Author: kimm773

Adrian Piper

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The Humming Room (2012)

 

I thought this part of the exhibition was the part that stood out to me the most, and could relate to one of the three themes. At first when I saw this exhibition part,  I thought it would be a one way giving interaction between the audience and the artist.

The small panel said “In order to enter the room, you must hum a tune, any tune will do. Begin humming as you approach the guard.”

But when I approached, the guard standing was waving his hand, almost forcing humming from the audience. I felt pressured and thinking that it was a free giving interaction, it was actually not. Instead of giving willingly, we were forced to give, and we had to fulfill the guard’s expectations.

It made me refer back to Miwon Kwon’s reading says:

“As much as the accepting of a gift puts one in debt, in an inferior position to the giver untill the debt is cleared through reciprocation…”

 

Simultaneous Perception Map

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Assignment was to create my response to the multi-sensory experience to the place that I chose: Union Square. I was expected to collect data 3 times of the day per week, and make a map that captures the things I’ve collected.

These are the three pieces I decided to create using Photoshop. The three images portray the different perceptions I got from Union Square, as a by-passer, because I walk through, around it almost everyday.

The three images go in this order, and illustrates the co-existence of human and the environment. Of course there’s a part of that experience that is very harmonizing and is well balanced but sometimes we go over that privilege and take advantage, in this case pollution.

 

Experimentation, Failures and on going confusion

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Experimentation:

I didn’t know where to start, so I started experimenting media or sort of say the “background” canvas. Before I knew I had coffee, I took an unfinished bottle of vanilla coke that had been sitting in my room. I poured some in a plastic bag with the paper, and let it sit for around 30minutes and more. These were the results.

 

 

After finding ground coffee mix, I also painted the paper which worked faster.

 

My initial idea was to create a play of words.

The book that I first found was a full edited script of “The Darker Face of the Earth”, a play by Rita Dove. Reading through, I found that it was handling such serious matter, somewhat hard for kids to comprehend.

The word “Play” usually gives people a positive vibe, or somewhat happy i thought. So I also thought of making a “playful” toy for kids to play with the actual “play”.

So I started working on these paper dolls, and I wanted to make it very vintage looking so I went over with coffee and dried it.

 

 

I felt like that wasn’t successful. So I took a break and did my laundry with my friends. And in the laundry room, I found this “Pillsbury’s Bake Off Dessert Cook Book”. Inside it, I found cut outs of magazine recipes, very vintage and flat.

The book itself was way more interesting than the play book I had, more colors and aesthetic-wise.

 

I started cutting out things and started making collages

 

I do not know what I’m doing.. I need help and advice….. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

MIDTERM : Toulouse- Lautrec

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If just simply given the assignment : “copy the artist’s work”, I would have had a much tougher time really drawing the artists work. The research that I had to go through writing the essay about his life, his techniques, materials really helped me grab a feel about how I could mimic his style of painting/drawing.

If I’m being totally honest, copying is something I’ve been doing my whole life. Of course it requires skill and it’s not something that’s easy to do. But it is way easier to copy someone else’s artwork than create something thats 100 percent original of my own.

Lautrec is one of the artists I was very familiar with. Living in Paris, I’d see so many of his paintings, I knew exactly how I would mimic his art. As a child I always thought his paintings were done with colored pencils. The bold colors that were not really blended out with others but holds its color within themselves. Something that oil paint cannot do. This thought that i had helped me in deciding what kind of material I wanted to use to copy Lautrec’s art.

For the studies, because I was so familiar and knew exactly how his style was, I didn’t really do a lot of research and discovery. I wanted to get a sense of his brush strokes, how to convert them into the feel of a hard colored pencil tip unlike the soft end of the brush. For the study I did two Lautrec’s famous paintings, and one dog.

 

 

My final piece

 

 

Drawing beyond a picture

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I still remember the first shock that I got on the first day of class. I printed out a square without knowing what I’d have to do with it. It was a photo that I took on the street, and it came with a small story.

The class had started, with the assignment where we were instructed to make drawings around the square photo, extending whatever is printed around the corners. My picture was a photo of someone cleaning the window (shown below), and I thought that it would be harder than other photos because of the lines on the photos were very geometric. It’s harder to hand draw and continue very symmetric, drawing lines especially not knowing the real outlines.

When I was little, I used to take 4-5 hours drawing, or making small figurines out of paper. I liked doing things that took a lot of effort, time, and patience. So I as usual, I took my time drawing and sketching out the lines beyond the photo. I look around and I see people almost being done with theirs and aren’t afraid to make moves.

