Tuesday, 30 October 2007

1w7 unreal reality.... mirror.....

I just thinking a space mix the real and unreal.
Something looks exist but still unreal.

In the morden life, everything goes fast. Many people already chose one kind of heterotopia even they may not realized. Foucault metioned the heterotopia can be a real place. I thought this place maybe a unreal reality place.

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PS.A video project i saw on VideoArt.Net
Made By lar peterson hernandez
(looks unreal/supernatural)




Anther Video
The progress of unreal become to real

Monday, 22 October 2007

1w6 Project Proposal

Eassy Title:
Consumption Utopia in Contemporary Society

Aim:
My aim is to explore what will happen after consumption utopia. Talking about spirit crisis and the bailment of the spirit.Exploring different utopia worlds which from different group of people and find out something in common.

Objectives:
Find out why some people become more indulge in food, interenet,shopping, computer games etn.
Image the how Chinese personal valuation changed after 1990.

Rationale:

On Triton and Other Matters: An Interview with Samuel R. Delany
a major definition of heterotopia; is its medical meaning. It's the removal of one part or organ from the body and affixing it at another place in or on the body. That's called a heterotopia. A skin graft is a heterotopia. But so is a sex change—one of the meanings of the word.

Michel Foucault. Of Other Spaces (1967), Heterotopias.
In the mirror, I see myself there where I am not, in an unreal, virtual space that opens up behind the surface; I am over there, there where I am not, a sort of shadow that gives my own visibility to myself, that enables me to see myself there where I am absent: such is the utopia of the mirror. But it is also a heterotopia in so far as the mirror does exist in reality, where it exerts a sort of counteraction on the position that I occupy.

The mirror functions as a heterotopia in this respect: it makes this place that I occupy at the moment when I look at myself in the glass at once absolutely real, connected with all the space that surrounds it, and absolutely unreal, since in order to be perceived it has to pass through this virtual point which is over there.

Mirror stage-Jacques Lacan'sThe
mirror stage describes the formation of the Ego via the process of identification, the Ego being the result of identifying with one's own specular image.
the Mirror Stage introduces the subject into the Imaginary order.


Outcomes:
1.Interactive Website/DVD.
2.Two Video works.


Media:
1.Using Flash and Photoshop to do a interative project.
2.Using Digital Video and software (such as Premiere,AE...) to edit movie.

Methodologies:

Two videos which can communicate together.
Like this project: Doug Aitken: sleepwalkers


Risk assesment:




Timetable:

Tuesday, 16 October 2007

1w5 Consumption Utopia and New Chinese Literature

In the 1990's, everything in China was changing at such a high speed that young Chinese writers did not have enough time to understand deeply the relationship between Chinese personal valuation and material life.

"Literature can make life better, like the function of art. Both of them save us from boredom and emptiness.

"the challenge of writing is: to find new ways of expressing and describing the relations between people and reality."

The Asian "candy generation" are busy buying apartments and shopping, they enthusiastically respond too installment plans and long for becoming a part of the mainstream of life. The purpose of novels by Hu Fang is not to research them, but to image them. Hu Fang, along with other young Chinese writers, hope to express their own voice. Not to agree with, but think deeply about the transformation of Chinese modern life.

"Utopia" has been a symbol of revolution and idealism in a certain Chinese historical period, but what does it mean now? Just as Zheng Guogu said: "consuming is ideal; consuming is piquant."


 (He Tian)

Tuesday, 9 October 2007

1w4 Whose Utopia?--chinese artist cao fei


Whose Utopia

Cao Fei: Whose Utopia, the first of these projects, presents the work of Cao, an artist born in Guangzhou, Guangdong, who addresses the complexities of the rapidly shifting contemporary moment. The artist spent six months at the OSRAM China Lighting Ltd., a factory in the Pearl River Delta in China, a major manufacturing base for everyday products for Chinese and foreign markets that has drawn workers from throughout China in search of economic opportunities and a better life. The installation is anchored by a video, Whose Utopia, and includes the everyday personal mementos and metal bunk beds present in the workers dormitories. The video is an eerily beautiful portrait of the factory and of the workers’ daily lives, fantasies, and aspirations. Scenes from the flow of the regular workday are interspersed with performances by a peacock dancer, a ballerina dressed as an angel, an electric guitar player, and a break dancer.






