The Post

The Bay of Tsunu in the sea of Iwami has no fine beaches and is not considered beautiful. 

Perhaps it is not, but we used to walk by the sea of the whale fishers over the rocky shingle of Watazu, where the wind blows the green jeweled seaweed like wings quivering in the morning, and the waves rock the kelp beds like wings quivering in the evening. Just as the sea tangle sways and floats at one with the waves, so my girl clung to me as she lay by my side.

Now I have left her, to fade like the hoarfrost.

I looked back ten thousand times at every turn of the road. Our village fell away, farther and farther away. The mountains rose between us, steeper and steeper. I know she thinks of me, far off, and wilts with longing, like summer grass.

Maybe if the mountains would bow down I could see her again, standing in our doorway.

 

Create a Room

Audio work:

Room Drawing:

Room Description:

My room is derived from an actual room in the film “The Skin I live In”. It is located in a suburban area so it is very quiet and somehow kind of isolated. A woman has been constrained in this room for years so in order to kill her time, she spends lots of time on meditation, yoga, and making small art crafts like some little statues. Because she can not cook by herself nor go outdoors, there is a lift in the room to provide her things she needs such as food, water, and books.

Work Reflection:

This is my first project in this class as well as my first time using Audition to edit sounds. I did have lots of problems when I was editing in addition to technical issues. At first, my work was too straight forward, I used the exact sound for what I wanted to interpret: water sound to interpret water, chopping sound to interpret chopping…But then a problem appeared, because we could only use the sounds in our sound library, I soon ran out of sounds and still had many details that could not be depicted. However, after I received my professor’s instruction, I learned that sounds could be more playfully-used, one certain sound can indicate several different things/activities. This was a significant improvement to me, after I started exploring different ways of using sounds, It was like opening the gate to a brand new world, everything became so interesting and challenging. I somehow accomplished depicting the story I wanted to tell eventually, but then another problem came up: how am I supposed to not just illustrate the storyline but also the sense of space in it? To solve that problem, I tried and tried again. Luckily I had my professor and my classmates as audiences, they provided me feedbacks and thus helped me a lot on making progress. Nevertheless, I wasn’t quite satisfied with my final work. Especially now, when I’m listening back to my work again, I found there were so many changes I could have made, such as adding more room tones and developing more ways on creating the sense of space. Overall, however, the learning experience was positive and special to me so I enjoyed it very much.

Bridge 3: Prototypes and Testing

Since I’m going to make a scaled model of the library to show my idea, my prototype of it comes from the model that I’ve made in Bridge 2.

The only difference is instead of thin cardboards, I will be using foam boards and bubble wraps for my model. Thanks to my former experience on using foam boards and the model that I’ve made in Bridge 2. The entire process of making the scaled model was rather fluent.

This is my first time using cardboards to make a couch though, so there were lots of struggles and attempting.

 

Bridge 3: Material Development and Testing

I had set up my mind of using cardboards as the frame/skeleton of my couch from the very first beginning, the problem was the material that covers the frame.

At first, my first choice was using air pillows quilts like this:

However, I then found out it was difficult to get this material in stores and was also worried about if it would be strong and durable enough to hold human bodies. Thus, I gave up this material and moved on to a new option—bubble wraps. Since they are very commonly seen and used, they are way easier to find.

I first bought 3/16” bubble wrap and tested it. It was amazingly strong and since the bubble size is rather small, it is thus more flexible to cut. Hence, I decided to use it for my scale model of the library as well as the first layer of my couch.

However, for the second layer, the layer that will directly connect with human bodies, since part of my purpose was to serve comfort and softness, I preferred to use bigger bubbles than 3/16”. I looked up in stores and the biggest size I found was 5/16”, which was not as big as I wished. I then searched up online and found the largest size bubble wraps: 1/2″, this was the size I wanted to use.

Cross-Course Reflection

Xingman is not yet an artist. She is just enjoying actualizing crazy thoughts and ideas she has in mind via different media and materials. Her interested field is rather broad, from drawing/painting to photography, filming, and animation…she loves exploring various ways of expression to interpret her ideas. That’s why she has chosen Fine Arts as her major, so she’s given more freedom to try and do whatever she wants.

Across her first year at Parsons, it is not hard to tell that she focuses a lot on putting “humor” in her work. Whether it is “dark humor” that combines violence with humanity, or “hilarious humor” that comes with absurdity and nonsense, she can always connect different elements with a sense of humor in her works. During the year she tried many new ways of transforming her ideas, such as using materials like foam board, cardboard, wires, wood, and fabrics to create three-dimensional works. This learning experience excites her a lot since she used to be more concentrated on two-dimensional works, while now, she’s acknowledged how to utilize the sense of space and create substantial objects. Furthermore, throughout the first year of studying, she also enhanced her ability of researching. Now she is more directed and orientated when she needs to start an academic research for her project. She now knows how to locate her research field, how and where to find resources, how to filter and pick out the essential resources that are useful for her. With this skill of researching, she’s having more concrete and supportive backup to state her works in studio making.

The mechanical toy-like caterpillar she made for her Space/Materiality definitely has outstanding meaning for her. She struggled a lot during the whole making process. Back to the very first beginning, she did tons of research not only on caterpillars, how they move and how their bodies function when they are moving, but also the mechanic and technical theory on machines. She made a brave step in trying a completely new material—wood to make this object. Being unfamiliar with the material as well as lack of experience on manipulating machines, she failed several times. Though she did feel frustrated and had to face lots of problems, she finally came over the difficulties and completed her work, which is considered as well designed and well working. Another impressive project is the model and couch she made for her studio course. In this project, her journey of doing research is particularly notable. Before she finally settled on her idea of what installation to make, she spent months slowing developing her thoughts. Including choosing the site, spending time observing it, and studying all the essential elements in the site. The range of the research is incredibly and surprisingly wide and detailed, she not only studied the circulation of the habitats, but also the layout and furniture design in the site. After months of research, after uncounted times of selecting and eliminating, she eventually came up with her final workpiece and even made an actual sittable couch in full scale to present her intervention.

Obviously, she is looking forward to her future learning life in Parsons. She is engaged in 2d works as well as 3d works right now, and she still will. In the future, she expects to continue exploring deeper into various fields such as filming/animation and interactive/installation art.