Reflective Journal

Elaine Zhang

MA Graphic Design

Reflective Journal

Word count：2333

In addition to the final show, there were lots of practice and development at MA level study. In the working process of this one-year study, I learnt and got much more from the projects, research, symposium, lecture and final work. It is no denying that criticality is a key characteristic of MA study; therefore, it is important to evaluate the development included how to solve the problems in progress, and what have been changed from the study proposal. It’s also an internal consistency between the practice and the future development.

Firstly, 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. 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. In addition, I carried on my previous projects related to this theme such as the silent film “Lost in life” (image 1&2), which was showed at Sigune’s studio. In this project, I focused on the lonesome, isolated and insensitive emotion of a girl who is eager for playing a close game with a friend. I used a hand game as an element to run my ideas. In fact, this is a traditional Chinese game that should be played with two persons, but they were just one girl who played the game and repeated the same action by herself in my video and book. Besides, audience could play game with the girl, which is a participation and interaction between the work and the viewers. When the film was showed in the public screen, I thought the visual language is strong, but the quality was vague. After that, I retook the video as high- quality photographs and did a book in the artist book workshop, which was showed in the “work in progress” exhibition. (Image 3)

Secondly, at the start point of my main project, I used masks to express urbanites' surface emotion, which is ostensible and unreal. I thought that lots of people ignore what they want, lose happiness and miss their emotion. In addition, they use an invisible mask to conceal their emotion in this complex and stressful social condition. As a result, I used mask to carry on an installation. In the progress, I broke the "surface masks", strung and hung up them (Image 4.). The chips of the masks looked sad and vacuous in the swinging state. In addition to the installation, I also thought about to take a video that refers to the city life, and then use projection to show the images in the masks. To evaluate the test, it was good to extend the methods and materials to do installation with marks; however, the element “mask” was vulgar and commonplace to express the idea. Importantly, other artists have used masks frequently, which is also hard to break through the first impression about the meaning of opera. In fact, after I gave up the mask idea, I saw Gillian Wearing’s exhibition at Whitechapel Gallery, which had a really strong method and vision to show the concealed emotion. Wearing questions how much we can determine about individual’s personality by looking at a person’s face and facial expressions. Her masks are liberating in a sense, because they allow people to say what they want, and not what others want them to say. Even though I did not continue the mask idea, Wearing’s work still gave me lots of inspiration.  

At this stage, I researched lots of related artists’ works especially the installation and space design. In particular, Esther Stocker makes great contribution to the disorientation of space. She is good at using black and white geometric patterns to create visual interactive space and make a real space as a large installation for viewer’s participation. In her trippy 3-D installations, Stocker's large architectural forms like real-life, 3-D optical illusion. Importantly, most of her works allow the visitors to interact and absorb the environmental space; therefore, she offers a close space for participation. After the researches, I tried to make models to create an illusion of the fickle city life, which was inspired by Stocker’s works. It can be seen that 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.

Specifically, for the ideas about installation of models, I tried different materials to create visual effects refers to a disorientation of urban life in a model of space. For example (image 5), I used illustration of buildings to extend the ideas. The tier upon tier of buildings, which reflected a stressful and busy urban life, created this installation. In this model, I drew the buildings on the floor and wall, especially; I built a reflected image of buildings on the floor that looked like a mirror. It can be imagined that viewers will feel stressful and oppressive when they come into the space, and let them to think about their life in the busy city. In addition, I tested other materials that ware film and mirror paper. (Image 6 & 7) As I mentioned, city life is colorful and full of false appearance, which like the illusion of mirror. I used the colorful film and mirror papers, and reflected light to build an illusion space. The mixed colour materials created an illusion that just like a complex and fickle city life. As a consequence, when people walk in the space, they can see themselves vaguely because of the mirror effect, just like they miss the emotion of themselves by the complex and fickle city life.  At this stage, I was really interested in doing the models; however, the problem is the infeasibility. Those models were difficult to realize in a real space because of the high price of materials and technology.

So I tried to find a feasible way to realize my idea. There were two different ways that I tested for realizing the models into a real space. The first idea was to draw the illustration of the buildings in a large roll of paper which about the size “2m*10m”. (Image 8) It can be seen that viewers can enter the large installation to experience the effect. Even through the large-scale drawing could be realized by working with the fact that it is on a paper roll, the effect was not as powerful as which I want to have.