CCA Kitakyushu presents Cao Fei's "Whose Utopia."

"Whose Utopia" is a 20 minutes video work, made during Cao's participation to Siemens arts program. For the project Cao stayed for 6 months at OSRAM China Lighting Ltd., Foshan. The area where the factory is located is called Pearl River Delta Region, and has been drastically changed as one of the strongholds of Chinese economic activities which have shown a remarkable growth. The factory is one of the factors for the growth and change, and the people, especially the young generation, come from many parts of the country to work there for their better life. "Whose Utopia," focusing on the employees who perceive the country's drastic change as their opportunities and involve with the expansion, traces their life and dream they hold. It shows the reality of their workplace and social environment in the country which is more strongly marching than ever towards the modernization, contrasted with the dreamlike poetic scenes that are presented by the employees.



1w4 Eden-- Life and death in the artificial ecosystem


eden is an interactive, self-generating, artificial ecosystem. A cellular world is populated by collections of evolving virtual creatures. Creatures move about the environment, making and listening to sounds, foraging for food, encountering predators and possibly mating with each other. Over time, creatures evolve to fit their landscape. eden has four seasons per year and each year lasts 600 eden days. One eden year passes by in about fifteen minutes of real time. A simple physics dictates only three basic types of matter in the Eden world: rocks, biomass and sonic animals. You can get more details about eden (including photos, sounds and video) in the book Impossible Nature: the art of Jon McCormack. The book also includes a DVD with video documentation of eden exhibited at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image in 2004.
eden was inspired by time spent in the wilderness of Litchfield National Park, Northern Territory, Australia.

eden’s creatures begin life with little knowledge. Over time, they change, learning to adapt to their environment. Evolution of behaviour leading to mating usually takes about five eden years to discover. Behaviours that are more complex emerge between seven and seventy-five eden years and beyond. Many creatures die during this time. If a creature can mate before it dies, it passes on its genetic material to its offspring, who inherit the capabilities of their parents (as behaviour learnt during a parent’s lifetime is passed to its offspring: eden uses Lamarckian evolution).

The creatures can see (at short distances) and hear. The sounds you hear while eden is running are the sounds the creatures make. They can recognise the tonal ‘colour’ of the sound they hear and identify its direction. Through evolution, the creatures learn to make sounds and to hear the sounds of others. The work generates a sonic landscape that is experienced by people within the installation space while eden is evolving.

Sound is only made by a creature if it improves survival.

For example, in some evolutions of eden, creatures use sound to help them mate or find food. In other evolutions, they use sound to keep people within the physical space of the installation. This is achieved by placing sensors around the installation that detect human movement. Their movement and presence is mapped to the food supply for the creatures. If there are no people, the food supply dries up and the creatures starve to death. By making ‘interesting’ sounds, the creatures can keep people in the installation space, thereby increasing their food supply. On some occasions the creatures have learnt to use sound to keep people within the space, hence increasing their chances of survival. A symbiotic relationship develops between eden’s audience and its artificial life.

eden could be considered an artificial life world that uses sound, or a generative composing system for experimental sound and image. One of the aims of the work is to exploit the emergent properties that result from the relationship between the people who experience the work and the open-ended nature of artificial evolution.


1w4 The Afterlife Project

offers a technologically mediated service that provides a tangible expression of afterlife for those who have become spiritually disconnected, or require hard evidence in some form of life after death. Hydrochloric (Hcl) acid in our bodies could burn a hole in a carpet. If this acid were extracted and refined it may be converted into electricity when combined with zinc and copper acting as anode and cathode.