User:Stonestone/RWRM-09
Stone YS - In this world
My name is Stone Ying Shi, from Beijing, China. I work with still and moving images since 2010, including 3d, 2d, photography, short films and documentaries. In this thesis, I will discuss the style and techniques I have been using and the things which motivate me to make work. I now make 3D images with Blender and photography to make images of female bodies in soft, bright colours. This process began with a series of works called ‘space out’, in which I aimed to make people feel more relaxed, from then on, I became interested in how my art could change the way people feel. As part of this process I researched the Gysin, Burroughs Dreammachine. In this thesis, I will discuss my current project Human Bonsai in relation to previous work and to work by others that has influenced me.
Introduction: Part One
I started explore my style since the end of 2015. I took photos of a girl in a photo studio when I was traveling back to Beijing China where my home is. Few months later, I started to making similar images in software. My photos and 3D works are mainly in pasty soft colors. From my perspective, these colors can make people feel melty inside because of its extreme softness, they are not very dramatic will never give people strong 'shock'. I can not explein what the softness is, it is more like a feeling The communication between me and my audience should be gentle, gentle also can be powerful in someways.
For example, this is a photo I took by accident, I was trying the lights which were orange and pink. Turned out, it is quite pretty and peaceful, also interesting, that in this picture, the gesture is ambigueous only the colorful shadows on her body.
Plastic Photo series is printed in different sizes, mostly A3. I had an small exhibition along with some of my similar 3d prints at Stroop Rotterdam during December 2016. It was a really small one but it was my first solo exhibition, my friend Funda gave me this chance to show my work. Most of the people just told me they liked the colors, that's already good to hear.
Touchless is my first 3d project. I started it in May 2016. Through this work I want to show a status of the moment before two people touching each other. I used transparent texture on human bodies and an ambigueous space to create the feeling of void and a bit danger.
I use Makehuman software for generating human body and Manuelbastioni Lab which is a plugin of Blender by Makehuman, which makes my workflow becomes faster when I only need simple pose and details of human.
For the figure of my 3D charactors, I just want people to get the feeling or a concept of the human instead of a specific human. I also did that in my photo work, I took photos with asian girls but basicly I don't want them to be recognizable. Those bodies are more presenting the bodies not themselves as the specific person.
I built 3D spaces in different ways, and always put it in the last few steps of the images. For example, my first 3d work touchless, when I was done posing, I started thinking why they have troubles of touching each other or why they are trying to touch each other. Although, it is not a fictional project, I want to put them in an interesting and probably narrative space.
One of my works in Touchless, there are 2 people, one is inside the other one is outside. One person tying to catch the other person by making its hand going through a window, the other person also trying to hold the hand, but under the window there is a whole. The space is totally chaotic and dangerous , I am trying to mess up with people, and expressing the feeling of touchless or let's say a bit hopeless.
This is the idea of people can't touch or connect, and also the sense of ppl disappearing either because they are all the same color, they are transparent, that's the idea of noise will take over, visual noise. That's like all the information, all the noise is going on. So if you think about it, at one point we want to make ourselves distinct from the noise, i am here, I am not easy, on the other side, we want to give up the noise, give ourselves over to the noise so with the flikr machine, you give yourself over to the noise. It is also what my previous project [Space Out] is about. It is so weird that two extrme things can bring similiar fact. In Buddhism, they say :"The form is nonexistence, and nonexistence is the form." （色即是空，空即是色）. I guess that is it.
I grew up in a kind of special time of China Beijing. All the "good" things suddenly rush into our life. People start catching all the trends and are afraid of being out of time. There are way more IT companies, more people using Iphones, people are always on their phones because news are in there, friends, food ,music, cleaner, massager are all in the small things. We are connected physically, disconnected mentally, but we are human, shouldn't we have more connections? It happens in some big cities of China. People get more lonely by communicating with people by click a useless heart. Also I thought maybe because of that asian people get to know west world more than west world knows us. But basicly people doesn't care about what is happening in this world. People care about what they are familiar with, and don't want to explore the world more.
