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SA245: My experience in this semester

Looking back this semester, this class reshaped my definition toward archive. Before talking this class, my definition for archive is an accumulation of historical records or a collection of materials. I never realize that archiving can be expressed by artistic format. But right now, I think that archive can be anythings, and you can create an archive by yourself. Except reshaped my definition about archive, the most valuable thing I studied from this class is how to set up exhibition of artwork in gallery space. Exhibition in Art&Music Library definitely was a valuable experience for this practice. I learned that exhibits arrangement is an integrated work, we need to consider the size of space, materials, light, and relationship between each art work, and what is the effective way to exhibit pieces. In addition, I also saw a lotto wonderful work of my classmates.

    What things I wish had been different? I think that arrangement of class need to be more organized and we need to have a detailed syllabus before beginning of the semester, because I really felt disordered for schedule of continue coming up. In addition, I hope that this class can give us more study about techniques of art, such as how make a video, how to make a book, and tricks of photography etc. Actually, I felt that this class was similar to the class of art history instead of studio art.  

    A lot of wonderful works of my classmates let me feel so surprised, and I studied a lot from their work. The most enjoyable thing for me is showing my project in the class, because I like to  share my understanding of art with others, and I also can receive a lot of valuable suggestion from my class. Reading is the most challenging thing for me, because reading included a lot of professional vocabularies and background knowledge, it was hard for me to understand by using second language. For each reading, I had to do a lot of research in order to understand, but it was a valuable process of study.

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SA245: Project#3 Documentation and Reflection

My piece is named ‘ Solitude’. It is a book that relate to the collection of solitude, and it composed by three parts, which are people with city, people with nature, nature and city. My inspiration from a conversation with my friend. My friend and me have totally different attitude toward loneliness. I enjoy loneliness, and like to get along with myself, because I feel very free and can think a lot of things when I alone. But my friend reject get along with self, she will feel very sad and loneliness when she alone. We can’t define right or wrong for different attitude toward loneliness, because it is subjective things for each person. After conversation, I began to consider what is ‘lonely’ and how to define it? Because loneliness in your eyes is not lonely in other’s eyes. I didn’t use ‘loneliness’ to name my project because I thought that this word is so subjective. I used ‘solitude’ to name my project, because this word doesn’t have intense emotional coloring. 

     For each image, I will not give definition and explanation. I want audience to translate them by the view point of themselves, because just like I mentioned before, loneliness in my eyes may be is not lonely in your eyes. But no matter objects or person, they are alone in each image.

    The color of images is not black and withe, I just reduced the vibrance of image. By this way, the most brilliant color still stay above the image, but other parts will be faded. It is better to highlight the object in the image as well as faded photographs can bring a feeling solitude in visual. 

     Because I want to use a traditional carrier to express my work, so I decide to make a book. And my work contains so many images, thus a book is the best way to collect them. However, due to it is my first time to make book, I met some troubles during the process of working. I finished typesetting for the book, but when I printed them out, the images were conversed in the same page. I tried so many different ways to reprint them but still not working. So I had to give up my original idea that printed two images one page. I just left one image in each page. But during the critique, people commented that leaving blank page is more effective than having images in both sides. I thoughts that coincidence can bring unexpected artistic effect. If I rework this project, I definitely will reform my typesetting. But I will keep suggestions from critique that leaving blank page. 

    For the documentation, I use a short video to record my book, because it is the most effective way to record entire feeling of my book.

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SA245: Project#3 Work-in-progress

Inspiration:

In this project, I want to collective some solitary things of my surroundings, since I was planning to record moments of myself and this city. My inspiration for this theme came from a conversation with my friends. In our conversation, we talked about loneliness, and we had totally different attitude toward loneliness. Thus, I decide to collect loneliness around me and use series  digital photo to express this theme. I want to take some photos where only have one person in an empty street or space. I will highlight an atmosphere of loneliness by comparison between people and their surroundings. Except people, I also want to use some scenes or subjects to express this theme. And finally, I want to exhibit my project by a book.

Step1:

I took some photos that a person in the city. This series is to express people’s solitary status in the city. 

Step2:

I shot these images around Ontaio Lake. This series is to express people’s solitary status in the nature.

Step3:

In the series, all images are subjects or scenery. I shot random things around my surroundings. 

Step4:

Photo editing

Step5:

Demo of book

Step6:

Typesetting

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SA245:Write about the exhibition at the Art & Music Library

    For the exhibition at the Art&Music Library, I selected my second project ‘SE7EN’ to present, because my first project is to personal, I don’t want to show such personal work in public. And I also want to rework my second project, because it is interesting theme. I want to appeal more people to notice seven sins, and encourage people to confront these sins, and flight back the guilty and shame when they experience these sins. 

