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We are experimenting with puppeteering in class. For our performance/event we want to show an interaction between an 'outsider' and a child with his parent. We were thinking of story-telling throught the child and having elememts of it physically and verbally twisted by the puppeteer.

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BlockDrama101.com

Strategy 3: Human Puppets

“Hola teachers, the next strategy that I will be sharing with all of you is Human puppets. This specific drama strategy is absolutely amazing, it's a really fun activity and I can guarantee your students will love it. We had a guest speaker come in today and teach us human puppets. Well, if the title does not give it away, this activity involves a human becoming a puppet. First you pair up two students together. One student is the control (puppeteer) and the other the puppet. The puppeteer will then pretend to use strings to lift the body parts of the other partner, they can also change the direction of the person. The student should not actually touch the other person because you want the students to really focus on how they are going to position that other person. The idea behind this is that the pair synchronize movement, plan the story well, and cooperate so that a smooth position is formed. Once the puppet is formed, the puppet will freeze there and the puppeteer can add an caption to make it more interesting. This activity can go so many ways, and is a great way to see how creative your students are. To modify this activity, you could allow students to sit down and just move hand, arm and head motions or the puppeteer can shout the actions and the puppet has to think of a way to act it out.”

@hazel499 @cicideng @jackiesi97

Rossi, A, 2012, ‘Strategy 3: Human Puppets’, Drama101 [blog], <http://brockdrama101.blogspot.com/2012/12/strategy-3-human-puppets.html>

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Assessment 3

For our planned event, we want to explore body politics- specifically how our culture and parents both enable and restrict how we behave. Every member of our group had a pretty hegemonic Chinese upbringing, despite having been brought up in different regions of the country, and me being a first generation Chinese-Australian. We realised that our parents had fairly strict rules and values that we had to abide by as we grew up, and even now as young adults.

To explore this and give a visual representation, we have an idea of ‘human puppets’ where a puppeteer affects a body physically with ropes or something. We might also gamify this concept and get the class involved in this process.

@cicideng @hazel499 @jackiesi97

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Assessment 2 - Reflection

This project continues my exploration of the binary oppositions of old and young. I wanted to explore a sort of middle ground, a shared space that exists between the two, rather than focusing specifically on age and its characteristics. In doing do, I have showcased the candid moment of laughter and joy which is experienced by individuals from youth to old age. Emotions such as these are indiscriminate of age and are experienced in moments throughout life at any and every age. I exhibited this notion of shared space by combining various portraits of individuals of different ages. The final work is inclusive of toddlers, young adults, middle-ages, and the elderly, all merged together to create four new portraits. I wanted them to be humorous appropriations of their original portraits to reflect the overarching light-hearted vibe of the artwork.

Initially, I experimented with pencil sketching as my medium, hoping that it would create a sense of cohesion to mixed portrait. This didn’t work out well because it was difficult to discern that the portrait was even pieced together from parts of different individuals. It was also hard to realise the age differences of the individuals due to the texture of pencil shading making them all seem to have wrinkly skin. From this, I experimented with simply editing them together on photoshop. I liked that this medium showcased the mixed portrait with more contrast between the layers and also a more humorous linear connection with the different parts. Once I established that I was going to work with photoshop as my medium to create these mixed portraits, I focused on adjusting the perspectives and angles of individual pieces to make the overall portrait more cohesive. Similarly, the resizing of the different aspects was important in not only making the portraits more linear and connected, but also added to its humour. A few of the mouth pieces were subtly blown up to larger proportions, which emphasises their laugh and perceived absurdity in the moment.

These portraits are black and white to reflect the timeless nature of this experience. Although the moment of candid laughter itself may be transient, it can be experienced by anyone at any time. These moments have gone largely undocumented in history simply because they cannot be premeditated, however have been increasingly captured by modern technology. The greyscale colouring of the images also attributes to the blurring between the young and old in these portraits.

The sound clip that accompanies the portraits bring them to life through audible laughter and adds a layer of depth to the project. The audio was derived from a wide range of sources and compiled together into a continuous stream which blends all the different voices. I converted several Youtube videos into audio files and cut them at specific times to maximise my intended effect. I had the most difficulty in editing them together because I didn’t know how to layer and merge audio clips past basically cutting and pasting them together. To overcome this, I worked in collaboration with someone who was familiar with music remixing. These sound clips feature a mix of personalities and voices of different ages to showcase how these moments of candid laughter can connect people of all ages. It further showcases the shared space between the binary opposites of young and old.

Overall, I chose to disregard any presumptions and associations with the binary opposites of ‘young’ and ‘old’ and instead focus on a middle ground- an experience that brings people of all ages together. This project showcases the spontaneous moments of laughter, shock, hilarity, that bring people together.