I am using technologies to fight with technologies. Everything has its two sides, it depenses on how you use it. For me software is the tool for me to communicate with the world, the others hear from me through the images I made in software, they receive them through their screens. I love technology, it is so great that we are becoming more and more advanced. It is really hard to say how the caveman will react if he can see this current world. The fact I don't like is actually people don't know how to use them, as a result people are the ones being used by them.
I think the Netherlands or Europe's art atomasphere for young artists is way better than Beijing from my perspective as an artist or just for myself. I actually started doing my art project after I got here. In here, art seems like a normal thing, which is a part of people's life, and people can accept more ideas even though they might not like them. When I was in Beijing, I got presure from life a lot, everything was around making money, I never thought about doing something to make myself happy because I thought (just like most of the people), money can bring me all the things I want. My mind now is going 'crazier and crazier' and I can't stop learning new things. It is something I never have had before. I feel like I am making things which have been in my mind for a long time but I did not see it, now they are keeping coming out.
Q:what are you working on now.
A: Now I am working on Human Bonsai project, which is a project conbining cgi and photography.
I am now taking photos of different people with different features. I posted on facebook group asking if anyone want to be the model, there were a lot of people that contact me, so I guess I have a quite big group of model for this project.
Until now, I have already photographed 5 people, but still in the experiment stage. I am not sure if I will use them for the final project.
Q:you said it's also important that using different types of ppl. What kinds of ppl do you have .
A: So far I worked with a french girl, a half black girl and a black girl, and an asian girl which is myself.
Q: what are you gonna do with those protential models.
A:At first I really want to scan them into 3d objects, I tried 2 ways.
1st is to take photos around he model, and using a software to generate the 3d objects. Somehow it works not really well. Then I went back to use kinect but the resolution of Kinect's camera is really bad, all the 3d models looks super blur. So I decided I will only use photos to show people in this project, and use cgi objects for the rest.
Q: what's the next stage.
A: After I get those images I will start thinking about editing them, and putting different people in different themes.
Q: how the ppl looks like related to bonsai trees.
A: I want to call my project human bonsai, is because I found they are quite similar, they all look different from each other. And in the Netherlands there are a lot of mix raced people, for me it is really nice to be here and much easier to find different types of people.
A: Since I got a lot of models, I also started another project which is a portrait photo series. Everytime, I book the photo studio for 2 hours but actually I do not need 2 hours, so I started taking portrait for my models.
This portrait series is about girls floating in some unkown places. The style is also like my 3D work, which is miserable, colorful, soft and with girls.
Q: what are you saying is quite significant, it takes 10 mins to scan people in the studio, so then you have more than one hour to , so it gives you time to photograph them. But it's also very productive it seems.
Bacon the artist.
if he has a 3d scaner he would have a lot of fun.
Q:compare to this .it seems like you don't quite satisfed. (two different photos)
A:Yes, it is because of a lot of reasons. First the pallet is not what is in my mind or my colors. it looks a bit flat. Also I had some hard time communicating with this model, so that's why I like these photos less than the other ones. Besides, this photo is not crazy enough for me, so when this photo showed with other photos, they looks from different themes.
Previous Works
Dream machine
On October 27th 2016 in South Korea, the first ever Space-Out Competition was held, which would be one of the most peaceful competition in the world. Candidates must maintain a certain and stable heart rate while being in a status of space-out. Finally, a nine-year-old elementary school student Miss Yang won the big prize. This “competition” gives me an initial idea of doing a research/project about space-out experience. During the competition, hundreds of candidates sat in the same piece of grass, going to different "spaces". Space-out, as one of the most commonest experience for everyone has its special attraction for me, because people all experience it, however, I will never know exactly what is the experience for others.
