This week's blog-Underglow (2005) - Susan Collins

Underglow is a piece of art that illuminated a number of separate gullies (drains) in the vicinity of Guildhall Yard, King Street and Queen Street and they were visible from dusk to dawn from November 2005 until February 2006. I like that piece of art particularly because from the picture we can see that the drains glow green light, which looks like what drains look like in the future. Also, green gives people a sense of chemicals, which suit with the idea of drain. So I like it very much.

Flash Project

(It takes forever to upload my flash movie, I will try to upload it again later)

For the flash project, I'd like to make one with the theme of Chinese Martial Art. Chinese martial art is famous in the world and is what I've always been fascinated in. Thousands of movies were casted and millions of books were written about it, one example known well in the western society is the Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. Chinese Martial Art is not just violent fighting, it is a state of mind, a way of communication with others and the society, and a beauty. But it surely will require a lot of details of human movements. I will try my best to make it as detailed as possible. Also, after learning interactivity in Flash, I may try to add some interactivity in my project.

Tree

Sound Art-Time Square

The piece of Art named "Time Square" is produced by artist Max Neuhaus. It is created by emitting sound under the center of Time Square. Because there are tunnels of different lengths under Time Square, people will hear different sounds when standing at different places because of resonance. Max and his assistants described this piece art as sculpture. Usually sculpture is perceived by eye, but ears are also able to feel the object. Besides, this piece of art share several characteristics with sculpture. At different places and angles, you feel differently towards the sound. The significance of the sound changes with the time of the day, just as the perception of sculpture changes with light. According to Max, Time Square is a place possessed by expensive real estates and deserted by art. His sound adds art to this deserted place.
In essence, his piece of sound art is the same with what we were doing. They are all using the form of sound to convey a message (in his case, creating the feeling of sculpture and adding art to Time Square). Like critiquing our art, I think the genre his piece of art is ambient. The major difference bewteen his and ours is the scale of the art(his is at Time Square...).

Sound Project

In this project I will try to convey the message that Time Flies by compressing a person's life into 30 seconds of sound. It will contain some of the representative sounds during different phases of human being, i.e., infant, adolescent, adult, and elder. Some examples of sounds that I may use are the cry of a new born baby, the oath at a wedding ceremony, and the sound of an old man walking with the help of a stick.
The theme of time and life is eternal. But more often than not, people tend not to be able to appreciate the preciousness of time. By compressing one's life into 30 seconds of sound, it should be easy for the audience to get the message and actually think about it seriously.
As for now, I haven't collected my sounds yet, so I don't know in which environment should it be listened to. But most probably headphones.