Unit 1: Methods of Translating / week 002
18/NOV/2021
On The Second Week:
The Feedback
- Interesting, I like the way it’s translated. You seem understand the main idea of the poem, the way you mimmicking Bukowski’s way of seeing things also really nice (Marie)
- I like it, constant feeling of sad represents in the colour tone (Chinhwa)
- Like it, really cool (Dami)
- The colour tone is too blue, it feels so cold and distant. Is it intentional? Maybe you can use the sephia tone. (Amandine)
- Cool, I really like the videos. Last week you made a cover using supermarket receipt, maybe you can use the feedback turned into poem for this one. (Charlotte)
- Like the overlayered scenes, really illustrate the train of thoughts (Parth)
- This video can be translated into various places, and that’s great. The layering scenes are working strongly, you seem translate it into indirect translating, compared to your previous one, and that’s great. It’s nice to inject your personal view into the poem and can relate to the context. That’s beautiful. Well done! I need more serotonin now.(LOL) (Houman)
What could be improved
(Note written by Marie, thank you >,<b)
- Have your own interpretation of the poem. The author’s attitude(the mind chain) and structure of writing.
- The overall tone has a similar feeling to the original poem.
- Recreate the same situation in the pom with your own story.
- It’s nice to have your own voice narrative.
- Work more on the aesthetic more. Such as the color tone.
- Want to understand the intention behind the use of color.
- Maybe combine the transcript one in.
- Explore more settings. Different settings do the same thing. Can translate the environment to other places.
Unit 1: Methods of Translating / week 001
11/NOV/2021
On The First Week:
Unit 1: Methods of Cataloguing / Written Response II
Unit 1: Methods of Cataloguing / Written Response II
The Cyclical Differences between the Utopia of Catalogue Covers and the Real World
MAGCD / 20036676
After Foucault studied how power and social change played out in the French revolution, he believed that we tend to simplify transition by viewing it as an ongoing inevitable attainment of ‘freedom’. In this Methods of Cataloguing project, I started by analyzing the transitions through the decades on IKEA catalogue cover designs. I am questioning the design: layouts, visual objects selections, style of typography, used materials, and colour tones. because there must be something influences those decisions and more interestingly it might be represented the conditions of the certain decades. My works focused on the five first decade of IKEA catalogue editions to re-assemble narratives where people looking for changes to create a better future as the company vision is ‘To create a better everyday life for the many people’ and their key message is ‘Small changes, a refreshing new life’.
Gioni Massimiliano stated that as the early twentieth century discovered the power of images and photography, artists felt the urge to reconfigure this amorphous mass of anomic images by creating connections, possible narratives, sudden clashes, and interpretations. He also said that it was an attempt to make sense of the world, to structure it, while still preserving its absurdly cacophonic, at times sublime, multiplicity. (Gioni, Massimiliano, The UnMonumental Picture, p. 12) Using montage as the medium, I tried to represent the contradictive situations: where people changing their interior to be comfortable, but, in another side of the world people making ‘change’ to get a ‘comfortable’ future. My process so much influenced by Martha Rosler’s work, Bringing the War Home: House Beautiful in her essay, she said, “the spatial comfort of these constructed works is belied by the discomfort of the details, in which two (or more) discourses are visibly made to collide,…” We might see in the 70s collage, how I tried to portray a glimpse of difference of how women represented in the media and how actually they are on the real life in the early 1970s where women fight for Equal Rights Amandement. I used the women on IKEA covers who sit comfortably on the fancy furniture having a good time at home. While on the outside, some women fighting for their rights. I also put a woman, who hold a big handwritten poster, blocking a place where medias always connect them to the female role in a house: a kitchen. As a further experiment, I made kaleidoscopic patterns out of the montages, it represents that this world made of two aspects: cycle, and constant changes.
What I see as the connection between my works and Foucault’s ‘The Order of Things’ is the similarity between my working process and the way he analyzed documents. Foucault organizes documents, divides, distributes, and organizes them in levels, sorts, distinguishes between relevant and not, finds elements, defines unity, describes relationships, as I did when I started to analyze the IKEA cover designs and tried to find different interpretation rather than look at them as a furniture catalogue covers.
Reference:
Gioni, Massimiliano 2007 It’s Not the Glue that Makes the Collage essay on The UnMonumental Picture, Merrell, London.
Rosler, Martha 2007, essay on The UnMonumental Picture, Merrell, London.
Foucault, M 2001, The Order of Things, Taylor & Francis Group, London.
Christopher Pollard, https://theconversation.com/explainer-the-ideas-of-foucault-99758
Unit 1: Methods of Cataloguing / week 002
4/NOV/2021
On The Second Week:
RE-ASSEMBLING IKEA CATALOGUES
The ideas: Manipulating objects on IKEA covers by adding another set of objects that describe the current situations in a certain year. My works focused on the 5 first decade to re-assemble contradicting narrative where people looking for changes to create a better future.
…. artists felt the urge to reconfigure this amorphous mass of anomic images by creating connections, possible narratives, sudden clashes, and interpretations.”
