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The Book Project

Our last assignment for the year was to make a book. The book has to be digitally produced and professionally binded. We were given instructions and boundaries on what to do regarding how many pages and what should be in the content of the book. 

At first, i was really confused and had no idea what to make the book based on, but luckily i like to take a lot of pictures on my camera so i decided to just browse my camera library and look for my inspiration. I decided to start with my work which was the reflective jacket which explains why it is the first page of the book, but i realised that going along the way i was more interested of making it about people because i am a people-oriented person. translate: i love people! So since the book could communicate about my interest, i decided to make it about people, the places i’ve been, and the memories i have had in London. And i think i am very satisfied with the result. I tried to be experimental with it by inverting the color, duplicating layers, and just combining pictures. I felt that it really communicated me as a person complete with my interests.

The background picture was taken on a fair on the Embankment area near the London Eye.

Scape has always been a big part of my life in London so i had to include it with my friend Rishi in it.

I decided to put a frame from my One Day video which is my friend Laura blowing bubbles

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One Day Film

https://drive.google.com/open?id=182HER7VNrYVOiTl79svC8ccRnn39-H8P

After watching these films, we were in turn instructed to create our own experimental film which was given the title of ‘One Day’. I interpreted this as being a Day in My Life kind of film and decided to film every single thing i did on one whole day but as it turns out, one whole day didnt really capture the whole sense of my daily routine so i ended filming my film over a 2-3 days. My first edit was more of a vlog style kind of video as that was what i was accustomed to as i would always watch vlogs on youtube, but when i showed it to my teacher he said it was too conventional which is correct because most recent videos on youtube is like that while we were told to make a experimental film. So i decided to pay around with filters--in fact, i think i used 90% of the filters on my Final Cut Pro X and i also played around with the speed. For the background music, i went back to my trusty Soundcloud as i have a playlist in there where i collect hype electronic music that i could use for videos, i also included the first Indonesian president President Soekarno reading Indonesia’s Proclamation of Independence. I like to edit videos, in fact, it was one of my skills back in highschool as i was always involved in the backstage crew consequently having to edit videos to promote school events or projects. And i would always edit videos to the song/beat which is what i did in this video--one of my mistakes as my final feedback was to let the natural sounds come to play and not use the kind of music i used as it was more catered to young people which is why friends my age really liked it but my teacher didnt.

In this video, i wanted to be as real and raw as possible to my audience which is why i showed the process of waking up after several snoozes on my alarm.

This clip was a clip which was repeated simultaneously across the video but with different formats like this one was with the kaleidoscope filter. The video was just a scene of a beautiful day in Mile End Park when the sky was blue and dog was running across the camera.

This next frame showed the view from my room’s window and i overlapped it with a clip of my college’s life--i played around with it.

I showed a clip of me getting ready and putting some makeup, combined with a clip of my oyster plate.

I showed the process of me going to the INTO centre--going through the bus and into the lift.

First thing would always be going to the studio!

During the break, my friends and i would go for lunch in one of the restaurants nearby.

In the middle of the day, i would have a non-art class which is marketing with Mr. JP Okeke.

After a whole day’s work, a few survivors and i would go home at 10 and we would usually play around.

Going by the tube is a daily thing to do, and seeing someone busking is also a common sight.

As you can see on the left-hand side, i included a clip of the repeated Park video but i cropped it so only the tree can be seen.

Walks from the Mile End Station back to my accomodation is a staple thing in my routine, its usually not that exciting, hence i put the kaleidoscope as the background.

Because it was on a weekend night, me and my friends decided to go for dinner in the central in an oyster place.

Going back from the restaurant, I love walking along Regent Street because i love the seeing the luxury shops in a row especially when it’s lit with street lights at night.

Hanging out in the common room used to be a daily thing--the common room buzzing with people socializing by playing pool and playing the guitar and singing along.

As i had to do something for my sketchbook, i had a photoshoot for the reflective jacket with my friend on the Mile End Park’s hill. I love it when i put the trailing filter on the clip where the reflective bits are lit, i think it looks cool.

Walking through the second floor pink hallway in order to go is an everyday routine for me.

When i get comfortable in my room, i would pop out my laptop to end my night with watching a youtube video or a movie.

