aram’s blog

My database

Data always tags me along the word ‘collect’, because that’s how I studied English matching proper words sets, and repeating the words together as ‘collect the data’. This way, I may not forget the words, but could also have a prejudice of the word - data is mean to be collected?

I created three data base sets: things that I collect ‘actively’ and thing that I collect ‘passively’. Although I’ve already showed my collections of Nike sneakers for the first assignment - Weathermap, creating my own database of Nike seemed an expansion version of weathermap, not recycling, so I included it. Second database is collections of ‘Paper sleeve vinyl replica CDs’, also known as ‘Kami-jyake CD’ (in Japanese, Kami means paper and Jyake is pronunciation of jacket which means ’sleeve’ to be exact) And third database is stacks of receipts that I ‘had to’ collect for some use such as tracking money flow.

Technically, I benefitted a lot from ‘Preview’ and ‘Dash Board’ that come with mac osx. Preview was used to show all data, so with Preview, I can ‘access’ the data. Dash Board (F9 key lets you do this function) contributes the randomness, because I can’t precisely layout which images to go where before Dash Board is launching. Images spread out in a second and they stay with desktop darkened.

Feedback:

What is the relation between each database? I certainly expected someone would be asking if those receipts are the results of above two categories purchase. (and someone did.) My answer is ‘no’. I wanted each database exist independently,  …..

When they are shown, why some parts of display don’t really match to the others? I didn’t do my perfection to make all three screens look same when presenting. For example, I did not modify ‘dock’ from mac osx to automatically disappear (following pictures show the installation at the hallway at the presentation time), whereas some were hiding it. 

Funny Game is Austrian horror film from 1997 directed by Michael Haneke, who also did a remake version of same title in U.S. The movie is full of horrifying scenes based on what two psycotic young men are constantly terrorizing an well-off family. The second U.S. version was a shot-for-shot remake of its predecessor with different actors and language.

When I watched the first one almost ten years ago, because of many disturbing visuals and context, this movie remained so strongly in my memory, then U.S remake version caught my attention again. My expectation grew with fairly ’strong’ actors like Naomi Watts and Tim Roth. I thought, as the title itself, ‘funny’ because same director did remake(or remix?) in U.S. I watched it and disappointed mainly from what I have seen from Michael Pitt’s performance. I would be more lenient if this was a play in theater of the original movie.

This disappointment made me think of making my own version of ‘remix’ that shows supremacy of the original version, and it requires the sacrifice of U.S. version. Technically, I wanted to put the original one on top layer implying it’s better, and ghosted-out(by lower opacity) U.S. version should be the bottom layer.

I did series of overlapped-footages that shows two opaque layers of different version of movies. First I extracted four important episodes from the whole movie (a young man borrowing four eggs, two men imposing the family end up breaking the husband’s knee, the lady being forced to find her dead dog, and the lady being forced to say a prayer), then play them at the same time.

Funny Games - Remix from Aram Chang on Vimeo.

While first remix shows almost matching position of different movie’s actors in frames, in this ‘dead-dog’ remix I found that two ladies are in different space creates more interesting, playful view-point especially when two are not overlapped, but in different scale - one looks tall while the other looks like a midget. Except very last scene with the dead dog found from the car, two ladie’s wandering around (by each villain’s ‘cold - hot’ sign) seems (to me) very ‘funny’.

FunnyGames_Dog from Aram Chang on Vimeo.

Viewing these series of remix in effective way was more challenging for me, than the remix itself.  Like I did last week for Character assignment, I could have used multiple LCD screens available on hallway, but I wanted to explore further to give proper feeling to the audiences - delivering disturbing (because the movies are meant to be disturbing) and spooky atmosphere. Therfore, I ended up installing projectors in the dark corner of Japanese room. Was this successful… I doubt that. Showing former version of remix at the same time only created more confusion, despite my pure intension to providing more perspective.

Why couldn’t I simply come up with something like this?  I believe this is a great remix …

Some articles and stories about animal’s mental disorder intrigued me to look back when I painfully decided to fix (castration) my cat several years ago. Back then, I was worried what will happen to my cat knowing that castration could be a cruel thing to him, erasing his ‘identity’ so there will be no more territorial pissing or any hostile behavior which means convenient for people, not for his sake.  And after he was castrated, I realized that it should have been done earlier if I wanted him to be a complete ‘indoor type’ cat, not a wild one. He still moans a lot in night time, and does recognize a cat doll that my wife bought for him implying it’s his wife. Only thing that has been changed ever since is no more territorial pissing at every corner to corner.

