http://www.arcspace.com/architects/nox/d_tower2/d_tower2.html

Assignment02 : 7 in 7

It’s a great opportunity for me to express whatever I want in this project, when there is no limitation in the requirement of the project. After around two months experience here, New York, I’m still so intense and overwhelmed with everything going around and in my life. Hence, I tried to do this project by doing Art from what I felt and thought everyday.

Even though we were supposed to finish every piece everyday, but it’s impossible to me to do totally everything in one day, since there were lots of thing to be done in someday e.g. tight schedule for elective classes from Monday to Wednesday, group project, weather etc. However, what I could do was just to plan everything out and kept sketching all my ideas every time I could.

Luckily in production process, I asked my roommate about places to get all supplies like cheap frame, paper or used magazines. Some part of time was spent as finding shop with right price I could afford. On Sunday, I went to Strand bookshop and found lots of great stuffs to use for collage. For the lesson I learn from this project, I learn that school new working space isn’t that bad. Still it would have been better to have own space or at least some place that I could leave my stuffs. Another important lesson is to try to think positive when everything doesn’t work out or not reliable. After all I’m quite proud that in the end I could get every piece done as good as I expected and learnt from critics in class as well.

01 : Rain, After I Met Irene
Wood carved

In the Chinese restaurant, I saw this box and thought of the relationship between Chinese and American from the old time to these days. This piece is a commentary of that ambiguous symbiosis between those two countries.

03 : At Least Five Minutes
Digital print with handwriting

When I did this one, I had the question of how superficial some relationships can be. Somebody you know for a month, but still feel like knowing just a moment ago and would never ever get any deeper.

04 : I Like You
Digital print

This relates to Animism in form of a piece of paper that plays double-faced and tricks a viewer

05 : Not Anonymous
Used book

I happened to find this used book about legendary basketball players in the US. That made me think of what a friend of mine, who is an African American, told me in the first day here about racism and opportunities in society. This book doesn’t have a cover. Hence I cut all the African American basketball players’ names in this book and put them in the cover as a hall of fame.

06 : American Forrest
Collage images

On Monday I went to the Museum of Natural History and I was quite impressed by the talk and the film about Gregory Bateson. Hence I knew what to do to the used book I got on Sunday.

07 : Killing field
Artist’s sperm, napkin and digital print

Sometimes unintentional action might cause huge consequence. In Eastern philosophy, we believe the incarnation life after death, life to the universe or universe in life.

Click here to view my presentation

When I started the brainstorming process for this project, I went in with the intentions of walking away with learning or trying things I have never done before. I feel like I slightly accomplished that, but I also ended up sharpening up on the skills I picked up or learned in Boot Camp. I think either way, this exercise was great in that I spent a great deal simply practicing and perfecting, and I learned how to do some new things too, and hopefully, if I were to get the chance to do this project again, I would think of different ways to approach it, perhaps even plan a bit ahead of time.

I think that because I was given so much leeway, it was hard to organize and think out what I would do. Of all my projects, I had the most fun working on the Cinemagraph, I think not only because it was a challenge, but because I was surprised I actually was able to make one. It was definitely a huge challenge. I’m not sure though which one I liked the least. I guess I would say it was the soundtrack and the Adult Swim Bumper, although when I created it, the whole goal was to make it feel like an Adult Swim Bumper, and obviously, the Bumpers serve as a means to promote something, I’m not sure if they’re necessarily funny. The site “Bumpworthy” was quite a lot of fun and became of great use in helping me complete the Adult Swim Bumper challenge. If the goal was to create ugly work, I think, to a certain extent, I succeeded with my Illustration.

As this experience started out, I went in with high ambitions of what I could pull off. I wanted to bake vegan cake hamburgers (cake shaped to look like a hamburger, which I found an incredible tutorial for), but I ended up going a different route, and I don’t necessarily think it was a bad route either. I took baby steps and tried to tackle the stuff I anticipate in school. And I feel a little more assured of what I might be able to accomplish in the semesters to come.

To View my Final Website and my Work, click here.

