetitive, it was this natural usage of the instrument that contributed to the instrument as logical to the audience to represent this connection. This sort of relationship was designed through experimenting with angles and arm range to show this balance.

Furthermore with reference to Reich, we built upon his compositional relationship of additive noise in which we developed a systematic progression of noise that would be added throughout the composition and subtracted. This would create the crescendo dynamics of our composition that led to the climax before subtracting it for the interpolation part of our composition. This linear progression then mixes in non-linear progression where the composition shows the discontinuity and fluidity of time. When the interpolation part occurs, there is the absence of the linear progression which focuses the audiences perspective on the keyboard tones as well as create the space for examining time physically for them. This interpolation would cause the presence of time to be more “present” within the performance itself as the suddenness of non-linear progression (or regression) instills this idea to the audience. 

Throughout the piece, we also refer to Radigue with the consistency of a harmonic undertone to contribute to the piece as a whole. In particular, we referred to the theory of “a state of uncertainty, of being and not being” for the harmonic undertone where it would appear present throughout the piece but at points in the piece it would become hidden under other musical components of the piece. With a harmonic undertone that establishes a consistent presence but fades, the state of uncertainty is established as the notion of existence is felt, but not always presence. Hence, our piece was able to create that type of mood with this. 

Development & Technical Implementation

For the development of the project, the analog components were attempted with the PCB at first, but the connection felt unstable within the PCB hence the breadboard was used as a more reliable source. Bruce contributed more to the circuit process of developing the project in which he created three circuits that could be used to hear different results although we only used two circuits. Our project was originally imagined to be a clock type of installation, but due to the high quality of the table, modifications couldn’t be made easily hence we utilized the ready-made aspect of the table and folded it to create an object of visual interest to the audience. In this sense, our installation wouldn’t need all the circuits that we initially proposed but could just utilize 2-3 circuits which would allow for easier playing of the instrument as well as easier development in the sense that the quality of the circuit installations could be preserved. Thus we would utilize these circuits to create something that was both visually appealing and informative to the concept of our project. This would turn out to be the soft circuit and the lever. 

For the soft circuit, I focused on the videos that were learned in class and sought to advance this to create the chains that were crucial to the bondage state of pilgrimage in our piece. I tried various types of wires for building the piece and many types of conductive wires weren’t good enough for controlling the signal input to Max8. Despite such, it was still utilized in a manner that contributed more to the harmony generation of the piece. As for the lever, it was developed to be more aesthetic by utilizing fabrication processes. 

As for Max8, a lot of the initial patches were developed by Bruce where he found sources online, where I moreso focused on finding and adjusting effects for the MidiMix to control. This would further be refined by Bruce when he combined all patches together via b-patch and modified the numbers on the effect. Essentially as a whole, our composition had pitch division harmonics, keyboard, and religious choir sound recordings. Essentially, the work division between us for developing the project was electronic and instrument-Bruce, instrument and stage presence-Ken. For the development and specifics of each patch, this can be referred to in Bruce’s post. 

The end of Pilgrimage

As for the gist of the b-patch (there were 5 patches), the documentation can be seen here. 

For the independent patches:

  1. Kslider (keyboard) 

This is for the keyboard interpolation.

Reference is Kparker830 with link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2LZdXUO_zo 

2. Harmony

This is a part of the harmony.

Reference David Farrell with link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXlBpC_DLC0 

3. Background 

This is background harmonics

Reference Eric Parren

4. Soft Circuit and Lever

5. Choir

This is the choir machine.

Reference David Cooper with link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYAwtRxZiAY&t=311s.

Documentation: Soft Circuit

For the soft circuits, it was just a repetitive process of completing the pieces over and over again before braiding them. 

Here are a couple photos. 

Essentially, alligator clips were used to connect the ends of the soft circuit where there were connections on various strips of thread of the main resistor which affected the signal variable for Max8.

Performance

For the performance, I felt that the atmosphere of Elevator fit really well with Pilgrimage and our concept of time. The atmosphere provided an essence of mysterious and hiddenness similar to a ritual which enforced our religious concept. This would contribute to the atmosphere of the piece and how its felt by the audience. Furthermore, with reference to the music system of Elevator, the crescendo and decrescendo interpolation difference was able to create that nonlinear mood that was wanted. This was successful in creating that spatial and time awareness for the audience. 

