November 2020 – pat scriptum

28th November 202029th November 2020

TOPSY TURVY (VISUALISATION)

9/11/2020

When given the theme of ‘Topsy Turvy’, the first thought that came to mind was the current pandemic we are in. I had to self-quarantine with my sister when returning home from London for two weeks in a small room separated from the rest of the house. I remember feeling disoriented and as though I was put in a new space even though it was a part of my house that I frequented. The thought that I couldn’t go outside also depressed me, even though, as my sister had very kindly point out, I don’t usually go outside. I felt that that didn’t matter though. The suffocating thought came more from the idea that my choice to go outside wasn’t there, regardless if I was going to take it or not.

A few artists came to mind at that; artists that create something surreal out of scenery that are at first glance, normal. These artists include MC Escher and Jan Švankmajer. An artist whose work I found very interesting from the briefing was Jonathan Djob Nkondo, specifically his film ‘DARK DAY‘ that played with angles and perspective as the background rotates.

I created a mindmap on a padlet which I will be updating as I develop my ideas.

N A R R A T I V E S T R U C T U R E

11/11/2020

A great writer thinks not only of what the character would do and feel, but what they want the audience to feel

In the lecture on narrative structure, I learned the differences between a feature film, a short film, and short form content with regards to the different elements and difficulties each type of film comes with.

When told that the main aim of any film is to elicit an emotional response, I began thinking back to all the writing and storytelling I had done in the past and how much of that aspect I took into consideration when writing stories.

I realised that a lot of the lecture’s content are what we as viewers already knew perhaps subconsciously, but here it was pointed out and listed into categories which I found very useful. It made writing a film making something more tangible with a certain structure as a guideline instead of a secret abstract work process that was dependent on the writer’s talent. It was also very interesting to see the types of villains or plot points listed out and finding how many films fitted these categories despite how different they were.

As the assignment for this project is to create short form content that is only 40 seconds, I was very worried as I had always been one to go over the time limit. But when given the plot points and film elements that were vital for short form content, I felt a bit more reassured.

Though my ideas are still developing, I had begun thinking of possible storylines that follow the guidelines of short form content which will hopefully become more refined as my ideas become clearer.

What I have currently are rough ideas and quite similar to one another, though hopefully that will change as I begin to gather more ideas and have a more resolved concept.

Possible storylines so far include:

The character is stuck in an Ecsher-esque environment with stairs and hallways going into different directions and has to find their way home, encountering rooms with tigers and dogs and bubbly outdoor scenery before discovering that they are protected by glass walls. The character feels relieved at first before realising that they also can’t get out of the glass room they’re in.
A character is confined in a small square room living their life day-to-day reading, watching TV shows, washing their hands, playing with a dog standing outside the room, eating with utensils that are wrapped in plastic, washing their hands, playing video games, and washing their hands. The cycle becomes so repetitive that everything begins to morph together and they start to go insane before a door is opened by another character, who invites them into a slightly bigger square room with a few more people inside.
A character is confined in a small square room with a small hatchet that served food wrapped in plastic. The room is bare and clean and sterilized, with one small window that shows a scenery of a forest. The character sits around all day and feels themself going insane, banging on the walls before one day a door opens and they step out just to realise that the scenery they’ve been looking at is a painting of a forest.

LOGLINE: Tai is stuck inside a small square room with one small window as he begins to go insane.

SYNOPSIS: Stuck inside, Tai is left sitting inside a room where he’s served sterilized meals and watches TV. There is one small window in the room where a clear blue sky can be seen. Days past with the routine repeating itself over and over and Tai grows agitated, trying to find a way out though it’s to no avail. Boredom and stress begin to eat at him as he hears every single sound from the TV play at once and he trashes the room until he faints. When he wakes up, an open door suddenly appears and he desperately sprints out to find a larger room, with a painting of the sky set up in front of the window.

I’ve created a mood board for the environment and crucial moments in the story, keeping in mind how I want the audience to feel at each point and what the character will go through.