Space-out is a feeling that people can never tell exactly what is by themselves which can be seen as the soul leaving the body. The views that people see in front of them when their minds escape from their bodies, are diverse and different from the others and difficult to tell clearly. However, the trigger points of space-out are quite similar, drugs, alcohol even some specific visuals, for example. Dreamachine, as one of the most critical patent of triggering space-out, also known as a piece of art work, is a good example to explore the phenomenon of space-out. In this essay, I will give my research on how dreamachine make efforts on people and why people get the feeling of space-out.
“Flicker” is a long-standing term of art in experimental psychology, referring to visual effects induced by flickering lights.
The first record of inducing hallucinations by flickering light emmerged can be traced back to 1564.Nostradamus conducted Flicker experiments, he was inspired by the legends of Lucrezia Borgia and the subtle magic of 'photic-entrainment' by flames she employed to access visionary divinations, and predict future events.
The first stroboscope was invented in 1832 by Belgian scientist Joseph Plateau. He used slotted disks turning at turning at high speeds to provide an image with an illusion of movement. Then the invention of the Electroencephalograph was made in 1924. German psychiatrist Hans Berger worked on human EEG, his main topic was to search for " the correlation between objective activity of the brain and subjective psychic phenomena and to understand the mysterious relation ship between mind and matter." Then he found Alpha wave."A rhythmic oscillation of potential at a afrequency of 10 cycles pre second .. detected in the human subject by electrodes applied to the head .. present when the subject lies quietly with eyes closed and disappearing when attention is fully occupied."
In 1945, Dr. W. Grey Walter applied flicker into his EEG research, in the end an electronic stroboscope was invented. After an experiment in a big range of people, Dr Walt got the feedbacks (strange feelings) from samples he chose, which were:" faintness or swimming in the head"; "unresponsive or unconscious for a few moments"; "the limbs jerked in rhythm with the flashes of light."
Most of the feedback pointed into epileptic symptoms.A feedback apparatus was built in order to figure out how the flicker trigger works on our brain.
As shown in the diagram on the right, eyes receive the lights from the strobes (lamp) as an subjective experienced signal which is transmitted to our brain, then, the signal (brainwave) goes through the recorder make efforts on the trigger.This loop can be seen as the basic prototype of how the visual flicker we look at works on our brain.
" We all noticed a peculiar effect . . . a vivid illusion of moving patterns whenever one closed one’s eyes and allowed the flicker to shine through the eyelids. The illusion . . . takes a variety of forms. Usually it is a sort of pulsating check or mosaic, often in bright colours. At certain frequencies—around 10 per second—some subjects see whirling spirals, whirlpools, explosions, Catherine wheels. " Dr Walter noted after experimented with strobes on himself.
In the post-World War II era, the Beat Generation rediscovered the drug-like strobe-machine by reading Dr Walt's book The Living Brain. It starts with an experience of Brion Gysin, a painter, writer, sound poet, and performance artist born in Taplow, Buckinghamshire. In his dairy he wrote:
" Had a transcendental storm of colour visions today in the bus going to Marseilles. We ran through a long avenue of trees and I closed my eyes against the setting sun. An overwhelming flood of intensely bright colors exploded behind my eyelids: a multidimensional kaleidoscope whirling out through space. I was swept out of time. I was out in a world of infinite number. The vision stopped abruptly as we left the trees. Was that a vision? What happened to me? "
After reading Dr Walt's book The Living Brain which was lent by William S. Burroughs, Gysin had found the answer. That is also the critical point of the relationship establishing between Flicker and Dreamachine; Walt and Gysin. Afterwards, Gysin built the Dreamachine in the early 1960's by putting a cylinder with holes onto a record player turn tablewith a 100 watt lightbulb in the middle. When the record player being set to spin at 78 round per minute, the strobes turns into the visual of sitting in a bus and passing shades of leaves under the sun, which makes the light flickers at a frequency of about 20Hz Alpha brainwaves which are associated with subconsciousness. With bringing the changes of brainwaves to people, dreamachine is displayed as an art piece in by Brion.
