Sunday 27 February 2011

Contextual Studies: Review on "A woman is a woman"


   I haven’t seen many French films but ‘A Woman is a Woman(UNE FEMME EST UNE FEMME )’ directed by Jean-Luc Godard became one of my rememberable films. At the end, I thought it was a bit strange but such a charming film because of its content, about a woman, the attractive performance of Anna Karina, use of colour, and its musical-like effects. It reminds me of a French film, Amelie directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet. Both films have similar features such as importance of the main actress, use of vivid colour in fashion and interior, use of sound effect, and comfortable tempo of conversation. I think that is because the director of Amelie had rather influenced by A Woman is a Woman. The scenes from both films that the character suddenly speaks to us, the people watching the film in front of screen, overlap with each other.
   However how charming the film is, it is not just that. What was so unusual from others was that there are lots of ‘twos’, conflicting pairs in this film. In a book ‘Speaking about Godard’, a philosopher and film analyst Gilles Deleuze points out Godard as, ”What counts with him is not two or three, or however many you like, it’s AND, the conjunction AND… The And is neither the one or the other, it is always between the two, it is the boundary… Godard’s aim is to ‘see the boundaries’ …to make the imperceptible visible.” Here are a few pairs that organize this film: male and female, yes and no, sound and image, musical and film, stillness and movement, comedy and tragedy. Beside the story of the film, most of the pairs are results of using many techniques in one time. Voice narration was used to describe character’s thought in Amelie within rhythmic dialogue, the fine tempo of talk is also one of the attraction but it was text narration that described thought in A Woman is a Woman. The scene that text appeared letter by letter toward Emile and then went back to Angela told that they love each other, it was almost like a well-designed graphic piece. Text was used when they didn’t want to talk and decided to talk by titles of books and also at the very end of the film, an electric message said ‘end’ when Angela closed curtain like an end of Broadway musical. It is not really a musical film(they didn’t sing during conversations) but it used musical-like music and sound effects directed by Michel Legrand that expressed characters’ feeling and atmosphere of the moment very well. With sounds, a variety of camerawork is used such as sometimes it is continuous cut from wide angle and sometimes it is a fragment of close image.
   This film attracts and interests me visually with its remarkable sense of using colours and text and also by its challenge to explore harmony of opposite elements together using different film techniques. It pushes me to challenge myself to try these found skills in my execution to find a new harmony.

Saturday 19 February 2011

Liu Bolin, the chameleon man

He is a Chinese artist known as an 'invisible man'.

Here's one of his work that represents himself really well.


Could you find him?
It is not just a photo of a building.
If you look really carefully, you can find him almost disappeared in the surrounding.
He has an incredible talent to camouflage himself by painting his body!



His works are awesome!
My final major project is about 'deception'.
I think his camouflage work could be a kind of deception.
I wish I had such a talent to paint, so I can try this illusion for my FMP...


I'm not sure if these are his works as well but I put them here too.

I found these images while I was researching on my FMP.
These images were used for a campaign of UNICEF China, that China has over 1.5 million underprivileged children.
The message written in Chinese says "Don't ignore me".
The style of the work and the message really work well together.
The idea of merged into background helps me carrying on FMP.

Tuesday 15 February 2011

Sunday 13 February 2011

Saturday 12 February 2011

Optical Illusions


A bit of research for my final major project...

Friday 11 February 2011

Nina Katchadourian

Nina Katchadourian is an american artist who has worked in many media, including sculpture, photography, video, and sound.


NATURAL CROSSDRESSING
Her portrait, putting two real wooly caterpillars under her nose as mustache.

 CARPARK
Sorting all incoming cars to by colour into 14 different parking lots.

GEOGRAPHIC PATHOLOGY
Experiments with connection between geography and anatomy.
Japan!

TALKING POPCORN
Translating sound of popping corn by morse code, 
and making a journal of popcorn speech.

SONGS OF THE ISLANDS
Collecting dumped loose audio cassette tapes and 
express the wide range of people in New York City.

Her various viewpoints and experiment-based work interests me a lot.

Wednesday 9 February 2011

Fact Project Part3

This project was a kind of second one of the previous project, the fact project.
Again, the aim for this project was to express a snappy fact given randomly.
I got a fact that 'bubble gum contains rubber.'

It was one week project and I had to do some portfolio staff, so the result had to be a simple one.
When I got my fact, I immediately came up with several simple ideas. Then I did some research about both bubble gum and rubber and made some collages to figure out my ideas. I was thinking to present my final work by collage, but after I made some samples, I thought it is better to present it by taking photographs of the actual objects. So I got a few kinds of chewing gums and a rubber and cut the rubber to fit exactly to the size of the gums.
I made two patterns for my finals.
I tried to be simple.

This is the other one.
Sequence photos

Tuesday 8 February 2011

Chewing gum fact


Thanks Shelley for telling me this movie!
It's really unbelievable!!

Monday 7 February 2011

Fact Project Part2

Through researching on the fact that chickens are closest living relatives to T-Rex,
I made so many experimentation works in my sketchbook.
One of them revealed that they have very similar skeleton to each other.
Then I got the final idea to make T-Rex skeleton from chicken bones.
It  took me whole 3 days to finish, and it actually worked out really well.

This is my chickensaurus!!

Made from only chicken bones, wire, and a bit of masking tape.


~How to make chickensaurus~
Day 1. Cook whole 2 chickens and eat well!! 
Take off all the meat from bones.
Day 2. Clean all the bones neatly by brush. (took me ages)
Soak bones in watered bleach for an hour and dry them completely.
Day 3. Make a base and select bones for each body parts.
Connect each bones by wires and glue. Better to look at actual T-rex skeleton.
Keep on going.
Make a head base by wire and attach bones.
Cover holes by masking tape. Put pieces of tiny bones as teeth.
Done!

The problem I got for this final piece was that the fact could not be clearly understood by just looking at it. There were some good suggestions to the problem in the crit such as add some feathers, beak, or comb to the skeleton. I would like to solve this problem afterwards.
Honestly it was a hard project for me at the first time because I had to direct myself through the goal. But finally, I think it was a really good challenge for me to explore my own way of working and achieving the aim. I also realised the importance of research by this project and how I can go through it. I want to make use of these experiments for the next stage.


What's more.
I also made some additional work for this project.
DVD package imitating 'Jurassic Park', called 'Jurassic Beak'!

Just for fun:)

Sunday 6 February 2011

Fact Project Part1

For this project, each student were given different creatures randomly and has to find some interesting facts about it. Then the aim for this project was to express the found fact about the creature in the most effective way.

The creature I got for this project was CHICKEN.

First of all, I thought I got a good creature to start with.
Chickens are funny, everyone knows about them, and have many different aspects such as birds, domestic animal, food, egg, etc...
But at this time, I didn't know that the wide variety of this animal would be the difficulty for me afterwards....


This was research based project, so I went to a city farm near Vauxhall Station for the first time to see real chickens.

They were actually very friendly.

The other day at college, all students made hand-made zoo by paper and act a short performance in pairs wearing masks or costume that are also hand-made.

It was pretty fun and it helped me to enjoy the project.

At this point, I realized that I got too much information about chickens and it became difficult to choose which fact to go on. I couldn't even consider chicken as either an animal or food. My thought was going too complicated and I was just too much to think about it. So I tried to calm down and went back to basic, remembering which fact were the people most interested in.
Then I ended up with this fact;