    My exhibition in art the Art&Music Library is totally different with my original installation in Level B of Rush Rhees Library. My original installation contains a game, so it needs enough space. But there has limited space in Art&Music Library, I have to consider how to instal my art work in limited space and how to cooperate with other pieces. I want to instal my piece in a corner and near to floor. Because ‘seven sins’ are in people’s deeper heart, it is a incisive and deeper topic, people rarely talk about them and notice them, but these definitely influence people a lot. Thus I want to instal my piece in a quite and secret space, and to create a quite feeling for audiences, so a quite corner is my best selection. Finally, I instal my piece as an order of seven in the wall, it  is an implication of theme. I felt that it is a successful exhibitions. From this exhibition, I learn about that exhibition of art work can be different form, sometimes artists exhibit their work in an exhibition as totally different way with their original idea. Exhibition is integrated process, artist need to consider a lot of parts, such as location, the size of space, light, and audience’s preference. This exhibition definitely gives me valuable experience in this semester.

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SA245:Write about the Class’ Collective Recording.

Actually I was hard to decide what I will post for my first collective recordings, because there were so much things that I would like to record, but I thought that my collection will be a series and uniform, so I didn’t want to change my subject during the process of collection. After I posted first photo about the changing of light in the night, I decided to follow this line to keep going. I began to collective images that I shot during the night and had light, I wanted to collect different status of light during night. Because night and light are similar to the sun and the moon which are contrary things, so I thought that collecting contract between light and night should be an meaningful and interesting process. And the lights of the night are always so pretty, and it had been used in a lot of art work. From all photos of my old shooting, I only found three images that related to the light and night, which deepened my determination  to do this collection. I didn’t limit a specific time to shoot images, because I thought that the limitation of time was so intentionality.I thought my collection should be nature instead of having strong purpose. Thus, I randomly shot images in the nights of every week, and selected the most representative and the best quality images to post. 

    The tags I always used were,#Week,#Night&Light,#Name,#submission. “#Week” was to recored time, “#Night&Light” was to name and maintain the style of my collection. “submission” didn’t have specific purpose, but I used it during the first time, so I decided to continue to use it in order to keep everything being uniform. I didn’t want to use so many tags, because I felt that so many tags made me feel disordered and meaningless, and I wanted to keep a very simple style of tags for my collection. Only two images that I added tags of the location, because I had been the Mexico during the spring break, images shot in there represented a precious memory of this semester, thus I marked the location of shooting.

     For me, ‘collective’ is a process to record to find to create beauty in our life. I ignored a lot of detailed and meaningful things in my life, but through the process of the ‘collective’, I can focus on them and add more value to them. Just like the collection in this semester, if I didn’t do this collection, may be I will never collect ‘night and light’, although I already shot a lot of images, these images were disordered, because I never manage them and  add vale for them. I really enjoyed this collection, because it let me notice some ignored beauty in my life, and it is a recording for this semester.

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SA245:Steven Seidenberg and Carolyn White’s work

    I was very appreciate that Steven Seidenberg and Carolyn White brought such wonderful and valuable workshop for us. It was my first time to participate an interactive workshop and had conversation with artists in such near distance. What surprised me most is that two artists who working in different fields, but they collaborated their works in a such good way. During workshop, they discussed their various experiments in bringing Seidenberg’s practice as an artist and philosopher into collaboration with White’s work in archaeology and material culture analysis. The collaborative work of them gives me an inspiration that art is no limitation of field, each field can be regarded as art itself, and the interdisciplinary collaboration can create unexpected art work. 

     Also, I was shocked by the the series of Tokyo Tape, when I first saw it, I didn’t realize that those images were the texture of road and shot by photography, because those images  looked like two-dimensional and created sense of abstraction, and in each image, there had vibrant colors to catch my eyeball. This series work also gave me an inspiration about how to record a city through a uncommon angle, because I want to do a project about Rochester before I leaving this city. Instead of directly shooting objects, I will focus on some detailed and representative things around us, these things may easily ignored by us, but contain a lot of meaning for this city.