Brainwaves has been mentioned earlier, which plays an important role in space-out experience. The blinky lights made by dreamachine produce about 20 hz brainwaves in our brain, in a way, it is within or close to the range of alpha wave( in a range around 8 -13 Hz ), which will bring people the feeling of deep relaxation, vice versa. Besides alpha wave, there is also Beta wave, Theta wave and Gamma wave which show or make different efforts on our brain.
Based on that, I made my first project which is called Nosebleed.
This is a normal morning or a normal afternoon, however, it is a normally normal moment, you step out of your door, grabbing two bags of rubbish in your hands. From the door to the dustbin, there are 100 steps in total. After 57 steps, you feel your nose bleeding, suddenly. "What the fuck?!" You think to yourself. You have to raise your head in order to stop nosebleed. Oh, there is nothing on above at all, tops of tall trees, tops of some tall buildings and, of course, the sky. I have to say, it is a random view indeed. Unfortunately, you have to look at this view for a few minutes, and waiting for your nose to stop bleeding. Damn it! You feel you are wasting your life, although, you also spend more time on doing other useless stuff everyday. At first, you just look at the view in front of your eyes, and cannot wait to leave this situation. But lately, you just notice that there is something in the sky, such as some clouds, some birds, some plastic bags. Then you would not see them anymore. You stop thinking anything else at all. In the end, after your nose stops bleed, before you go on your way to the dustbin, you get a specific feeling of the very specific position.
Nosebleed is a online art work which shows the views that people might see when they get nosebleed suddenly (skies and the top part of the building) when they are walking on the street. In order to bring the space-out feeling for the people who might see the work, the most efficient way is to create alpha wave as a key to bring people the similar experience of Flicker and Dreamachine in it with the strobe effects like Dreamachine.
For the first attempt, I downloaded an alpha wave meditation video on youtube, and put the sound into a program I made (http://pzwart1.wdka.hro.nl/~ying/404/thatwave.html) using Web Audio API. This program is able to calculate the data of the sound and then, visualize the data into different colours in order to bring the blinks by colour fast changing.
It did results in something blinky, but the question is: if it is the real alpha wave frequency. As a matter of fact, people can only actually hear the sound between the range of 20Hz to 20000Hz frequency by ears, so there is no one can hear an alpha wave sound. When I thought I should give up the idea of creating alpha wave blink because the alpha wave audio is a fraud, I found the origin of the special sound in the youtube clip - "Binaural Beats".
Binaural beat is an auditory illusion perceived when two different pure-tone sine waves. Both of these two waves have frequencies which are lower than 1500 Hz, and the difference between them are less than a 40 Hz, are presented to a listener at the same time, one goes to left ear and the other one goes to right. For instance, if the left channel is 500Hz pure tone, the right channel is 510 Hz pure tone, as a result, the listener will get the auditory illusion of a third tone (a frequency of 10Hz which being the difference between the 500Hz and 510Hz), in addition to the pure tones played to ears. Binaural beat is the third sound.
It gives me a new perspective of grabbing alpha wave data -- creating video works based on thedreamachine's principle of producing alpha wave (flicker) and using the data of Binaural Beats which would produce alpha wave frequency.
For experiment, I upload a piece of sound [1] which produces Binaural beats third tone pitch frequency (from 7 Hz to 12.9 Hz which is right in the range of alpha wave).
Dreamachine, as the most important reference of my project "Nosebleed" gives me a chance to create the space-out experience in my work.
I built up one dreamachine and tried to figure out why/how it works(or if it works or not).
After really tried it, from my perspective, I saw a lot of different shapes, and did had the feeling of relaxation. All the templates I found online are cut in the same shapes. However, in my point of view, the shapes matter less than the flickery. Then, based on this observation on my own, I created the prototype of Nosebleed (website -> http://stonestone.nl/0510/NorthernSky.html). Users can upload the Binaural Beats and then watch the flickery sky.
