I began the workshop today by introducing two artists to the students. First, artist Heather Dewey-Hagborg, and her project, Stranger Visions, In this well-made documentation video on her project ,Dewey-Hagborg created portrait sculptures from analyses of genetic material collected in public places.
Japan born artist, Saeri Kiritani, created her selfportrait sculpture with rice and rice noodles titled, 100 pound of Rice, to describe her journey of discovering self-identity as an immigrant.
These two projects opened beautifully for the class today and the direction where I’d like to encourage the students to work towards.
I am hoping to create more workshop exercise and I brought a few classroom exercise today. The ideas were inspired by the project Dear Data. I had prepared a small tool box before the workshop for today’s exercise. The tool box included: paper clay, wooden sticks, color sticks, red yarn, color PVC strings, large drawing paper, color pencils, scissor and knife.
During the course of the workshop, I began by asking questions related specifically to their memory and emotions, the color and shape that related to the workshop participants as a group, and about sound, time and space. I asked them to collect the data and then visualize these data using the tool kit that we provided.
In our first exercise, I asked the students to remember the specific moments in the past day or week when they felt indecisive with their thoughts or actions.
In the second exercise, I asked the student to collect the fashion data of everyone in the room, then asked them to use different color and shape to visualize those data and create a group portrait sculpture based on the data they had collected.
In the last exercise, I asked the student to spend 36 seconds to listen, while others making random noises and sound around Studio A. After listening, the students were asked to visualize the sound , specifically, using different shape to represent different character, and to use colors to represent the direction of the sound,and to use mass to represent the volume.
After the exercise, the students presented their own quantified-selfie tool kit and project progress. It’s very exciting for me to see the progress of each student and how much knowledge and understanding of the subject had grown in just four weeks since we started. We are ready to move onto project production now.
今天的工作坊一開始對學員介紹2位藝術家和她們的作品。藉由這兩支紀錄片為今天的課程作個漂亮開場，引導並鼓勵學員對課程的內容進入狀況。：
- 藝術家：Heather Dewey-Hagborg
作品名：Stranger Visions
連結：DNA Spoofing
這支製作精良的紀錄片簡述Dewey-Hagborg在城市間遊走中，搜集人們遺落或丟棄的毛髮、煙蒂等物品，用科學方法分析基因素材，模擬出肖像並施作模型雕塑。
- 藝術家：Saeri Kiritani
作品名：100 Pounds of Rice
出生於日本的作者用自身最熟悉的「米」來創作，展開一段移民者自我身份的探索與認同 。
一直希望有多一點的課堂練習，所以今天準備了一些讓學生動手實作，我設計的這些練習的題材由創作名為「Dear Data」的作品所啓發，也準備了放有不同媒材的工具箱，材料有：紙粘土、小木棒、彩色竹籤、紅毛線、多色的塑料線、大張畫紙、彩色鉛筆、剪刀和美工刀具。
從課程中，我循序漸進的提問學員關於他們的記憶和情緒的相關問題，互相觀察工作坊成員的色彩與形狀組成，並利用聲音、時間、空間的方式來增進感知上的敏感度。他們利用提供的工具，用視覺化的方式搜集資料與分析，呈現出提問的問題。
練習1：用素材表達在昨天或過去一星期，曾發生過上猶豫不決或優柔寡斷的動作或想法。
練習2：搜集教室內工作坊成員的時裝數據，例如：服飾總類、 顏色組成、形狀差別、、、等後，用色彩和圖形來表示差異性和作視覺化的分析，再使用不同媒材組合成雕塑作品。
練習3：工作坊人員用不同器具在室內發出的聲響或噪音36秒鐘，學員聆聽後用視覺與形態化聲音呈現，特別是，要用不同圖形表示音質差異而賦予不同的個性，用色彩來表達位置來源的方向性，用量化的形狀表示大小強度 。
這些課堂練習過後，每位學員發表這幾個星期內的功課，在量化自拍工具箱裡搜集的內容，和創作題材的進度。對於他們分享的物件和過程，我感到很興奮，也認知從開始到現在的四個星期中，他們對課程的理解和知識層面的增進，我們已經準備好可以開始動手作了。