View my project presentation here: 7 in 7-d9-14-11mg

In seven days I was asked to create a new project from start to finish daily. In hindsight I see that across my projects there is a theme of environment and improvement. I am constantly aware of my surroundings and observe the environment I am in. I find myself being interested in cutting edge technology while I still have a great appreciation towards the natural. I am also interested in creating safe and healthy environments where I feel stable, protected, and goal oriented. Through 7 in 7 I have a better understanding of what types of environments I appreciate.   A few of these projects I was commissioned to do and I included them in my 7 in 7. Those projects too focus on bettering yourself (through exercise), bettering the environment (radioactivity detection system), and bettering the safety of society. Across my projects there is a chain link of collaborative effort and commitment to team goals. Even with the wall art in my apartment I found myself questioning my roommate, “What do you think? Do you like it? Is there anything you want to add?”. I also ask those same questions to my clients when going over logos and branding for their companies.

I think the main difference between a concept and an execution is that when one creates a concept, he or she only thinks about a plan of a project whereas in execution, he or she actually does the work. There are many times when I think a certain project will seem interesting but I don’t have the will to actually carry the project through. I start to doubt myself of the idea and think it to be silly at times. Seven in seven gave me the opportunity to do some projects I have been wanting to do for quite some time now.

Because the project had no “wrong” way, it gave me freedom to do whatever I wanted. I tried not to create a concept that would link all seven of my projects at first because I thought it would then reduce my creativity to explore. I tried at most to do a project that first popped up in my mind each day – no matter how silly they seemed. Once I finished all seven projects, I realized all seven projects had a relationship to either my background or my personality. My business card represents who I am and my advertisement is a method to advertise myself. The cardboard box I made represents my industrial design background while my poster represents the type of graphics I like to use. I incorporated my hobbies of running and taking pictures for one of my projects. For the last two projects, it shows I really love to doodle and draw.

I do not think there actually is a real “finish” to a certain project as every project – whether one thinks it finished or not – always has room for improvement. But if I had to define a finishing of a project, it would be where one or a group would no longer have any additional ideas to further add to the project or finds or find adding more to the project will make the project too broad. I would like to say that my projects are finished within the seven by seven criteria but have lots of room for improvement if I wanted to further develop each idea. Although a project might seem good one day, it might look horribly bad the next. I don’t think any of my projects look horribly bad but I can certainly change them to look better. As an example, although I spent 6 hours doing my graphic poster and thought it looked ok, I saw it the next day and was wondering what I was drawing. But this was actually quite intriguing. This was one of the interesting things I found out about myself while doing the seven in seven project. Sometimes I’d grab a pen or start to draw on illustrator without thinking much but things were actually being drawn naturally.

I am very glad we had the opportunity to do the seven in seven project. Although it came as a stress when I didn’t have an idea each day, I think it was a good experience in that it gave me the opportunity to do projects I would have never done unless it was the seven in seven. I really learned a lot about myself and had the chance to release a little bit of inner self in me.

I think right after I finished my second project I had decided that I was going to base all my projects on soccer. It was a topic I really liked working with and there a lot of things that I can do with that topic. A theme I did not intentionally intend on was for it to be all made for a Manchester United fan. Sometime after the fourth project I realized that I was doing everything related to United in particular as I am a big fan of the club.

After the completion of my projects, I do feel that every project can be improved. To start with, the project done on the first day can make fun of so many other clubs. I can keep adding to the list of cards and make it a whole set for every league. However, time made me limit me to only insulting three clubs. In the second project, I can expand the project to include a facebook group page, a web page and maybe a poster. I feel that for the third project, the tissue box can be given more curves to make it look more like a shoe. I feel the poster, which is the fourth project, is probably one of the projects that I would not do much to improve. As I had the most time for the poster, I feel a lot of effort and time was put in to making it. Both the flash animations can have more animations and information. The website can be a multiple page website and not a single page website. It could also include a shopping cart and a blog page for United fans.

Even though I have mentioned improvements for probably every project, they all seem finished for what I set out to do. Before every project, I would determine how much time I would give for the project depending on how many hours were left in the day and how much other work I had to do. As such, I feel all the projects are fully complete as I executed my concept in all of them to a level where the concept can be seen clearly in each project. For this project I felt that every thing I did must be done to the level mentioned above and that meant knowing how to execute everything I decided to do.

Overall, I feel like I might have missed out a little bit by not experimenting with a range of topics and execution techniques. However, as all the seven projects are something close to me personally I am left feeling extremely satisfied with the outcome even though a lot of them can definitely be improved.

7in7 presentation