Through a lot of research about installation and space work from related artists’ works, I tried to think the specific emotions of urban people. And I found all my ideas were my own thinking and feeling, not the attitude or thinking from the specific people who living in London around us. As a foreigner, I cannot understand British people’s thinking because of the different culture and society. So I did interviews and tried to know the area specifically. (Image 9) And I want to know how people think about their life in a large city and what’s the different between china and here. Through the interviews, I got a lot of information from different people who working here or come from other countries. Most of them feel stressful, lonely, unhappy or busy to their work or study. And some people feel the pressure must be happened with the rapid development of society, but we need to face the stress and make our psychology to be better. I was interested in interviewing people, and it was a good way to get more ideas by different specific questions. In fact, the idea of interview was inspirited from the Jessica project, which was the first project with Silke in the first term. (Image 10) If I want to extend the idea of interview, how to open up the interview question will be the point that should be concerned in the future.

After the interviews, I tested other visual effect to create a illusion or disorientation of an urban life, but the problem was the drawing of the buildings were not suitable to express my idea, because it was not real city life. So after that, I took photos around the city, and choose modern buildings as the element. Besides, I edit a small video and projected it to the colourful papers to create a fickle word. On the other hand, I tested the effect by using the projector in the private area. I projected the image in the place, which I am living. For urbanities, the home is close and private and makes people relaxed, but I moved the stressful situation to their private space to create a stressful and oppressive atmosphere. (Image 11 & 12)

At the end of the MA study, final exhibition is the most important project, which has already token a long time to develop the ideas. When I started to think about the expression of summer exhibition, I preferred to carry on my project with the idea of projecting work, which referred to the photos I took in a private space by projecting the city images. However, After the final show presentation, I faced a question that I just thought about to use public image into a private space which was a way to make the outside stresses to contrast with the inside individual private space. But I had not concerned that if I want to show this visual work into an exhibition space, it becomes another way to make the private back to a public space and the meaning will be changed. That was the big problem made me confused, but on the other side, it also made me to think about my work from a new point of view. 

To solve the problem, I rethought about the model practice and tried to extend the ideas and realize it to a 3D space. Importantly, installation and space work are still my most interested area. As I mentioned, disorientation of the urban life is also the theme I want to show, and the fickle and stressful atmosphere is what I want to create in an interactive exhibition space. Through the test, I decided to create a mirror effect that will be like an illusion of urban life. In my work, I am exploring the stressful and fickle nature of the urban life and it's suppression of its inhabitants' emotion. My approach is to create a participatory space with a mirroring effect, with relevant themes to contemporary society. Here I am acknowledging that urban life develops rapidly, and that there are numerous pressures, like work and living situations, that make inhabitants feel lonely, discouraged, oppressed, and passive. I'm trying to make the stressful nature of the urban environment visible to the public. Additionally, my interest for 3D graphics and participatory design are clearly exhibited in this installation. The experience of models was an important step in my development. I extended my ideas and methods to a new stage, and got to know what area I really interested. As a result, some practice and test will give you a useful development. In fact, during the final project, Mona Hatoum’s work gave me a lot of inspiration. I visited the The Fundació Joan Miró in Barcelona recently, and it was really fortunate to see the British artist Mona Hatoum's work. The exhibition looked like a dialogue with avant-garde movements in modern art, which affected me to think about how to use a real space to make sense.

After distributing the exhibition space, it was time to decorate own area and adjust the situation, at the same time, the problems happened soon. For example, after fixing up the blackout material, it was installed loosely and looked not as professional as a gallery space. As tutors' suggestion, to solve the problem, it's better to swap the space with Chris. I have thought about it, but for me, changing space will be harder to realize my installation, because I need to place the projectors at the end of the opposite wall in the original space, which takes more than 3 meters away. If I move into a new space, it takes more time to reconsider the situation and material especially the mirrors. So I came to the space to remove the blackout material and re-installed it from another side by myself. It can be seen that it's very strict now. After that I took off the light tubes that I don't need, and left one light for Melis. Than the problem of light was also solved. By the way, I whitewashed the wall that I want to put my projectors. The process of setting up the exhibition was a useful and important part for the future self-development.

During the show build, I have arranged the mirrors for a long time. At first, I put the mirrors on the floor and tried to make an illusion; however, the big problem was that it would be very dangerous for viewers to stand inside. (Image 14) So I changed my mind to make a grid on the walls. Then I set up the mirrors as the Picasso pattern and made the mirrors looked like the building’s windows that showed in the video. As a result, the problem of safety is solved; the patterns are more corresponding, and the visual effect is still disorientation. (Image 15)

All in all, I learn a lot of things and become more confident during the development of MA level study. Importantly, I get to know what I really want to do in the future.