"Sleep-swim"

Intention & Inspiration

I thought of 夢うつつ(Yume Utsutsu) by Yoshimori Makoto the moment I started brainstorming for this project. Inspired by Chiharu Shiota's Trace of Memory and Dawn Ng's Paper Plane, I decided combine the two elements, thread and origami, to create a three-dimensional art piece that illustrates both the order and the chaos in my chosen music piece.

Trace of Memory

Chiharu Shiota

Paper Plane

Dawn Ng

Approach

At first it was hard to decide if I wanted to make my product related to the the musical components in the piece or the feeling it gives me every time I listen to it. Then, thinking of combining thread and origami, I decided to include both. Since this music is an original sound track from Natsume Yuujincho, an anime about japanese legendary creatures and monsters, the melody sounds slightly creepy but very calming at the same time. It reminds me of goldfish swimming, dream talking, sleep walking, and tangled threads. So I started folding origami goldfish using printed sheet music of this instrumental piece. After I finished with three, I started placing them to form a good picture. First I tied red threads to the fins of the two goldfish, then I arranged the black thread into a messy form and later placed the fish on top. Finally I put my desk lamp at different angles to get different light effect and chose the best one among the 10 images I took.

Product

As shown below in the image, my product is two origami goldfish folded using printed sheet music, placed on black thread and tied on the fins using red thread. The black thread not only stands for the chaotic feeling the music gives me, but also takes form of the ripples caused by motion of the goldfish. The two goldfish are tied using red thread because I learnt from Chiharu Shiota's Trace of Memory that the red lines she used to tie the shoes stand for memories that bind people together. Thereby I'm using the same technique to show the tangled emotion of calmness, sadness, and fear that this music represents. I named it "Sleep-swim" based on the term "sleepwalk" to give a feeling that the fish are swimming during sleep, just like how this music represents itself.

夢うつつ

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吉森信

Reflection

I think my ideas are fine, but it is more difficult than I expected to actually create what I had in mind. I could have spent more time finding a better way to fold the origami goldfish, and I could have used more of them to represent the flow of music. It still turned out fine though given that we are only allowed a limited amount of time to finish this. I also feel the need to get a real camera or at least stop using my phone to take photos because they look really unprofessional even with filters added.

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Tangible Translation

Courses

62-150 Intro to Media Synthesis and Analysis

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New creative industries are empowering new modes of collaborative consumption, creation and reuse of media. This often relies on successful collaborations between cross-trained artists, designers a...more

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Transformation of my favorite piece of music into tangible art.