User:Chen Junyu/Graduation Project Seminar/project proposal/Proposal2

1.specific examples and sketches of possible outcomes and past experiments

2.concrete proposals and prototypes of your own work as well as the contest in which that work sits.What will you create that expresses your vision and your subjective position on the topics you are exploring.

Project

The project would be an audiovisual installation with the concept of "scale of nature". There is not specific decision of the image and sound. The sound could be recorded from inside of the plants (maybe) by contact phones, then amplify and synthesis to hearable sound. The image would base on the micro or and detailed construction of plants such as image taken by microscope, by using these images, creating 2d hand-drawing animation out of that. The work would be placed in a dark, half-closed room which provides enough silenced environment. The animation would be projected onto different spots with different scales, height and duration）in the room to build up the feeling of immersion. The path should be flexible for viewer going through, but there will also be a default path in the exhibition handbook.

Introduction

After the research for EMO(Giants and Little People)[1] I have slightly moved further with the word "Scale". Since we born in this world, the scale of the world for us is always changing, it changes with the grow and shrink of our physical body, also relies on the understanding or our emotion/feeling to the world. At a macro level, out general understanding of this world is also changing by the time, such as the conversion of public perception from Geocentrism to Heliocentrism or the changing of peoples' feeling to nature presented in the western painting history.

Quoted from the English scripts of Earth, Sea, and Sky: Nature in Western Art: Masterpieces from The Metropolitan Museum of Art: From early times, people struggling to understand powerful natural forces imagined them as human in order to mitigate their fear of the unknown. The tradition of personifying nature continues to this day.

File:Lascaux 04.jpg

Lascaux Caves

File:Claude Gellée - Paysage avec la fuite en Égypte.jpg

Claude Gellée - Paysage avec la fuite en Égypte

Through advanced technique, there is no doubt that we can obeserve the function of cells which constructs our physical body, monitor every singal moment of a chemical reaction and simulate the process of a black hole having its food. On one hand the scale for measuring the world is gaining its datas, on the other hand, it doesn't bring a big difference on our perception to the world. We still live in the same model of cities or towns designed and built hundred years ago, the scale of buildings or roads didn't experience big difference in the past years. We feel safe as living in the artificial world, and, we are escaping from or eating out the outside nature. Maybe only when we stand alone in a wild forest without any human life's evidence, we finally can feel the original fear or the awareness of our tininess as human being did thougsand years ago.

The reason of feeling afraid of something is very complicated. In physiological terms, fear is a feeling which can be generated in a short moment. By experiments, scientists found that fear can be traced to our amygdala, and the reactions of the amygdala are so quick that they are for all intents automatic. From zoology aspect，scale and unknown are two basic elements which can trigger the feeling of fear. It is an original feeling to all the creatures which are much larger than us since the ancient world, since " large " represents "dangerous" and "hard to beat“. And for the same reason, our instinct to avoid all the possible harm make us keep away from things we don't know.

Relation to previous practice

When I started thinking the topic of the graduation project, I traced back to my old works before I came to PZI, most of them are illustrations. Then I realised in these drawings, little people or giants, the comparison of the scale between human and other species took a large part. Surely "scale" is an effective factor in different kinds of artwork, especially in drwaings and sculptures, I still wanted to dig out what is the point attracting me so much.

Relation to a larger context

http://vimeo.com/107976057

Beautiful Chemical Reactions by L2 Molecule

Sound

• Jez Riley French

Audible SilenceA sound artist who has spent most of his live on listening to environments. He recorded a lot of sound from small creatures, such as bees and ants, also creatures in sea such as periwinkles eating sea grass. "natural composition"

• Bernie Krause--Soundscape

Bernie Krause--the voice of the natural world The Soundscape composed by : Geophny Biophony Anthrophony Through recording sound in landscape, Bernie Krause observes the influence to environment which is caused by urban expansion.

• Raoul Brand

Sound recording inside of a 80ft chestnut tree (contact microphone) sound inside a tree

Visual

Microwold's Photography by Daniel Stoupin http://www.microworldsphotography.com/ The oldest known paintings are the Grotte Chauvet in France, the paintings show horses, rhinoceros, lions, buffalo, mammoth, abstract designs and what are possibly partial human figures. These paintings are thought as the respect for nature, or for the gain of prey

Practical steps

In order(All this practical steps are for experimenting the project sound of plants,now I am not sure if I should go further with):

• Working on prototypes for sound/visual, collect and analyse attractive installations，add--reduce.
  • Sound

Tried with a DIY contact microphone to record the sound from the tree in the yard of PZI by infixing the Piezo into the trunk，failed.

• • Visual

References

Oliver Grau Virtual Art -- From Illusion To Immersion

Gyorgy Kepes The Nature and Art of Motion

Max Luthi The Fairytale as Art Form and Portrait of Man'

Dolf Rieser "Art and Science"

[English Scripts]Earth, Sea, and Sky: Nature in Western Art: Masterpieces from The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Michael Pollan "The Botany of Desire"