Final Reflection Post (For both Seminar and Studio classes)

My word is Reed

First class (choosing my word in studio class)

Honestly speaking, I was shocked by this huge dictionary, a whole pile of knowledge.

 

Mood board:

The three parts shows three directions I considered to research on for my word. Later as I  research more, I decide to focus on the top and middle parts, because I see more connection of these two definitions.

Prototypes

Time:

This is an oboe music piece. It’s originally a piano piece. Every time I play it, I almost hear an oboe company at the background. This reed instrument can be the core of this music. Because of the tubular structure, when wind pass through, it takes away everything. The emptiness makes the instrument sounds nostalgia and creates melancholy.

2D:

It’s the reed (mouth piece) of a clarinet. It’s the part that enable the instrument to sound. Like the previous Time piece. It’s inspired by the reed definition of musical instrument.

3D:

This is a reed color dress with straws on it. When the model walks, the dress part spreads put. All the straws will be filled with wind and pull the cloth. The straws represent the structure of the word reed. The emptiness in the middle functions the word.

Analysis:

The Time one and the 2D ones are more directly related with the definition of “reed”. Both of them are inspired by the mouthpiece. If you ask people to envision the word reed, a lot of them may see the sketch of a reed as it is in the sD piece. The black pencil lines and the additional gray background easily drags the whole tone down to a not-so-lively atmosphere. It’s depressing, calm, and with rich deep emotion. Then, the Time piece continue this idea. It  makes the idea even more concrete. The melody is simple without gimmicky rhythm change, but the original composition and the characteristic of oboe with reed structure makes this piece richer with sorrow. If described by personification, this music with oboe is like a man walking by a river. There is no obvious wrinkle on his face, but the past experience quietly tells the story at the bottom of his heart as the river flows. The reality of time passes is sad enough.

The 3D dress design takes both the idea of surface definition, the plant, of reed and the structure. Imagine the woman is walking in the wind with this dress. The straws are blown like tassels. The  dress with gradual color change on it flows like the wave of reed tips.

I will take idea of the emotion word reed creates as the base of this project. It’s a sophisticated feeling of peace, sorrow, melancholy and heaviness. However, when you feel it, you see this emotion simple, as the emptiness inside a reed structure.

Research

Metropolitan Museum of Art

(Contemporary art)

Obstruction:

As it is written in the introduction, this is an appropriation and manipulation of pre-existing, common objects. The shadow is not the main character, but it serves as background and looks miserable. The shadow looks like reeds. They scrabble in the corner as reflection of the original piece. I see the shadow as a kind of revealing.

Guitar and Clarinet:

As a reed instrument, oboe is chosen in this painting. It helps me reconsider the importance of reed in music.

(Ancient Chinese Story Telling section)

Odes of State of Bin: the Seventh Month

Reeds are often used to imply negative or poor atmosphere . Because reeds are unimpressive and ordinary characteristics, servants use them to build their roofs. The whole painting is about servants’ poor life in four seasons.

Returning Home:

These two paintings are done during the painter’s visit back to home empire. He’s nostalgia, but this trip was depressing. While crossing the river, he was alone on the boat. The surface of the river looks desolate. The whole image looks empty. The reeds became the only background, but they don’t help make the environment lively. Instead, it looks even more miserable. The outside nature implies the painter’s inside feeling. This area between the mountains is empty, so is the painter.

 

(Egyptian collection)

Beside the art pieces above, I found those objects that is related to reed.

Reed Pens:

People used to use reed to make pens in order to write.  However, they didn’t help me on the understanding of reed and I didn’t see direct connection between reed pen and my final thesis, so I decide not to mention them in the research paper.

Rubin Museum of Art

 

Bodhisattva Kshitigarbha

Kshitigarbha is the Bodhisattva who stay calm confronting all situations. She wills to stay underground to influence the underground world. It’s such a “dark” situation. The background reeds reflect her loneliness but persistence. I speculate that she’s waiting for all the evil to confess. She persists like reeds’ characteristics.

 

 

 

Avalokiteshvara’s Legends

This is a part of a long painting. According to the introduction, this is the part when they try to escape from the island. The dynamic was depicted vividly that I can’t feel the tension. Not like other sources I find, here the reeds appear discretely around the water. unexpectedly, they also create a strong melancholy foreshadowing that Simhala was the only one who finally got home.

 

Arhat Ajita

According to the introduction, the painter Khyentse Chemo is good at depict animals and plants. Above the center character’s shoulder, there are reeds. Here, reeds are background of the front mouse and the person. In ancient times, big mouse are used to describe bad governors. They take citizens’ food and tax, so they are full and fat. The person beside the mouse seems so poor. It seems like he’s begging for something. The leaning reeds create a windy weather background that enhance the person’s miserable situation.

The experience in Rubin Museum taught me more about the process of doing research. It doesn’t mean that everything you looked at would provide you sources for you to use in the final project or final paper. It’s just a process, a kind of learning, can be a accumulation of knowledge that may help you later in other courses or assignment. I didn’t know anything and didn’t have any interest in Buddhism before, this trip provide some information in this field.

Final project proposal:

My project will be a cylinder with lens at the end. The body part of the cylinder will be drawn with  repeated lines implies reeds. The “boring” strokes should create melancholy. The inside will be left empty that represents the core structure of reed. A slide of lens will be insert at the end of the cylinder with pictures drawn on transparent plastic paper. The mechanism of the lens imitates the lens of a magic lantern. The whole design of the cylinder was inspired by Kaleidoscope. Instead of the rich content inside of a Kaleidoscope, my cylinder will include as less decoration as possible to emphasize the desolation emotion.