C O N T E X T U A L R E S E A R C H

With the idea of being confined inside a room, I researched some films and historical events that portray this same idea.

OLDBOY (2003) starts off the film with its main protagonist Oh Daesu waking up in a small motel room where he couldn’t leave and was given the same food for every meal. He was held captive for no reason for years until he was suddenly released one day and set out to find his captor.

There is an apparent transformation in Daesu’s appearance (his hair and beard growing) to show the passage of time as well as the events occurring in the news. There is also a clear shift in his character at the start of his captivity, ten years in when he grew insane after witnessing the loss of his wife on the news, and when he was suddenly released.

Susunu! Denpa Shōnen (1998) is a controversial Japanese reality show in the 90s. For its challenge entitled Denpa Shōnen teki Kenshō Seikatsu (“a life out of prizes by Denpa Shōnen”), the show put its raffle winner, Nasubi, in a small apartment with no food, clothes, or appliances except for a table of envelopes and a rack of magazines. The challenge was to survive on sweepstakes from magazines by mailing them in with the provided envelopes. The only way to win the challenge and leave the room was to reach a monetary value of one million yen (approx. 7,218 GBP) worth of sweepstakes.

Nasubi spent 15 months naked and filling in contest entries before he reached his goal of one million yen, with a viewership of 17 million for the show. He was taken on a trip to South Korea to celebrate before being locked inside a similar room and told to earn enough prizes to equate the price of a plane ticket back to Tokyo. By that time, he was no longer accustomed to clothes and human interaction.

A similar transformation can be found in Nasubi’s appearance and personality from his happy-go-lucky attitude going into the challenge, and his complete bewilderment at the sight of an audience applauding him after 15 months of being naked without any human interaction.

White room torture is a psychological torture method where a prisoner isolated in a white cell designed so that there is no sound or shadows, aimed at complete sensory deprivation and isolation. Prisoners were found to have lost their sense of identity and experience hallucination as well as psychotic breaks.

C H A R A C T E R & E N V I R O N M E N T D E S I G N

18/11/2020

Based on my research, an effective way to communicate to the audience the transformation from sanity to insanity is to create a character that appears to be naive with short hair who ends up insane with long hair and rough appearance overall.

Tai’s character design

For clothing, I wanted to create a sense of unease as well as portray the idea of topsy turvy as things not seeming right. I thought about our attire in quarantine or working at home, where the top half that is shown on the webcam is prim and professional while the lower half that is off-camera is comfortable.

The final design I went with is the first one on the left, where Tai is wearing a neck tie with sweatpants and a cardigan as well as a pair of shoes. The combination of casual and business clothes may seem off or even comical, but plays well into the unease and uncertainty of the pandemic, not knowing when it will be over or when one can go outside but also too anxious to lounge around.

For the environment, I went with a simple white square room like in the moodboard. The room has a TV screen on one side and a window on the opposite side so Tai would have to choose between the two. There is also a small dog door big enough for a tray of food to pass through, but not big enough for Tai to crawl inside of.

I modelled the environment in 3D on blender in order to work out the angle of the billboard filling up the window as well as reference for the different camera angles when I draw the storyboard.

M O D E L S H E E T S

I tried to take into account all the possible facial expressions and poses Tai would be in and the different angles this could appear in in the storyboard.

21st November 202029th November 2020

CINEMATOGRAPH STORYBOARD (VFX)

I D E A S

10/11/2020

When watching the different cinematographs, I noticed that the most effective ones are ones where the moving element is a small part of the image, especially in shots that are detailed. This made me think back to my childhood when I thought I’d see things move at the corner of my eyes and believed that the objects in my house were alive. I’d notice, especially in rooms with a lot of objects, that one small thing like a doll or the vase of flowers would move. I thought that this idea would make for interesting cinematographs.

I began to dig deeper in my childhood fear and possible things in my life that could have influenced it. I knew that growing up in Thailand, a country that’s saturated in Buddhist and Chinese culture, I’ve seen from a very young age the significance and meaning projected onto different objects such as dolls and sculptures and necklaces. Even in Thai media, objects such as necklaces with monk pendants were shown to ward of ghosts and spirits. Every big company and establishment would have a small resting place for the guardian spirit who owns the land and they’d be given food and drinks.

