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Uncertainty of Documentarism

The authenticity and representation of truth in the media we consume on a daily basis are of significance because it provides information that we may need, social understanding, and communication to a larger demographic. Many of us see clips of news segments, reels on social media like Instagram and 小红书, and advertisements daily, which can subconsciously give us information even if we aren’t paying attention. However, there are always multiple perspectives and biases to the information we are fed in most cases: news platforms will give information based on their political affiliation, if there is an argument between two internet influencers there will always be two sides. Depending on whichever the viewers see first, if it is the only part they see, then it will be the perception that they hold of the situation regardless of whether it is true or not. Furthermore, misinformation in the media especially in the regards of healthcare, drugs, and anything that affects a large population could have adverse consequences and jeopardise the well-being of the entire community.

Live broadcasts can give viewers a sense of trust with the platform that is streaming. It is difficult to falsify videos of events that are currently happening, and even if it is, the connection with the viewers is established as they can also feel as if they are there in the moment. 

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In Our Own Image

In In Our Own Image, Ted Ritchin talks about the fluidity of the digital in terms of personal expression. In my opinion, fluidity of the digital describes the versatility of digital mediums such as video, photography, and online blogs. It’s about how these forms of art adapt according to who the viewers/interacters are, and how they can evoke different meaning according to how someone’s mood is or the situations/environment they are set in. 

For example, this illusion shows two different interpretations. One time, a viewer may see the white vase in the middle, but others, they may see the two face silhouettes facing each other. In terms of fluidity of the digital, if someone is feeling heartbroken or confrontational, they may see the faces, but if they are happy or have been shopping for flowers, they may see the vase. It’s about the duality of art and digital mediums. 

Photography is not necessarily the best way to capture reality. For example, many travel accounts always hyper-edit their photos to bring out the colours of sunsets, and the camera angles always change how viewers would see it in comparison to if they were at the scene themselves. Furthermore, there is no true way to really exemplify what the human eye sees with a fabricated lens. No matter what, there is always distortion. However, it can also bring out things that the naked eye cannot – zoom lens and microscopic cameras help us to envision what we cannot purely see. So in a sense, photography also encapsulates the concept of the fluidity of the digital. 

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Visual Metaphor: ELM

For the visual metaphor project, we were asked to create a 60-90 second film explaining a story with a voice over. Hugo Wang and I were partners, and decided to create a story based off of the poem “Elm” by Sylvia Plath. 

To start, we drafted the original storyline. We decided to create a story that follows the progression of a breakup, starting with the initial breakup then the contemplation period and eventually the loss of self in other people and substances. 

Section 1: The breakup. The man is seen with the girl, then the girl disappears and and he is left alone. After, he is seen by the riverside, fading into it. To film the disappearing scene, he had to stay still while I walked away, and we cut the video into two parts and crossfaded it. As he is leaning back, we rotated the camera with his motion and crossfaded it with the video of the river. With the heart in the coffee, it is a visual representation of heartbreak. 

Section 2: The contemplation period. The man walks alone in various scenes, from walking across bridges, to structural forms. As we were in the park, I noticed that a lot of the structures allowed people to disappear and reappear at certain angles, and we decided to utilise that to have a continuous flow of the man just walking. We also filmed the scenes at different perspectives for more contrast while still providing the flow. 

Section 3: The loss of self. The section is introduced by the church, signifying a change of heart. Then we follow the man’s journey through his eyes at a party, observing people, then seeing all of the faces of people he has used to try to get over the breakup, interspersed with moments from his contemplation in black and white in quick flashes. In the end, we see his vision fading in and out, just seeing the party lights. 

In terms of the music, we chose “Destroy Myself Just For You” by Montell Fish because the lyrics and entire tone of the song describes the story we wanted to portray. Integrating church bells as a change of scenery helps to let viewers know that it’s the start of the decline after the contemplation period. 

We decided to put a film/retro filter on the video clips for Sections 1 & 2, to portray the reflective tone of the scenes. For the third section, we increased saturation and contrast to create a little bit of a darker tone. 

Contributions: We both filmed segments – Hugo did most of party scenes and I did most of the park scenes. I did the video editing and Hugo did the audio editing. 

Overall, I loved doing this project and learned a lot about how to portray emotions in a visual context by pairing the visuals with audio. 

Special shoutout to Daniel Cashdan III for being the actor!

Video link: video

Poem: Elm by Sylvia Plath

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Project 2: Kinetic Prototype

Documentation of Project 2:

For Project 1: New Bodies, Rainee, Alan, and I were inspired by sea life and the feelings of entrapment – creating a dress with a light-up spine made of wire overlaid on top that doubled as a tail as well. For our kinetic prototype, we wanted to follow the same theme, thus, we decided to create the foundation for moving fish scales at an attempt of biomimicry. 

In order to better understand the movement of the scales, we decided to experiment with how to mimic it best using cardboard, paper/various fabrics, and fishing wire. We made different placements for where the wire would go and shapes for the base frame. 

Here is the photo of the different prototypes we made:

The middle is the initial draft, and the left photo is made from the fabric cutouts I made for the scales, which we were originally planning to use but realised that there were better materials that were more scale-like yet provided flexibility to showcase the motion, like the TPU on the right that Rainee and Alan used the laser cutter for. 

For the actual fabric, Professor Marcela provided us with a fabric that was what we were looking for. Here is the photo of the fabric and what the laser-cut scales look like: 

For the movement of the scales themselves, we originally tried to use a joint mechanism. However, the joint was not smooth enough, so we pivoted to using buttons and the fabric strip as a connector.

For the sensor, we initially tried to use the DC motor; however, we could not figure out how to program the speed of the rotation and control it. We decided to use the stepper motor combined with the ultrasonic sensor, with a base that Alan 3D printed, because it is the most accurate and controllable, allowing the strings to go in the right direction. 

