The following is a combination of the arguments made in Hito Steyerl’s essay In Defence of the Poor Image (2009), written in the formal structure of Conditional Design Manifesto by Luna Maurer, et al. (2013).
For the final outcome, I decided to move ahead with the 5th experiment, by continuing to modify and alter the film’s visual language.
I wanted to choose certain stills from the film and continue experimenting with its colour language. Then I went on to change the format of the material from a film on youtube to photographs on display at an art exhibition. I chose the random dialogues as captions to be placed on the photographs to incite thought-provoking emotions in the audience.
WHAT’S WORKING
• Reconfiguring the format and purpose of the short film into meaningful stills displayed at an art gallery elevates the subject and changes its credibility, perceptions, and audience. It scales down the audience since an art exhibition is not easily accessible to everyone, which inherently also makes it more special and valuable.
• The play with the colour language of the film creates a compelling narrative, highlighting its emotional quality.
• The exhibition format translates the form, context, and visual language of the original film in a more interesting way by making sure it doesn’t use any tropes or stereotypes to convey its narrative.
• By dismantling the original order of the film, it lets the viewer create its own narrative of the story. Since there isn’t much context provided to the viewer at an art exhibition in comparison to a film, the audience is forced to think for themselves.
• There is a lot of progress from the initial experimentation. Initially I was very lost, working with a film was definitely outside my comfort zone. This project has been the most challenging for me yet, but the overall design translation process has been a great learning experience.
WHAT’S NOT WORKING
• The final translation doesn’t communicate the exact content from the original material (film). Does that mean it’s still a translation?
• It could be pushed further to be more abstract in its narrative.
• Experiment with more stills from the film to give the viewer a better understanding of your intention through your process of translation.
TO DEVELOP THIS FURTHER/ IN FUTURE PROJECTS
• Further experiment with the form of the original material by possibly translating it into an audio piece that focuses on the concept of voyeurism.
• Create my own narrative by mimicking the film’s content and formation and taking photographs of my own created compositions.
• References:
1. ⟪Subject, Object⟫, Studio Millionroses.
2. Illustration Research Methods, Mireille Fauchon.
Selected material:
Crossing Point. Directed by Philip Wang (2017). Wong Fu Productions.
Genre: Romantic Drama
Duration: 9 min 40 sec
Story: The film follows the trajectory of the relationship between Janice and Sean —
from how they first met, how they initially felt about each other, how excited he was when he first saw her, how detached and wary she was with her heart, and how eventually their feelings grew for each other. It’s about the crossing point, the point at which there is an equal investment into the relationship from both sides, and where the relationship goes from that point. By categorising love in the form of a graph, they’re converting their emotions into a statistic, making them simpler and easier to understand.
EXPERIMENTS:
1. Changing the format and context of the material by transcribing the film, but removing the characters/human aspect from it.
2. Maintaining the context but changing the format from video to photos.
3. Shortening the film down to one specific clip that captures the essence of the film.
I changed its colour scale to grey and removed the background music to see if it changes my perception.
4. Changing the density and volume of the sound. I wanted a muffled effect, making it seem like its in the background being overheard.
5. Modifying and developing the visual language of the material, while preserving its film format. I started by blurring out the footage and experimenting with the saturation and vibrancy of the colours. I combined this blurred footage with the muffled audio.
TOPIC
Inspired by Borges’ abstract Chinese encyclopaedia, a symbol of unusual and random categorization, Foucault studies and questions the limitations and validity of the concepts of order and classification. He mentions that order exists in every culture, already deeply embedded in our thoughts, making it seem natural rather than something to be imposed upon. Foucault also explores the constraints and possibilities of knowledge and language, using archaeological inquiry and episteme.
ARGUMENT
Foucault argues that there is an obscure and hidden relationship between ordering codes and the reflections upon order itself, i.e., the code that manages who we interact with and the ways we construct our thinking about these codes. His intent is to analyse the “pure experience of order and of its modes of being” (Foucault, 1989, p. xxiii), and how it has developed since the sixteenth century.