Growing up in this culture had instilled this thinking in me that inanimate objects had thoughts and were alive. This made me worried whenever I mishandled my toys or abandoned them for new ones, thinking that they were crossed with me. Perhaps that was why I kept thinking I could see them move.

I made a mind map on padlet breaking down my ideas and expanding them.

E X P E R I M E N T I N G W I T H P H O T O G R A P H Y

23/11/2020

Though I’ve dabbled in photography every once in a while, I never went past using the auto settings in my father’s DSLR.

My father’s camera is a Canon PowerShot SX620 HS

Although we were told how the aperture, shutter speed, and ISO affect light and the final image, I felt like I had to make that clear for myself.

I went around my house to dark bedrooms and bright balconies while testing out the different settings to see how it affects the image in different lightings.

I made a little chart for myself on a padlet to compare the different lighting and settings.

B A C K G R O U N D S T U D I E S

24/11/2020

With my theme in mind, I had a look at all the little decorative objects in my house that I was either scared of as a child or new ones that I feel would have scared me as a child.

I’ve found that a lot of the objects I was scared of were human-like vintage ones made of porcelain or wood, especially if it had been worn out by time or had parts of it chipped off. When making observational sketches, I noticed how the objects were often positioned on a difficult place for a child to access, be it the top shelf or amongst expensive tea sets we had to be careful around. It added to the fear somehow, as though the objects were looking at me from above as a child and I couldn’t control them since they were out of reach.

I took photos of the objects around the house. My mother was considerate in putting them where their colours match the setting, although making them blend into their surroundings would’ve probably made me paranoid as a child since I wouldn’t be able to notice them at first, making their first movement at the corner of my eye very jarring.

S T O R Y B O A R D

30/11/2020

Exploring the different dolls and objects in my house, I took into consideration its location as well as the material they were made of and what they were designed for. I animated them simply with minimal colour to map out the composition as well as see how affective the movement would be.

As the storyboard progresses, the more animated the objects become, starting with a garden statue that has a fern leaf waving over it, then two garden statutes of children on rocking horses, then a doll whose hair is flowing from the wind outside, then a porcelain doll that reflects flickering light, then a nutcracker that moves it mouth by itself, then two drawing mannequins shaking their heads.

I tried to keep the movements very subtle in order to create that ambiguous feeling of whether the object is actually alive or not.

11th November 202015th November 2020

LOW POLY WORLD (3D COMPUTER ANIMATION)

W H A T I F ?

27/10/20

I enjoy the developing part of the process, coming up with ideas that vary from one another before narrowing them down or merging some together. My what if questions go as follow:

what if… ocean levels rise and flood the entire world?

what if… there is an entire functioning society beyond the brine pools?

what if… fish live on land and can swim through the air?

what if… oxygen is a toxin that is slowly killing us?

what if… you wake up one day and everyone else in the world has disappeared?

Fish living on land feels like an idea that I can really explore in-depth. How would they interact with each other? With humans? I find that fish swimming around without the pull of gravity holding them back and living amongst a man-made urban space would create an interesting juxtaposition.

Would they divide into different countries and continents nearest to their native land? Would the more vicious predators living among the woods? I imagine the interaction between them and humans would simply be that of co-existence, somewhat similar to humans with pigeons on the streets.

It was interesting to see the different moods and situations provided by different artists under the same theme. I gathered images with interesting colour palettes, varying tones and compositions, as well as narrative pieces that tell a story.

E N V I R O N M E N T C O M P O S I T I O N

27/10/20

Drawing out the thumbnails for my environment, I kept in mind the juxtaposition between marine animals interacting with urban man-made environments that I wanted to achieve. I went onto Pinterest to gather images of urban environments as well as images with interesting composition and colour palettes.

