Travelling through the rushing New York City Fifth Avenue to the Parsons Making center, there is a colorful exhibition called, “Free Play” in the corner. It is a space integrates exhibition, game, and the act of play. Before going into the gallery, the entrance emits a characteristic of fun and playful with its bold and free color blocking glass design, inviting the audiences going into the area.

In this wide open spatial gallery, it includes all sort of games, like table tennis, chess, and video games. How they install the game gallery is kind of disappointed to me due to the high expectation from what entrance suggests. The theme and the impression suggest that the gallery is going to be full of quirky, unusual, and FUN game setup; however, the setup of the gallery just looks like a common room that people hangout in with some stools, tables, and games on them.

Despite all the regular looking game setup, the gallery actually has a game that looks more unusual, but still have the element of interactive. It is this piece that have a rectangular soil ground that almost take up 1/3 of the room. It might seem simple, but because of its larger size, it screams gallery fun. This area is not just a mud playground; it is an interactive game that the players need to occupy the space on it. The quality of the oversize ground setup, and the nature of the game is to have audiences stand in the game, it screams FUN and artsy.

If I were to make a shift in “Free Play”, I would make things bigger in this spatial room. For example, the game of chess on the table would be enlarged to take up 1/3 of the floor in the room. The setup can either make the enlarged chess minions to be light using foam, or let the players be minions in costumes. The shift for the game from regular size on the table to oversize on the floor gives a powerful gallery effect, but maintain the interactive game play.

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Bonus

Selfies version of my 7 moods –

Illustration version of my 7 moods –

Object transformation: Banana –> Apple –> Pear –> Banana

My partners (Heather Moon and Sky Ta) and I developed an idea of using an actual fruit for each completed stage, and 2 dimensional collages for the transformation. It is almost like putting an object into a computer, then the object is pixelated and changed through out the process. The end result is our shift for the object transformation.

Detail shots:

Translucent of thin clouds floated in a steady speed to the north, moving toward to an unknown sky. The heat from high above baked rows of intersected black and red foldable chairs. Mild wind blow caressed the fresh cut green grass. Long list of monotones speech echoed from ear to ear, like a lullaby in a long lecture. To me, everything sounded unreal, just like a dream. My left hand unconsciously reached into a pocket on my uniform blazer; a sudden chill sensation peaked through my fingertips, yet it felt so calming and awaking.

Steadily, the motion of repeatedly caressing this cold metal surface prevented me from dozing off into my own wonder world. I pulled this unfamiliar object out of my worn out blazer into the eye of the light, and the metallic black surface reflected the light immediately into my eyesight, telling me to remember. “Remember what?” something whispered in my head. A thick icon of a rusted gold sun imprinted on top of the circular shape of the object, a sun full of gears, and symbols of bright light and motion. My finger lingered to the side of the object, there was a button. Just a click on the top of the button, the sun side of the cover popped open, revealing the secret parts of the object. In the middle of the circle, a white second hand were speedily running and pointing at twelve Roman numerals in a circular motion. I pulled it further up, and a long chain came out of my pocket, attached to the object. “It is a pocket watch for you.” The voice whispered once again. It looked so new to me, yet so old and unfamiliar. A gift? A toy? Or a reminder of time? None of them were true, but they could be true.

On the way to my graduation ceremony, my brother pulled out a tiny object, and threw it to me with a slight arc angle. “I almost forgot; this is for you, a gift for your graduation.” I looked at it curiously, “What is this?” I flipped it to the back, and there were some moving delicate gears in there, visible through a transparent glass. “It is a pocket watch; people used to use them as time reminder instead of those stupid I-phone that turned people into technology zombie.” I looked at him, frowning my eyebrows. “It can serve as a reminder that you should spend more time looking at the world around you rather than just stuck your brain into a non-existed fake world. You are going to college in New York! Go explore, and enjoy your life while you can. This opportunity of different experience and freedom is limited, so don’t waste your chance.” After my brother’s erudite speech, I glared at the pocket watch again, then my mind sucked into the deep metallic black like it is a black hole.