The illusion from dreamachine is created by the alpha wave, which is one of the brainwaves which could bring relaxation status to people. To create a space-out experience is (kind of) equal to finding a way to create alpha wave. The filkery light which I would like to apply on my own work can be come true by using third tune(Binaural Beats). Binaural beats could be a trigger of alpha wave which has a certain frequency the same as alpha wave.
Plastic
Last winter, I took a series of photos of my friends. (add pictures) It was the start of me focusing on using pastel colors and girls bodies as the main elements of my projects. In those pictures I used multiple flash lights with colorful filters on them. The direct lights and shadows shows different colors on the background and different parts of models' bodies.
Touch(less)
Touch(less) is a project of me in the beginning of using 3d images. In this project, I used 3D human models as main "characters" showing the state of the moment before two people touching each other in order to show a feeling of isolation of our living. By using specific transparent materials, people become fragile as a piece of plastic. People floating in an unknown space, it is hard to tell which side is inside, which side is outside. Using this concept, I want to emphasize the sense of fear and isolation. (add pictures later) The reason why I made this work is because I wanted to create a feeling of isolation from the world as a reflection of our society. It is a crowded, colorful and noisy world, however, the relation between individuals seems going further and further. People want to touch each other but actually cannot really reach each other.
I want to show this feelings and unstable states to people, with soft and colorful visuals to enhance and make the images less dramatic but more peaceful, which is more about my perspective of aesthetics of a slightly sad image, which are peaceful and cruel.
Recently, I started my daily project, which is to make an (moving and still) image (100 in total). The elements of these images are mainly human bodies (females), animals. I made a prototype of website to put my works and will push it online, on which I can easily show them to people especially for some animated (moving) images by using .gif format.
It becomes a diary, reflecting the moods and state of mind of a specific moment of the day. For instance, on Day 4, the main character of the image is a sleeping woman. The reason why I made this is because on that day, I was working with 2 sleepy friends, they slept besides me, etc etc. .
This is a part of my method of making things, focusing on small things at a time, instead of making a big theme and get nothing to say eventually.
Hopefully, after I finish this project, I can see clearer what I can do for the following project which might be a funny and experimental, chaotic short film.(see below for Refs.)
Looking back, I have always used moving image, video as a media for my works. For these works, I use a particular color palate which are "girlie", bright, ice cream, gradient colors.
Colors
Since there is no strong contrast behind those colours, they do not make any conflict in the images, which engender a peaceful state of mind, no dramatics, and always bring peaceful and soft feelings to people.
Bodies
Human bodies are always the most important part of my works, especially females.
Firstly, I think I understand girls and I prefer female bodies to mens, I like a fit body that has curves (rather than the angular bodies of men), which strengthens the softness of the images.
Although, the forms of my works have been changing all the time, there are always similarities in between them.
Feeling
Last research of mine is "Space Out Experience", which was also about making a peacful state of mine in the viewer. I am always interested in things which can make people feel relax.
Human Bonsai
My graduation project Human Bonsai will be a series of images and a video of bonsai trees which use the human body as a plant, using 3D technique and portrait. Aside to this project I’m thinking of producing a photobook. This project combines my interest in photography and my background in filmmaking.
"Bonsai tray planting is a Japanese art form, in which trees are grown in containers, the tradition dates back thousands of years. Similar practices exist in other cultures, the Chinese tradition of Penjing (盆景) is considered to have been the technique’s place of origin, as well as the miniature living landscapes of Vietnam. --wikipedia"
Bonsai, as a deformed plant is based on the aesthetic of its makers. The meaning of its natural life is no longer existing. With the development of aesthetic, technique, culture etc., the looks of Bonsai have been changing diversely, the types of Bonsai are also becoming more varied.
Somehow, the Thing is more like a bonsai less like a tree.
