Course: CTCH 110
Instructors: Rebecca Caines, Jason Cullimore
Assignment: Project Plan
Project Name: Shadow Joy
Student Name: Hongchen Zhang
Student ID: 200316701
Date: 2015/3/19
I watched this video in the class that was played by a guest speaker. I forgot his name, and all I remembered is he is pretty tall, and come from some sort of film department. There were many video clips that he presented during the class time, and to be honest they were all cool stuffs due to the creative technology. However, one of them that impressed me the most was called “Face Hacking”, which is about 2 Japanese guys are sitting down on a certain stage with their face facing the projectors, and the electronic patterns are presented from the projectors to their faces as the surfaces. Then you can watch both of their faces are changing to all kinds of covering masks that whatever the projectors displayed, such as the faces of animals, robots, aliens, skulls, and so on. It brought a huge impact to my mental appreciation, so that I cannot help myself to be super enjoyable about this art work.
The entire presentation of the face hacking was about 3 minutes, but it’s long enough to be an outstanding work. It was fantastic to shock your mind so that you have no time to catch a breath until the show was finished. In terms of this amazing art work that I have never seen before, a little bit research had been operated by myself, and the result was surprisingly less complicate than I thought, which is blew as this: Since the human face is the digital surface for projection, it is crucial to make sure that the skin is ready to be mapped almost entirely. Eyebrows are flattened with liquid wax and an air brush procedure is carried out to create a blank envelope. The process becomes intricate when tiny markers are precisely placed on the model’s face for the purpose of facial tracking. The two models are seated facing digital projectors and multiple infrared cameras all connected to specialized software; triangulating the marker positions in 3D space. This set-up calibrates the position of the markers and maps the geometry i.e. Measuring the distance between the eyes, the length & width of individual facial parts. With the mapping layout in hand, the projection is overlapped onto the faces of the moving models with utmost accuracy.
Any successful masterpiece will require many setups and preparations; it won’t be easy unless you do not want to create something influential and powerful. Due to the limitations and resources restrictions, I do not think it is practical to make something relate to creative technology as much as complex as this one. So what I am planning to design will be much easier than the “Face Hacking”, but will definitely adopt its idea because it is the source of my inspiration. Light is a very typical element to be used in creative technology field, so instead of using electronic laser, I will use light beam as my power source. However, normally the light colors are only yellow or white, so in order to have more color choices, what I can do is either finding other colorful light bulbs or just using white one with being covered by the colorful transparent papers. Anyway, I will figure it out later in the making process.
For shifting the patterns from one to another, I do need to think about some ways that not only easy to manipulate, but also effective as well. What I can imagine now is using the paper cuts. When the light shine into the holes of the papers, the shadow it creates will make the patterns. So compare to the “Face Hacking”, instead of using the electronic lighting to make visual textures, I will use the opposite way, which is the shadow. When the shadow is presented in the certain surface, it will be apparently divided to the positive and negative spaces. The shadow parts will be totally dark and the bright part will be the object that I want to project. Furthermore, the bright part as the positive space is not only showing the viewers what it is, but its color can also be changed as long as the light bulb is covered by different colors’ papers. Stop here and you may ask: what will be the presenting surface? Good question! In terms of the innovation and creativity, I definitely won’t use the face as the surface again. Instead of copying the “Face hacking” to the body parts, I will try to use objects. For example, a blank cup will be a good choice. Whenever I project the light through the paper pattern-cut-hole onto the surface of the cup, its meaning will be totally changed. I can present a spider on the cup to make it as one which belong to a wild person; I can display a Cupid onto the cup to represent the owner of it is a romantic folk; or I can depict a Montreal Canadian team sign onto it so that the audiences can quickly recognize the passion of a hockey fun.
