Study Proposal (revised)

INSIDE AND OUTSIDE

— VISUALIZING DIFFERENT PERSONALITIES OF PEOPLE AND OBJECTS

RESEARCH QUESTION

With the amazing advancement of the video-saturated and digitally-enhanced society and the development of the individual, the way people think has undergone profound changes related to the past time.  The definition of the feeling, like happiness and safety is very simple in people’s mind during the bygone days, but that kind of happiness and safety cannot satisfy them in the contemporary society.  As a consequence, they are seeking for more things either physical or psychological to make them feel happy or safe.  They cannot be themselves like they were yesterday.  Eventually, some people lose themselves under their huge desires that are not always fulfilled, and meanwhile, they are gradually becoming more and more complicated. The complexity can be reflected in people’s personality.  Not only do split personality mental patients have totally different two personalities, actually the normal persons also have two ones, even multiple personalities.

 

The point that I am exploring will do a great job in evoking people to rethink about themselves and discover their inner thoughts that they always ignore or push aside, so that they can know themselves more deeply and control the personalities properly under different situations.  What’s more, it will exert beneficial impact on seeking the balance between positive and negative personalities in one body or object, and the different ways of seeing.

On the other hand, it is clearly natural that the development of art is intimately bound up with the advancement of the society.  If artwork, as a special mental production in the society, separates from the public, they will be entirely insignificant.  For example, as Perricone (1990) points out in reference to the relationship between artist and viewer, ‘work of art is like a magnet between creators and appreciators that occurs as a sort of connected relationship with attributes just like the things it links together are more dynamic than they been exhibited in isolation.’  Artists express the thought in their work, from which viewers receive the information by appreciating and thinking by themselves. Art is a process of mind communicating between artist and viewer; in which artist collaborate with viewer intangibly through the artwork.  So the way that how to collaborate with viewer effectively is worth exploring.

   

RESEARCH CONTEXT

My original research bases on a quote “Words are unreliable” by Chinese artist Xu Bing, which is the theme for our first two-week project.  I did the work “You make me feel so safe, Jessica” to prove the quote.  From my own perspective, a sentence in different context is totally different. The feeling of safety can be transferred to unsafety, even risk.  Actually, not only are words unreliable, everything around is also unreliable.  Take people as an example: sometimes people do things that goes against the real thoughts of their heart, and then they will confuse why they did that and why the behavior cannot be the same as thoughts on the grounds that people do not know themselves deeply or they cannot control their behavior with a kind of objective reasoning.

METHODOLOGY

Firstly, my research driven by practice in different studios in Camberwell College of Arts, and I will make full use of the resources that are available in school, like Letter Press, Print Making, Digital and 3D Workshop.  Before doing that, I will do some research and analysis on different materials at home due to the fact that the material, like human being, have different features in different situations, and the way how artist communicates with viewer in their artwork. What’s more, my future practice will try to challenge the conventional photographic and sculptural art, and enabled viewer to become aware of the their own identity in the perception of the work. To some extent, it means that I will try to create works that contains the viewer rather than drawing the viewer’s attention towards some concrete external objects and runs contrary to people’s usual experiences and expectations and challenges them intellectually and emotionally, in a sense, can tell them about themselves, about their own obsessions and desires in the past and future. 

Secondly, it is universally acknowledged that London is an international art and design centre and the city is distinctively attractive, so I will visit exhibitions as much as possible regarding to art and design in the UK, especially in London, to expand and complete my design ideas.   Last but not least, the resource in the library is an integral part of my research and it is the major source of theory to support my viewpoint.

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