Author: Yangcheng Yao

There was a previously an exhibition where the artist record the vision of outside through the cover of a mask. We absorbed the ideas and reflected on our own situation.

We put the overall narrative under the context of pandemic and community lock-down. Since the beginning of April, we have been under strict lock-down. Life has been irresistibly shaped and our perception of the outside world was altered subtly as well.

Our concept is by presenting a stream of consciousness, or someone’s thinking flow to convey our feeling and thoughts under such circumstances.

We started with a shot using a lamp as the light source and did the shooting through a mask. Also like the bleary-eyed state when we wake up.

We intentionally took the photo behind bars and blurred the image.

Then combine it with some rough texture and old movie effects.

(As we cannot go out and see stuff, we perceive the world like through a filter and rely on social media, that so much information come to us everyday which we cannot tell whether it is true or not)

 

We wanted to apply the different form of movement from water as a metaphor.

Transition: little drops and ripples to big flush of water

                  little restlessness to strong wild crave for experience outside

 

I am a big fan of the horror movies directed by James Wan 温子仁.

Wan is a master when dealing with the scary effects. He otfen uses sounds to direct audience’s attention, like the squeaks from a door. He is also good at illustrating spaces and utilizing psychological effects to generate horror. There is a Classic “Hide and Clap” scene in The Conjuring 招魂 from 2013, where he scares the audience with an unexpected hand clapping.

He uses multiple techniques to create the atmosphere and foreshadow, as well as pushing the plot. For this one, as we audience are anticipating something comes from the front with the main character, the ghost suddenly appeared from her back and clapped twice. Also to mention he has done it with various shot angles and camera movements.

I tried to identified the most important shots involving camera movements and created 12 frames for the scene, to explore the techniques he used and illustrate it with explicit words and signs.

Video Clip:

The Conjuring – Wanna play Hide and Clap? – YouTube

Storyboard

PDF Version:

Storyboard 1 Storyboard 2

 

Sound Track:

Concept: 

I typically remember I was afraid of darkness during the period of adapting to sleep alone in my childhood. At that time I was sensitive and highly alert to the sounds around me, as if there were danger hidden in the darkness.

So I want to create the warm, comforting atmosphere in contrast with the anxiety, tension and horror.

• Scene depicted

Mom finished telling the bedtime story. She coaxed me to sleep with soft patting, kissed me goodnight, turned off the light and then left the room. 

(Actually fell asleep…) I dreamed about hearing some strange sounds as if there were a monster wandering around. I got really scared. Suddenly the monster attacked me. I woke up in a sharp gasp and found out it was a dream. Finally I turned on the switch.

Sound Elements:

filping pages/ closing a book/ mashing bed sheet/ patting / kiss/ footsteps/ switch/ turning door knob/ wind/ waving curtains/ trembling breath/ spinning coin/ monster( metal scratching wooden closet) / gasp

Editing:

The sound track can be divided into two parts. The first part ends with the door knob sound (0:42).

I put the orginal sounds into multiple sound channels. And the sounds with similar properties or linear connection are put into the same channel. 

Basically the techniques I utilized are noise reduction, panning, volume adjusting and diagnostics. I put for example the footstep panning 100L to 100R to create the motion, and the others followed 100R to indicate space and position (coin spinning as well).

There were some air explosion sounds generated by curtains and winds, which couldn’t be removed through noise reduction, so I kept it for its nature. I tried some echo and delay effect for the coin sound and curtains, but that turned out to be confusing and disrupting.

Challenges:

Overall the most challenging part is collecting satisfying sounds elements. Due to limitations of physical surroundings, I spent a lot of time experimenting with the stuff and figuring out the way to collect the sounds.

My work is called Abyss. I use compare our virtual digital network as Abyss to match the characteristics of the digital world, uncertain, uncanny, and dangerous. The virtual word is an extension to the reality, as Beth Coleman mentioned in Hello Avatar, we humans now are constantly shifting through the physical world and the virtual one, making an integrated “X-Reality”. It offers us brand new dimensions and limitless possibilities( the blazing of colours). However, there are always dangers that you may get sucked in by the black hole and get overwhelmed by the abyss.

For the composition part I firstly adjust the colour of the raw file.

Then I utilize the creation from illustrator.

At last distort the surface and blend them together.

 

 

 

1. What does Ritchin mean with the “fluidity of the digital”? Give an example of digital imaging/digital photography that exemplifies this.

In the book, Ritchin mentioned in the foreword that “the fidelity of the mechanical age was being replaced by the fluidity of the digital. ” From my perspective, it indicates the transformation in technology and photography. Photos are no longer shot by the rules of light and electricity. With digital imaging, the image can be easily manipulated, since the information context of the picture can be interpreted and altered by algorithm. So, to say that, digital image is not a type of new photography, but indeed a new media. 

The photo of the Artificial Instagram Influencer Lil Miquela(right, CGI) with model Bella Hadid

It is super easy to manipulate an image to fool people’s eyes, even the whole appearance of a people can be built up.  

