STUDY PROPOSAL

STUDY PROPOSAL

----------------------------  Elaine (Yi Zhang) --- MA Graphic Design  ---------------------------

1)     RESEARCH QUESTION

The initial interested area of my study proposal was about the urban people’s concealed and missing emotion. In view of existing situation of modern people, I wanted to explore the idea of the mentality of urbanites, and pay attention to the strange, lonesome or vacuous emotions which are cased by the tremendous work pressure. That was the general direction. As for the specific interested orientations, there were some tentative ideas to consider, such as the numb attitude of office worker. It can be seen that my original idea was to express the theme from the urban person’s perspective; however, my proposal has been a little bit changed in the expressive point of the theme. Through the abundant researches, I am going to express the stressful and oppressive urban life by the expression of the living environment and condition. That means I want to express the urban people’s emotion from their outside instead of human itself. As a consequence, in the modern society, people ignore their real feeling and neglect what they really want to have from their inner heart. The missing emotion of urbanites is an interesting area which I want to carry on my project. Importantly, the way of expression from human outside area is my interested part. In particular, space design and participation design are the interesting areas which I want to combine with, and I am going to research how to realize a visual effect of my theme in a real space.

I think the theme of the project is relevant, because design should be concerned with social responsibility, which is the soul supporting a work. In my opinion, it’s less intensive and nothing remarkable if the work is created by a designer or artist who lacks social responsibility. We should broaden our horizons and see through the world. As a result, I think that researching urbanites’ emotion is a way to consider the modern people’s state of living, while it is also a viewpoint to concern the social phenomenon which has close relations to our life. Specifically, in my research content, ‘urban’ means a stressful, complex, lonesome and fickle life for modern people.

2) RESEARCH CONTEXT

As I mentioned above, I want to express urban people’s missing emotion from an outside perspective. Space design and participation design are the areas which inspired me a lot. Particularly, Kusama’s Endless Love Show gave me a lot of inspirations. When audiences stay in the space, the colourful and variegated colours make powerful attraction with the mirrored reflection. It is a special experiment for viewers because of the flicker effect, which is created by the phantasmagoric colours. Through the participation of the show, viewers are led into Kusama’s hallucinogenic word and made sense personally. Overall, it can be offered a close experience of face-to-face communication and participation by the diversified use of colours, just like the endless love happens to you.

Following this, I consider another famous artist Esther Stocker who also makes great contribution to the disorientation of space. There are a lot of related artworks designed by Esther Stocker, which successfully explain that how the interactivity of graphic language can be expressed in a gallery space. For instance, the minimal installation Abstract thought is a warm puppy, which is also made up of black geometric graphics and displayed in a white room spatially and optionally. As for the disorientation of the effect, the feeling of standing outside is different from entering inside. It can be seen that Stocker’s artworks have tremendous expressive qualities for expressing the interactivity between graphic language and the participation of viewers.

3) METHODOLOGY

There is my interest for 3D graphics and participatory design; especially the visual works in a real space, because the unpredictable effects will be happened in the process of audience’s participation. With the speedy development of graphic design, it is not merely used in 2-D form. Nowadays, graphic design is influenced by diverse areas of modern art, such as performance art, digital art, and participation art and so on. I am going to focus on the relationship between the using of graphic language and participation art in the organization of space. Large installation and space design will be the good ways to extend the idea. For the theme of my project, I plan to investigate particular area of London, explore the local residents’ lifestyle that contacts with my research.

4) RESOURCES

In the working progress, I am going to use photographic studio, printmaking studio and 3D workshop to carry on my work. But if I want to do large installation and space design, I will try to do some handmade models firstly, and test the different materials and visual effects in advance. In addition, college libraries and the different libraries in London are the important resources for researching. Besides, museums and galleries provide abundant information of artists’ art works for me to research.

Reference:

Cataldo, John W. (1966) Graphic design and visual communication. Scranton: International Textbook Co.

Collings, M. (1999) This is Modern Art. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson

Frieling, R. (2008) The Art of Participation 1950 to New. London: Thames & Hudson Ltd.

Guglielmino, G. (2008) How to Look at Contemporary Art. New York: Umberto Allemandi & C Publishing.

Hoptman, L. & A. Tatehata & U. Kultermann, (2000) Yayoi Kusama. London: Phaidon Press Limited.

Newman, William M. (1995) Interactive system design. Harlow: Addison-Wesley.

Schadler-Saub, U. & A. Weyer, (2010) Theory and Practice in the Conservation of Modern and Contemporary Art. Hildessheim: Archetype Publications Ltd.