Before sleeping, i would always check my phone once more and go through my instagram looking as i always do.

Preparing and going to bed finally after a packed day!

Here is the original unedited clip of the video which i repeated over and over again in the video but with a different format or filter each time.

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Meshes of the Afternoon - Maya Deren (1943)

This short film was created by Maya Deren as a non-narrative work which is called a “trance film”, where the surrealistic film shows th subjective view of the protagonist--showing what the main character experiences more than what’s actually happening. The film starts with a somewhat happy song that you would listen to in vintage cartoons but as the film progresses and it get creepier, more experimental sounds are included and more unsettling sounds gets included as the timeline gets warped and the clips begins to repeat over and over again when a trigger object is seen such as the knife. Overall, the film left me with an unsettling feeling because i get confused between which is real and which is a dream. 

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Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore, 1999

This was an experimental film edited by the British artist Mark Leckey--most of the clips in the video are discovered clips of young people dancing in a rave and clubs being drunk or high as a kite, which expressed the youth culture back then being filled with drugs. When i first watched it, i felt an uneasy feeling looking at all the stumbling, stiff movements of the youth dancing when they are on something. The original audio has been taken away from the clips and replaced with what seems to be an electronic bass line and even what sounds to me is a nursery song--and all this for me just adds to the notion of what it feels like to be high because you will start to feel weird and i feel that Leckey was able to give this experience even to the viewers, which leads me to the conclusion that this was a brilliant video and Leckey is truly a genius. Being experimental, Leckey played around with the VHS feel, the speeding up and the slowing down of the video, the occasional pauses on a person’s drugged up expression just added to the suspense even more. We could tell that he was pushing the boundaries of making an experimental videomaking with the added ‘random’ speaking voices and the images he placed inside the video. The video itself could spark a various of responses from the audience like confusion, uneasiness, curiosity, intrigue, and even entertainment, and many more which lead me to my conclusion of this being an intensely experimental video.

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UAL LCC Digital Portfolio

Next, i had another portfolio request made by UAL LCC and because this was much later, i had more work that i could put in and overall i liked this digital portfolio much more than the initial one just because i had more work that i could show. I still used several pages from the Kingston one, but i deleted several pages from the previous one and made new ones with the work that i had recently made. And this time, i got the orientation right, i was able to make it potrait. Furthermore, i think LCC liked this portfolio too as they invited me for an interview but sadly when i asked for a reschedule, they didn’t respond back.

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Kingston Digital Portfolio

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1w7zhkc8UBMEBHES_Rdwa8TfpBu4fDUwl

This is the link for my first digital portfolio which was for Kingston, this did not include a lot of works since the deadline for Kingston was around February and a lot of my work wasn’t done back then but i still tried to make the best out of what i could. I played around with the format and left a lot of white space as i was going for the theme of clean and minimal. I edited everything with Photoshop since i would be able to get the highest quality with it, and i had to converted it to pdf using the Preview app in the Mac and since it was my first time it didn’t turn out the way i wanted it to be. It came out in a potrait orientation when i wanted it to be landscape, i sized the original document as big as the powerpoint slide size. But i think i did pretty well for the formatting because for me it felt really graphic, which helped me to get an interview with Kingston and later on, an offer! yay!

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Bread Out of Paper

Continuing from the first week where we had to make a leaf as a practice, now we had to do the real thing. So we had to pick an object randomly from the range we were given: there was everything from a coffee cup to a flower. When i first picked, i got a toilet roll but when my teacher offered a change i decided to be adventurous and picked another one--which i got a slice of bread. At first i was panicking and dreading as i was thinking how in the world am i going to make a bread out of paper, it is going to be so difficult but i decided to stick with my choice and make it.

From the scanning itself, it took several tries to get it right. I had to deconstruct the bread precisely--removing the crust from the body. And to save paper and time, i scanned 3 crusts in one page. The first time i did it was a total fail because after i printed it and cut it, i cut right within the lines which i wasnt supposed to because i had to leave a border so i can fold it into each other. So reluctantly i had to redo it again which i dreaded, then after cutting it correctly (leaving the white border on), i had to cut through the white borders on every dent in order that i can fold it correctly as i couldnt fold the white border as a single thing as the bread has nooks and crannies everywhere on its edge. This process took especially a long time which is why i neglected this project for some time before continuing it. 