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SA245:Camille Henrot’s video: Grosse Fatigue

The video, ‘Grosse Fatigue’ directed by Camille Henrot, it definitely is an amazing video. The sound of background and all images in the video are really good. In the video, Camille tells the story of the creation of the universe by covering wide-ranging knowledge, such as anthropology, ethnography, and the history of technology. In the video, the most impressive thing for me is that the whole video is covered by dense images and sounds, and these images ceaselessly pop up, collide or implode across a computer screen with the background music. I feel that the visual effect is very successful, I will consider to use this technique in my future project. The video gives me a strange feeling, which is real and unreal, separation and coordination,scientific and religious, and it is hard to conclude what is the main line that they want to talk about, because it gives me so many information, but I really enjoy this feeling that it brings to me, because the whole video like the processing of development of universe.

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SA245: Video Mappings - Aida Palestine

“Video Mappings: Aida Palestine” directed and produced by visual artist Till Roeskens, the video is a documentary film that explores the evolution of the Aida refugee camp though a series of maps drawn by its residents. It was an impressive video for me, artist explored the psychosocial dynamic of space and the effects of the occupation by a unique cinematographic technique. In the video, artist didn’t show storytellers and real scenes, I had to image their age, appearance, environment by storyteller’s voice and story they talked about. Although less information made this video a little bit abstract for me, it definitely gave me more space of imagination. In addition, from this video, I felt that real emotion and authenticity were very important in an artwork. For example, all maps were not same and accurate, even very simple. But as the film progresses, I was hemmed in by a complex network of lines, and entire map of reality emerged in my mind based on their real stories.

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SA245:Project#2 Reflection of Project

I think my work worked well in installation location, and I feel the way of installation, the scale, materials and the color used for images all supported my intention. I invited some people to view my installation, by following the clues I left in each image, most audiences found book finally. And they told me that the whole process was similar to a detective game which was really interesting and triggered their curiosity. And most of them were interested in why I used this way to instal my work, and what was the connection between the installation and the theme of seven sins, and some of them talked their understanding about seven sins with me. I used a video to document my project. However, during the critique, I found that audiences were hard to understand the way of installation and they were easily to ignore the information in each image. I  though that this misunderstanding was used in lack of real participation. Then, I got some advice about how to make document more touchable, even audiences didn’t view your work in first-hand experience, but they still can understand what you want to express.If document my project again, I will adjust the angle of shooting of the video, and provide more information in the video. And before playing video, I will give more introduction for the project.

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SA245: Project#2 Documentation

Theme:

Seven cardinal Sins 

——pride, envy, greed, lust, wrath, sloth, gluttony

Inspiration 

My inspiration for this project came from Se7en the movie directed by David Fincher and written by Andrew Kevin Walker. In the movie, the murder use the sign of seven sins to select his victim. After watched the movie, I considered that seven sins were in each of us as long as we are human. Although these are negative parts in human nature, we need to face up to these evil parts. In my project, I expressed sins by people’s behavior, the status of different objects, and I used different color to symbolize each of sins. By doing so, I want to normalize these sins, and appeal people to confront these sins instead of escape them. In addition, I hope that people can realize that sins existed in the depth of one's soul, when people experience these impulses they can flight back the guilty and shame, because none can eliminate them but people can control and restrain them effectively. 

The location of installation:

Rush Rhees Library — Level B

Book: The seven sins, by Aurdey Wurdeman, 1911- 1960

            River campus libraries, Level B, PS3545. W967se

   In Rush Rhees library, there is no typical location that directly relate to the theme of my project. In order to make a connection between my project and installation location, I searched some books about seven sins. Most books of this type located in the level 500m of the Rhees Library, where was the area of religious book. But I don’t think that seven sins just relate to religions, if I instal my project in there, it seems that I forcedly add a definition for seven sins. Then I found the book—The seven sins, by Aurdey Wurdeman. It was a collection of poems, which talked about seven sins from author’s view and didn’t give any typical definition for seven sins.The content of this book was relate to the theme of my project. The book located in the level B of Rush Rhees library, then I installed my project around this book.

   Because my inspiration of this project came from Se7en which was a suspense movie, the detective needed to follow each line to find murder. Thus, I installed my project as a way of finding process, which related to the theme of movie. I left information of the book in each single image, and putted these image in the floor. Audiences can find book, little by little, by the clues in each image. Through this way audiences can enjoy the project as well as participate in the project. I think that audience’s participation is very important part in an art showing, because audience can understand art ark better when they have participation.

Meaning of color

Violet-pride: pride is that a person feels more special or important than others, and the color violet is often associated with royalty, nobility, power, and ambition, then I used it to express pride.

Magenta-lust: magenta is a combination of red and violet, it is a feminine color, and it has sexual connotations in many conditions.

Golden&Orange-gluttony&greed: these two colors always be used for symbolization of wealth and status, then I used them to express greed and gluttony.

