Lightbox v1.4: the Painting

Ma-mian qun (horse-face skirt; 馬面裙)

This was the digital painting I did for the lightbox, and part of the back-lit image. Initially I decided to add hand-drawn elements to the work to avoid potential copy right issues and plagiarism, because the original photo I had in mind came from a famous advertisement of a well-known merchant (in the hanfu sub-culture at least).
Guess what? I chose it because it was quite iconic in the development of modern hanfu.

Courtesy of Minghuatang

Besides, I thought adding personal touches to the work reinforced the aura of the piece, although some might argued that artistic aura was already lost in the new age of mechanical reproduction. Well! At least I had fun painting it, and I truly appreciated that there were maple-leaves pattern per-installed in Photoshop.

A historical relic (important: the skirt was displayed backward)

Lightbox v1.3: Thinking Inside and Outside the Box

As I have stated in the previous post, both light and box are the essential complements of a lightbox. They are as important as the back-lit image. Moreover, because the sensitive nature of light itself, and the reflective characteristic of the painted surface, all of the complements needed to be taken into account when constructing the object, in order to attain the desired result.

Communication between light and the image is crucial. The box serves as a medium for light to travel, and thus it has significant effects on the latter and then the image. When I was told that I could actually do something different to the box, my crazy mode was turned on, and thus I added a bit surprise to the work.  I really hope it will work!

 Eventually, I am actually excited for the lightbox now.

Lightbox v1.1: What to Do and What I Want to Do?

This post was supposed to be posted before Lightbox v1.2: Sketches. It is recommended to read this one first, although order does not really matter.

Note: the following came from my paper sketchbook. Even though I had already completed the image at this point, I wrote down the following based on my original brainstorming.

Key ideas:

1. First of all, this work will be a pain for someone like me who frequently moves, so it must be absolutely worthy to keep. 
2. Furthermore, because it is the final project, it is going to be a summary of what I had learned from the past projects. Particularly, there will be either direct or indirect reference on the Interior drawing, Flow, and Light and Movement.
3. It is going to form parts of the foundation and/or prologue for my future thesis.

In details: 

1. Generally speaking, it is going to be thematically connected to the Interior drawing, and aesthetically connected to Flow and Light and Movement.
2. It will directly comment on the Hanfu movement and reflect at least one of the central ideas.
3. It is going to be hybrid: contains both hand-drawn and photographic elements.
4. I am going to use either visual elements directly taken from the past projects, or those resemble the elements used in the past.
5. It is going to be a night scene which includes post modern architectures.

Lightbox V1.2: Sketches

This post was supposed to go after Lightbox v1.1: What to do and What I Want to Do? I had posted this one first because v1.1 was not finished at the time. 

Here were the quick sketches I did before I constructed the final image for the lightbox. At this point, I already had a vivid idea for what to do, so I only did two similar one.

Interestingly, the actual image turned out to be a combination of both.

Lightbox v1.0: Q & A

Why to construct a lightbox?

• Lightbox = light + box = both light and box are important elements to be taken into account. 
• Back-lighting creates a strong sense of luminosity and reinforces transparency.
• The box may represent the inversion of architecture

Some historical，ethnic，and contemporary precedents of lightbox:

• commercial billboard and advertisement such as the vending machine in the Sofa lounge
• cinema
• slides
• tracing on a light table
• lantern

Retrieved from Sina News Center <http://news.sina.com.cn/o/p/2012-02-07/072723892250.shtml>

•  Piying-xi play (皮影戲) or Shadow Puppetry

Retrived from <http://hb.sina.com.cn/news/g/2012-03-19/58241.html>

 I might use the last one as an aesthetic reference.

What does it mean to construct an image?

• creating an artificial representation of space
• if the image is fully based on photos, then it represents a man-made reality which is entirely based on fragments from the real world. How real can it be?
• if the form is hybrid, such image implies the integration of the real and the representational. As the creator, I can control the degree of integration, and use it for the symbolism and/or narration of the work.