I used pencil to carefully trace out and plan where I was going to ink the paper. But the teacher came and told me that I should be bold about it and use a sharpie directly. I started drawing with the sharpie but the lines wouldn’t come neat, it would bleed and the lines would get bigger, and I ended up not being able to control the lines I was drawing. So i switched to a regular MUJI ink pen and the results came out great. For the less dark black area, like the window panes which are more of a grey tone, I used pencil and filled it in.

 

I wished I had more time to finish but the photo it self, because they were a series of windows aligned next to each other, it wasn’t hard to find out what the cropped image of the window would look like, extended outside.

 

This is when I brought it home and drew a lot more.

 

Nothing Personal

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Introduction to our Chapter

 

Quote 1: “Where the people can sing the poet can live  

Where the poet can sing the people can live”

 

Quote 2: “Things often have to be destroyed,

dissolved in acid, cut apart, or dismantled in

order to tell their full story”

These quotes talk about unity and destruction. While the first one illustrates the power of the union of forces, of inspiring one another and of the harmony that exists in a balanced system, the second one delves deeper into the creation of these forces that unite us, the destruction we undergo in order to unleash our power. We, as a group, chose to explore this unique balance of unity and destruction and the symbiotic relationship between being connected and present eternally in a system, and yet isolated and ephemeral.

 

Our conceptual process:

We all kind of knew that we were going to use photos. So regardless what kinds of photos we took, we wanted to focus on the gathering of the photos and the format. Initially Saheim had photos took on an app that had a vintage feel to it, photo as a film. And as a fan of film photo I thought why not use the film idea and apply it to our project. When we individually got all of our photos,I gathered all of them and formatted them to fit in a booklet. The concept that I thought could really go well with the whole film idea was projecting the method of how photos are usually chosen as a photographer. To create something and maintain the beauty, you also have to destruct photos that you don’t want. And adding to that, giving motion to the photos, giving the white frame the impression of moving across these films.

 

Our roles:

Anshu: Quotes, 2 individual photo interpretation.

Saheim: Idea of film roll, 2 individual photo interpretation

Georgia: 2 individual photo interpretation

MiRi: Booklet formatting, individual photos.

 

Observation Notebook – Walking in the City

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Walking in New York is so much different from walking in Korea. Thinking about it, it’s quite fascinating how the subject matter on the streets are the same but the way they act and coexist one another is so much different. One thing I’ve noticed that was clearly different from the countries I’ve been to is jaywalking. Of course, a lot of people tend to jaywalk all over the world. But the way streets of New York are built, the one way signs that allow you to look at one direction of the cars coming past is quite ideal I’d have to say. Walking from my dorm to the school buildings, I see so many different people and so many different situations. On good sunny warm days, I realize that people tend to stop in the middle of the streets to look at their phones to either figure something out or text someone. By this, I don’t just mean the weather influencing how people roam around the streets, I literally mean people standing facing the street light pole and texting. I’ve had so many cases where those kinds of people standing awkwardly in the street made me laugh. Here’s the best example I found which I had to stop and take a picture of.

 

 

Following Piece

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Introduction: The assignment is to follow a stranger till they go to a private space just like Vito Acconci’s ” The following piece”.

 

Pre-following/hypotheses

I think the major concern isn’t getting noticed while I’m following someone random on the street, I think its more towards where the person will end up being.  The thing is they really cant say something about me walking behind them in the same direction for an hour or more, because I can just argue that they might be following me and that I’m freaked out about that.

A strategy would be walking in a pace that wouldn’t really bother someone. The best would be keeping everything natural.

If this was my research method, I think I’d be able to learn about people’s consciousness regarding their safety?

 

Include a photo or photos of your re-enactment

 

Following notes:

My notes 

  •  Chose a path where I usually go home from school. (more natural and subtle)
  • Decided to choose a woman who was carrying a light cross purse, with good steady winter shoes and coat
  • Very steady pace.
  • Chose the time between 12-1 when there’s a crowd of people around Union Sq area trying to get lunch

Started from 13:01: 5th Ave. between 13th and 14th

Ended: 13:08 : Nordstrom Rack

The weather, pretty windy, lots of people with hoods on trying to get home/work fast.

