Voyager No.3

At the end I don't know where to begin.

This is the very last video/project I made in my college years for ART 599. at first I thought of doing something different, I knew I were doing sounds and videos and I knew I were to do them separately and put them together somehow, but I did expect this is where I will end up to be--- Voyager No.3

I guess it will help to shine some light on my astronomy background, which is close to none by now. But I DID studied this subject a few years back. And this video really came up because everything is just in the right place. The footage of this video was taken a few years back at an illumination event in Tokyo, Japan called "The Universe", and I got too excited a week ago reading that NASA just had its first spacecraft Voyager 1 sent out beyond the Solar System. Additionally, for each clip of the videos, there were about 5 differently sound resources I used. I hope this video could take you out of sight, out of mind a little bit.

Another Romance

 
 2 things struck me about Vivian Maier,how poor she was and how poor she let herself to be. Being really update to camera equipment was the only reason and I do not see why she was doing it. I wonders in black and white photography how much room was there for a significant improvement.
 
    Rather than that I am fond of her universal, free-spirited artist mind.The fact that she guarded her talent to her own was almost the most romantic thing I have ever heard, must be a true treasure to unearth someone\s work like that.

   But I couldnt help but wondering, would things be different if she was public about her works while she was alive?

Aesthetic autonomy

Listen to Mark Dion, the celebrated artist/archeologist/collector/author/naturalist/teacher talks about himself and his ideas in this clip!

Born 1961, Dion has been working in the art world for more than 2 decades. He is a site-specific artist that does installations that remind people the relationship between human beings and nature, more or less. He really is a passionate archeologist who does a lot of digging and sorting as many of his works show. But what I really found interesting about his approach is that he finds his aesthetics in the process of disconnecting objects from the identities they acquire with the established procedures of archaeological knowledge. He is a cross disciplinary adventurer who softly introduces his way of breaking the cliche statement that "modern artist are only trying to break through the scientific boundaries", he embraces both in and out of context.

Dion now teaches at Columbia University, NY.

About Carol Emmons

     Carol Emmons was a hilarious person to listen to --- she definitely has a sense of humor.
However, the postcards she showed in the lecture were somewhat hard to look at for me. But her installation in the Wriston Art Gallery was different, the large scale installation was consisted of several parts, each part was distinct on its own yet all of them were harmonious in aspect of arousing the same sort of emotion, it leads me to think about the space around me, the relations I have in relation to objects and space.
   

I was particularly drawn to this reflective metal sphere-like object that was placed in the middle of the room. It was surrounded by all the other parts of her works, but unlike others that were placed mostly on the ground, this was up high, it allows us to see it as it is--and ourselves too, as we seeing it, from a quite special angle. I could definitely see the physiological narrative she embraced in her Art works, though subtly it works for me too. Last time I was looking at a sphere from this angle was in my winter astronomy class, 3am in the morning through the huge telescope they set up in front of Briggs Hall. And through the lens, on the other side, there were galaxies that were thousands of million light years away, and Saturn and its beautiful ring. And I have not recalled that experience for a while, until I was there looking at this.

how to Karaoke

Here goes the how to video made by me

Basically I chose to do this particular performance because this allow me to incorporate audio art with visual art together.

And my face never appeared in the video except for a brief moment before I started to sing, I was looking down. And I liked it so much that I also put is at the very end. If you happen to know the song and the original music video, you'd know the singer was looking down as well at the exact moment before she sings, so that was an accidental nice touch I got.

MEET-CUTE(an late proposal for a project that is already done!)

Project 1 proposal

"Art is the state of encounter"   ----Nicholas Bourriaud

"enounter"

noun

noun: encounter; plural noun: encounters

1.

an unexpected or casual meeting with someone or something.     --- Dictionary

The expectancy in the daily routines, that was the first idea that came to my mind. Every each of us somehow always has this potential belief that tomorrow will be just like today, and that today was just like yesterday. Do not try to disagree--- because if you just think about it you will know that's true. Besides, based on my shallow knowledge of social psychology, we as human beings are at ease with this general familiarity. In fact, we will be shocked or even scared of anything new in the first place. 

But encounter is different in a way that it usually presents no threat but a nicer side of surprise. There is this term "meet-cute" that is usually addressed in the movie industry in which a future romantic couple meets for the first time in a way that is considered adorable, entertaining, or amusing.These are my thoughts about how I should approach this project.

So what I have in mind is that I am gonna be a intruder in other people's daily life, "strike" them when they least expected any surprises and then create this encounter. Now the project is done of course, and I chose to put a rose besides the pillow while people are going to bed, and the whole process is photographed in my previous post.

Untitled and Complicated

Below are the results for my documented project of this "Arena of exchange".

the process was simple: I went to the rooms of these 7 friends right before they go to bed, they were wearing what they wear to sleep and no pictures were posed, they were in their most natural pose.

I figured that there is nothing more "everyday" than sleep, we close and open our eyes, and than passage of 7/8 hours in the darkness is the time that everyone become unarmed, relaxed, no-make up, no strings attached, that is the time when everyone is really being himself. So that is why I picked this unpretentious moment in the first place.

All of them are aware of my presence and me taking photos, but not the rose. So after they all lied down and closed their eyes ready for sleep, I secretly took out the rose and put it besides them.The lightening was pretty awful in these student dorms,the original pictures are very yellow. So that is where I most put efforts in when editing.

One might ask, why rose? I think the subtext is quite obvious, seriously, have roses ever meant something else? like ever?

So the real interaction between me and them, between daily world and art, in the arena of exchange that is described by Bourriaud, is not these moments that got captured here, but the moment after I left or the next morning when they wake up and found the rose. These pictures are merely the process before the real interaction.

I do not want to start to really elaborate on this whole project and the big concept because it got kinda trite already. Being a senior who is leaving this place, school and country soon, I would say there is more sentiment than ever, and all these faces and memories are all I shall bring with me to the next chapter of life.

for the full album on flickr, click here!