Though it was not my favorite drawing out of the six thumbnails, I chose to render the 4th thumbnail with the convenience store as I thought it would suit my initial idea the best. Convenience stores seemed like the perfect example of a man-made urban environment, from how saturated the colours are, and so many things are made available and instant in convenience stores that it’s easier to list out things that aren’t sold at convenience stores.

I felt like my final render could be refined more, although it captured my concept well and was enough to be used as a basic mapping of all the colours and tones of the environment. If I could redo this, one thing I would’ve kept in mind was the colour scheme and to make the fish more distinguished from the aisles of products.

F I R S T S T E P S I N 3 D

27/10/20

I was quite nervous going into this rotation as the little experience I had with 3D computer animation (which consisted of one workshop) was limited and I found it quite difficult. I realized then how it didn’t require drawing skills, but sculpting blocks into shapes using a mouse.

Following the tutorial video, I still wasn’t very confident. I decided to challenge myself, however, to create Wall-E for my robot on blender.

I was limited to the mesh shapes available as I didn’t know how to create more complex shapes or manipulate them. So to accommodate the more complex shapes of Wall-E such as his eyes, I had to break the shape down into the geometric ones that I can make and merge them together.

It was quite enjoyable as I got more used to the software, and I liked how the detail of the tires turn out, even though it took me much longer than the estimated time.

One thing I also realized doing this assignment was that although 3D computer animation doesn’t require drawing skills, it did require observation and analysis, breaking down complicated shapes into simpler ones, as well as always being mindful of the fact that what I was creating had dimensions and it will look different in different perspectives.

B L O C K I N G

28/10/2020

It was here that I realised that choosing a very geometric and precise environment may have been an oversight. It took me very long to work out the dimensions of different shelves in the convenience store and I have not even thought about the snacks and condiments being displayed on said shelves. Hopefully, I will be able to finish up more details later.

Though as despaired as I was trying to create proportional shelves, it felt very rewarding to see the environment I had drawn out starting to take form, like a store that was in the middle of being refurbished before opening.

If another 3D computer animation project ever comes around, I’ll be sure to keep in mind the actual blocking out when I was designing it as to not run into this problem again.

A D V A N C E D M O D E L L I N G & S C U L P T I N G

3/11/2020

I had thought that having animals in my environment would make things easier as proportionally they are simpler than humans and the animating process would be easier as they didn’t have a lot of limbs that require moving.

I was not entirely correct.

All my animals went through at least two revisions, partly due to the fact that I did not want to give up until a pair of fresh eyes could tell what kind of fish it was at first glance.

The sculpting process was difficult for both me and my laptop. Everything felt stiff and it began to feel frustrating when I couldn’t sculpt out the models the way I wanted it to look. Though I learned later on that I shouldn’t fuss over the details when it was going to turn into low-poly and it didn’t matter if the fish had eyes or not.

My poor seal went through three different stages of evolution as I tried to figure out the best way to block him out. Sculpting the face and body before turning it low poly like the tutorial did not seem to work well for him (as seen in the 2nd image) so I turned to the more extraneous task of sculpting him out in geometric shapes, starting off with a plane and a lot of extruding following after as well as choosing a different reference to follow where the seal’s characteristics are more apparent in low detail. I was quite happy with how he looked in his final stage.

Feeling a bit more confident in myself after the seal’s success, I added a few more animals to the environment using the same method. Though they’re not as detailed as the goldfish, which was sculpted smoothly before being converted to low-poly, I felt like I had captured the characteristics of these animals in simple shapes.

During this process, I also realised how vital references are to 3D animation. Elements such as scale and proportion have to be considered much more in 3D compared to 2D. References are now on the top of my list of things to consider carefully before beginning the execution of an idea. The references really helped me to capture the characteristics of each animal and added life to my environment, which I was happy with.

L I G H T & C O L O U R

4/11/2020

I still had doubts after blocking out and colouring my environment, as it still looked rough and like it was missing something. Lighting seemed to have solved that problem.

I started off trying to imitate the rectangular ceiling lights at convenience stores that would light up the different sections, which the area light was perfect for. That didn’t feel like enough to illuminate the fish in the store, however, so I added a few spot lights to locations where I felt that the fish were left in the dark, and to soften up their shadows a bit.

