Line Artist Statement
A thought came up on my mind as I read “The Practice of Everyday Life: Walking in the City” by Michel de Certeau. Being able to see, hear, and observe around your area means you can understand the world. People could understand through texts, languages, images, and more creatively, walking around from one location to another. De Certeau mentions in his text that “it thus seems possible to give a preliminary definition of walking as a space of enunciation” (de Certeau 98) and it didn’t take long for me to realize what that means.
I visited my mom’s office to observe every person’s movement at different times on the 5th floor. I personalized the quote above and acknowledged that each of the movements had their own clear purposes: going to the bathroom, taking the elevator, drinking water, or draining a coffee. I thought this was “a space of enunciation” (de Certeau 98) since people were clearly pronouncing and speaking what they need by not physically talking but with actions. Discovering and following the paths of the people six times (7-8 AM, 12-1 PM, 3-4 PM, 6-7 PM, 9-10 PM, 12-1 AM) and comparing those lines and shapes got me to understand the world in this office.
News Artist Statement
Influenced by Alexandra Bell, I decided to use highlighters and black markers to recreate the covers for The Chosun Ilbo, one of the leading daily newspapers in South Korea. To be honest, I have never read a physical newspaper article in my life. After being assigned this project, I came to wonder where I could collect those physical copies of the newspapers. Then I remembered that my grandparents, in other words, older generations still receive newspapers in front of their doorsteps everyday. So I asked my grandfather for either any past or present newspapers that he had at his home.
I experimented with different techniques to recreate the articles. After those experiments, I decided to borrow a few of Alexandra Bell’s ideas of omitting, mark making, and highlighting techniques. I highlighted the negative words and phrases with orange, positive with blue, and colored any advertisement related news with black. Advertisements dazzle the readers into buying new products or getting new services and I wanted to blackout those materialistic elements so that the readers can actually concentrate on the news itself.
After finishing recreating the covers of The Chosun Ilbo, I have found a noticeable trend: the percentage of the orange highlighters compared to the blue was outstandingly greater. This trend proves that there are more negative stories than there are of positive ones. I personally felt sad about this fact because it means there is more tragic news in the world, but at the same time, I think it’s crucial since citizens have the right to know what is going on around the world, whether it’s bad or not. Another trend I’ve noticed is that there are three advertisements displayed in the same spots on the covers.
Reporting gloomy stories was a trend even from the past because Aleksandra Mir also mentioned that most of the news from “the years 1986-2000 were about small-town gossips”. In addition, after The September 11th Attacks in 2001, the news reports became even more tragic and gloomy. Even though the time periods are different, my interpretation and Mir’s interpretation of newspapers was similar since we both found news to be filled with devastation. Furthermore, I agree with Nate Lowman’s opinion that he can’t focus on online news because “it is built in the idea of distraction since everything is one click away”. I highly agree with this point of view because after reading the articles from a physical copy, I realized that I have concentrated more. The physicality of the newspapers helped me focus on the reading and the content, whereas online, I would have checked my messages, updates, and calendars all at the same time because I can see it just below my chrome tab.
Shapes, Patterns, Textile Artist Statement
For my shapes, patterns, and textile project, I have decided to name my patterns of artwork as the Memorylane of the Butterfly. I have taken more than ten photos of my daily life objects with my DSLR and have decided to choose three out of those ten images to create a unique pattern. I chose to trace the photo of my teddy bear, butterfly-shaped hair claw, and a donut looking tape.
However, after choosing these objects to trace on Adobe Illustrator, I couldn’t think of what specific type of pattern or shape to create. Then, I remembered an exercise I’ve done with an artist named Glendalys Medina, who came to talk to us in our visual thinking class during my NYU Freshman year. We did a visualization exercise: She told us to move to a place where we feel comfortable being in and told us to imagine ourselves being in all these different states of situations. One time, we would imagine ourselves being in an angry state, joyful state, and sometimes moments where we feel grateful for. As I recalled my experiences associated with these emotions, my childhood memory from England popped up into my head as a joyful memory.
When I was 8 years old, I used to live in Pinner, an area in Greater London. When I attended elementary school there, I would always go to the park which was right in front of my school. One day, I was at the park with my friends and I was wearing a brown jacket on top. Out of a pure child’s mind, I started wondering if any birds or butterflies will sit on my arm if I stand like a tree. So I started standing like I was a tree, having my arms wide opened next to my shoulders in the middle of the playground. Right then, a purple butterfly calmly flew and sat on my left arm: Ever since I made that eye contact with that butterfly on my left arm, I had this memory kept with me for almost 12 years.
I wanted to express this unique feeling through shapes, patterns, and textiles. Therefore, I had the teddy bear, butterfly, and the tape to represent each thing: myself, the butterfly that sat on my arm, and my eyes. To express that I kept this unusual childhood memory with me for years, whether or not I moved from countries to another, I rotated my shapes around to show that I was physically moving while this memory was with me the whole time. For each photo, I differentiated the sizes of the bear, butterfly, and tape by increasing the sizes each time to show how they each stand out by itself. I am the symbol of this memory; the butterfly is the symbol of this memory; my eyes are the symbol of this memory.
