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2022
Editorial/Experimental
instructor:
Caspar Lam
Keywords: forms, emotions, ordinary objects
Do ordinary objects merely serve functional purposes in meeting daily needs, or is there an inherent emotional dimension embedded within them? This exploration delves into the emotional interpretation of commonplace items, presenting them devoid of functionality, purely as visual forms. The project challenges the perception of everyday objects, emphasizing their value through unexpected perspectives and transforming them into a visual diary—capturing the essence of the ordinary, often overlooked, yet deeply meaningful moments in life.
Inspired by John Cage, I experimented on the unexpected perspective of objects. The whole project focuses on the experimental process from images, to motion clips, to a book, as a continuous series.
Parsons BFA Communication Design︎︎︎
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Objectives
Transcending objects’ functionality, this project interconnects and stimulates our thoughts and attitudes of life. I imagine emotions and language expressions, unique to us as living beings, represent the integrity of humans and exert a profound influence on how we perceive and engage with the objects.
Experiments: posters
Start by observing prevalent geometric forms from my surrounding objects such as circles and squares. Even though circles and squares are mathematically incompatible, they are able to coexist in the same objects, as the magic of our three dimensional world. Use the language of shapes to bridge the connection from myself to objects. Shapes became the letters; objects became the words; and posters became the sentences and even a paragraph.
Research/Inspiration
Musician - John Cage
Book - A book of things
Book - A Not B, Uta Eisenreich
Artists - Rafael Rozendaal.
Artists/photographer -
Daniel Eatock, “Trees.”
Book - Mind Walks
Book - Condition Design Workbook, Studio Moniker,
Book - Super Normal, Jasper Morrison & Naoto Fukasawa
Experiments: photography
The continuous exploration happened in my kitchen to convey the amorphous relationship between my emotions and scales. When small-scale utensils such as a teaspoon and a cooking spoon become the focal point with its adjunctive large-scale pieces such as cups and bowls, the emotions expressed drastically different.
By playing with the scales and distances to the camera, the impression of the order and the dominant positions are reversed without applying physical transformation.
Experiments: newspaper
The consecutive series of the experiment leads to a book, "Circle but not Circle," revolves around exploring the relationships between two-dimensional circles living in the three-dimensional circular or circle-contained objects. The primary emphasis is on experimenting with various circle types—solid, hollow, and outlined, and its reflection on the objects’ features, such as solid circles mostly appearing in inflexible materials, and outlines circles often linking to soft forms.
Manipulating the scale and perspective of circles produces captivating visual patterns, unveiling the intricate visual connections between these objects and prompting contemplation on emotional associations.
Experiments: book and motion
“Shape It”
The culmination of these experiments is curated and presented in a final book “Shape It” to narrate and document the whole thinking process and visual productions. Alongside the book, a motion work is presented with background sound from our daily lives. Inspired by the musician John Cage, the motion composed without words but auditory stimulation and conveyed the ordinary but effusive moments in the regular life. Audiences are encouraged to interpret with their imagination and creation, stepping out of the inherent thinking conventions.
Epilogue
The whole process indicates ordinary but emotional expressions. With the attention to AI development, human emotions seem so intricate that machines currently are not capable of doing so. Large amounts of our work and life now are digitized and replaceable, except emotions and consciousness remain unique to us and not pecuniary. Engaging in a sequence of experimentations involving photography and books allows me to immerse myself into interpreting emotions, and has also been a pivotal process of gaining interests towards natural language.
When efficiency and productivity are becoming the core value of the living world, how to better fulfill our spiritual world and bring out the value of human consciousness and expressive emotions? If humans were no longer required to work, what significance would our existence hold? My poetic interpretation acts as a bridge to capture mundane yet valuable life objects with unexpected perspectives to present the meanings of our emotional values, and facilitate me to further explore the positive impact of human emotions.
