Year 1

• What memory are you manipulating?

I’m going to manipulate a memory of when I got food poisoning from this egg waffle thats a Hong Kong delicacy.

• What is your concept? Is there a linear story? Non-linear?

It’s going to be a linear story.

• What is the goal or intended purpose(s) of the project?

I want to be able to show it go through my stomach in very weird/abstract way.

• What is your intended length?

My intended length is going to be 1 minute.

• Tell us WHO, WHAT, WHERE, WHEN and HOW you plan to shoot. Be very explicit about each of these 5 elements. What materials will you need to make it? Where do you plan to shoot it? Will you shoot from one camera or two (One angle? Two? More?)? — These can refer to the Storyboards/Shot Plan and Materials List. You don’t need to write them twice. Just link from the proposal to both.

I plan to make this whole stop motion using photoshop, draw each frame on there and put it together in Adobe Premiere. I will plan to have different angles. I also plan to work with Stephanie, because it is a lot of work for one person.

• Has any media work already been produced on this subject? Show us examples of these references and explain what is new, different, interesting, engaging about your approach?
  Style? (Any key stylistic elements in shooting, audio, editing, etc.). Show two examples (these can, of course, be from the list I showed you in class).

I’ve seen all the examples on this website. I like the sound used here, Im probably going to use some kind of background music instead of having voice overs. I also watched this one and I really liked the editing in the beginning when I don’t see the hand in the frame.

• Will you have sound in it? Music? Narration? If narration, who? what? Would you like to edit to the beat, or simply have it play at the same speed throughout? Why?

I will have background music in it but no narration. I haven’t chosen the music yet but I think the I will have a beat that changes depending on whats going on.

• Who is working on the project and what will the role of each person be?

I am working on this project by myself.

 

Material List:

– My laptop (Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Premiere)

– Drawing Utensils (Paper, Pens, Pencils)

– My Drawing Tablet

 

My partner Rachel and I initially planned to go to a drag show in class, however due to some age restrictions we had to come up with a plan B for this project. So we decided to go to Central Park Zoo. I honestly didn’t think the zoo was going to be as small as it was, I barely saw any animals; the most exciting animal I saw was a bear. We had some technical issues towards the beginning, we didn’t realize that the Sony recorder required a different type of memory card, so I waited inside the zoo with all the equipment and Rachel left to go to the nearest shop because we thought we would have to pay for two more tickets.

While I was waiting, I took out my journal that I started making for my Time class. A journal to document ideas, drawings, memories and honestly whatever came to mind. I had been feeling really homesick that weekend so I was pouring my feelings out through overlapped handwriting, which is a very nice way to release any kind of frustration or sadness. I overlap the handwriting so no one else can read it. Which is what I represented in my art piece. I chose to illustrate dippin dots because that was the most exciting part of this trip to the zoo. I absolutely love dippin dots and they just make everyone feel so happy because they are so colorful. In a way one would think its ironic that I chose to “pour out” my feelings through dippin dots but it was more like a relief to get some time to reflect and release some tension.

I not only took my journal but I took my camera as well and I managed a lot of photos.

 

I did like most of the stories, I think it was not only the content but the way they narrated the story that made it interesting. The fluctuations in tones keeps the audience interested and helps them follow along feeling the mood of the stories and how the characters are experiencing it. They weren’t as short as I expected them to be, but I think the story telling was done so well that one hour per episode seemed to go by pretty fast. Sometimes they used different sounds to make the story come to life. Most of the stories are told in a very structured way, the beginning then the climax and then the falling action. We can story-tell by structuring our tale in a similar format with a good hook to keep readers or listeners in this case, interested. The memories are recounted by the story tellers exploring their stories that happened in the past. They’ve had time to reflect on it, so they add present tense commentary. Its not in the moment which is why it can be told in a structured way with a beginning, middle and end.