Then after finishing that process, its time to join everything together--i used the double-sided type and UHU glue to glue everything together and it took time because the glue kept coming off in places as the bread has many crooked edges which kept bending. So i had to hold it down for some time for it to completely dry down, and finally it was done and i was pretty satisfied with the outcome.

Sideways view of the bread

Front view of the bread

Back view of the bread

Bread flat on its back as seen from the side

Breakfast!

I tried arranging a flatlay as if the bread was supposed to be eaten for breakfast--complete with a peanut butter spread and a knife.

I tried making a gif of the process of (almost) putting the spread using a stopmotion which i made by putting several pictures together in Final Cut Pro then proceeding to Photoshop to turn it using a gif (using a gif tutorial i found on the net as it is my first time making a gif). I know it isnt that smooth like other gifs but considering its my first time, i think i’ll give it a pass :)

Next, i decided to ask for my friend’s help to model for my bread as i wanted a real person to ‘eat’ it just like it’s a real bread, just to add to the realistic-ness factor. And fun fact, i shot the pictures below in my friend’s room and ended up leaving the bread in her room, and since quite a few people visits her room often, she was always receiving comments on why a piece of bread is lying on her dressing table, and she always had to explain that its my project and its not real so bingo! 

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Composites in the Contemporary Practices

The third week of class we were introduced to composite images where an image or print is broken down into composites using technology and joined again physically using papers to make a bigger picture. 

(The Arrival of Spring in Woldgate, East Yorkshire, David Hockney, 2011)

This artwork was produced by David Hockney who pushed the boundaries of contemporary art by going back to nature yet utilizing technology at the same time as this painting was produced digitally using his IPad. This work consisted of 50 large-scale iPad drawings printed on paper which captured nature’s miniature glories. This was a huge landscape drawing that enabled the viewer to zoom in on even the tiniest details of nature within larger landscapes. He was embracing the how the IPad could instantiate the sharing of his works to his friends over the internet.

(Horses 85-86, Mike and Doug Starn, 1985-1986)

Doug and Mike Starn’s diverse conceptual practice which includes their conceptual photography practice fascinates me because I have never seen anything like this before. They incorporate a variety of deconstructive techniques such as décollage and appropriation that results in a work like the Horses 85-86 which shows us a chopped picture of a horse’s head. At first glance, we might think that the way they cut and join horse’s head is random but if you actually look, it’s quite intriguing because you can really appreciate the magnificent features of the horse’s head and the way they combine the cut parts actually makes sense. I also love how it looks so vintage with the Sepia photography and the scratches on the surface which adds to the texture of the photograph.

So we were assigned to make our own composite work by taking a picture of a work we did, and with the advice of my teacher, i chose one of the image of my readymade line that i made before. We had to use Photoshop to split it using the split tool to 9 parts equally then save to web the split files then afterwards print it ourselves in the printer downstairs. After printing it, we had to cut out the white borders using a cutter and ruler so it would be straight. 

Next, all we had to do was joining it but it took me quite a while because 6/9 images of mine were just of the studio floor where i took the photograph, but after looking closely, good thing that each of the floor images had a bit of a mark/flaw/dirt in it so i was able to distinguish which is which. I laid it out in order in the floor but i had to join it from the back using masking tape and i couldnt just simply flip the picture and tape it together because it wouldnt be the right order so i had to redo the order from the back then i carefully taped them so it would all be joined perfectly into a poster that if one didnt look closely, would think that its just a huge poster paper when it’s not.

The next task would be to place the finished work on different backgrounds and take a picture of it--to see what it would look like on different surfaces. First, i utilized the window because i thought it would be nice to have the light through it but turns out what the light did was just expose where the masking tapes were placed, but it did still look nice because the overall picture has a blue tint on it from the sky, the background, and radiated towards the image itself which had a blue tint yet with a grey background which was the floor.

So i turned on my flash to take a picture of this, and i think its much better as it showed the object clearly. It made the image stood out more than the background and also hid the masking tape because it spotlighted whats in the picture rather than whats behind it.