It is always so interesting to realize what habits, perspectives, and value structures can impact our psyche. Medina is one of the artists who deal with this issue, who expresses how those aspects “download into our psyche”. After taking a look at her work and listening to her explanations of her work, I was able to acknowledge her thoughts and intentions of her work. She makes her language and images through “geometry, neuro-linguistic programming”. Besides, her interpretation of the Hip-Hop culture is what makes her work so contemporary at the same time. Next time, if I get the chance, I would love to try out different methods to express my childhood memories, such as creating installations, 3D artworks, and maybe even digital works.
Color Response
In the past, photography was defined with just black and white colors. Everything was observed in just two colors and therefore was hard to imagine how the real scene looked like. Nevertheless, “since the 1970s, color photography has entirely saturated the visual landscape” (Lehmann). Vibrant colors shown in photographs have begun to help viewers observe the exact scene and moments, in other words, it has become more realistic. This, I believe, is a positive impact of color photography, but I would like to talk about other discussions that color photography has driven us to.
Personally, I do prefer color photography over black and white because they help me understand the picture more vividly. However, color photography can also influence us to an unknown world because of how indefinite it can get. Claire Lehmann, in Color Goes Electric, May 31, writes that Steichen, the director of the Department of Photography at the Museum of Modern Art, “hoped the exhibition would explore color’s artistic potential, but acknowledged that the question of its value was still unanswerable” (Lehmann). I highly agree with this statement because I also think the value of color is undefinable since everyone’s standard of beauty is different. I find it extremely hard to pick art that is aesthetically appealing to everyone because everyone has a different point of view. In addition, colors can often show the realistic side of the moment, but when artists use massive amounts of photo manipulation, instead of representing the real scene, it can draw an imaginary world. Through photoshop, images can get unrealistic and can even portray surrealism.
The definition and characteristics of color photography highly resonate with the color of ash. Eleanor Maclure, in Essays of Colour-Cabinet Magazine, defines “the identity of ash as a color [that] is questionable” (Maclure 16). I love the color ash for no reason: It’s just pretty in my perspective. To some people, ash can be a color that gives a cold mood, a warm mood, a “black-like” (Maclure 18) mood.
However, when ash is combined with other colors like green and white that are relatively common to spot, it is likely for the photo to become more friendly to the audience. For example, the photo that I’ve used to select 5 colors is a combination of realistic and unrealistic colors. To me, I see #295B64 and #3C848F as questionable like ash and #C29D87 as more of a natural color. The first two blue-ish colors are imported from an artificially made lighting from the studio and the third color is imported from the skin tone of the model’s. Like this, I think that a combination of unnatural and natural colors brings the audience to a comforting state as well as triggers their interest.
3D Statement
To be honest, this project was the hardest project I’ve ever done in this course. I struggled a lot and eventually couldn’t get my project to work. However, I’ve learned some lessons throughout my trials and I would like to share what has worked and did not work for me.
At first, when I thought of an object that created conflict, I wanted to take a photo of a slipper that is commonly bought by people in Korea. It is called the “Samsun Slipper” which basically means “Three Line Slipper” in English. There are three lines on the slipper and it is used by many students and workers because they are cheap and comfortable to wear around. However, it is an object of conflict because many people have mentioned that the design looks exactly the same as Adidas’s slippers. Nevertheless, the slipper didn’t work when I imported it to Metashape for some reason. One predicted reason is that the model isn’t able to recognize the section underneath the strap of the slipper. Also, it could be because I’ve shot the object from too far away so the model isn’t able to recognize the detail.
Therefore, for my next trial, I’ve chosen a different object. I chose a piggy bank and a few things have worked and did not work. Considering my first trial, I chose an object that is not symmetrical, glossy, and that does not have a hidden part like the bottom of the strap. However, when I went over my photos, I’ve realized that the backgrounds of the photos weren’t perfectly aligned so Metashape had a hard time recognizing the object.
In order to fix this problem, I re-aligned the photos on Adobe Photoshop and tried again. However, for some reason, it did not work. Maybe it was because the focus was different and there wasn’t that much of a difference in the colors between the object and the background. After this trial, I tried reshooting my piggy bank multiple times, but I couldn’t get it to work.
Later, I chose another object to work on: a persimmon. This trial was the most confusing trial because everything seemed like it should work. I’ve used a tripod, had set a timer so that it won’t move, even a slight, placed the object on a messy background, and took all sides of the object. I’ve tried using my computer to work it out as well as a bigger computer, but I couldn’t get it to work. Using a timer definitely helped me in not having my background to move at all, but I couldn’t get it to work. I would love to try again next time in the future and get a final product :)