I think This American Life had better narrations in comparison to Radiolab, but the difference isn’t that great, they are both very well done. It might have been because The American Life had longer narrations so they could go more into detail because they had more time. They also added more background music that went with the mood of the story. Especially in Obsession. Not only that, but the story was told through poetry which added to this eerie feel.  Perhaps it was also because Memory and Forgetting wasn’t really focused on narratives but more on the psychology and science behind the concept of Memory. In Remember Me, there is also background music but the voices of the characters really help evoke the mood, it makes the story more personal and it feels as though the character is telling us about their experiences one on one. The American Life podcasts just seemed a little more personal, perhaps it was due to the podcasts I chose.

Memory and Forgetting

Notes

Historical Amnesia

Add a memory back into the brain (implant a false memory)

Elizabeth Loftus (Plant entirely false memories into people: when you were 5 or 6 years old you lost your mom in a shopping mall and you were rescued by an elderly person and given back to your parents.) (Interviewed about the past, talked to the parents, tell people the truth about their past and slip in the lie/suggestion and adopted it as their own memory)

People take an image of an actual shopping center and images of their family members and construct these completely new memories, making them believe it happened to them.

Kremnater (suppose you witness a crime, and a police asks “did you see a red camiro leave the scene,” “are you sure?” The red camiro that is now in your head feels real. Back in the 80’s people started showing their repressed memories and Elizabeth Loftus questioned it which got her into a lot of trouble.

Memory is malleable

Story

Joe – painter

He used to get high in the evening

Trip and contemplate the universe

Joe drifted backwards into his adolescence

He had one show and then another one

Painted deserted landscapes

He started painting girls coming out of dark spaces

Reflecting that the girl looks the same in all paintings

16 year old in 1972 (Kay, first love, oval face, almond eyes)

He cheated on her, in front of somebody she knew

She moved away to Minnesota

She called him one day and they went out dancing and drank beer

She invited him and he said he had to see another girl

She lit a cigerrette and slammed the door

She died in a fire that night

Post traumatic pleasure syndrome

That story is self sustaining and whole

Story

Klive Wearin

Written by Oliver Sacks (Musicophilia)

Pioneer of music

Deborah is his wife

Music the gift of God

Suddenly March 1985, he became ill

Started off with headaches that never went away

Doctors said it was a very bad flu bug

5th day of the headache he became out of it

He couldn’t remember his wife’s name

Most severe amnesia ever documented

He would forget something at the blink of an eye

He couldn’t retain anything before a blink

Every blink was a new waking moment

Encouraged Klive to write a journal

Put the time from his watch (10:06 awake first time, 10:07 truly awake first time)

Line by line succession of astonished awakening

No difference between day and night

Survived total amnesia for 20 years long (Just like death)

Somehow he has sustained his love for Deborah (Can’t remember his children’s names, but he gasps with relief and excitement, hugs and kisses her with a lot of passion)

He could still read music and sing

Music is so richly organized, you can feel whats been and whats supposed to be

When the music stops, he falls out of time. Music gives him a time to exist.

Who Am I

Notes

Measuring adrenaline (flat line interrupted by 6 spikes when he made jokes)

Jolt of adrenaline when he made a joke

He wrote a book about the brain

Where is the inner real me?

Everything about a normal healthy person is flux

However theres still this one constant

Right hemisphere you see yourself in the morph of you and Bill Clinton

Story

Hannah Palins mom brain “explosion” aneurism

Headaches went away when she went to aerobics class

After being taken to the hospital

That was the last thing she remembered in 4 months

She was hooked up to a lot of machines

She squeezed her daughters hand realizing that her only daughter was in the room

She died that night

She was a shell of a person

Couldn’t walk/ go to the bathroom/

Slowly, very slowly a different person started to emerge

She never used to sing and she starts to belt out now all the time

She got a tattoo and loved wendy burgers from being a proper woman

Time stops and normal disappears

Story

We are just a car crash away from being a different person

Extended self is a story of whats happened to your body over time

When we fall asleep we lose grip of our brains

The dream (hoards of little people, come up and just keep looking at me, they were aware of me)

Stevenson (19th century, saw the little people who manage a persons theatre/always refers to himself as third person)

Where do dreams come from?

