project[1]

lim jia sheng,
0344034.

BDCM
.Design Principles
::project[1]





lecture

Self

Our basic personality/nature distinguishing us apart from others, especially coming from introspection & reflexive actions.

It consists of a few things added together:

  1. Foreign perception of physical/personality traits
  2. Own perception of physical/personality traits
  3. Own experiences
  4. Own interests
  5. Own thoughts!

Self-Portrait

Own depiction of self in a form of a visual.

Pablo Picasso's self portraits across the years, n.d

Figure 1.1.1, Pablo Picasso's self portraits across the years, n.d

Partial self portrait —

Figure 1.1.2, Partial self portrait — "Fly Muid to the Moon" by Muid Latif, 2013

project[1]: Self-portrait

info:

todo:

  • Create a self-portrait using any form of media.
  • Write a 150-200 word rationale for the final idea.

research:

Initial Monologue

Who are you?

I can't start to describe how much I hate this question. If you've read my previous "about me"'s, you'd know. Does anyone truly know who they are? You're only a cumulation of your history; a snapshot can only be so go so deep; a description can only hold so much.


From a foreign (mortal) perspective, who are you?

Me to them is also made from the history between. This snapshot is by nature, tainted by their own histories, making it inherently inaccurate.


If there's no one else & no time else, who are you?

I'm no one. What's different between a blank person & a flesh pile?


You're lost. Who stumbles on such a question unless they don't have an answer?

I guess so. I guess being lost is a state of mind, cumulated from history & circumstance. I'm just, a human trying to survive & understand the world.


Interests play a role in creating a signature for "you" as well. What about those?

I like, many things, but I don't like to be defined by them. It's easy for a person to do it, as things done is a part of history between them & a person, but for the person, it's a present.


Actions aren't the only interests, though. How about preferences?

Hmm. Preferences have the same properties as interests, but I guess their nature of being an attribute of receiving energy, instead of interests being an attribute of expending it, make them much more easily palatable?

Maybe, I'm just a person that's trying to understand the world a little too much.


Inspo

These were a little more surrealist than I would expect from something I would make, but the vibes, hit different. The ability to make a """partial""" self-portrait really opened up a new frontier of expressing a person, through visuals that open a portal into never before seen aspects of self.

sketches:

Unfortunately, even though all that deep talk was kinda cool to live in for a moment, it turned out pretty useless when I started to attempt to sketch.

An Uncaught Error, 12/5/2021

Figure 1.2.1, An Uncaught Error, 12/5/2021

It's just everything I know mashed into an artefact. Its definitely overwhelming & messy, ...utilitarian? I had no idea what I was doing. Everything felt both, overwhelming & underwhelming. I had to take an even further step back.

A marathon later, I started thinking. I kept trying to repivot, but couldn't let go of the tid-bit of "me" being a snapshot of my experiences. From here, my small little brain sprung a leak, sparking the thought of doing things step by step. It was largely out of self comfort, but I of course, took that literally.

I made a shopping list of things currently in the 1st branches of the — "me" tree of suffering.

  1. struggling to parse & map human behaviours into pure functions
  2. starved of emotional energy
  3. only have the moment to focus on
  4. stuck

I then took these & went oversharing like a regular self portrait.

feedback:

  • 26/5/2021
    • Is it a series or a sequence?
    • Successful direction in expressing self portrait.

final:

self.snapshot(depth = 1), 20/5/2021

Figure 1.3.1, self.snapshot(depth = 1), 20/5/2021

PDF PDF PDF PDF

Yes, this entire strip is the self portrait.

It's a fever dream. It's me. At least, it's me now. I'm supposed to tell you about what all of me means, but well, I can't tell you what I don't understand. Maybe that's okay. You've seen what it's all about, maybe even read it; hopefully you understood what I don't really. The shopping list above is a self documenting recipe to clone my brain state, & the artwork is what that state feels like. It's all just, me, more of me, then another chunk of me, again & again, until what's left is no more me. Disgusting, really.

Transform stack:

  1. struggling to parse & map human behaviours into pure functions
  2. starved of emotional energy
  3. only have the moment to focus on
  4. stuck
  • A "pure function" is a functional programming concept that involves a piece of code giving the same output if given the same input regardless of state.
  • "Emotional energy" is my parsing of the unit exchanged between individuals socializing; similar to money in capitalism.
  • The red stripes are a reference to the previous piece from exercise[5], noted to be "methodical".

Medium used was acrylic & pencil.



reflection

This experience was an interesting one. It made me do a lot more self reflection than was probably healthy, but I feel like I learnt a lot more about myself, as well as more importantly how to express myself. The main findings other than that was just how to more effectively abstract away """unsavoury""" topics; package them in a way that's easier for both the viewer & the renderer to handle. At the end of the day, I feel like the practical hands on of the media, as well as the brain squeeze definitely instilled new knowledge that I'll be able to use in the future, to both express myself & express other people.

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