As the thesis of my seminar research paper, the function of reed is more like a lens of music or important scenes in movies and dramas. Even though it is just a background or a small part of the instrument, the structure of emptiness in the center give reed the special ability to bring melancholy emotion.

To observe the world with a lens and a previous empty entrance leave a space for a person to think and experience some of his negative emotion. The reason for me to choose sorrow to experience, instead of happiness, because I believe that sorrow calms down a person more easily than joy does. A person may lose his mind if keep being in happy. Also, the existence of sorrow proves the existence of happiness. Reed (both the structure and the image of the plants) is a media of sorrow.

My original idea was to create an garment, a helmet with decoration that implies reed. When a person wear it, it covers the person’s vision and allow him/her to experience the emotion reed brings. However, a helmet itself is too eye-catching and it may distract this experience. One day I was eating cocoa batons, and I suddenly notice the container of the snacks. It is a tall cylinder shape. I suddenly recall a telescope and the lens in a kaleidoscope. That’s how I changed my design.

Final presentation:

I summarized my seminar reflection for my final reflection in class. I only talked about the quote from Where is creativity? Here is the whole reflection for seminar class:

As Mihaly Csikszentmihaly points out in “Where is Creativity?” : “Many people never realize that they are standing in a propitious space/time convergence, and even fewer know what to do when the realization hits them.”(1) Many people see creativity as a gift, a kind of luck that is given to you. However, creative people do not only depend on luck. To receive a gift, a person at least needs to empty his hands to hold the gift. A person needs to prepare himself the ability to handle creativity. Otherwise, he isn’t able to catch the creativity.

When I decide to make an art piece, I certainly need to prepare myself with the basic knowledge of tools. Then when I confront trouble, I know what tools I can use to solve the problem. Through the learning in studio, I’ve learned how to use InDesign and process of making a garment from cloth. I used to use Word to edit text and orientate pictures for printing. And it was hard because Word has its own format. With InDesign, I’m able to move text and pictures freely. Moreover, when I try to figure it our how to use this app, I realized the importance of active learning. It’s my responsible to learn a new tool, so don’t expect that other people will spend a lot of time teaching you. This also applies on the Garment as Avatar project. I learned how to use a sewing machine to actually make a garment by experiencing it. I improve my active learning.

In The Suitcase, Sergei Dovlatov describes Paris as this, “The shell of peace and wealth can fall from a person in an instant, immediately revealing his wounded, orphaned soul…”(2) A beautiful appearance of a work can’t conceal its crap content. I see this quote from the opposite side. If a work has interesting meaning and content, but the appearance looks like trash, no body will be interested in discovering the inside of it. If I write an essay but don’t proofread it, it’s hard for readers to understand what I tried to say with all the grammar mistakes and the messy structure of sentences in the essay. As in studio class, when I try to do a post for the project, I have to make sure not only the content I write is thoughtful, but also the appearance of the whole post. Every work I do needs a decent presentation. I should be able to explain the thought in my art piece, so the audience can emphasize what I know about this piece.

I also find talking note very helpful. Even though I stressed when an article is too hard that I have trouble writing the summary, it forces me to connect the parts I understand from the article to figure out the parts I don’t understand. Susan Sontag said the following sentences in her The Conscience of Words: “As fiction writers know, every story is told by a narrative voice, and voice reveals itself by what it sees.”(3) Talking notes shows personal perspectives on an article. “Seeing is choice. It’s inherently personal.”(4) Each person’s learning of the same article can be very different from others’. Talking note is a record of understanding. Also, because talking note is not as formal as a review, so I feel more confident to express my understanding of an article.

The things I mentioned above have influenced me on my final project. Even though I don’t think I completely master InDesign, I choose to use this app to make my category as a test for myself. I learned more features of this app while making my category.

When I write the research paper, I start to put more attention of the details in essay. The content of the paper is important, but the grammar and the word choice are also essential, so I made two appointments in learning center to make my essay more polished.

(Foot notes are at the bottom of this post)

Then, I introduced my final project:

As I mentioned in the proposal, this cylinder emphasize the desolation emotion. The cross lines on the outside is an abstract imitation of reeds. The pictures below are two lens at the end of the cylinder. The left one is a reed field. The right one is a single bird flying on the background of repetitive lines. The four lens demonstrate the desolation emotion of reed from physical object to abstract scene.

 

Exhibition model:

This exhibition is designed in a T-shape in order to separate three theatre rooms. They are placed at the three ends, so the sound will not influence each other.

Promise of migratory birds (drama), The Notebook (movie) and The Classic (movie) are playing in these three theatre rooms. They are important sources in my research paper. Each room includes a projector hang from the top.

The other side of the wall of The Classic theatre room, there are two of my prototypes. A wall painting of reed (mouthpiece) and an oboe music piece. There is a ceramic recorder around the corner. This area shows my research on reed in music.

There are two Ancient Chinese paintings I find from Met.

On the other side, there are the artwork I found in Met placed in the corner with reed-shape shadow and the other prototype. It’s a garment.

Around the corner, there is a study table with two books from my research on reed, two reed pens I from Met, and my final project. I place them in here to make them look casual. On the wall, there is Picasso’s painting.

The whole exhibition is in a grey color tone. There’s no redundant color that will affect spectator’s experience.

 

 

 

I think this final project went okay for me. I enjoyed making the model, since it not only challenge making skills, but also challenge the practicability of design. One thing that didn’t work well was the lightening. The lens of the cylinder I made were not clear enough under the bright light in the classroom. The brown ball pen wasn’t a good choice. Also, my presentation in class was too long. I should have shortened each part so that I can introduce my project better. Next time when I do a project, I will have to place my art piece into different location to make sure it functions well and practice the presentation for more times.