Category: U2:position

I made a publication this week. a fine finished book.

I did’t consider much about the form of book, because I want to focus more (first) on the content, so for the form, it’s basically the form easiest one to create.

I do not have “thinking” about this topic right now, so I basically use book to investigate/collect/document the topic, comparing with what I want express, I focus more on how to express a topic better in the form of book.

so, the next step, think about the medium!

try the different ways to investigate the material.

I was quite unwilling to use the “traditional format”, like the style of chinatown, is not real china, but that’s how people think of china, right?

Be intention to your design.

1. figure out why I made the choice of design
2. try more format of design

for the format

1. research about the link between hokkien and book

DO SOMETHING EVERYONE CAN UNDERSTAND!

the first week’s work is like a kind of “self-expression”, I don’t like it, and others cannot understand. so I decided to throw the map form, throw “my story”, using the material I got from interview to create something.

I faced two options : 1. recreate a publication 2. using a publication to document

the difference between these two questions is the authorship. when I am doing the design work(although in school it seems that I have 100% authorship of my work), I was confused： should I show the feeling of interviewee by presenting there speaking or should I make a new story based on there stories?

as a designer, what should I do?

I have no answer, so I decided to start work first.

through making, I feel what MICHAEL ROCK said in Designer as Author. I am not only the author, but also director, translator… I have to be responsible for everything I made.

through printing, I found a color mistake, which make me think more about the meaning of color in my publication?

so in this case, I tried to use the different “RED” from shallow to deep, to show the awareness of self-identity.

the effect is not good, so I didn’t do that, but change some colours to make the page more vivid.

publication

what kind of the binding/folding can communicate better?

feedback:

1. is the printing format related?
2. the cover about immigration is not related
3. you can hold the whole story based on the interview material
4. why not invite friend to cook and to talk about it

during the making, I always have the question about “how to link the story” and “to what extend I can control the story”

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My audience is everyone.

as hokkien culture is a small and unknown culture for most people, it’s better to using separate parts to explain the culture more. + using typical outstanding visual + everything related to the topic(people do not understand Border Force that Fujian people meet)

part 1 : the overall of hokkien

part 2: the interview document

part 3: my enquiry + my question about my identity(the confuse about identity is not only on me, so how about collect the questions )

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Communicate Communicate Communicate Communicate Communicate

So far this week, I made an experimental map by using my own identity story. like the one showing below.

while I was making it, I wanted to show the fragmented identity and using the map design to show the process of so-called identity finding.(why I feel so shamed typing this…)

so rather than delivering messages, I want to show more about emotion part.(the thing that I always weak at)

I got feedback from tutorial:

this is not good at showing information

better with location

wit more hokkien style

what I did the next is using tracing paper to make the reference have a dialogue with my identity map.

I feel quite enjoying when I made this, and I got better feedback than the map

this, I’m using my own story and reference to make. cuz I didn’t get the enough time to deal with the transcripts from interview.

so for the interview, it’s quite hard to get people actually , we don’t have many hoklo people here, so many interview have to be online, which I don’t really like. and the people I can find are mostly students, which limit me from getting information about real immigrants. so I need to think more about the topic based one the reality.

what I’m going to do next week:

1. find the proper topic(learn more about hokkien culture and find something deeper)
2. find references (both art work about minor culture & about topic)
3. doing the analyse about map design element
4. making

Before dialogue

Prepared questions for Laura Knight

1. To make subjective map, what kind of aspect do you focus on?
2. Any reference?
3. Hard to focus on one question of my project.

Prepared questions for Taihao He

written component:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1XpXVLgjrCO5p-mrCVnaX5yepMIflIGWN/view?usp=sharing

video:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YZzB2PBbha2XuN_gTWA6_GHebaFERXVP/view?usp=share_link

There are three things on the todo list this week

1. gathering references and statement
2. my position
3. choose one reference to make prompts

In the iterating project, my final enquiry became”how to use weaving as a means of graphic design to visualise perspectives and emotions of the live in London? “

There are two main things to talk about in my enquiry

1. weaving as a means of graphic design(the method)
2. perspectives and emotions of the live in London(the topic)

I feel like limiting the means of graphic design is not a good way at this stage, because I want to focus more on my topic but not how to weave. Here, I want to talk about my position. I have desire to express something, not only express for myself, but also express for the group I’m in (eg. Chinese / Asian / Women / International student). If I need to define myself, I would say a non-objective reporter.

So after self-reflection, I change my enquiry as “how to use graphic design to visualise perspectives and emotions of the live in London?“

#cartography #psychogeography #mapping

Week 1-2

The topic or the enquiry at this state is not very clear actually, I only know I’m interested in the relationship between city and individual. So I collected some references about this area.

To visualise the data, I tried to combine them with map. As I want to do something handmade, so I still insist on weaving to show the data.

Week3

I decided to give up on handmade thing as it’s not something I’m good at and also a good way to communicate. But the week1-2 experience did help me to make my enquiry more clear and made me think about the logic of making project. Before I’m used to using “science ” logic to do project, while I’m not a scientist, so the result of this often be like  a messy. Don’t be too stubborn and don’t be too specific, this is not a scientific experiment, this is my advice to myself.

