Research_01

Artists – John Baldessari, Bruce Nauman, René Magritte

  • long and vague titles
  • mixed media
  • viewing things with different angles, dimensions
  • displays a collection of ordinary objects in an unusual context, giving new meanings to familiar things
  • open-ended, making you wonder and be bit a more imaginative for a while
  • playing with reality and illusion, constant shifting back and forth
  • contradiction, allusion
  • provocative, surreal

       

To me, I’m most impressed about how they reminded me of everyday objects/events, also to view them in different way. Simply altering of angles, locations, combinations, scale, or colors seems to be enough to create big conflicts.

 

Literature – I LOST MY NOTEBOOK! So to be finished… T_T

Book to read: Philosophy of Nonsense, The Intuitions of Victorian Nonsense Literature.

And this is a part I’m fond of in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland:

“Who are you?” said the Caterpillar.

This was not an encouraging opening for a conversation. Alice replied, rather shyly, “I—I hardly know, Sir, just at present—at least I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have changed several times since then.”

“What do you mean by that?” said the Caterpillar, sternly. “Explain yourself!”

I can’t explain myself, I’m afraid, Sir,” said Alice, “because I’m not myself, you see.”

Subject Matter Projects

Sensory Masks – Lygia Clark (super related<3)

  

Sensory masks were gas mask-like hoods, that had herbs and aromatic seeds at the end of the “nose” or small mirrors at the location of the eyeholes. Thus the senses of the people that wear them are cut off the external world and a different vision is provided. However, there’s a darker side to the work as well; the masks could be seen as an entrapment, an imprisonment and prohibition of contact with the outer world.

These artifacts force us to rediscover the meaning of our routine gestures, to turn inwards. These objects help to experience rather than to been looked at.

Maxence Parache, Hyper(reality) – Maxence Parache

It uses a Microsoft Kinect to scan your physical environment and display it inside a virtual-reality helmet, so you can rotate the visual angle any way you like, with an Arduino-powered glove equipped with force sensors. In other words, you’re still able to physically interact with all the “real stuff” around you, but you can also pan your “mind’s eye” around the scene separate from your own body, just like you would in a video game.

A Way To Go – Studio AATOAA

It is like a grey squirrel balanced on a branch, fearless. It is a game and a solace and an alarm, a wake-up call to the hazards of today. At a moment when we have access to so much, and see so little, Way to Go will remind you of all that lies before you, within you, in the luscious, sudden pleasure of discovery.

Bonus: Bla Bla.

Augmented Hand Series – Golan Levin, Chris Sugrue, and Kyle McDonald

It is a real-time interactive software system that presents playful, dreamlike, and uncanny transformations of its visitors’ hands. Our investigation takes a position of exploration and wonder. Can real-time alterations of the hand’s appearance bring about a new perception of the body as a plastic, variable, unstable medium? Can such an interaction instill feelings of defamiliarization, prompt a heightened awareness of our own bodies, or incite a reexamination of our physical identities?

Thesis Reconstruct

After talking to Gabe, I knew it’s time to force myself to answer hard question to find the motivation.

 

Why Nonsense?

The origin of the idea arose from the research of phrase “down the rabbit hole”, leading me to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, of Literature Nonsense, which deeply inspired me with its description:

… The nonsense world, on the other hand, has no system of logic, although it may imply the existence of an inscrutable one, just beyond our grasp.

Invisible, obscure logic, ridiculous but not annoyed. Bumping into this kind of things is like having current to flow from bottom to top of my body, and dipping my brain into bubbling soda. Nonsense is an indispensable catalyst to daily life.  Its open-ended character lets imagination grows. It’s how I got inspired and motivated, and I want to create Nonsense too.

 

Thesis reconstruct

After reviewing previous projects in ITP and seeing repetitive helmet related projects:

  • introvert
  • because of lack of confidence, afraid of ppl looking at my face (heavy self-awareness)
  • shelter / lense / armor to approach world → saver
  • as another identity → braver

And asking myself those questions:

  • Why ITP? –> Not only animation. Because ITP is more than pure graphics and that excited me a lot, e.g. Puppet class, Codes to make non traditional unchangeable linear animation.
  • What did I learn? –> Code; ability to realize the ideas both visually and physically; build stuff based on imagination; be social; quest for deep thoughts and share with others (but still not good at); be insincere; hug; loneliness control
  • What should I do but I didn’t? –> Be more social; stop avoiding conversations; stop being too pragmatic to choose classes; social hacking stuff to help ppl conquering social awkwardness
  • What do I want to come out with from ITP? –> Dream realization; the method how I conquer social awkwardness; positive impact like a seed; something funny, lighthearted, and weird.

Here I tried to depict a less obscure map for my thesis. Under the realm of Nonsense, I want to make something that will assist introverts approaching this world, and it can also be a channel to providing introversion moments, e.g. being isolated, observant, and analytical. Along with the description of introversion-extraversion on Wiki:

“… Humans are complex and unique, and because introversion-extraversion varies along a continuum, individuals may have a mixture of both orientations. A person who acts introverted in one situation may act extraverted in another, and people can learn to act “against type” in certain situations.”

My project aims to use nonsense contexts to let users experience the introversion, and also the transition between it and extroversion.

Hybrid Mood Board

Torn between two ideas: 1) Show, which is multiplayer VR experiments; 2) Room, which is a tiny cardboard room hybrid of virtual and physical interaction, thus for my mood board, I created a hybrid of graphics & tangible, pro-Show (right side, with drawings and different helmets) & pro-Room (left side, with thread, wires, bottles, wood cubes, and feedback tray) as well.

mb01

 

And here’s the digital collages of my two ideas under the realm of Nonsense.

[ Show ]

moodBoard_Show

 

[ Room ]

moodBoard_Room

 

Projects Preview

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Before coming to ITP, I was never a person who makes things or codes. I grew up pursuing high grades, good college, and proper stable jobs, and kept my fantasy and daydreaming well within leisure time and doodling. After graduated, I’d worked as macro economic analyst for 2 years, forecasting “far to reach” numbers in the market manipulated by many big hands, and I gradually became numb and the job became just task. Thus I decided to change the life path when I still can, and desire to do something that will only end good if you pay enough efforts in it. Something is not made by talking but made by hand. Learning 3D animation was my first step, and then I was in ITP.

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Reviewed my past projects, I concluded myself a graphic person who want to do physical stuff. In the coding worlds, everything is so perfect, yet in the real world, everything is so against my will. I don’t know why I kept challenge myself with to do physical stuff even I know I’ll spend extra time on fabrication than other people. The connections of physical & physical, physical & graphics just fascinate me.

Overall, the projects can roughly summarized as

  • animated
  • fantasy realization
  • lighthearted
  • trying to be weird
  • hoping to be provoking
  • and most of them were out of self desire.

I’ve been focus on web based 3D graphic using Three.js since Spring 14′, and extended to virtual reality exploration. In Fall 14′, I fell in love with gears and kinetic movement, with blood and tears, because of Automata class.

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Thus(?) for my thesis, I’m interested in

  • Daydreams / doodles realization
  • Mask / helmet / thing that hides face: transform myself, communicate with the world as another identification
  • VR: experience the impossibility, challenge with contradiction and illusion, combine with audio and physical feedback
  • Chain reactions: both physical computing and analog (e.g. automata); to connect virtual with reality, experience virtual in reality, to make reality in virtual

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