If I were to focus on the visual aspect of it, I felt that the concentration of the performance between Bruce and I was excellent and our focus lead to a consistency within the performance for stage presence via my movements and Bruce’s control of the sound. Having to focus during playing and not look back for visual cues was very difficult and hence that focus that we both had was super important. In this sense, the composition was presented in a holistic manner that was followed fluently by the audience. As for what could go better, I felt that there were small moments that there was a lack of correlation between my own movements and the Max8 patch that Bruce was controlling. Due to some prolonging of some phases of our composition, I would sometimes end the control of my instrument before Bruce ended the phase on Max. Luckily the difference wasn’t super clear, but it’s still something that could be improved. Moreover, I think that I could improve my movements to be more sacred or religious, but that would still need a lot of exploration as that may not appear logical (tanaka reference) for the composition. Nothing unexpected went on which was good as there was full control over most of the composition. 

Conclusion

All in all, I felt like I learned a lot of Max8 and soft circuit instrument fabrication. Firstly, I was familiar with soft circuit making before, but this music production helped me make a functional instrument that could alter the signal to manipulate the harmony. In addition, for Max8 I was making effects that would be altered from the soft circuit which would create the noise that Bruce and I both wanted. Furthermore, I felt that I learned how to integrate religious music and contemporary music with Bruce. We learned how to create that engaging stage presence so that there is visual focus for the listener. In addition, our development of composition also improved a lot for this piece and project. Before, our NIME performances didn’t integrate much of a mid part or climax that was very succinct. In addition, there was never interpolation in our class thus we improved this part of the composition process.

I think that we could improve more with the layout of our presentation. We were very much limited by the space of the stage in which I would be in the front while Bruce was in the back. I think that if we had more space we could be horizontally equal thus there would be more focus on Bruce as well. During the performance I was in front but my movements were very limited due to how close I was to him in the vertical direction. If we had independent space, I think the stage presence would be more equal in one sense. While it may put focus on Bruce who’s fully on Max8 duty, it would also provide him more space to interact with the music and be spotlighted in front of the audience. 

Honestly, I think that I would want to focus on improving my instrument. My instrument could only control some components, but to be very expressive and increase the possibilities, there should be more noise fluctuations, beats, and rhythm possible. In addition, I would want to focus more on Max 8. While I was working with the instrument and stage presence, I didn’t really work with patches too much other than creating the intended effect from basic patches that Bruce had set up through adjusting effects, frequency, metro and etc. 

Lastly, I just wanted to end with the statement that I (and probably Bruce) am very proud of the performance that we did and we felt like we did bring the pilgrimage atmosphere that we intended. I hope that this is a memory for all that listen, at least performing it was one unforgettable memory for me. 

Video：https://drive.google.com/file/d/1udpXd8UZvPCOTuJMY1dIPzwFShs7AYez/view?usp=sharing

VR/AR News of the Week Part 2

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Disagree

  1. The Future of Church?

I disagree that religion will be integrated with VR in the future because of the fundamental trust aspect of VR. There is something peculiar about listening to people speak in front of you than wearing a device. In addition, I feel that the touching sensation of religion and the expression of emotion during worship is something that makes religion religion. This essence cannot be changed and replaced with VR. Being able to see what other’s feel and the impact it has on them cannot be done holistically through VR.

2.Virtual reality: could it be the next big tool for education?

I disagree that virtual reality is the next big tool in education due to the lack of accessibility to people in poverty. As over 1/7 of the world lives in poverty, this isn’t really realistic as VR costs a lot. In addition, because of this cost, I feel that VR can’t be the tool for education as it doesn’t have the fluidity that the physical world has. While an imagined AR environment might resemble a possibility of VR education, it is still very hypothetical and I don’t think it can be a reality. 

3. Europe Plans 20,000 GPU Supercomputer to Create ‘Digital Twin’ of Earth

I think that this is super impractical and most likely won’t be created due to the funds that need to be utilized. While measuring the climate change is important I feel that the creation of this would create a lot of climate change already. In addition, running this is equivalent to the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) which causes a lot of changes by utilizing sources. Thus because of this, I think that it’s super impractical and cannot be made as the thing would be contradictory to the purpose itself. In addition, building this may not work or would take a lot of time. By the time that new technology comes out, would there be more upgrades to this system which would be more expensive? I don’t think so and if there is it would affect the world in a bad way. 