Green-envy: green color represented evil in the Middle Ages, then it is better to express envy.

Red-wrath: red exudes a strong and powerful masculine energy, thus it can express wrath.

Blue-sloth: sloth is the act of being lazy or idle, blue color represent peace or quite, thus I used this to express sloth. 

Music:

The background music is Aria Sul G by Johann Sebastian Bach. This music be used as background in the movie SE7EN, so I also used it as my project’s background music.

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(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlkzzlnT5eI)

SA245: Project#2 SE7EN (Documentation)

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SA245: Project#2 Work-in-progress

1）Step#1 Shot photos in black room 

After I made sure the theme for my project, I decided to use a series of photos to show it. But when I finished the first and the second shooting, I found that it was not enough using portrait photography to express my project, because “envy”, “sloth” these words were too abstract to express by model’s body language and facial language.  

2)  Step#2 Continue to shoot photos and pick up photos from previous photos

During the spring break, I continued to shoot photos and pick up photos from s previous images. I found that except portrait photography, status of an object or behavior of a person can express the theme better. From previous photos, I selected the image of broken plate to express “wrath”, the sink accumulated dirty dishes to express “sloth”, the behavior of eating to express “gluttony”. After I went back from travel, I found that tomato decomposed in my refrigerator and it looked like a distorted face, then I thought that it was better to express “Envy”. I shot “greedy” and “lust” during travel. My friend and I picked up food in supermarket, actually we already selected a lot of food in our shopping cart, but we still wanted to buy more, and I realized that our behavior can represent “greedy”.  

3) Step#3 Do photo editing 

Using photoshop edits each selected photo and using different colors represents different sins.  

4) Step#4  Find relationship between the location of installation and project 

I didn’t find a special location that relates to seven sins to instal my project, thus I considered that I can built a connection between a book that relate to even sins and my project. 

5) Step#5 Instal photos in the library

6) Step#6 Made video to record it 

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SA245: Response for Project#1---On the Way

Response for Project

02/18/2018                                

A written reflection about your process, the work you have produced and the conversation we had in class about it during your critique session.

- Type

Digital image

- Techniques

PS - Collage

- Theme

On the way

     My project relates to travel, it is an archive that includes all travel places where I have been from freshmen year until now. First reason I want to do this topic, because the first word emerged in my mind was “travel”, when I first viewed the image from the envelope. Another reason I want to do this topic, because it is the last semester for my undergraduate year. So, I want to record/conclude which places I have traveled in these years, because there are a lot of precious memory during each travel.

    My project totally has four parts, and each part includes three partial images of the image I received in the envelope. These partial images were used as tag card to write some words to record each travel. I wrote the time, the location, the partners who traveled with me in there, and I also wrote one or two words that can represent my feeling toward each location. After joining fours images together, the full image from envelope will be shown in the center.

   Why I separate full image to four parts, the first reason is that I want to make a connection between the image I received and the images were shot by myself. The second reason is that I feel when I try to recall bygones, I always put different parts of my memory together so that a complete thing can be presented again. Separating image to four parts can represent memory pieces, and putting them together represents the process of recall. Editing the image from the envelope to be black and white represents the past.

First Part

   This part includes four locations which are Orlando, Miami, Lijiang, and Puerto Rico. My first travel experience in university was to go Orlando and Miami. During that travel, I was familiar with Maya and Fred, and we became very good friends until now. The first summer holiday in university, I went to Lijiang with Jiajun, we knew each other from middle school. This travel was very precious, because after graduated from high school, we had less time to meet each other.

Second Part

  This part includes three locations which are Guangzhou, New York, and DC. In the summer vacation of the sophomore year, I took a summer school in Guangzhou and live together with my sister. My sister has given me so much help during my stay there, and it was the first time having company of family member, during I studied in a strange city. So I use word “ warm” to describe Guangzhou.

Third Part

   This part includes three locations which are Beijing, Toronto, and San Francisco. This winter break was my last winter break in university. I decided to stay in the united states and to travel some places I always wanted to go but never been before. So, from the end of December of 2017 to the January of 2018, I traveled to San Francisco, LA, SD, and Boston.

Fourth Part

   Locations included in this part are Los Angeles, San Diego, and Boston.

Take way from critique

    I received a lot of valuable suggestion from critique. I think that a good art work not only has the function to express creator’s idea, but also can strike a chord from audience.

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SA245: Project#1 Work-in-progress

1. This is the original draft for my project. I already knew what I will do, but I need to consider how to arrange these images and what is the final image I will show.