I also played around with making my lights the same colours as the colour scheme I used for the store to make the shadows feel like a part of the environment and not stand out starkly against the soft colours.

I went for a softer colour scheme than what I had on my concept art as I felt like vivid colours in such a busy environment would make it too messy. I quite like how this pastel colour palette looked on the store and the animals. It may not be realistic to what convenience stores usually look like, but I prefer this dream-like sequence much more, playing into the juxtaposition I had wanted.

A story began to write itself as I was creating my environment. First, it was a question of where are all the humans in this world? There are only fish. I thought about how the main fish in the environment were goldfishes. My initial decision for choosing the goldfish was that they’re the most common fish pets and are often put in different environments depending on how their tanks are decorated.

Goldfish, however, are natural predators that can crowd out the native fish population if released into a lake. I also found Shibuya Goldfish, a horror manga about schools of giant goldfish swimming in the air that invaded Shibuya by eating humans. The scene suddenly felt like a world that was colonized by goldfish, the only traces of human life left behind being the convenience store.

I recalled two of my initial questions when developing this idea: Would they divide into different countries and continents nearest to their native land? Would the more vicious predators living among the woods?

If it was a world colonized by fish and marine life that can swim through air, would the food chain within their species still exist? What if the convenience store became their environment due to predators roaming outside? It suddenly felt more sinister, having a shark and a whale circle around the store. I decided to go with this storyline and made the outside world a different tone from the inside of the convenience store to accentuate this idea.

It was a nice surprise to know that ideas can still develop itself into something more in-depth and solid even past the development stage, that it can still be uncovered during the technical process. I was very happy about how the world was building itself.

R E N D E R I N G

11/11/2020

Putting a stop to the making process, I made sure to leave a fair amount of time before the deadline to render everything—this was one of the smartest decisions I had made in this project.

It took me three days to render four animations.

I had expected the task to be fairly frustrating as rendering would take a long time, but I really didn’t know how my animation would really look until three hours later. It was a tedious trial-and-error process as I encountered a new issue every three or four hours, be it that objects that were hidden will appear in the final animation if they weren’t deleted, or that the rendering can mess up the colours, or that one of my objects’ surface was inside out so the lighting looked strange on it. It also turned out faster than I had expected because the lag in the software when I played the animation made me think it was slower.

I had set up a total of four cameras in my environment and animated two of them. One animated camera was more dynamic, moving around and tracking different fishes as they swam, although it was much too fast and messy when viewing it after rendering.

The block I had put up for scale that was hidden was also visible

I set a static camera in the corner of the store like a security camera to view the fish interacting with each other. I didn’t realise until watching this that one of the fish swims through the shelves.

For the final video, I’ve edited all the animation from different angles together.

The blender file can be found here

Overall, I’m quite happy with what I have achieved considering how worried I was at the beginning of the project. I like the contrast in the pastel colourfulness of the store and the blue outside world, and I think I animated the movement of the animals well. There are some faults and mistakes that I had overlooked when I was working on it that I notice now (flying blocks, random objects, fast camera movements, etc.) although if I were given the chance to do this all again, I’d be more mindful of these details and leave more time at the end to fix everything.

3D animation in some parts what I had expected but in others completely beyond. There were aspects that I found easier than I had anticipated and some that were more complicated and tedious than I had thought. With the cameras and blocking, it’s essentially a digital movie set which I found very intriguing. Although the process of 2D animation is more enjoyable to me, I can see why 3D animation is a popular medium in film and video games because of how alive it feels. Though the process may be tedious and difficult with lags and errors, the end result feels incredibly fulfilling.

9th November 202014th November 2020

YOU ARE HERE (INTRODUCTION TO ANIMATION)

6 P E O P L E

30/10/2020

When given this assignment, I immediately had a difficult time coming up with six people.

