Bounded

Intention

My project is a physical translation of one of my favorites, "Divorce Rhapsody" by Eishi Segawa. To me, the music embodies a gentle, soft touch and at the same time expresses a strong feel of grief. I am also intrigued by cyclic but not repetitive rhythm in the music. It creates an effect that is like bouncing back and forth. I intend to reproduce these features in my product. 

Product

My final product is composed of cardboard and cotton. At the center is a black cuboid representing the deep grief and ambivalence I feel in the music. Then I cover it with cotton to represent the gentleness in the music. And to reproduce the sense of bouncing back and forth, I used card strips to wrap around the whole box to visualize the gentleness being constrained and bounded.

Approach

How did you approach the assignment and re-creation of the work in a physical medium?

In the looking out session this module, I was deeply inspired by 36 ventilators, 4.7m3 packing chips, by Zimoun. I love how he renders traditional textiles and how he juxtaposes different materials to create an interesting touch and sound. So for my own warm-up project, I focused on the material aspect of the work. I intended to reproduce both gentleness and grief embedded in the music so I chose corresponding textile that I feel represents the emotion and touch well.

https://mediasynth2016.slack.com/files/yiyangg/F2NGZ6Z8T/36_ventilators__4_7m3_packing_chips__lookingout3

Reflection

I think it is successful in that it captures the audio's touch by rendering materials with different textures (like cotton + cardboard). But I feel it is not expressive enough in terms of its representation  of bouncing, cyclic rhythm, which I described above in the documentation. If I got the chance to redo the work, I would choose another composition, such as round shape, to mimic the circular feature in the music. I fee that would make the product more integrated and smooth.

What I learned: I recognize the gap between conceptual prototype and final outcome. In particular, I found that overly conceptual representation is not always effective in expressing ideas. To construct a strong visual effect, I would try to convert the concepts into more direct, elementary tangible forms to create the product. Also I experience the difficulty in dealing with physical/tangible media. For instance, when I was composing my work, it was really hard to make the cotton part look neat because of sticking and fluffy nature of the material.