Light and Movement v1.0

As suggested by the title, my next project is going to be about light and movement. Although I haven't really fully developed the idea yet, I want to talk about it briefly and write down some important points.

• It's going to be a loose continuation of the hybrid media project. When I was worked on "Flow," I had discovered many things which I didn't actually use, and thus I would like to continue exploring them in this up-coming one.
• The visual style will be very different from "Flow." I am currently thinking of a much more decorative, expressive and culturally relevant approach for this one. In other words, it will be less realistic.
• The overall theme will be about the light, space, artificiality, and authenticity.
• Some of the footage and ideas were left out from "Flow."
• I am going to play with and use a lot of filters in Final Cut.
• There will be sound effect: either a musical piece or a contrasting sound from nature or both.
• Mirrors and glass are going to be extremely important.

Hybrid Media Exercise: Two Important Terms

Note: this blog entry was supposed to be posted during the researching phase of the project. Because I had absolutely no clue what to do at the time, and I needed to connect these terms to the actual work (which was very open-ended), I decided to post them when the video was done.


Immersion (immersive virtual reality):

Immersion is a mental state in which the participants are unaware of their body or physical self, as if they are lost within another environment which is often artificial. Immersion is an important aspect of many artistic installations and video games. For example, when they are playing video games, the players are often lost in the virtual reality, and become unaware of their physical surroundings and time. In fact, some of the game developers are aiming for this effect, such as by using the first-person viewing angle in the games (one good example will be a recently released game called "Dear Esther").

Retrieved from IGN <http://www.ign.com/images/games/dear-esther-pc-100307/3589955>

In addition, immersion was one of the essential objective of my work "Flow." In my personal case, I tired to create an immersive atmosphere by juxtaposing highly contrasting visual and audio elements.


Haptic Visuality

In short, haptic visuality is the touch of eyes. For example, in a tactile blind contour drawing exercise, the artist is drawing down the objects without looking at the actual drawing, as he/she is trying to touch and feel the contour of the objects with his/her eyes, and then he/she translate this sensory information onto the paper. Moreover, during such exercises, any optical illusory information such as tonal shadow is omitted, because it is not attained by the sense of touching.

The reason I put this term  here is because haptic visuality is originally part of my work. I was going to incorporate parts of the blind contour drawings in the video, and thus it will adds to the hybridity of the work. However, due to the fact that the video was already quiet long, I decided to leave certain things out.

Hybrid Media Update v1.0: Mac and PC don't get along.

I had finished filming the hybrid footage yesterday, and I was planning to work on my actual video today. Unfortunately, I realized that my flash drive couldn't to be read on Mac, because it was formatted for PC.

Guess I will need an extension because I really want this video to be great. Furthermore, the footage I had taken looks surprisingly interesting, I honestly don't want to waste them.

Anyways, the video shooting was actually a lot of fun, although the editing process was frustrating from time to time. The reactions between the pigments, ink, and water were very magical and breath taking. I am actually very excited for this project now.

I had tried out different  methods to shoot it.

Below is one of the methods of shooting.(Thank you for the custodians who had rearranged the studio)

Method 2: with the three most important equipments

What a mess!

One of the results (.gif animation, click to play)

Interior Project Plan v1.1: clothing design

I have just completed the clothing design for the project. This is a quick and extremely rough sketch to figure out the colors.

This clothing is based on the self-portrait which was used as the profile photo. There will be more information in the future, including a formal bibliography citing all the possible resources.

The clothing you see here is a hanfu (a.k.a. Han Chinese Clothing) style called shenyi (literal meaning: deep robe). In this particular case, because it consists of three layers of robes, it is also known as sanchong-yi, or triple-layered clothing.

Interior Project Plan v1.0

This is a quick brainstorming/plan I did for the Interior Drawing project.

Spoiler Warning:
It explains many of the connotations I will use in this project, and thus it will heavily impact the reading of the work.
Furthermore, I did this very quick in order to keep my ideas flowing, and thus I might made a lot of spelling and grammar mistakes in the content. (I was not concerned, of course).