Perhaps it was because my definition of someone who mattered filtered out the majority of the people in my life. I defined “people who matter to me” as individuals whose impact on my life are significant to the level that I may not have gone down certain paths or made big life choices without their influence/input. With the standard set that high, I felt like very few would fit.

This made me think about my life carefully, analysing my present and recounting my past to see how it had led me to this point. Why did I choose animation? Why did I start drawing? Why did I stray away from more academic subjects when I wasn’t struggling with them to pursue art? Why am I different from who I was years ago?

The process of analysing the people around me became a process of outlining my identity and how I became the person I am today. Who were the people in my life and what were their influences?

In the end, I could only pin-point four people, though it felt right.

Sharing my work with the class had me rehearsing how I would explain my choices if I had to.

RM is a rapper and leader of the boyband BTS. He released a solo mixtape titled Mono in which he explored his feelings of solitude and the struggles of his life that I felt had put my most complicated thoughts into words. One of the songs, everythingoes, is about how nothing on earth lasts forever, including the hardships we’re currently facing. I see him as someone who created art that emphatized with me as well as offering consolation, hence the two different styles I drew him in.

My father was the one who first introduced me to art. When I was younger, I wasn’t performing well academically and didn’t have any hobbies. So he, who drew and painted a lot in his youth directed me towards that area. I’m thankful to him still for encouraging me to play musical instruments and draw, fully indulging into this creative area that I didn’t expect from him. I don’t know if I would’ve been able to find myself here if it weren’t for his influence. One drawing of him was drawn in 2014 when I was thirteen, sketching him candidly in his quiet time. The second drawing of him was drawn recently in 2020 six years later, now a full-fledged art student.

My grandfather is someone I vividly remember in my childhood and now, still. The love in my household is quiet, the affection present but minimal. I remember, however, as a child, how certain I was that my grandfather loved me because of how affectionate and outspoken he was about his love. I think the certainty has really helped me when it comes to reassessing myself and determining my value.

My mother is the first person to come to mind when I think resilience. A lot of things happened to me as a child and now, be it asthma, anxiety, broken front teeth, or scoliosis; none that anyone expected to happen. My mother had always remained calm as she adapted to the things that happen and would promptly educate herself on anything that she wasn’t familiar with. Her composure had calmed me in my most panicked times, and had trained my mindset to prioritize calmness when running into unexpected hurdles. I drew here in a distinct, middle-schooler style with coloured pencils on lined paper to capture that feeling of her always being there in my growing up.

6 O B J E C T S

6/11/2020

After figuring things out in the first assignment, picking out objects for this was much easier.

I used to have a difficult time cleaning my room as a child because I felt attached to different objects and would feel bad about throwing them away, thinking of different possible scenarios where I might need them in the future. I’ve always found it interesting that inanimate objects have sentimental values to us, and our emotional response to it almost matches that of people.

To express this, I decided to capture my objects as short stop-motion gifs, as though bringing them to life.

THE HAGRID ACRYLIC STAND was one of the rare impulse purchases that I made. I went to Osaka, Japan, with my older sister for my high school graduation trip and it was the first time I was travelling without my parents, and the entire trip was planned by me and my sister. I was careful about what to buy since the trip there was already hefty, but seeing a tiny cheap acrylic stand of Hagrid from Harry Potter amongst the rows of Japanese anime characters was so hilarious to me at that moment that I had to buy it for laughs. It ended up being one of the few souvenirs that I actually bought from Osaka.

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis is the image of a milestone in my life when I managed to finish the entire book in English when I was seven years old. I was terrible at English when I was younger which greatly upset my father who grew up in London. It came to a point where he would sit down and read with me, something he didn’t do with any of my other siblings. I was given the complete Narnia chronicles and read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe as I had seen the movie before. The book was the first of many that I later went on to read and enjoy.

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller was my first purchase after moving to London for my foundation course. It was recommended to me by a friend when we were discussing Greek mythology and the writing made me cry. The normalization of same-sex love in the story gave me comfort and a break from the society where it is still viewed as an anomaly. Another fun memory from this was when my parents took me to the Scottish National Gallery in Edinburgh when I was halfway through the book, not expecting to find a huge painting of Achilles Lamenting the Death of Patroclus, spoiling the ending for me.