(Gioni, Massimiliano, The UnMonumental Picture, p. 12)
Experiment #4
Focusing on 5 earlier decades, I tried to tell the contradictive situations: where people changing their interior to be comfortable, in another side of the world people making ‘change’ to get a comfortable and better future.
In the 70s collage, I want to portray a glimpse of differences how women represented in the media and how actually they are on the outside. I used the women on IKEA covers who sit comfortably on the fancy furnitures, like not minding anything else but having a good time at home. While on the outside, some women fighting for equality. I also put a woman, who hold a big handwritten poster, blocking a place where medias always connect them to the female role in a house: a kitchen.
Experiment #5
Because I see two similar aspects: cycle, constantly changing. I turned the collages into kaleidoscopic patterns.
…. to reflect objects and create beautiful, fascinating repeating patterns”
Kaleidoscope
The Feedback
note written by Marie (thanks!! >.<)
Working:
- layering image of historical events with the utopia-like settings that IKEA portrait.
- cover: summarize the IKEA at that time
- find the pattern of the overall representation
- Subtlety is powerful; the few collages are too pop out. Keep the subtlety.
Not working:
- The first approach of putting people into the setting. (t is an interesting visual approach but a little lacks meaning) -These explorations are showing the real people and items in the perfect setting, maybe use people’s photo in IKEA shop instead of use people’s photo on street.
To do:
- Look into what happened in Sweden. (Amandine)
- Make the collage more like an IKEA cover. The covers are essential as a summary. (Parth)
Unit 1: Methods of Cataloguing / week 001.b
29/OCT/2021
Office Hours
with Andrew Brash
After getting feedback from yesterday’s class, I made the slides to present them on office hours and I thought about several things:
→ Re-deconstruct IKEA catalogue?
- Separating people out of the catalogues
- Make them homeless? → context: homeless-milennial issues in Indonesia
→Re-imagining IKEA catalogues?
- What if we use real people from the year to put on the covers?
- Using people who sit around Londond
- Make IKEA catalogue out of utopia: people throwing garbage, doing chores, or even homicide case in a house?
What I found interesting: the visual mood in every transition
Experiment #1
Experiment #2 and #3
The ideas: Some of ideas that crossed into my mind but I do not think I want to finish them because lack of closure. There are manual collage ‘Deconstructing IKEA Catalogue’ and Original Life Soundtrack’ the advanced version of ‘Through Normal Days’ digital collages.
The Feedback
- Find surprising things, make it interesting and rich
- might be a connection with interior design
- sorry, lost you at the end of the chat. What i would say about this project is that the focus is on categories, sets and reworking them (methods of sorting, taxonomising, classifying, captioning, framing, recontextualizing, adding, substracting, stretching, compressing, hijacking, subverting, exaggerating, etc.)
- What might be more interesting is to continue with the set you have and reconfigure the purpose, value, and play with the meaning of the individual components and the set, while asking what the meaning and values are. but bringing in another set could be interesting – maybe using homeless people could be a bit obvious and crass however…
Unit 1: Methods of Cataloguing / week 001
28/OCT/2021
On The First Week:
In this project I choose IKEA catalogues to work with because I recently went to IKEA and they said that 2021 would be the last edition of printed IKEA catalogue. They already printed catalogues since 1950s. I think it would be fun to explore the visual styles of IKEA catalogue covers through the decades.I also think it would be interesting too, to see how the trend back to the past, compared the oldest catalogue design to the newest. I love the idea to see how ages represented in visual works, and in this case, I use IKEA cover to find out.
I just made rough thoughts of the IKEA covers because I thought that we only had to discuss about the set that we choose, apparently my tutor expect me to show experiments I already did last week (which I had not yet, at the moment) and I just talked about what I see and short-analyzed on the covers through the decades using IKEA website which I prepared 30 minutes before the class. (I’m so sorry :””( )
Frankly speaking, I failed to present my ideas and I could only hope that Mr. Houman didn’t upset. :”(
The Feedbacks
- Find out the possibilities of lifestyle
- They use 3D renderings/hyperrealistic → More economic way?
- The style in 50s back again in 2000s?
- make uncovers, look at various angles?
- explore this in this kind of way
- why they lost of character of identity as years go by?
- why they put many things on the covers that makes them look like a cheap tabloid?
To Do
- try short the shape/size
- do experiment with the catalogues
- look for the political condition as well
- try framing
Unit 1: Methods of Investigation / Written Response I
Subliminal Messages in A Liminal Space
MAGCD / 20036676
In this essay I tried to find relation between my chosen site and George Perec’s Species of Spaces and Other Pieces (Perec, 1974) Perec’s interest of investigating random simple places evoked me to do the similar things. In his book, Perec stated that there is something frightening in the very idea of the town; we get the impression we can fasten only on to tragic or despairing images of it (Perec, 1974, p. 62) We might see the block in the neighbourhood as an uninteresting place, we tend to pass thirty houses to get to the tube station in a rush to get to our destination without noticing that the row of houses is radiating the message of everything who lived there for years. The curiosity about the messages motivates me to choose Hermitage Road as my method of investigation brief. Through admiring places that people do not spend much time in, I am trying to find meanings in imperfect ordinary insignificant things which people usually ignore.
