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.