Afterwards, i decided to go basic and placed my composite image on the white wall of the studio and i think it looks really nice because it somehow looked like a real canvas placed on a white exhibition wall--which actually stayed on the studio wall for some time.

I used the flash to take a picture to see if it made any difference to the picture, but all it did was whitewash the picture and even the flash was reflected on the surface of the photograph as the print surface is glossy.

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Using Paper for Technology

On the first day of the module, we were introduced to several artists such as Wade Guyton, Thomas Demand, and Wendy White. They were artists who utilized the technology we have today to create their artworks. 

(Installation view Wade Guyton, Kunsthalle Zürich, 2013)

Wade Guyton was a New York painter who creates his artworks digitally and then printed them off on a specific machine. He was testing boundaries and challenging the notion of imperfection because as you can see from the picture above: although he might have printed it with the right scale on his device, it didn’t come out having the right scale as shown by how the black and white lines didn’t match perfectly. The top left black line was longer than the black line that was below it, and the white line on the top was shorter than the one below it.

(Copyshop, Thomas Demand, 1999)

Another artist we were shown was Thomas Demand and his work quite fascinated me because as you can see on the work above: at first glance, it might just seem like a normal boring copyshop that you see in offices, but when you actually look closely, everything in the picture is made out of paper. Just like his other works ‘Office’ and ‘Pacific Sun’ (which was a stop-motion), all the realistic scenes of everyday places were entirely created out of paper, which is completely amazing as they look very real.

So for our very first assignment, we were required to recreate the process of making a real object out of paper, and we started with the simplest object which is a leaf. We were given two papers: one for each side of the leaf. We were supposed to make it as realistic as possible so we needed to cut it accurately even around the rugged edges of the leaf, which took me quite some time as I wanted to make it as perfect as possible.

After cutting and pasting both sides of the leaf together, I had to trim the edges because the white paper could still be seen. Subsequently, because I could still see the white sides of paper after being glued, I had the idea of coloring them in using a green crayon. I finally decided to go with the color ‘Olive’ after much consideration.

This was the final leaf in my hand after the whole process of cutting, pasting, coloring, and scrunching it up in the veins of the leaf to make it look like a real fallen leaf.

Next, our task was to bring the leaf outside the studio and photograph them in places in order to make them look like a real leaf that’s fallen somewhere.

I took some masking tape to stick it in the back of the leaf so i could play around with it a little bit. I sticked it on the lift directory horizontally on the number zero because i thought it looked quite artistic, like when 0s usually have a line going through it. This also felt like it could be a crown of leaf of some sort like the one they used to give to the victors to be used around the head in the Ancient Greek Olympics. In this picture, the leaf also looked vey real with the lighting hitting them in the perfect places and the scrunches looking like real veins--although the light made it look a little too glossy to be real, but thats okay because some leaves have glossy blades.

This leaf i decided to stick to the handle of the stairs, and with the monochromatic white wall and grey handle, the green of the leaf just pops up a little more making it look like an artsy picture--this could possibly be on the cover of a Kinfolk magazine (or at least the color block is). Or without context, people looking at it could just think that a heavy wind blew the leaf to the handle of a stairs outside and this is a photograph of the leaf just before it falls to the ground.

The picture above is taken on the cigarette ash tray on top of the trash can like the leaf was just freshly blown off the tree and accidentally fell on top of the trash bin. And analogically speaking, the leaf could represent a cigarette because a cigarette comes from tobacco leaves so in reality we’re actually really smoking leaves. It would be cool back then if i had rolled up the leaf and burned the edges of it to look like a real cigarette, and took a picture of that.

Stuck Between Bars

This leaf i just wedged between some bars in front of a rennovated shop near Liverpool Street. It could look like a leaf just fell off the tree and got stuck between the bars. With the background of the leaf being inside the bars where it looks cold and harsh, the leaf could be stuck in prison haha

Caught Headshot

With the flash on, it looks like the leaf is being caught in the middle of doing a naughty act like how when a criminal is being ambushed by the police a big spotlight would be shone on them. As well when they are taking a criminal headshot, they would be taken in a bright flash.

The final picture is one where i placed the leaf on the sidewalk beside some sidewalk plants, so its like im placing it beside its family. Like it just casually fell off the tree onto the sidewalk, chilling beside its sidewalk family and the pole.