Foucault claims that, things and thoughts are catalogued within a series of orders and are differentiated by culture. He studies the cultural remains of the past to comprehend how it came to develop a particular system of classification. He states that “in any given culture and at any given moment, there is always only one episteme that defines the conditions of possibility of all knowledge, whether expressed in a theory or silently invested in a practice.” Foucault uses the term episteme to represent the architecture of human thought which is present at any given time.
AIM and MEANING
The aim of this preface is to study the rules of language and order, that make knowledge possible and how these rules and therefore the knowledge change due to circumstances over time. These established rules of order are based on preconceived notions, which means that there is no certainty in the validity of this knowledge. Therefore, Foucault encourages the readers to deconstruct these rules and to reflect on other ways of organising and classifying the world.
REFERENCES
Foucault M. ([1966] 1989) ‘Preface’ in The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. United Kingdom: Routledge, pp. xvi-xxvi.
For the final set, I decided to move ahead with the experiment where I removed all the flowers to instead focus on the plant or the leaves.
I took this experiment a step further by creating a collection comprising of just single leaves taken from each botanical illustration. By doing so, removing the elements of the illustrations that gave them the aged, scientific, and detailed look.
WHAT’S WORKING
• The final repurposed collection is a fun and simple recontextualization of the original.
• It is intriguing to see the scientific element removed and turned into something less formal and detailed.
WHAT’S NOT WORKING
• Even though the final collection has a new purpose, the botanical foundation of the original set still connects with the new collection. The research and experimentation could be pushed further to change the original concept.
TO DEVELOP THIS FURTHER/ IN FUTURE PROJECTS
• Remove the “botanical” aspect of the collection and turn it into something that is completely disconnected from the original set.
• Try endlessly layering the illustrations or the shapes of the illustrations.
• Turning the set into a collection of data and possibly shifting its context even further.
Selected Collection: Botanical Drawings by Alfred Riocreux.
Apart from the aesthetic and beautifully detailed illustration style, I chose this set because it reminds me of colouring books and encyclopaedias I had when I was a kid.
What are the different components?
1. Flowers, branches, and leaves
2. Names of the plants
3. Matting of the drawings
4. Coloured in illustrations
5. Some are line drawings
How are they similar?
1. Watercolour based
2. Leaves are of similar shades of green
3. Centered on the page
4. Certain flowers share the same colour
5. No background and they all seem to be floating
6. Names of the plant are written at the bottom left corner
7. They are all similar proportions on the page
8. All pages are beige/ off-white in colour
How are they different?
1. Shapes of leaves and flowers
2. Sizes of the different components of each plant
3. Flowers vary in colours
4. They are drawn with different movements
5. Different names
6. Vary in textures
How are they held together, both formally and conceptually?
1. They are all held in a book together
2. Follows the same page layout and each page is conceptually the same
3. They all share the same purpose
4. They are also held together by their illustration style
5. Conceptually it also reminds me of a Botanical Garden
How is your understanding of each component shaped by its relationship to the other parts in the set?
I’m not sure how each component relates to each other apart from the fact they belong to the same category of plants and that their illustration styles are the same.
What patterns are visible across the set?
1. They all seem to be floating on the page, it is a recurring pattern.
2. One botanical illustration per page.
3. The similar layout of each page forms a pattern too.
How is it presented, circulated, or accessed?
It is presented in a book format that can be accessed online and physically in the library.
Experiments:
1. Sorting and classifying based on colour.
2. Exaggerating/ Recontextualising – Neon Effect to make it look like a Cyan print
3. Exaggerating/ Recontextualising – Glowing Edges – focusing on the outlines
4. Adding/ Subtracting – Removing all the flowers and focusing on the leaves
5. Adding/ Subtracting – Removing all the colour and focusing on the lines
6. Recontextualising – Grayscale version of the illustrations
Reflection on initial feedback:
• Find more ways it could be curated and sorted.
• Find value/ purpose/ context from the experiments already done.
• The Neon and Glowing Edges effect removes details of the plants, focusing more on the form and shape rather than its identity.
• Explore the movement of each plant in the form of gestures.
• Think of how the experiments help you have a new understanding of the collection. Are you creating new subjects from these experiments?
• The silhouettes create shapes that unfamiliarises the original collection. What else could they represent?
• “Outcomes that pose questions, not solve problems.”