 

 

Conclusion

 It was an interesting experience for me but it’s something that I’ve always thought into. In Korea, men following women in the streets where there’s not a lot of people have been the fear of all women across the country. The government even came up with a system that allows volunteers near subway stations to walk women till their homes safely. They all wear a flashing yellow vest, with the words “Safety Escort Program” printed at the back. The service is open to anyone just by calling the number 30 minutes beforehand. And I’ve seen positive responses to this service and perhaps it helped the number of sexual assaults decrease. The point I’m trying to get across here, is that I think following someone for more than 20 minutes in Korea would be so much different from following someone in NewYork. Perhaps the fact that in Korea, I’d be better off following a male instead of following a female because they’re so insecure about what’s going on around them.

 

 

“…Under the seeming disorder of the old city, wherever the old city is working successfully, is a marvelous order for maintaining the safety of the streets and the freedom of the city. It is a complex order. Its essence is intricacy of sidewalk use, bringing with it a constant succession of eyes. This order is all composed of movement and change, and although it is life, not art, we may fancifully call it the art form of the city and liken it to the dance — not to a simple-minded precision dance with everyone kicking up at the same time, twirling in unison and bowing off en masse, but to an intricate ballet in which the individual dancers and ensembles all have distinctive parts which miraculously reinforce each other and compose an orderly whole. The ballet of the good city sidewalk never repeats itself from place to place, and in any once place is always replete with new improvisations.”
― Jane Jacobs 

Using one of the two quotes below to inflect your thoughts (-or- choose another quote from any seminar reading you think helps you talk about this experience), unpack the experience – what did you learn? notice? experience? were your hypotheses correct? if not – what was unexpected?

 

This quote seems to talk about how the city works in unison, the movements and change that happen on the streets are not just compared to dance but specifically ballet where the individual dances reinforce one another. I thought this was interesting how comparing the movements that happen in the city on the street to a dance is something thats pretty common, pretty predictable. But specifying that dance to a ballet, where all the movements together “which the individual dancer and ensembles all have distinctive parts which miraculously reinforce each other and compose an orderly whole”.  Walking around union square, an area where mingling around or staying for a long time only really happens when the weather is really nice. Unless we have the warm climate, the cold restricts our movements and the way we maneuver around the city. But also in another sense, the way we act all together because of these restriction also keeps things happening as a result.

Gift Post

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Our task was to create a gift to someone else just by looking at the other person’s 10 chosen photos from their own social media.

 

The post below shows my process in gathering information from observation, making careful assumptions, leading to the final decision on what I want to gift

To start with, these were part of the photos that Sean chose to show himself on his instagram.

 

From seeing Sean’s photos, my first thought was “Wow. He really has character”.  Most of his photos that were actually of him, were very distinct, showing his character and attitude. And another thing I noticed was that he was making art.

Based off of that, I took an emotional? psychological? senses? approach.  I wanted to make something that showed a bit of effort, to give him the thought that someone else is going to make art for him in return for his art “giving”. The visual approach I made was to give him a pencil drawn self portrait because I think they show the most purest? most natural form.

I don’t have a picture of the portrait drawing I did of Sean.

 

 

COUNTERGIFT 

Getting a gift to Jade wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be. Well it was the same with getting Sean a present but overall this experience of gifting someone with something that we made wasn’t easy. The observations had to be direct, which was her overall attitude, things around her in class.

Jade gave me a paper model of a camera which I thought was very interesting because that’s something I’ve never expected from someone. I saw the effort and thought into it and especially coming from someone I don’t know well, I was happy.

 

Countergift Strategy

Giving her a gift was hard in a sense that I didn’t know what to begin my inference with.

All I knew from seeing her in class, and from her introductions in class was that she was super into fitness. One thing I noticed everytime class started was that she had such healthy drinks or packed food from home. So I decided to give something that my mom always packs me when I’m about to miss breakfast as a replacement for a meal.

Misugaru is the term, it’s a very Korean drink that goes with hot milk or hot water. It’s a fine powdered 7-10 different kinds of grain and is considered the most healthiest lattes in Korea. Older people more often likes it because it has a very healthy grainy taste.

I didn’t know how I’d pack it for her so I found a ziplock bag and put quite a lot in there. I’m not sure if she’d even try it because of the weird packaging but i feel like she’ll get a sense of what it is when she tastes it once.

For me and probably for every korean kid who grew up with Korean parents will relate to a glass of misugaru moms make. And knowing that Jade is part Korean, I thought it would be a new experience for her.

I didn’t know how I’d pack it for her so I found a ziplock bag and put quite a lot in there. I’m not sure if she’d even try it because of the weird packaging but i feel like she’ll get a sense of what it is when she tastes it once.

 

 

 

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