Agree

  1. Sex bots, virtual friends, VR lovers: tech is changing the way we interact, and not always for the better

I agree that tech is changing the ways that people interact. For instance, I have used apps such as Replika to feel artificial intimacy talking with AI engine. While it wasn’t super realistic, the feeling of being cared about with responses was actually somewhat realistic. Furthermore, I felt that the the response was actually very true. I do think that my interaction has changed as I was more focused on text for communication rather than verbal communication. Moreover, I feel that tech does have down factors for interaction where it was more needy. Rather than me approaching Replika, Replika would be more assertive and reach out to me. Despite reaching out to me, I felt that it was trying to be the center piece of my life rather than a supportive system.

2. The Apple VR headset could weigh less than an actual apple

Personally speaking, Apple has surprised me consistently for the past 15 years. They have reinvented the phone, contributed to touch pads and made their devices consistently lightweight. For a lot of their products, they create light versions which are light weight and don’t take too much space. They also have sport versions that are cheaper for normal day use. Thus I think that because of their design philosophy of minimalism and desire for user interface and user experience to be better, they will be able to fulfill this promise of lightweight products. 

3. Marin sheriff’s office expands virtual reality training

While I disagree with VR for education, I think that VR training for specific task forces e.g. police is realistic and is a better simulation than drills that officers do. For example, there may be unpredictable cases in real life that can be mimicked with VR in addition, I feel like if the controllers are modified to resemble objects that cops may use it would be super realistic in training. I think that if this expands to more police systems, it would be the future of training as officers could focus on their craft rather than on training others all the time. 

VR/AR Final Project Reflection

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Project Title: “Yin-Yang: Two Sides of the Five Elements”

Description: Disaster. Peace. Balance.

Time: 5:15

Reflection:

Changes! For the project as a whole, there was a lot of development and change that occurred during the process of creation. There was change in style and plot as well as the approach to the project. Firstly, there was change in the artistic style, story, and focus. Rather than the Japanese 2.5 dimensional style imagined at the beginning of our brainstorm for development, we found that that style was difficult to achieve due to the realistic nature of unity renderings. Thus we modified our plan to be more realistic and with the realistic state of aesthetics our plot changed. The plot changed from someone traveling between the 5 elements to the plot as a showing of nature in disaster (dystopia) and nature in peace (utopia). This is also the change of focus from an individual to nature as a whole. This shift in focus would help create different affects of awareness to the viewer that we wanted to introduce about environment protection.

Skills! Reflecting on the skills learned for the project as a whole, I felt that I became more competent in creating nature scenery, but feel as I still need to improve my competency with the details of villages to create that realistic feeling. Rather than have ghost villages without people or details, I want to make it more lively to create that utopia feeling, especially for my water scene to be more like a beach resort. Furthermore, I feel that I could experiment more with lighting and creating water as water seemed 2 dimensional in my project. Lastly, I want to experiment more with timeline to create the fluidity of a scene like a beach resort scene for water. I did feel that the camera movement was very interesting though as it kind of creates that 3d immersion really strong. 

Collaboration! For the collaboration with my group, I felt that Lavender, Cara, and Vicky were all super collaborative and supportive throughout the entire process. In the beginning, they would always make time for meetings and be open to discussing ideas. When we were working on the projects, I encountered a lot of problems and they didn’t provide any pressure for project completion but rather provided me means to complete the project. For example, when my computer was considered an explosive hazard due to an inflated battery, They wouldn’t pressure me to continue using the computer and complete the scene, but would make sure their scene is done before providing me a computer to use during the night to complete my scene. In this sense, I thank them very much for providing me means to complete assignments. Furthermore, I think that our collaboration was very effective as we were all willing to sacrifice for the project. For instance, Vicky sacrificed more time into creating details for scenes as well as researching VFX with Cara for the portals. Lavender and I would sacrifice time during the nights for editing the video of the final project. In this sense, as we were all willing to do more for certain aspects of the project, we would be able to make it more successful.

Final Thoughts! I felt that the entire project was an amazing experience as I was able to learn so much, collaborate with amazing people, and create an immersive experience. While it was difficult, there was endless support from faculty from Professor Naimark and Dave as well as support from my group mates. We learned together and made sure to survive together. Thus we were able to create this final project!