The transformation of the Bonsai echoes the development of human society, which has changed and adapted in order to fit into our current world. The development of things like clothing, communication and technology are some of the skills that move us from yesterday into tomorrow, update the way we speak, the things we do, the feelings we feel, the dreams we dream and the way we see ourselves.
Therefore, I would like to make this project, as it speaks to how society changes people and how external powers influence the subject, in parallel with how people condition bonsai trees.
Here is a list of powers (principles skills) I have come up with till now, which make people deform in different ways and I would like to apply in my work but I am still unsure about them and keeping developing more:
- Technology (internet, electronic devices)
- Pop Culture
- Popular Aesthetic（fashion - anything else?）
- Media Orientation
- Success (what is success? - financial? in career? fame?)
- Consumption (of food? or of stuff?)
- Emotional Demand
- Communication
- Stereotype (of what? people? racism? the general act of stereotyping?)
- More…
In my work I aspire to create soft textures, a sense of void, and also something ridiculous, verging on playful craziness. Other than these rules, the work will follow three formal tracks, which have been developed through my previous works.
The three formal tracks are described below:
(a) Color
(b) Human figuration
(c) The manipulation of form
I made a couple of samples to give you an initial expression of what I am talking about this project.
In the photos models will position themselves as a bonsai, each position is based on a specific power I have mentioned above. For each skill I will create 3 to 4 versions according to real Bonsai styles (see picture below), by which people become into a human bonsai. The background will be a vague and virtual space.
The video work will accompany the photos, showing the details of human bonsai with 2D/3D graphics showing the growth of ‘vines’, and the movement of ‘leaves’. I am developing ideas for a voice-over, but am still unsure of my best options, it is possible that all will be recorded and reviews during the stage of post-production.
Timeline
Dec 2016 - Feb 2017 (where I am now): Technique Researching / Sample Making / Problem Solving(For instance, after I made the first test video, I found out the way I thought about tracking did not work so well, I need to find some other way to do it).
Mar 2017 : Pre-production, including photographing, filming, and 3D scan if needed.
Apr 2017 : First Post-production and fixing. (find problems, add details, re-shoot, re-edit...)
May 2017 : Second Post-production, "Debugging" and Perfecting. (More detail fixing works)
June 2017 : Third Post-production including pushing online(a web page), print, prepare projection.
Setup
A series of prints will be framed and hung on one wall, a projection will be displayed on another wall, in between the walls will be a bonsai.
I have been interested in how artists play with 3D "beings".
One of my reference is from Johnathan Monaghan, his works give me endless thoughts and strong feelings. In his works, the combination of not-related objects, the symbolic details and the fluency of every movement are 3 key points which inspire me. The work Escape Pod (2015) which from my perspective is a "story" of consumption critique, in which the main character - a golden bull (a consumer goods) runs from consumer society to nature world silently and valiantly.
Artist Kate Cooper works on high-defination digital CG images and CGI woman body. Her works changed my opinion about realistic CGI works. Looking into her works, I can feel the subtle uncanny valley feeling, however, the feeling combined with unconscious， sympathy and void, which is the thing I want to achieve in my own work.
Ceramist Jess Riva Cooper and sculptor Yoshitoshi Kanemaki are two non-3D artists who works with bodies also. In Jess's work, blossom of "human" gives me a nice example of how to deal with body and plants at the same time in a beautiful and elegant way.
Yoshitoshi's weird and sweet deformed-girls sculptures impress me by how quite and graceful a fake human can be. The way he deforms "human" brings me many ideas of my own work.
There are also works from artists like Beeple, Blake Kathryn, kyttenjanae, Matt Crump etc keep giving me new ideas on color, composition and mischievous "craziness".
The reason why I started playing with 3D and decide to make this project is because of those people. They give me a enchanting and emotional perspective to work with nonexistent objects.
Bibliography
- http://animalnewyork.com/2014/kate-coopers-hyperreal-hypercapitalist-cgi-females/
- wikipedia
- Websites of artists I mentioned above
- Website : Bonsai Empire