My first sketchbook was bought when I was ten and began to play around with copic markers, drawing fan art and making original characters. I had friends online and offline who had the same interests and made their own set of original characters, and we would draw each other’s characters for each other or making them interact. It was a time in my life, looking back, where I was at my happiest, fully enjoying art. Not saying that I despise art now, though back then I was struggling with my studies and art was an escape that I resorted to when I was down and stressed. Art now to me feels like everything and every emotion, not limited to just happiness.

The letter from my online friend was sent to me last year along with a handful of gifts and drawings. I’ve hand a lot of online friends in the past, but this is the first friendship to exceed years, so a letter from them is special to me. They knew I like Van Gogh, so the addition of writing their message on a Van Gogh postcard was a sweet personal touch that I appreciated.

My British passport was the only object in class that came with negative experiences. I felt that the significant parts of our identities don’t always have to be happy for them to be significant. Having dual-citizenship was something owed to my grandmother who, along with many pregnant women in her time, sneaked their pregnant bellies into flights to foreign countries to give birth there so their child would acquire the citizenship. My father is Thai but also British in many aspects. He grew up in London and studied medicine in Edinburgh. Though we rarely visit the UK, he knew the city like the back of his hand, walking around like a local who had always lived there. Even at home in Bangkok, he enjoys British shows and meals and music which I eventually inherited from him. Having a British passport came with the privilege of not needing a visa when travelling to countries that would require one if I only held a Thai passport. Having a British passport when I am also Thai, however, comes with the disenchantment and realisation that I am considered different because of how I look. I’d often get racially profiled when travelling to the UK, held back in border control due to an “oriental” face holding a British passport that looked like it had rarely been used or freshly made. I didn’t truly understand the reality of being a person of colour until that moment, and that part of my identity has been brought to the forefront of my mind.

C O N T E X T U A L R E S O U R C E S

In class, we were told the importance of keeping a collection of contextual research such as artists and works that we can access when needed. I have created a padlet that I will be regularly adding to as the course progresses.

The padlet for this can be found here

O B J E C T A R T I S T P R E S E N T A T I O N

13/11/2020

The object artist presentation was the first group assignment in the course. I’ve always felt obligated to speak up and give suggestions when discussions are quiet even though I am quite a reserved person for the sake of the project progressing.

I introduced to my group an artist I thought would fit the criteria which was the Czech film maker Jan Švankmajer, more specifically a section from his 1992 film Food. I had found the film last year during my foundation course, and was very glad that my group agreed to make the presentation about him.

There were instances where I was quite nervous about the presentation, as one of my peers didn’t have any social media accounts and could only communicate via another person. Fortunately, everything came together at the end and everyone worked on their parts of the presentation incredibly well. I couldn’t be more thankful that everyone turned up for the presentation.

The presentation can be found here.

The artists presented by other groups in class were all very interesting, notably Tanaka Tatsuya, Hans-Peter Feldmann, and Christopher Marley had caught my interest.

TANAKA TATSUYA created miniature worlds using everyday objects and food. I found the piece with the rice as clouds really interesting and made me think of my own culture and the food my family would make.

HANS-PETER FELDMANN photographed cross-sections of bread and exhibited them as such, showing a variety of different shapes textures. There was something comforting about this, I felt. Bread is a part of everyday life. Foods like rice and bread feel like the basis for any meal, and to exhibit framed photographs of them seem to show their significance to our lives, as subtle as they may be.

CHRISTOPHER MARLEY had a phobia of insects, but eventually went on to create artworks with the insects’ entire organisms preserved and arranging them in aesthetically pleasing well as if to ease that fear or to show how he had become fascinated by them. It made me think that the parts of our identities are not the be-all end-all of who we are. We are constantly changing and evolving as individuals, and what we know about ourselves now may not be the same for who we are in the past or the future. What we are so certain about now may be completely false after, much like how Marley had a phobia of bugs before going on to create beautiful artworks with them.