Category: 2024

Lateral thinking

This chapter mainly concerns suspending judgement until later. I find this to be especially applicable to the beginner’s mind: as a beginner, one has very little idea on what is appropriate for a situation, so when a beginner propose solutions it can vary from semi reasonable to outrageous (kinda like how adults see children and their big ideas). It can be useful to adopt this mindset as experts, since these ‘naive’ ideas tend to be on the right track but something in the details make them not feasible. The important thing is analyzing these details to eventually arrive at the right solution.

Art & fear

Art and talent being a pair feels like a tale as old as time. What I find most annoying is that people from my childhood used to jump at any opportunities to judge artwork. It’s not really a problem if someone can draw well, but for people who just want to dabble in it for fun (like me) it was hell: every time I tried to draw something new, I would get some scathing comments about how I should just stick to what is necessary (i.e., enough to pass art classes) rather than make new stuff. That plays a huge role in me not being interested in creative stuff from middle school all the way until university.

Awesome guest. I like how committed he is to each of his work (2+ years of research prior) and how he has a very clear idea of what the work means and how it could transpire. He seems to be very in tune with his own craft, not afraid to do things others would consider to be offensive (e.g., acting out the stereotypes) or too intimate.

After we decided on the theme of “incompleteness”, we listed some incomplete things:

1. A model that isn’t fully built
2. A game without a conclusion
3. Cooking without the necessary ingredients
4. A comic that is not fully drawn
5. A story that doesn’t have an ending.
6. Half a picture
7. A family where the dad is missing.
8. An apartment with no furniture
9. Having one good quality but not the other, e.g. a genius who is shy.
10. Berlin without the graffiti
11. A complete idea but you remove something from it.

From this list, I decide to go with 1. You can find the result here: https://rb5213.github.io/

Impressions of Merche Blasco

Conceptually, I find a lot of similarities between her and Mariana. One thing I noticed during the presentation of Merche’s work is that she makes certain hand movements (like an 8) more frequently. This reflects to how the mind frequently manages to carve patterns out of randomness, even for something as random as improvisation.

I liked her idea of adding ideas that don’t fit together to create something new, that is her idea of adding water to her electronic instrument. Her idea of using vibrations and processing them with digital means is very interesting to me because the sound is caused by vibrations, altering vibrations with certain patterns makes it still the same sound pattern but with different tones or timbre.

For the individual assignment, Linda created an audio. Jason created a drawing, and I created an outline of a game.

Combining all our work, our final group assignment is an animation of someone playing our game. While playing, an advertisement will pop up. It advertises an album, save our world, which contains the music that Linda created. The front cover and back cover of our album will be like the following.

The video of someone playing our game will be the following.

The advertisement page will be the following.

Our works lament all destructions that imperialistic expansions bring upon. The front cover of the album is about the people that’s been killed (although it’s a little abstract, the round circles are the heads that’s been chopped down) with a mushroom cloud at the back., while the back page is about the celebration of the imperialists.

I was trying to relate the digger to the why question. The result of our why turns out to be a loop, and what is always looping: song!

I used the sound of:

1. Jason playing with a pen when we are discussing the project
2. Shoveling dirt
3. Vacuum
4. Lazer cutting
5. construction site noise
6. Drone sound
7. Drilling sound

The story is that we start from a tool that is widely used (a pen) to the shovel, then to vacuum and then progresses to laser, which is more hardcore. Eventually, we end with a drone sound, indicating the end of the digging process.

I’ve never made anything like this and this is way harder than I expected. 

I believe that pursuing one’s passions and truly committing to them brings immense satisfaction and enrichment to life. Watching Merche perform, it’s clear she pours her heart into her work. Her deep engagement and genuine interest in her craft were evident. I especially admire her creativity with new musical instruments and her contributions to the community. Her motivation and dedication to her art are truly inspiring.

Our WHY questions:

Why do we need to dig a tunnel
Because I want to
Why do you want to dig a tunnel
Because I’m bored
Why are you bored
Because I’ve got nothing to do
Why do you have nothing to do
Because I have no friends
Why do you have no friends
Because I spent all of my time building this machine
Why do you build this machine
Because I want to dig a tunnel
Why do you want to dig a tunnel
Because I’m bored
Loop

From this set of Why questions, I immediately thought of a Chinese science fiction novel called Three Body. In the series, there were quotes such as “If I destroy you, what business is that of yours?” “For a civilization in the universe, it does not and cannot have any friends.” These why questions reminded me of these quotes. For a higher civilization, destroying a lower civilization is as easy as a flick of its hand. Then I related to the destroyed lower civilization through their struggles and came up with the idea of drawing paintings of the same scenario but only from opposite perspectives. One is on the higher level of civilization, where destroying other civilizations is simple and celebrated; the other is on the destroyed civilization, where they fought for freedom and salvation but still failed.

Merche and her works were all very interesting. I notice that all three musicians we had were all good at doing improvisation. Probably for music, improvisation demonstrates creativity the most. I’m very impressed that Merche said she never had formal musical education. My favourite work of hers is her wood bucket creation that records the music of water. The sound of the dripping water is healing and reminds me of the beautiful nature. All three musicians talked about not afraid of making mistake, which is a key part towards creating creative creations.