Bibliography

Clip’wreck 2017, ‘Contagious laughter compilation’ on Youtube, accessed 14 September 2018, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7rJpRqK-8E&t=95s>

BruBearBaby 2011, ‘Baby laughing hysterically at ripping paper (original)’ on Youtube, accessed 14 September 2018, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RP4abiHdQpc>

Fleming, C 2010, ‘Kelly laughing hysterically’ on Youtube, accessed 14 September 2018, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIiVgTb8LTY>

Pinterest, ADAD 2018, accessed 5 September 2018, <https://www.pinterest.com.au/pin/568720259191601676/>

Pinterest, ADAD 2018, accessed 5 September 2018, <https://www.pinterest.com.au/pin/568720259191542797/>

Pinterest, ADAD 2018, accessed 7 September 2018, <https://www.pinterest.com.au/pin/AcNNnQbDEkJ38WrxlI73QSfWKlNirtrBiXhzt86myOdO7i4UlRQx90g/>

Pinterest, ADAD 2018, accessed 9 September 2018, <https://www.pinterest.com.au/pin/568720259191587833/>

Pinterest, Inspo 2018, accessed 9 September 2018, <https://www.pinterest.com.au/pin/568720259179454652/>

Pinterest, Inspo 2018, accessed 10 September 2018, <https://www.pinterest.com.au/pin/568720259182475601/>

Pinterest, ADAD 2018, accessed 31 August 2018, <https://www.pinterest.com.au/pin/568720259191528867/>

Pinterest, ADAD 2018, accessed 31 August 2018, <https://www.pinterest.com.au/pin/568720259191528346/>

Pinterest, ADAD 2018, accessed 31 August 2018, <https://www.pinterest.com.au/pin/568720259191528705/>

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Assessment 2

Binary oppositions Old/Young

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Audio track for assessment 2.

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I decided to make a laughter compilation sound clip that would accompany the images. I sourced the material from multiple Youtube videos such as these two and converted them to audio files before cutting and blending parts together. It showcases voices from young baby giggles to elderly men chortling. I just think it adds to the humor and further blends the binary oppositions together into an indistinct and inclusive phenomena.

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Week 7 - Value

This week we discussed what has value and how we determine it. Value can refer to monetary value, moral stances and personal beliefs. The value of something is generally very arbitrary and depends on external factors such as rarity, prestige, popular culture, and also individuals’ personal contexts as well. I thought of how this applied to my binary opposites of old and young that I’m experimenting with for assessment two. Instead of finding value in both old and young as separates, I thought of highlighting what is timeless and a shared space which is inclusive of people regardless of age. I believe moments of real spontaneous laughter which happens organically with the chemistry between two or more people is highly valued by those experiencing it.

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Assessment 2 Experimentation

Merging these two individual moments and personas together to create a sort of shared experience of candid laughter. I didn’t include a ‘young’ person like with the previous image because I want to show that anyone can experience these emotions regardless of their age. It contradicts the distinct binary opposites of ‘old’ and ‘young’ which are often perpetrated in society.

I’m also experimenting with colours this time. I think it gives a liveliness to the image, however it does sort of detract from my initial idea of making it black and white, and ‘timeless’.

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Still experimenting with fragmentation and reassembling separate individuals and moments to create a sort of shared space. I want to highlight how candid moments of joy are experienced by all ages, from youth to adulthood and senior ages, and its often a shared moment between two or more individuals.

Update: I have since cut this from my series of images because it just seems too disjointed and doesn’t convey a ‘togetherness’ with the individuals.

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Experimenting with merging these candid expressions together using photoshop. I’m not sure whether to make them black and white to reflect how these moments are timeless, regardless of age.

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Assignment 2 experimentation

I’m developing a concept working with the binary opposites young/old. I want to explore them through the expressions of laughter and moments of candid joy where age doesn’t discriminate. These moments exist throughout every stage of our lives, from the childish innocence of our youth to the moments of unexpected joy in daily activities in adulthood.

I’m experimenting with roughly merging parts of their faces just from sectioning a piece of paper.

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Affect and body politics

#ADAD1002 #experimentation

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Affect and body politics

#ADAD1002 #experimentation

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Assessment Task 1

Contemporary art and design often looks at the idea of constructed binaries, such as man/woman, soft/hard, straight/gay, dirty/clean, organic/synthetic. Considering the history of these ‘pairs’, how can art and design interrogate these binaries and offers new insights?

My poster explores the constructed binaries of young and old and attempts to challenge the ingrained assumptions surrounding them. The connotations of what it means to be ‘old’ and ‘young’ are distinct and separate. In society, being old and elderly is associated with being frail, weak, wise, and forgetful, among other such things. On the opposite hand, youth holds connotations of being free, fun, energetic, wild, and immature. I wanted this poster to show that it is possible for both to overlap and that age does not restrict a person’s ability to have fun and be silly.

The poster is arranged so that the old women are standing on top of a mountain of words, literally and figuratively showing that they have more life and energy than what is assumed of their age. I started with a piece of unstretched canvas cut to size and painted half with a mix of bronze and browns to mimic a tarnished and shabby aesthetic. I painted the other half gold to represent the saying “old but gold” and blended the two together.

When searching for images to use, I found some of interest including an elderly couple in the middle of a pillow fight, two women dressed almost in ridiculous gym-wear/leotards almost like caricatures of wrestlers, and a whole bunch of other grandparents being badass. These pictures captured the same youthfulness that younger adults and teenagers are associated with, being spontaneous, immature, and just overall silly. I chose to use the two women on the poster because they were staring defiantly at the audience in their funny outfits with their arms crossed as if saying, ‘We can kick your ass, punk’. Thus the binaries and distinctions of old/young is challenged in my poster.

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Assessment 1 process

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