APD Week10_Play and Stillness

Theme 

Play and Stillness

Context

“Sometimes you just have to turn off the lights, sit in the dark, and see what happens inside of you.” - Adam Oakley

Stillness could be quiet and being still or death. At the start, I was wondering what kind of work I haven’t tried, and I have found a couple of projects that interests me with projector mapping.

‘Human Sound Object’ (https://vimeo.com/170962832)play with the movement, sound and light. I like to hope light interact with humans movement. The other one that interacts with humans project ‘The mood reflecting floor’ (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOg4chJAgn8) The floor designed to pick up different body languages and react to some things like fish in a pond. I like this work by presenting different colours of the fish, also giving a relaxing mood.

I was stressing what should I do for the last exercise and I have tried to find many projects that relate toward stillness as I could. Then I found these project that plays with the still object with the projector that gives the viewer feels the object was moving. ‘Sony Interactive Tabletop’ (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-gTqrR9rKI) This is a project of bringing objects to life, it uses motion tracking to detect object placed on the table and display additional information and interactive elements to be touched and played with. The audiences are playing with still objects. There is another work ‘Cube in Cube’ They used rotated mapping system and Kinect head tracking to projection the cube inside a cube. The cube seems like moving but it a still object.

I was planning to corporate with others again, when they suggest an idea of our childhood game ‘Red light Green light’ I start to search up with different kind of ways to play this game. Such as some used it as a workout game, car racing game, Tv show challenge game etc, and the most memorable one is they need to eat watermelon while they playing this game. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sHjvFuoyvg) When I suggested we should do a food one, everyone just scared to spout on the face of each other.  

Lastly, I remember this few months have an exhibition of 10,000 porcelain birds from Cai Guo-Qiang presented at the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) (https://www.heraldsun.com.au/entertainment/arts/5-mustsee-works-at-ngvs-terracotta-warriors-and-cai-guoqiang-exhibition/news-story/701464a12c953eacba1f1c826ab322d3) 

Method

Created some handmade paper fish, then put some tinny light in the fish. Create some water patten on cello sheets and stick it on torches and flash it in a dark room.

Response

I end up corporate with Qiannyu and Sophia for this exercise, and we have made some changes to the method. We decided to make some handmade Jellyfish with some tinny light and projector some natural videos. During the process, we test out some method to make a jellyfish by using the wire to use cello sheet wrapped up. The cello sheet also gives a nice reflection from the light. When we start to projector the video on the jellyfish, the light inside the jellyfish was not obvious. In the end, we decided to turn off the projector, the light and the reflection give a nice colour and we have spin the sewing string it give a slow turnaround of the jellyfish.

This was given us an unexpected piece, using a stillness object and play with the light and reflection. 

Reflection

What is the play mean in this exercise? At the start, I thought Play should create an interactive piece to play with the audience. After rethinking the work of Cai Guo-Qiang’s birds, I was thinking what if animals become still and the environment just keep moving? When we finish our project, Qiannyu and Sophia become really still to record the project process. I realised display an artwork will also attract the audience to become stillness to capture the angle that they think is wonderful. Being stillness to see what happens inside of you.