He started training his little people, pre bed ritual, wanting them to tell him a story.

 Obsession

Notes

Rituals that get out of control

These people are imprisoned by certain actions

Story

Jillian – obsessive over the number 2

If she dropped the key once, she would drop it again and then pick it up.

Becomes an obligation,

Says something and then repeats it to herself

Assigned numbers to colors/days of the weeks/

As powerful as a physical condition that doesn’t bother her, gives her order in her life.

Obsessions can take the place of religion. Things will be orderly if you follow those rules.

Story

Black Swans – Lauren

Starts off with superstitious beliefs

Lots of poetry

Prozac stops working for Lauren

Didn’t believe in prayers; simplistic chemical cause

Remember Me

Notes

Benjamin Franklin – cheerful disregard for the truth

“prettied things up” so they can be remembered

Not so easy to control how people will see you in a couple of years

Story

In a lot of the club pictures for Yearbook there was one kid that appeared over and over again.

It wasn’t a big deal for that to happen^ has a story/adds character

Story

Hotel ghosts

The ghosts are connected to how they died

Walter the ghost, doesn’t even have a motive

^Nobody knows why he stuck around

What could he have done that was so bad which caused him to stay around.

Fate is out of your hands

If you’re lucky your legacy will be remembered

Walter got blamed wrongly. The real Walter is being remembered and forgotten at the same time.

Please write on your blog (1-2 paragraphs) about how what you saw today in the three exhibits relates to your memory work this semester thus far and also, more specifically, to your “Memory Reconstructed” project this week. How did the work resonate with you? How will it inform your work this week? How does it relate to what you’ve studied thus far about memory?

The work that inspired me when I went to the MoMA was this piece in the Picasso Sculpture exhibit.

 

Picasso was never known to be a sculptor, he is more famous for his drawings and paintings which is similar to my situation. I’m not very comfortable with three dimensional work, and looking at this piece it resembled what I wanted to do with my project. I wanted to illustrate it black and white and in order to experiment with more hands-on work, I wanted to make it into a “pop-up” effect. Just the whole idea of bringing this two dimensional illustration and making it three-dimensional really resonated with what my original plan for this project was. The main material in this work is also paper which is how I planned to make my work as well.

 

Similar reason to the first one, however this is executed in a different way; again, I like the fusion of two dimensional work and three dimensional work. It’s just a very impressive piece in general and I love the use of the multi-media background to compliment the giant bird. I also love the subtle color scheme, its completely opposite of what I usually go for because I tend to work with bold colors and patterns but I have a real appreciation for this subtlety.

 

My Shrine Elegy:

Beautifully constructed temples,

Adorned with ornaments and statues dating back generations,

Intertwined with mythology so detailed and timeless.

A culture so dense and immaculate

 

An exquisitely designed box

made of glass,

so one can look inside

to appreciate its beauty.

Creating a disconnect.

 

Identity is embodied

within a person.

 

Mine is a fusion of

every culture

It’s confusing.

It’s globalized.

It’s different,

from my parents

from my relatives.

 

And I’m okay with that.

Like a lotus that finds beauty

in muddy waters,

I find beauty

in my loss.

 

My Artist Statement

I decided to make my shrine memorializing my loss of culture. In order to represent that I had to make a “beautifully constructed temple” which embodies just the overall beauty of my culture and religion. I used colorful patterns which are iconic to the Hinduism tradition and art, it’s all collaged to show a “packed” feeling because the religion itself is packed with mythology and tradition dating back to 500 BC; I used aluminum foil to provide a more “reflective” feeling to make it more personal.