2. Select photos from my photo album.

3. Edit each part of the project.

1) First part

2) Second Part

3) Third Part

4) Fourth part

5) Put all parts in one file to adjust the color tone of images, because the color tone of splicing parts need to be similar so that when I joint four parts together, the center image can show a full image.

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SA245:Project #1 -- Original Prompt Image

This is the original image that I received in the envelope. This image gives me a feeling of travel.

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SA245: Project#1 Response to Baron—“Foundness”

      “Foundness” is the core for the archival in Jaimie Baron’ concept. It relates to “temporal disparity”, “intentional disparity” as well as authenticity and inauthenticity.  Archives can be defined as the documents that were preserved and the foundation of modern history that had been constructed. They have function to bring people to contact with the past, to offer people a glimpse of world that existed but had been changed. The expression vector of archives can be diverse, such as image, acoustic, even smelling etc. Through archives, the past becomes knowable as well as perceptible. In Baron’ article, he mainly mentioned the image as the expression vector of archives, and these images can offer people an experience of past that written word can’t described. Like Baron mentioned, “ ‘foundness’ for archives means that found image not only points to a previous production context, but also to a previous intended context of use and reception.” (Archive Effect#1, P24) “Temporal disparity” and “intentional disparity” are two important concepts for archives. The “temporal disparity” is a necessary factor that makes a document becomes “archival”. It can show audience the changing of perception and the changing of objects generated within a single text. By viewing and experiencing the changing recorded in one text, audience can realize and experience the changing of history and the object itself. The “intentional disparity” more focuses on the creator or author themselves. The original purpose of one object will be changed, if author, creator or user put it in different situations or different times. For example, an image from the last century can be a precious historical information in nowadays, but it is just a very common image when it was created.  

     Authenticity and inauthenticity are also  important factors for archives. The footage be (that is) shot without intentional purpose is more reliable and authentic than the footage be (that is) shot for the purpose of document. That is why sometimes raw images or lower quality images are much more authentic than high quality images.

     My project expresses the concept both “temporal disparity” and “intentional disparity”. The image I received in the envelope shows a girl ’s back, she stands in the mountain and looks to the distant. The background of image includes sky and houses in the distance. When I first viewed this image, the first word emerged in my mind was “travel”. I considered that this image was shot during her traveling time. Based on the visuality and my perception toward this image, I associated the travel experience of myself. I decided to make an archive about my travel experience during four years’ university life. At the beginning, I concluded all places I have been traveled from freshmen year until now. Then I collected eight to eleven images from each traveling time, and arranged them by the time line. In my project, audience can see the changing of myself with the development of time, and the changing of the locations, thus the temporal disparity has been created in there.

     My original purpose toward those images was not for archive, but when I edited them to an archive, the intention of those images has been changed, thus there has an intentional disparity. In addition, the creating purpose of the image that I received must be different with the purpose I supposed to do, thus there also has an intentional disparity. Finally, in order to show the authentic of archive, all images I selected are original photos, although most photos can’t show high quality composition of images as well as photography techniques, they are very credible and authentic.

    To conclude, there are no conscious to do these choices ——“temporal disparity” and “intentional disparity”. When I did my project, I didn’t have specific purpose that my project must show the concept of “foundness”. But when I finished my project, “temporal disparity” and “intentional disparity” have already existed in there. I think that this also expresses the authenticity and objective reality of my archive.

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[36x Contact Sheet]

Explanation

·          This contact sheet is my first shooting job, I just test the balance between aperture and shutter speed. Due to this is my first time to shoot photos and to wash photos, the quality of most images is not good. But after this testing, I already learned about each part for film camera better, and I mastered the balance between exposure times and shutter speed during different situation.

·          To conclude, when I shoot outside, if I fixed shutter speed at 1/125, the aperture should between 11-22, if above 11 the image will over exposure. When I shoot inside, if I fixed shutter speed at 1/125, the aperture should between 3.5-5.6, if lower than 5.6, the image will too dark.

 Exposure Log

ISO: 400 Fixed

Shutter Speed: I fixed shutter speed at 1/125 for this roller

Line#1

5.6

5.6

5.6

3.5

Line#2

1.8

1.8

2.8

2.8

2.8

Line#3

1.8

1.8

1.8

1.8

Line#4

1.8

1.8

5.6

3.5

Line#5

5.6

3.5

5.6

3.5

3.5

Line#6

11

11

11

11

Line#7

5.6

1.8

1.8

1.8

1.8

Project #2: Mini Assignment Contact Sheet

Light: 5.6

Exposure Time:5