Metamorphosis Project: HERE I AM

Here I am.

Am I here?

I am here. 

So, metamorphosis is the process of change. My project is about the change of the international students' mental activities, from they first arrived England until now. I started with interviewing people in the International Pathways in my University, asking what they felt when they first came here, what they feel now and what are the changes. Then, I asked them to express their feelings in their own languages with the phrase I provided, which is "Here I am". They can also express it in alternative ways, such as "Am I here" and "I am here". I was very enjoying the interview because it allowed me to know more about the people that are just like me. Later, in the tutorial section with my personal tutor T, he said that this is a very interesting subject and I should consider making it big for my final project. Well, that's exactly what I was thinking about but didn't dare to tell people about it. Therefore, I was glad that someone agreed with it. After all that interviews, I managed to gather 18 different languages and combinations of feelings. 

The project outcome will be a short video with original sound track and footages. The sound track is almost done, the footages has been playing around and I am woking on After Effects and hopefully create some interesting animations. 

Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty

We were told by our personal tutor about this exhibition.

Went to the website immediately. 

Found the only ticket left this month is two days after.

Okay, that's it.

Ticket booked. 

There was already a long queue when we arrived, and the sign "No Photo or Sketch is Allowed" had driven us crazy. 

So I recorded my experience by recording, haha. 

The atmosphere was awesome with the music and the installations. With my phone sat in my coat pocket, I had given my full attention to the environment. Guess forbidding photo taking is not really a bad thing.  

The exhibition was so worth it. Hope I can revisit it in the near future. 

Interdisciplinarity OR Information Addicts

Today we have been going through the topic of interdisciplinarity that lecturer ML thinks it will help us developing the metamorphosis project. Some words like "disciplines", "autonomy", "modernist" and "postmodernist" keep appearing and mess around my head. At the end of the lecture I think it is only tip of an iceberg and there are much more to explore, but I already had my mind blown!

Wanting to study a digital version of fine art, I am more leaning towards the cheering side of interdisciplinarity. And the free flow of information enabled us to acquire knowledge from other disciplines, why not taking advantage of it? An example that I imagined is like Vincent Van Gogh. What if he do what artists do nowadays: having personal websites, managing social networking sites like Facebook Fan page and in his case, reading self-help books and go to support groups. Maybe he won't die young and create more masterpieces?

Or maybe Vincent won't become THE Van Gogh anymore, he might be busy socialising that he didn't go to middle of nowhere and paint The Sower or The Potato Eaters or many more, without the sufferings he might just become one of the many good painters. Here come to the down side of interdisciplinarity: one may master nothing.

We are not all Leonardo Da Vinci who slept less to gain more time and mastering fifteen disciplines. To be honest, the idea of "everything connects to everything else" is very intriguing and I can almost imagine how satisfying it would be to know everything. But that is just before reading the down side of interdisciplinarity. These three words, "master of none", just gave me a big punch in the head. It's red, it's big and noisy. I now see it as "wakeup you idiot". I remember every time doing my research, I was clicking link by link, going through website by website and there is no end of that process. Often I forgot what I was researching at first and all those information read was a mess.

There must be a right way being interdisciplinarity and it differs with everyone. In my case, I think I've gone a wrong way and become a information addict. LOL.

Day in Oxford

Going Oxford is quite exciting to me as it is a place that filmed many movies, such as Harry Potter.

First we went to the PittRivers Museum, by passing through the Museum of Natural History that we got a glance of those "dinosaurs" and glowing stones.
The environment inside the PittRivers Museum is very interesting: dark with dim light(I think this is the reason why taking photos with flash light is allowed.); one way up and one way down; looking down from the first and the second floor, you can see the collections inside each glass and metal box, at the same time the metal part of the box itself give great visual impact. The colour black did a great job here.

We have to draw something in our sketchbook. 

In the afternoon we headed off to the Ashmolean. No offence, but personally, most of the collections are not my cup of tea. The Ashmolean is just like a smaller scale of V&A(London) or Rijksmuseum(Amsterdam) to me. A surprise is that there are some paper cutting art work by a Hong Kong born artist Bovey Lee. It is rare to see displays of art works done by Hong Kong artist in museums(or it is just me haven't explore much museums, haha. Anyway, yeah, HK.) I will definitely check out her work. 

Last, we went to the lovely Covered Market and paid one pound(student price, normal adult price is two pound) for visiting the Balliol College, University if Oxford. The college is smaller than I thought, but it looks very Oxford(of course). Most of the time I was imagining myself in Harry Potter, One Day, The Theory of Everything or whatever movie that take place in "Oxford". Busy me.

The Hall in my eyes: table lamps. 

I wish I can visit Oxford again someday and explore more. Only one day is NOT enough for Oxford. 

About Project Metamorphosis

It's a new stage and new project starts.

Metamorphosis is the big title and we are going to develop our own project starting with a project proposal. (There are few things going on: research file, essay and the project proposal. It's very confusing whether or not they are related to each other and I think a mind map will help me sort it out). My understanding of the word metamorphosis is from my biology lessons, in simple words: like the process of a caterpillar turning into a butterfly. And the general understanding of that, given by the tutor Ms M today, is a process of transformation. Then she showed many art works that involves the idea of metamorphosis.

This week is about doing research and writing the project proposal. I need to beware of the time management because procrastinating, wasting too much time, is the habit that hinders the possibility of achieving better results in my works.

To conclude, get motivated and do the mind map to sort things out first, then start doing the research and write the proposal.

Feedback Day

I am a former science student and now a foundation student in a UK art university. 

At first I thought studying a foundation is a absolutely "no" thing. The score I got from my public exam is low but getting into a degree in the bottom ranking universities should have been no problem. Having a degree is all I wanted, or my parents wanted. Later I discovered that I was not so motivated about applying for a degree and that I was interested in art. So I ended up doing foundation, which I thought it would have been a waste of time but I am now very much enjoying it. 

The feedback day for stage one is an amazing experience. We have three stages in the foundation. In stage one, we get to try working with a variety of materials and experimenting ideas. The feedback I got is that I am a very reflective person. It is very new to me as no one had told me that before. 

I will continue working hard and writing blogs, for improving my english and for improving myself:).