However, just using lights to project somethings onto somewhere sounds not that exciting and influential. So I came up with another idea to make this assignment more interesting and challenged. I just finished my final graduate exhibition in the Mackenzie Art gallery, the theme of my show was about the narrative story telling. What I want to try is using the lighting as my medium to create comic stories. Imagine this, if you present a four-frame comic into four different cups’ surfaces, will that be real interesting? So in this case, I will design a particular stage for presenting the papers with pattern-cutting on them. Because the papers can be moved easily and the light can be adjusted any time you want, so why don’t I use it to make an animation instead of a stock-still comic. Therefore, I will make the stage has a motor to transport the paper from one side to another, which like the shadowgraph show. The only difference is the shadowgraph’s characters are created by objects’ shadows, but my project’s characters are made by the lights through the paper holes.
As we talked about in the class lecture, the teacher Rebecca asked us if we think the DJ’s CD players are creative technology. The real definition of this term just blew my mind. Suddenly I understood what creative technology is. It is simply a creation above the original technology. In other words, it is a new way to use the existed technology. Relate to my final project on this course, I have to use something famous and intelligent that already existed, and then present them with the light beams. Then I thought about the Chinese artistic engraving of papers. The Chinese paper-cut are extremely influential especially in the Chinese country sides. A lot of famers regard cutting artistic paper as their part-time enjoyment. Whenever the Chinese Spring Festival is coming, people will gather together with their scissors and red papers, start to cut the paper. There are so many skillful strategies are required to this work. How do you cut; where should you cut; how hard or soft should you control your strain of cutting, and so on. Those questions have to be considered during the process. After they finished, you can see the fantastic objects that they created with their tiny scissors. As one of the very typical Chinese culture, I am going to using the paper-cut as my moulding board to be the transition between the medium and the surface. Whatever patterns or objects on the paper, I will project them with light and shadows onto the other surface. In order to make up the lack of motionless, I will work on the light colors to make whatever being projected are in different color levels so that the themes can be changed with them as well. For example, if the paper-cut pattern is a cow. When I use a white light to present it, its color will be white like a milk cow, right? However, if I shift my light to yellow, the cow will turn to be cattle as the livestock; if I change the color to red, you can realize the anger of the cow and may turn it to be a fighting bull.
The Chinese paper-cut is a traditional art, just like the ancient CD players. However, when you use the traditional art in a contemporary way, its meaning can be somehow sublimed to another level. DJ wipes the CD to make exciting music and that special fractive sound almost changed the world. Today one of the most popular stage performances---street dance is tightly inseparable with the DJ’s CD players wiping. The same idea here, instead of appreciating those fantastic paper-cut art pieces just by visually, I give them a new way to present out due to a transition from the positive space to the negative space. Chinese paper-cut is an ancient culture belongs to the past, but we take it out as a new way of showing the art, and which is also the conception of my own understanding to the creative technology.
Another artist that inspired me a lot is also come from Japan, whose name is Kumi Yamashita. If you look at her art work, you will find how successful the light and shadow that she manipulate with her objects. Like one of her work call “A to Z” (2011), she hanged the curved wood of 26 English litters randomly on the wall with the single light source, and a female face shadow covered part of the litters. So with the shining of the light from the same direction, the face shadow covered the some of the litters’ shadows, at the same time, they also combined the negative space with the litters’ shadows to make it as a whole. Another fantastic piece of work with lighting skills! I learnt some senses of engaging with lights and shadows from her works, and when I push those ideas and theories into my own project, it will be really helpful. Today’s art works cannot stay at where they were; we have to explore a new way to rebuild it. Still using the example I mentioned earlier, the cups. If I combine the paper cut patterns with blank cup’s surface together, it is equal to a mixture between arts and life goods, of cause it won’t be done without the help of technology---the lights. So if you ask me why this project I planned is important to the contemporary culture, I will say it is a significant recall of the ancient art which adopting to the new life styles.
Overall, the final project I would like to make is a portable stage with the holder of papers, and a light source with switches of choosing colors will be attached to the stage. On the other side, you can put any objects as the projecting surface, and whatever it is, after the light shining onto it, the object will present you something cool for sure.
My understanding of creative technology is not only stay at making something fancy and useful, but also make something as a piece of art. I am a visual art student, no matter what kind of technology I use for the tools; the purpose will be the same, which is making a thing for people to see, to feel, to appreciate.
