Zero: Never Ending

Zero is a restart point, where everything ends and begins. Just like the day and night, it starts at 0:00 and ends at 0:00 which the day begins all over again. It is a continuous and never ending measures. 

Using 'never ending' and 'continuous' as my inspiration, I created a never ending origami book, when unfold. the content will goes back to the start. A simple message "the end is where we start" is communicated through out the origami pages. When it unfolds the message is revealed and the action of unfolding and the continuity of the book described the word 'zero'

Social Documentary

I always find my neighbour very interesting - one of the reason was because of their little yet frightening dog. He has a small body but when he barks the neighbourhood would think it comes from a huge dog. 

So I have decided to do a project on them. This is my first time doing something like this - interviewing people that I rarely spoken to and going in to their house. It was quite frightening at first because I don't know what to expect. From the interviews and tour around their house, I found out a lot about their character and the difference in their character - but at the same time they balance out each other from their differences. I've decided to focus on and show how to show their differences in character. 

The husband (David) is more quiet, calm but rather reserve. The wife (Cheryl) on the other hand has more character - she's the loud one, at first she seemed to be more dominant in their relationship, from the way the house is decorated, Cheryl is the one who always buys and picks all of the decorations and place them wherever she wanted. In a sense, the first impression I got from them is that she seems to have more power in the house. 

But after meeting them the second time, I realised although Cheryl seemed like the dominant one, however, when David started talking in his chair , Cheryl kept quiet and let him talk - at that instance, Cheryl's power vanish and David was the dominant one (in a subtle approach)

The 6 photographs are aimed to show the idea of balance between marriage - in this case how their character balances their marriage.

Scanner Camera

Taken by Chris's scanner camera that was exhibited in our private view Tourist Exhibition @ Gallery in the Corner. He turned his printer into an instant camera with the help of the scanner and magnifying glass. In the exhibition, he set up a photo booth area where everyone who visited could take their pictures with it. Pretty awesome stuffs.

What you do not see

What you do not see

A sound piece where I translated the idea of blinking as lost of information into what you hear instead of see. We will never see the entire event of something but we could definitely hear everything. By translating it into hearing, the imperfection is demonstrated.

Tall Stories: The Unknown

'What can you find under the sea?' An unknown environment that one is not familiar with. In a group of 3s, we created the image of what can be found underneath the sea by closely relate it with a specific quote taken from the movie 'Le Grand Bleu'

Quote:

"You go down to the bottom of the sea where the water isn't even blue anymore, where the sky is only a memory and you float there, in the silence. And you stay there, and you decide, that you'll die for them. Only then do they start coming out. They come, and they greet you"

Series of pictures below shows the testing process

The process of making in the studio

A collection of sea creatures

3 series of photographs (each series 1½ meter long) was produced to represent the idea of the unknown. by closely relating to the quote, we came to a conclusion that as one sinks down into the sea, one would like to stay down because of the creatures that greets you underneath. Instead of the mysterious-frightening sea monsters, they were represented very beautifully as we discovered 'bioluminescence' fish - fish that gives off lights in the dark for living.

Monologue: 'I Have A Dream'

Typographic project where we manipulated the famous 'I have a dream' speech by Martin Luther king. We questioned the idea of will the speech be famous if Martin Luther King was not shot to death? By changing around the point size of each line, we managed to create the recognised speech unrecognised - until one spots the four important words 'I have a dream' in red. The different point size created a blur between the importance and the unimportance in the speech.

A bunch of Designers and Tourists @ Berlin

35mm Minolta

Never Thought I Could Do That

A photography project looking at areas that we have never done. I chose oysters as my topic because although I dislike raw food but people always mentioned how good oysters are, so I set myself a challenge to 'try' and taste oyster. And through photographs I conveyed the idea of the repulsion that I always get when thinking about raw food especially having already tried oysters, it made me feel nauseous even thinking about it.

I showed this through a series of photographs, using a glass as a symbolism of my stomach, I created an atmosphere from a 'clean' stomach to a 'filthy' and 'stained' stomach.

Scoliosis

A one week self-initiated project about scoliosis. For those who do not know what scoliosis is: it is an abnormal lateral curvature of the spine.

A series of photographs taken to make people understand how it feels like to have scoliosis - a condition I was diagnosed with 5 years ago. In order to illustrate the discomfort I experience, I had individuals imitate a crooked standing position consistent with the shape of my spine, and then try to hold that particular pose for an extended period of time. This illustrates the amount of discomfort scoliosis inflicted individuals have to put up with everyday, due to their internal spines being crooked.

The display is purposely done in an angle and descending in order to make the audience experience the discomfort.

During the experiment and testing stage, videos are taken in order to capture the individuals facial expressions and movement. (which I will be putting up soon when I finish editing them)

Whitechapel Photo

Mini Blackouts

Blinking is just as important as breathing. It is considered that every time we blink, a 'mini blackouts' is formed. Although this mini blackouts does not interupt our views of the world but if it adds up, we loss quite a lot of information in a day, month and year.

Experimentation 1:

3 blinking calendars were made based on a flipbook format. 30 or 31 (days in a month) alternating black and white papers were compiled to produce a calendar. The total minutes lost in that calendar month were revealed as the calendar is flipped from back to front.

Experimentation 2:

Using one part of a famous speech - Martin Luther King, "I Have A Dream", the loss of information through blinking were illustrated by crossing out words when reading the speech.

An audio was produced from Martin Luther King's "I Have A Dream" speech. Every two seconds of the speech, 0.3 seconds of the audio is erased (the blink) - to demonstrate the idea of an information loss.

The visual impact of blinking is translated into hearing to stress the image imperfection.

In addition, a video is produced to highlight the visual and auditory concept.

Layouts

I've been practising some layouting spreads in InDesign. Playing around with the grids and texts. To be able to present the correct fonts for different type of spreads is quite difficult. Instead of making 2 double spreads that has a theme going on, I got carried away and made different theme for each spreads.

The first spread, is an advertisement spread for an individual company 'wongfuproduction' that is based in USA - promoting their event. The second spread, has an actual information of The Yas Hotel in Dubai, a spread aimed for the type of magazine such as travel guide. The third spread is based on a spread that can be found inside a collection of photographer's book.

The fourth spread is designed for Shinichi Maruyama (Artist) book cover where the images were taken from his own photographs.

London Design Festival

A couple weeks ago, I went into London to have a look at some of the Design Festival. Mind Over Matter by Alan Fletcher was interesting. I got a little bit depressed seeing a wall of sketchbook pages and his visual research. But gave me that tiny bit of motivation on how much research I have to do now.

Noma Bar 'Cut It Out' was quite fun to look at. Noma Bar played around more with a recurring theme - negative space. And the use of bold colours in each cut outs gave the whole piece humour and attraction. In the middle of the exhibiting area, a massive die-cutting machine shaped of a dog where one can produce their own cut-outs. Very interactive.

Outside the V&A, a huge installation by Amanda Levete Architects 'Timber Wave' was phenomenal. The 3-D latticespiral work built from oil-treated American red oak surely is an exciting and dramatic installation which brings the London Design Festival out on the street.

The textile field in the V&A was quite amazing for me - more like the time we spent there lying on it was quite relaxing after a long day of walking throughout London.