The future is unknown and wild; we, as freshly graduated students, are thrown into a borderless ocean, straight from a warm and protective environment. We are to find places, where we can survive and belonged, in this vast ocean – it is hard, and it is scary. The future seemed perplexed, and I do not know. Who am I? Where do I belong to? Where can I find my happiness? How am I going to get somewhere? Why not go somewhere that is unfamiliar, or try new adventure? I do not know. Maybe I am frightened? But what am I frightened of? There are those invincible walls prevent me from going somewhere, telling me to not leave my comfort zone unless someone open the wall for me to go. I often worry too much about what is next while I am ignoring the precious moment I am in now; I guess this is what my brother was telling me: “Don’t be afraid.”

What about now? All I have is this tiny pocket watch that can constantly remind me to explore while I can, and enjoy the present moment. What about the future?  I do not know.

This collage is a metaphor of a shift for my partner. It is a shift of her planned to be an illustrator because of her sister, but ultimately chose to be a fashion designer in the end for her passion. The shoes are the metaphor of her walking out of the illustration dream into fashion design dream, and the grey represents the past.

Some of the detail shoots:

Then my partner (Heather Moon) and I combined our shift collage into one big shift. My grey tone world clouds above her creation (my story of shift), and her peddle of color pieces drift into my collage with a flow and movement.

Some of the detail shoots:

In this picture, all of the items I have are irreplaceable. Most of the items are gifts from several people, and the items are more of a trigger to memories and events. For example, the grey hat was a second hand gift from my cousin, who is in New York. He and his friend gave me a memorable birthday during my visit in January. I’ve never had a proper celebration because my family don’t really care about birthday that much. Even the hat was not new, I still cherish the hat and the memory. Also, there are items that are not gifts, but they give me comfort in away, like the rainbow thin necklace. I fumble it when I don’t feel good, and the interaction with the necklace makes me feel comfortable.

In term of the composition of picture, I purposely make one item interact with the other ones by overlapping them on each others. Having them mingle together creates a flowing and circular motion within. It might sound illogical, but this composition is tidy to me. I like to make a space of mine a personal wonderland, and it is not always understandable.

My time map is exploring the speed of time through senses and feelings. This map is a documentation of me being at 6 different spots I chose in The High Line. At each spot, I just sit or stood there, recording what I sense, what I feel, and what I think. I left whenever I can’t stay anymore, then I recorded different interval times at the 6 places. Instead of using the actual clock time, I used the symbol of  multiples (x1, x2.3 …ect) to indicate how the time pass faster in certain area to me, comparing to the spot has the standard x1 on the right top corner. (that standard place was the spot I spent the least time at)

On the map, the painted watercolor is the portion of High Line I went, and the black inks on the map were the route I’d been to, starting from the left corner. The red arrows are the 6 spots I stayed, and the pictures were the views I had at the spots. All of the spots have descriptions written in black markers (like the place is comforting me, or irritating me… ect); those are the senses, feelings, and thoughts I had when I was there. They correspond to the symbol of time speed because liking a thing, event, or area can speed up the time; in contrast, disliking an event or place can slow down the sense of time. For instance, 1 minute can feel like 30 minutes. This map I created was a visual documentation that let people see the relationship of me vs. time at The High Line.

The object in the GIF is a pocket watch that my brother gave to me for my graduation gift, and I chose this as my one minute quick drawing model. This pocket watch is tiny, but delicate in details; yet, this caused a problem in my quick one minute sketch. At first, I tried to accomplish to sketch out few of the feature of the pocket watch; however, one minute only allows nothing for that. I ended up having really rough sketch and dis-shaped feature. As I kept going for multiple times, I tried to find the most simple way to get a very quick drawing gesture for pocket watch, but still keep the obvious shape. Every single one paper has something I changed, in order to find the most simplified form for every parts. This GIF is the result of the whole process.

Shift has a Connect meaning to me. This might sound strange as shift is a form of altering and moving. However, the movement of shifting  contains an action of connecting, both physically and mentally. As for my own experience, I came from an small island in Asian, Taiwan, to a high school that is in Canada, which is composed by students from more than 35 countries (I am not talking about the abundant of ethnicity, but variety of cultures living together). Because of the shift just from Taiwan to Canada, I am not only expending my connections from Taiwan to Canada linearly, but more of Taiwan to different locations across the map. As in mentally, I believe that although shifting from one to another becomes new set of mind, but people can’t cut off the bridge of who we were; memories are still hidden within.

This is why I design multiple metal frame cubes that are connected to each other in just one corner; this denotes the connection between old self (cubes) to new self (newest cube). The piece is flexible of its form, and also the ability to grow (adding more cubes –> shifting once again).