   2.  Reflect on the extent to which photography is capable of capturing reality; and compare it to other media (technology) (e.g. text, video, virtual reality, books).

I would to compare the process of taking a picture as select a point on the time axis, and froze everything of a certain physical space from a certain perspective. According the reality on that moment on that right spot is captured in a 2D frame, serving similar function as our eyes do. For example, the biggest difference between picture and  video is about the motion. Photos are used to capture a fixed time point, or it is still. But videos are for record a set of movements happen in a period of time. While Words involve not only visual but but only the language perception. 

Project Description:

Design four non objective / abstract paintings using the same type of shapes throughout, changing the sizes and positions of the shapes to create four or more areas broken into 55%, 25%, 15% and 5% of the total area.

Scheme #1 Starry Night

The colour scheme came from my favourite impressionism painting Starry Night by Vincent van Gogh.

The colour scheme, as well as the painting itself, give me an overall sense of peacefulness, because the dark blue and yellow coordinates well together. The dark blue calm people down, while the bright yellow wrap people up with brightness and warmth. The whole image triggers my imagination and my yearn for the mysterious starry sky.

For the pattern, I also absorbed from the painting and utilized circles and curvy angles, respectively to stand for moon,stars and moving clouds.

 

Scheme #2 Young Feminine

The first moment I saw this colour scheme, the game Monument Valley came to me.

The four colour altogether create a feeling of a dreamlike realm, like a princess’s palace in fair tale. it also can be associated with sweetness, wonder, candies, marshmallows…

In terms of the patterns, I implied the framing strategy a bit, and altered the perspectives and angles of each image to get four versions, also combining the segments with curves for arcs and pillars. 

One of the challenges is that I think four colours are not enough to illustrate all the surfaces 100% clearly. So it is more like a puzzle-like, transformed dimensions

Scheme #3 Sun Rays

 

I Set the Value K zero for all these four colours so that they are the brightest. They really bring out the heat to our face. The patterns are sun rays from different angles and observation angles.

Scheme #4 Fragment Era

These four colours are close to neon lights, representing for mystery, and fake, distorted visions. Additionally, It’s a bit like cyberpunk here, give people a dizzy feeling, a sense of high technology of the digital age. And the combination of these polygons make the image looks fragile, indicting the fragmentation of our era, questioning about the authenticity of the things we see.

Alternative Designs

 Timber

Project description: create  (draw the plaque and describe) your own Pioneer Plaque to explain a piece of human history to aliens in Story of Your Life. 

We want to present this pioneer plaque on behalf of China. After discussion, we think the written language system in China can be counted as the most developed one. So we decided to utilize the Chinese Characters. 

Introduction of Chinese Characters:

Chinese characters, also known as Hanzi (漢字) are one of the earliest forms of written language in the world, dating back approximately five thousand years. Nearly one-fourth of the world’s population still use Chinese characters today. As an art form, Chinese calligraphy remains an integral aspect of Chinese culture.

There are 47,035 Chinese characters in the Kangxi Dictionary (康熙字典), the standard national dictionary developed during the 18^th and 19^th centuries, but the precise quantity of Chinese characters is a mystery; numerous, rare variants have accumulated throughout history. Studies from China have shown that 90% of Chinese newspapers and magazines tend to use 3,500 basic characters.

Chinese characters have evolved over several thousands of years to include many different styles, or scripts. The main forms are: Oracle Bone Inscriptions (Jia Gu Wen 甲骨文), Bronze Inscriptions, (Jin Wen 金文), Small Seal Characters (Xiao Zhuan 小篆), Official Script (Li Shu 隸書), Regular Script (Kai Shu 楷書), Cursive Writing or Grass Stroke Characters (Cao Shu 草書), and Freehand Cursive (Xing Shu 行書).

Design Process:  Finally we chose the four Chinese characters, respectively “家(family), 国(nation), 天下(the world)” It is from Daxue, and is used to provide guidance for people’s way of living a meaningful life. Besides aspiration, we want to expand to the meaning. 天下is not limited to the world but the whole universe. We define the four characters as a complete set demonstrating the alignment of their meaning. And the ultimate goal is to convey the message of peace and inclusiveness that we humans are willing to establish friendly relationship and will treat them equally just like ourselves.

Basically the logic is to separate the characters and regroup them into a new pattern. We also got some inspiration from seal cutting patterns. We mainly chose 篆书 and 金文.  As we know, the aliens depicted by ted-chiang have simultaneous mode of consciousness, and they can perceive the information as a whole. So they can identify the elements with interpretation.

 

Colour Scheme Practice

Number	Colour Scheme	Name	Source
1		Starry Night
2		Complementary
3		Aqua
4		cyberpunk
5		Tufts	Tufts Color Scheme » Blue » SchemeColor.com
6		Summer Vibe
7		Flame
8		Dollar Tree
9		Liverpool FC
10		Young Feminine	Feminine Kit Color Scheme » Blue » SchemeColor.com