In the first three weeks I investigate the liminal space: place between their home and their destination. Liminal space originated from the Latin word ‘limen’ meaning on a threshold or at a boundary and evokes a period of time/space ‘in-between’[…] (Turner, 1974 1982; Van Gennep, 1960 [1909]) I watched people walk from south to north everyday but their mind is not being present in the moment, I noticed that by seeing a few of samples: the fresh apple that being there for almost three weeks, plenty of big dog’s stool being stepped and spread along the road, some died snails on the road stepped meanwhile on another wall they were crawling slowly living in the moment, it contrasts with the background noises: sound of people walking, speeding bicycles, fast vehicles, and ambulance siren. Every house has small garden some of them have lichen, moss, and wild plants growing through their wall. If we think about it further, we will learn a lot that the small plants are trying to deliver a message that they will reclaim their place in the nature. It also represents the threshold between decaying and growing and how time and nature eventually visualize them in a better vision without human noticing because we are too busy to try to get to our destination. It connects to the liminal space of people on the Hermitage road: going from a place to another place.
As an evaluation, from Perec’s work, I can see the red thread that pulled from the beginning of my project until this week what relation between my fragment of thoughts. I also imitated his ways of thinking towards ordinary things in life, it helped me to get more point of views in only an ordinary space with no monumental object to see.
Reference:
- Perec, G. (1974) Species of Spaces and Other Pieces. London: Penguin.
- Turner, V (1974) Dramas, Fields and Metaphors. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
- Van Gennep, A (1960 [1909]) The Rites of Passage. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Unit 1: Methods of Investigation / week 004
21/OCT/2021
On The Fourth Week:
Trying to Focus on One Thing >.<
What I was afraid of came true: Mr. Houman asked me why is my presentation jumped fragment into fragment. That was also my mistake that I did not recap what I did in the last three weeks, but presented my series of experiments that I did. I am still not deciding what my focus is, I am also struggling to keep my eyes at only one object. Too many things to explore. Too much possibility. I feel so stupid in the same time.
I know what my intention is, I know what I want to say, but I am still not sure HOW to deliver the message through my project yet.
I am still not finding something that connects the people who walk fast in the liminal space and decaying objects such as apple. The only thing that crossed my mind is only what grows from decaying spaces: lichen, moss, wild plants. But I am not sure how to interpret the message and translated them into visual project. In the class, we took notes and feedbacks and I thought about trying to push the ‘What Happened in The Liminal Space’ video on second week further.
What’s Working
- Overlapping videos in different times
- the snail and apple video is interesting and effective
- the metaphore between apple and myself – apple is growing roots in the neighbourhood – look for deeper meaning
What’s Not Working
- Following people, why don’t you talk to them?
- moving images (I do not know, no comment about this one 🙁 )
- asking people online to send the picture of lichen they found — how does it relate to my project?
The Feedbacks
(note written by Charlotte, thanks!)
- Why the following people?
- Lots of different ideas together – is it clear what you are looking at? The path of your thinking through these experiments is not totally clear always.
- Trying to find meaning in small things, gradually noticing everything through different experiments.
- The aspect of using time is really interesting, the snail, the apple and the time-lapse video. Video is very effective at showing different moments throughout day, could you push this further? Could do separate morning and evening videos to overlap and see the differences. Could do every hour and layer videos to see differences.
- Your key messages are time, why are people rushing, paying attention to small details. Need to be more explicit in showing these as the key themes, at the moment the website process seems a bit random with experiments skipping to the next without communicating your process clearly enough.
- Really like the parallel between the apple and yourself – apple is growing roots in the neighbourhood too – seeing deeper meaning in this.
- Moss/lichen is another interesting experiment as it shows the history of the neighbourhood, and the passing of time. Interesting seeing the different lichen around the world but how does it relate to your street and your project?
- Comparing one day, or time to another might be a helpful experiment. Gather information at a certain time and comparing with later that day or the next day. Asking people where they are going and making up a picture.
_______________________________________________________________________
Today, 24/OCT/2021
I tried to crop the image of the rotten apple in the final week, and also cropped the lichen image and paste them into the apple. It represents the threshold between decaying and growing. It connects to the liminal space of people on the Hermitage road: going from a place to another place.
I also got some ideas, mostly I want to get involved with the neighbourhood, interact with them, but still afraid but here are few ideas:
- making photographs of people on the pavement, cropped them individually, and make them printed on tracing paper to make the shade effect like the video on the second week but in another medium to preserve its ‘still’ness.
- making a series of digital imaging photo: mixing the lichen and decaying objects: apple, bread, drinks, etc. I think this would be interesting.
- sit on the pavement and give a simple drawing of people who wants to slow down and having a chat with me, will upload the picture on my blog so they can download them and also view other people’s portrait and diverse stories about where are they going (very challenging but I am really curious to try)
- making a parody of slippery sign that written “Caution! ….’ continued with some funny texts, might be a message to make people smile, or a message to make people slow down, and put them along the pavements (I can not stop my self off of taking everything in a comical way)
I reworked the video into better resolution and concept.