APD Week1 Play and self

By Xipeng Niu (Xavier)

Theme

Play and self.

More specifically, it requires us to explore an unusual direction of identity or self representation. In my work, I reviewed myself from memory. I believe my memory and my experience shaped my personality and identity. Thus, I chose to use photos as a medium to convey my selfhood.

Context

The work I produced this week is started from thinking the connection between self and portrait. Instead of the outside of myself, I focused on the inside – the memory which shapes me and defines who I am. This idea is inspired by the concept of surreal photography. Surreal photography is a kind of art work which can share your vision of world or imagination to people who don’t see it the way as you (Bowker, 2013). Thus, I decided to create a piece of artwork to share people my vision of myself.

In terms of play, Henricks (2014) stated that play behaviors express the need of understanding the self and self – realization. From the my practice, the satisfaction I felt are from the process of reviewing and expressing myself in another view.

Method

In practice, I picked photos and manipulated them in photoshop. Then they are composited to a surreal portrait. When it is done, those images from different photos and printed as an album. When I received the album, I cut out those photos as I designed. This method has two aspects of play. Designing the album is a process of idealization of myself and crafting the paper cut out portrait is a kind of play like origami.

Reflection

In general, the final result of it is not bad. It kindly achieve the what I planned.

The issues include:

1. I am not good at cutting paper as I thought. The edges have been really messy. Besides, I cannot cut out all the stroke which is used to identify which part I should cut out.
2. The material I chose for printing is gloss paper, I expected it will have a better color. Turns out, it largely increased my difficulty to cut.
3. The thickness of gloss paper is not enough. The shadow between pages I expected is not clear enough.

As refinement, the material should be reconsidered. Something thicker should be used in printing. Also, a perforation cutter should be used. As for the image itself, illustrations of photos should be drawn instead of filters to photos.

References

Bowker, D 2013, Surreal Photography : Creating the Impossible, Ilex Press/ Ivy Press, Lewes. Available from: ProQuest Ebook Central. [27 July 2021].

Henricks, T.S. 2014, "Play as Self-Realization: Toward a General Theory of Play", American Journal of Play, vol. 6, no. 2, pp. 190-213.