And I’m going back to the interest about city and individual. As I’m reading more, I started to question myself why I want to do this. The relationship between city and identity became my answer. yes, as I was born in the city, grew up in the city, everything about me is in the city. The city shape my brain and shape who I am. So, here is the enquiry: how the city shape our identity and our identity influence the city?

my references can be divided into three parts:

1. city and identity
2. psychogeography
3. mapmaking

As my project is about making subjective map, so I decided to use mind map to do the writing.

 

comment for week 3

1. how the audience understand your own experience?
2. why the shape?
3. maybe add some text could be better to create context
4. for the publication, try to use transparent paper

Week 3.5 

update the shape with grid

 

People’s identification with a place is not static. The physical environment changes, and so do people’s behaviors. I used coding to model the fluidity of identity in processing, and generate 137 combinations of map

PImage img1, img2, img3, img4;
void setup() {
  size(1000, 1000);
  img1=loadImage("1.png");
  img2=loadImage("2.png");
  img3=loadImage("3.png");
  img4=loadImage("4.png");
}
void draw() {
  background(255);
  stroke(255, 255, 255);//Red Green Blue 0-255
  for (float x=0; x<=width; x+=50) {
    line(x, 0, x, height);
  }

  for (float y=0; y<=height; y+=50) {
    line(0, y, width, y);
  }

  for (float x=0; x<=width; x+=50) {
    for (float y=0; y<=height; y+=50) {
      float num=random(0, 7);
      //0-1.5 1.5-2 2-3 3-4
      if (num<=0.8) {
        image(img1, x, y);
      }
      if (num>0.8 && num<=2) {
        image(img2, x, y);
      }
      if (num>2 && num<=2.5) {
        image(img3, x, y);
      }
      if (num>2.5 && num<=4) {
        image(img4, x, y);
      }
    }
  }
  saveFrame("fra/####.png");
}

From week1 to week2, as I chose weaving a the method, my enquiry changed from ‘How to visualise the life in London?‘ to ‘How to use weaving as a graphic design method to visualize life in London?’ to ‘How to use weaving as a means of graphic design to visualize perspectives and emotions of the life in London?’

London as a world famous city has countless attractions and places of interest, but that’s only for tourists. What kind of city is London to people who really live in London? What kind of emotions do people living here have for this city?

Taking a walk in London as an example, I extracted the images that most aroused my emotions from my perspective. These images make up my London. This city is no longer gorgeous and prosperous, but lonely, yearning and full of hope. So I want to express these emotions and perspectives in a visual way.

Experiments

Comments:

Working

1. pixels
2. colors

not working 

1. is that real weaving but not wrapping?
2. mixture of different things
3. materials

Line of enquiry & writing prompts: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1seQOrj93BOLOvbMWB9IwwNJNegquRpy5/view?usp=sharing

Statement:

landscape of the city from a personal perspective. A city is no longer a combination of buildings, streets, and people in the objective sense, but the life seen by different individuals and the emotions they get in the city. Images are one of the main ways we record our life in the city. Through image reconstruction, it reflects the changes in different individual perspectives and personal subjective choices. The change of the city no longer follows the laws of time, but changes with the change of perspective from one person to another.

So, what kind of way to choose to convey emotion has become a crucial issue. Among digital and handmade, I chose traditional weaving which can contain more emotion. Weaving itself is socially symbolic. It is often considered feminine, historical, emotional, and personal. Through weaving, cotton threads and photos are combined to form an abstract picture, and personal emotions and memories of images are infinitely magnified.

Experiments have proved that such a medium combination of rare figurative information and abstract patterns forms an obstacle in the transmission of information. The audience can only vaguely discern the scene where the image was shot and use vague guesses to understand the message that the sender wants to express. All in all, all of this is too personal. But that doesn’t mean it’s a bad way, but there’s a lot to improve. When the topics I discuss involve cities and groups of people, more samples should be added to the discussion, including different nationalities, races, and social classes, and more sample data should be obtained through field investigations for a wider range of information collection. Secondly, the way of weaving is too single. As mentioned earlier, this kind of behavior itself can contain a lot of emotions. Through diversified weaving techniques, we can express emotions more accurately.

I chose the materials from a walking experience in London, these include 1 photos, 2 a conversation between me and my friend during the walk and 3 map.

At first, my aim is quite simple, finding a way to visualise the experience in London.

Here are 100 iterations: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Cd3SxPLr_9zxFi4UvDqiIIhf09n2Q4U3/view?usp=sharing

Publication

Working

1. there are many methods be used, like deleting / missing / cutting / disruption in reading. And the abstract shape can show the missing of memory.

2.weaving is interesting.

Not working

1.the emotional part is not shown

2.more like ideology, too much for iterations, so choose one of two directions

Self- reflection

During this process, there seemed to be too many topics I wanted to discuss, such as memories, experiences or life in London. I feel uncertain and the enquiry "HOW TO VISUALISE AN EXPERIENCE IN LONDON" is definitely too vague.

So for the Week2 work, I choose the "weaving" which interested me more to be the direction to going on.

Why weaving?

In the face of the increasingly powerful AI, I have a negative attitude. I think actually that most of the digital work can be replaced. So choosing a manual experiment method is a tiny insistence on expressing the human part.