Here is a video of the motor attached to the scales: 

After I made the base for the dress, we needed to make the frame. To make the frame for each row of scales to put on the actual mannequin, we 3D printed sticks with holes lining them, and put screws in the top and bottom to secure the two parallel sticks together. Then, the sticks were tied together with the fishing wire looped through the remaining holes to allow a strip of fabric with the scales attached to stay rigid on the frame. Three pairs were connected and put as a sort of tail, using the same pulling mechanism as the fish scales but with no motor (therefore, the motion was manual).

Here is the final prototype: 

Improvements for future consideration: 

  • Placement of the strings through the scales: It seems that the movement worked best when the strings were placed closer to, but not directly above, the base of the scale as compared to when it was placed at the tip of the scale. We should try to continue with that placement on a larger scale and see if it holds out. 
  • Motors: The stepper motor we used is really heavy – thus if we want multiple rows of scales, we may need to find a lighter alternative and experiment with fixing all the lines to a singular motor. 
  • Joints: The initial joint prototype did not work – thus we used buttons. The buttons are quite bulky/noticeable and do not blend well with the fabric at all. However, for the final project, we will explore different methods in order to have a more seamless connection. 
  • Teamwork and communication: I will improve on managing time better in order to be able to work on the group project and contribute more, as there were a lot of prior obligations during the times. I also feel that the group could do better in terms of communicating with me, as I felt like I was kept out of the loop for a majority of the time even when I was able to make it to meetings.

Overall, I look forward to seeing how this will progress into the final. 

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Week 10: Paneling Tools

For this week, we learned about paneling tools in Rhino and attempted to create a wearable. I decided to try to follow along with the bangle tutorial in class. 

This week’s was a bit tougher for me because Rhino is still pretty hard for me to adjust to and I’m still getting the hang of it. However, I enjoyed learning about the grid points and learning about the different patterns that can be made on the 3d object itself. For my version, I created a bangle that has a diamond-like grid on it.

This is what my frame looked like: 

 

 

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Sound Visualisation Project

My initial memory for the sound visualisation was going to be from the perspective of sitting in a coffeeshop in New York City on a rainy day, watching all the people passing by. However, the more I recorded the sound samples, the more I realised it sounded like it would be from an underwater scene – which brought me to a memory of when I was about 14 years old. I was surfing in Half Moon Bay when I got a leg cramp and fell off my surfboard. My leg got cut by the fin and I remember moments fading in and out from above water and underwater. 

For the basic structure of this, I started out with the background sound of a video recording I took from a rocky beach in Niagara Falls. Then, I recorded the sound of a lot of people talking outside of a street in Xuhui, and also recorded the sound of someone playing music on a speaker as they were standing on the street. I layered these for the first bit of the soundscape.  I then isolated the water for a few seconds and faded in recordings from an outdoor skatepark in Puxi, first recording the skateboards rolling and people doing tricks, then recording a group playing slow drums in a different area of the park. These were to emulate the sound of my heartbeat, and also hearing the noises when I came out of the water. For the rest of the soundscape, I faded in and out other various noises such as the airplane flying overhead with the water consistently in the background. 

For effects, I added lots of reverb and amp for the water noises, limiter and equaliser on the skatepark, reverb on the people talking, echo on the music, and full reverb and echo on the airplane noises. 

Overall, this was a cool project to explore. I had previously used other DAWs such as Ableton Live and Logic Pro, but it was a bit tough adjusting to Adobe Audition. If I were to take this project further, I would add more elements and perhaps mute the water noises especially for the parts portraying underwater in order to better convey the emotions. 

final soundscape: link

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Project 1: New Bodies

For the first project, Rainee, Alan, and I decided to alter the human form by drawing inspiration from ocean creatures and specifically, a fish. There are so many elements of the deep sea that have yet to be explored by humans – oxygen tanks provided aren’t even enough to allow us to take a glimpse, and the technology we have at the moment isn’t strong enough to survive the pressure in the deep sea. So how do these various sea creatures survive? There is much mystery and fascination to the various habits of these creatures that humans cannot even begin to imagine. That is what Drowning, our project, attempts to do – bridge the gap between humans and fish to create an altered form of the human body using elements of biomimicry. 

Though fish and humans are relatively different in terms of physical stature and composition, they share a few common traits: the need to eat, organs that keep us alive, and a spine – which is what we decided to draw on the most. To create the spine, we used a malleable wire that we bent into a net-like frame and layered it over an actual fishing net turned into the base of a dress, weaving an LED strip into an iridescent fabric to create dimension to it. We originally wanted to use optic fibres, but the LED light that we were going to use was not bright enough to light the entire fibres. We then connected the LED lights to Arduino in order to make it change colour according to the volume of music played. 

Something we struggled with was getting the colour/brightness to vary according to how loud the music was. The analog input kept jumping and the sensor values were inaccurate. To fix this, Alan used three ranges in order to have better control of the brightness.

In order to improve our project for the future, we can figure out a way to embed the circuit into the wearable instead of connected separately. Furthermore, we can try to find a different sensor that reacts to distance better than the microphone sensor. Based off of feedback from the class, rather than focusing on one part of the body, we could try to find a way to transform the entire figure into a fish-human hybrid, and create even more exaggerated features to truly distort the wearer’s body. 

Overall, I enjoyed creating this project and learned a lot from the process. Not only does Drowning attempt to create a fish-human hybrid, it also draws attention to the feeling of being trapped by beauty constructs. The fabric of the wearable is beautiful, but the net and the wire themselves are rather “ugly” and restraining. In a sense, it is an ironic allusion to humans restricting themselves by beauty standards and constructs – something that is only able to be felt by humans. 

project 1 video