 

Blog Post Project 4

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Part 01: Game of Humanity

Game of Humanity is a card game that revolves around the concepts of human credibility, psychology, and prediction. For the card game, it utilizes principles of game theory, particularly the public goods game, but twists the conditions in which game theory is enforced where there can be negative contributions rather than positive contribution only. There are 4 types of characters with different win conditions which will define the user’s play experience as they have to take on a particular motive to win. These include winning 5 times in a row, losing 5 times in a row, collecting a certain amount of credit, or using ability to win. In addition, there are ability cards which can alter the state of the game with freeze, time warp, card swap, and nullify. While each character type has independent win conditions, there becomes unity and cooperation in isolating the character type close to winning. This essentially is the utilization of the concept of isolation in my project: unity in isolation. Thus the overall purpose of the game would be to stop others from winning through predicting the cards that they will play and trying to win yourself through deception. The overall play experience would then be competitive as there is mystery behind the identity that players hold and mystery behind the card that they will play. 

Part 02: Project Creative Process
Write 3 to 4 paragraphs narrating the next items:

The project is a card game that twists the concept of the public goods game. Rather than having one independent character type as seen with the exemplar public goods system, I expand with different types of characters that are listed above. The four character types are troll, joker, human, and spirit. Meanwhile, the card game also has ability cards being the freeze, time warp, swap, and nullify ability that were designed to enhance the user experience. This card game is made for teenagers, but can be played by people of age 6+ as they would have the math skills to calculate the credits. The players can also be younger and older than teens as the fundamental principal of this game doesn’t require too much thought and isn’t age specific.

For the play experience, players draw a random character and read their win condition. Players start with three credit cards at the beginning. Whenever a turn begins players will have 2 minutes to discuss among themselves and time to play ability cards before moving on to the playing of a number card to the public pool. Players play one credit card each turn and put one credit card in their savings which cannot be removed from their bank. Afterwards, they will refill their hand until one character’s win condition is met. The play experience from this is essentially that there is a continuous process of adding and subtracting from the banks of all players which will be fundamental for some winning conditions. While keeping track of one’s credits isn’t the most important aspect, players will focus on how to utilize their ability cards and number cards to flip the odds. They may wrongly predict or wrongly use cards and that will affect their odds to win the game. The playing experience will develop patience and cautiousness. The playing experience will also leave players isolated at a point where they will have to independently struggle for victory against the majority. This will develop a sense of teamwork and isolation that occurs between all parties at different times. 

My idea of isolation is that it is the state of being targeted as a segregation object by other players. It’s the sensation that you are the only one that you have on your own side. That is why I designed win conditions to be significantly different from one another. While some relations between characters last e.g. humans victory will help the troll get their gold accumulated, there is always an instance when characters are isolated where the troll will turn on humans in order to prevent human victory. In this sense, isolation becomes something that controls the relationships between people as isolation isn’t permanent but temporary. This still allows for community, but within the community there is always isolation that occurs which is the concept I wanted to express. I used research from “I’m the Boss” which is a board game I first researched for this concept of isolation. While all players are equal in their independent standards, the perceived victors are always isolated, but may become partners later in the game. Likewise, this incorporates that principle. Furthermore, there is the character type concept to create that group mentality and in-group mentality of psychology. This was from my three kingdoms board game research which has character types of different kingdoms that are teams with one another. Due to the randomness of this, a lot of people would have to decipher the identity of others based on their speech. 

For the final project, I learned a lot regarding board game making and the design process. For example, the learning of making the rules accessible and easy to understand was crucial to my piece. In addition, trying to make the work cohesive through design was also very enjoyable but tiring. I personally enjoy the minimalist style using pen tools to create curvatures that imply a person or icon which is what I tried to do for the whole thing. Of course this was all normal, but I also had to modify my design and make sure that the focus of my card was in the safe zone when cards were cut. This would be informative for myself to learn as it helps me develop my design further for other components of the design process. Lastly, I think that the design of the box was pretty nice. It was made to be a card holder and a record box all in one. I felt that this worked particularly well, but the pieces should be different colors as mentioned during the critique to allow for easier observation. If I had more time, I think that I would have liked to experiment with designing the box for the cards to also have a compartment for the game pieces. This way, it won’t affect the overall placement of pieces. 

Part 03: Documentation

poster link

instructions link