I believe that he’s still a cat, but his identity has been blurred now he’s ‘disturbed’ cat, not fixed-one.

What if he thinks himself a human-being? This seems possible for me because my cat and I have been living together for several years and main ‘character’ he has seen in his limited world is me (or my wife).

So, I experimented that what it feels like a being a cat, wearing a mask that I created, and socks on both hands.

Character_MasterVid_CatMan from Aram Chang on Vimeo.

Character_CatToy from Aram Chang on Vimeo.

I did a comic that consists of three stories crossing to show more than one ending sequence to the audience. The subject was ‘Tony Montana‘ from the movie Scarface, who is becoming almost insane in the particular scene that I chose to use.  Since this isn’t about re-creating or ‘just’ cartooning one of my favorite movies, I decided to tweak the story by grabbing one famous(very!) line - “Say hello to my little friend!” where the story begins.

Intended flow was that the audience to read

1. left vertical story line first, move onto right side one following by
2. the ‘bridge’ strip which consists of two identical ‘pause’s in center, then
3. view the third story.

And each strip should tell you following stories

1. Left vertical line: Tony gets angry (for what happened before) then yells at the cuban mobs (outside of the door), there’s no response but a cat’s moan.
2. The bridge line: An intended ‘pause’ by cloning same cuts of Tony pointing his gun at the door. Finally he hears ‘Hola’ from the cuban mob outside and feels embarrassed by.
3. Right vertical line: Cuban mobs waiting for the right moment to burst in, gathering more crew around the door area. Then they hear loud “Say hello!” from inside and respond saying ‘hola’. The door blasts out by angry Tony’s gunshot, casualties, and there’s Tony looking down them and saying ” I said ‘Hello’(not any other languages?)”.

Feedback from class: I knew that the first one would be ‘why not ‘z’ axis’? which means, this comic lacks of three dimensional aspect. I started off thinking about making comics in 3D form even before brainstorming about the story, however, creating comic itself(in rather conventional way such as drawing and putting it in the square cell box) seemed priority that I should spend more time. And… I ended up respecting all reference comics from online and spending my lifetime to mimic them as I could. I think it was a good practice to understand, or at least experience comic drawing skill.

Besides this, more powerful and unexpected one was that many of class didn’t quite undestand how story goes. And some details such as sweating with darkened face wasn’t comprehensible.

Initially, it seemed hard to connect ‘weather’ and anything from ‘me’ whether it is personal or not. Once I decided to go with ‘personal’ direction, I managed to come up with the way to connect a possibly interesting habit of me and weather - shoes and weather.

People do care what to wear depending on the weather every day.  I don’t wear any mesh sneakers when it’s rain or snow. This simple ‘policy’ made it possible to keep all sneaker collections I’ve treasured in nice and clean shape, lasting longer than typical longevity of ‘just’ sneakers.

Map consists of three visual elements - a bottom of sole graphic for a map, weather icons on each directions, and geometric dots from the legend, that indicate each specific model of the sneakers.

From my understanding of ruleset, I tried to include as less letters as I could. I was simply afraid of letting me making a mind map, rather than a weather map.

Feedback:

1. No one asked why I named the title “Air Temperature Pattern”. The answer is, that I felt like word-playing implying “Air” is also Nike Air. Many of the sneakers I put on the legend are Nike Air Max series from late 80’s. I thought they really look like “pattern” when grouped, also have something to do with “temperature”.

2. Ramona made an important comment. I wanted to remember it exactly, so I asked her after class then I forgot what she exactly said! (a shame…) She pointed out that the way I explain the map is interesting because I sort of ‘reverse’ the reason why I discriminate certain shoes.

3. Sanjay immediately recognized almost whole thing including my intention, concept, and Nike-madness.

4. Hulya said that I didn’t seem to be a person who could collect that many shoes, never (in the elevator while we’re taking break).

5. Again, Sanjay sharply point out that he never saw me wearing some shoes in the legend - that’s true, because I also have a group of ’school sneakers’ in my mind. You won’t see me wearing all of them from the legend.

6. Alberto asked me if I cared less Asics Onitsuka Tiger Mexico 66 than any other because he found it on relatively ‘bad’ weather region. Knowing him wearing Onitsuka Tiger often, this seemed toughest question for me. I love them, but they don’t fit me well as much as Nikes do. And most importantly, weather dictates what I should wear!