The whole temple represents the “exquisitely designed box” that I talk about in my elegy. How if you look at the whole religion from an outside perspective its just this beautiful artifact, just like a lot of other old traditional customs. A “traditional” way of thinking doesn’t necessarily have to have a positive connotation, in fact most of the time we associate it with negativity. I’ve left that part of me behind, I no longer have that old traditional mentality, I don’t believe fairness is associated with beauty, I don’t have to marry another Indian man in my caste through an arranged marriage, I don’t have to be a housewife and I don’t have to be constantly repressed by either my parents or another male dominant figure in my life.

Another important symbol in my temple is the lotus, which essentially sums up my entire thought process perfectly. A lotus itself is symbolic to how good things can result from bad situations because they grow in muddy water. I folded my baby photos where I am celebrating festivals when I lived in India into a lotus flower and placed it at the bottom of this in-scent holder, also in the shape of lotus to represent the burning away of the tradition.

 

Someone would traditionally create a shrine for a place of worship for sacred person or object. Occasionally the shrine contains sacred relics.

I’ve chosen to make a shrine of the culture I’ve left behind in India. Even though I try to incorporate it to my life today, its something that I’ve definitely lost because I left in grade 4. I’ve lost it because I’m not surrounded by it anymore. I’m memorializing it because I feel a disconnect from it, no matter how hard I try to embody my culture. I will design my shrine like a little temple that my mom owns at home. My parents are obviously more immersed into Indian culture and they try really hard to teach my sister and I, however we’ve grown up in a different environment so it will never be the same.

I have incorporated black and white sketches on my mood board because that is how my shrine is going to look like. I plan to make it out of slightly thicker card paper. I am more comfortable working in 2D but I do need to push myself when it comes to 3D work, so I thought this could be a good compromise. I get to still sketch but i will need to cut them out and glue them so it becomes into this three dimensional shrine. All the gods I will draw, will resemble a pop up card because it is 2D and i plan to glue the bottom to the shrine, that will also be made out of paper. To make it more personal, I would include photos of me as a child celebrating these festivals, also in black and white to go along with the whole aesthetic of this project. Its to represent the loss of color which essentially represents the loss of culture. My shrine will actually resemble what an Indian shrine looks like, a small temple that families have at home.

The materials I will need for this project are card paper, sharpies, pens, cutting knife and super glue. And of course my personal photos.

 

I chose a memory which comes to my mind immediately when I think of “errors” because the part of the brain I focused on was the anterior cingulate cortex. The drinking age in Hong Kong is 18 so I was not breaking any laws but when I was out clubbing one night I had a really stuffed bag and I briefly remember having to hold my wallet separately. However after reaching back home in a taxi, I realized that my wallet was missing and I have no recollection of putting it down anywhere or dropping it. I went back and retraced my steps. It was still noisy, the music was loud and people were still dancing and drinking. My wallet contained this slip of paper that I needed to give for my new Hong Kong Permanent Residency Identification Card, so I panicked. The next morning, I kept avoiding the subject of my new ID card and overtime my parents asked for the slip I would change the subject. I felt so guilty. Then finally, I told them I lost the slip but I never confessed to losing my entire wallet because I was scared they would never trust me with anything again. To this day, they don’t know about how I lost my wallet and all my other ID cards and the money I earned from the job I was working that summer. The three objects I chose were a wallet, a small bag and the national Hong Kong flower thats on the identification card and any official document related to HK. I recall this memory in a sequence. However I chose to use charcoal as my medium because the whole thing was “messy,” or haphazard. Thinking about how I lost my wallet is a blur, but how I tried to find it and lied about it is completely clear. Its one of my most recent errors that is why I chose it. 

10 Rough Sketches to show my idea for the Food Utensil Project. I resonate most with the Indian community and one of our traditions is to host a lot of parties, where we invite many families and have a lot of food. Whether its celebrating any festival or a personal achievement to which one invites friends, food is always a vital part. In order to make it easy to serve everyone a lot of food at once. Since curry is one of our main delicacies,  I want to create a giant soup spoon that can also be used as a bowl; for multiple utilitarian purposes. Here are just some rough sketches to represent the ideas I have for this product.