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order and relationship

Minjee JeonMFA Candidate ProposalSpring 20172017 Anticipated Graduation Department of Graphic Design Virginia Commonwealth University

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Abstract.

How can we develop perspectives that govern our relationship with this world? Everyone carries internal realities: physical, mental and emotional. My work starts from exploring the essential concept that “designers start with people, coming towards a solution from the point of view of people”.1 Our visualization process goes through our system of interpretation that we carry with us everywhere we go, a system intimately tied to the body. Depicting a human figure is the most intimate reflection of ourselves, an innate image that we hold in our minds, and project almost involuntarily (we see faces in everything——even the moon!). Our perception can, therefore, project surreality of seeing, as well as a semiotic level of abstraction. If abstract art, the “spontaneity of expression”, relies on “a partially arrested development at the infantile stage”2 that everyone carries within themselves, it can provide a global platform and the means to creatively embrace diverse realities.

MechanismPrint 33.1” x 46.8”

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Perspectives.

Our body can be thought of as a vessel with an opening——a container, storing information and experience with sensors gathering data from the world. The opening, the access point of a vessel is the eye of a lens that only perceives what we can apprehend or accept as true. We see and transform the world through contextualizing and giving forms based on our understanding. We read images, but can only do so within the limits of our reading ability. It is thus a matter of percolation and the choices that we make as we interpret, build perception, and develop our perspectives.

Diagram II (Physical)Lightbox. Level two

Wood + Backlit film print8” x 8” x 8”

image 1image 2

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A Lense5 second animated gif.

A sphere lens absorbs light and diffuses it back. It is bringing a natural process to artificial structure making invisible visible.

Light.

Light or the metaphor of light is essential to reading, permitting and introducing a legible area. Historically, an in-depth understanding of the nature of light was made possible through the invention of lenses, introducing the world of macroscopic bodies and microsystems. The resulting widened physical range of legibility revealed the mysterious harmony and order in every natural system. Through orders and patterns, we are able to see the theory of gestalt that becomes a model to guide our relationship to this world.

Diagram II (Physical)Lightbox. Level oneWood + Backlit film

5” x 5” x 5”

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Diagram II (Physical)Lightbox. Level two

Wood + Backlit film print8” x 8” x 8”

Relationship.

The relationship between human bodies and the natural world is intimately physical, connecting us though shared experience of space, time, mass and energy. Our viewpoints are built on top of our learning and scientific rationales that embody the strict laws of physics. How we see this order becomes an invisible machinery that elucidates our perspectives in a novel and creative way. We look into existing materials as extensions our body and use this to grasp and gauge our place in the world.

image 1image 2

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Diagram II (Physical)Lightbox. Level three

Wood engraving + Backlit film11” x 11” x 11”

Fossils.

The fossil is an interesting object to observe——it possesses attributes that are considered to express truth, the physicality of existence and the embedded characteristic of reality. Fossils can be thought of as a mark of history, and by examining them and considering them scientifically, we shape a paradigm that shifts present and future. So we may ask, where and what does it point to?

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Natural System and Human InterferencePopup book. 8.5” x 30”Popup process book. 8.5” x 20”

What is human interference with a natural system and how does data collection lead the narrative?

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Order.

“The chain of signification”3 continuously develops and reshapes our relationship to everything through the way it is understood. My work relies on an interest in visual diagrams, using gestalt theories of construction to create relationships of image and structure that are brought to consciousness. Viewers are encouraged to interpret these relationships and seek order. It is a journey, finding a way out of a labyrinth, a departure from confusion.

Order: The disposition of things following one after another, as in space or time.

To me, order is:* making sense, making things understandable * construing form out of the void * seeking towards truth and value * navigating location and finding control from a state of being out of control * a logic that maneuvers in relations to others and therefore, it only exists and defined by another

Diagram I12 second animgated gif.

Projected

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Self ContainerPaper box. 12” x 14” x 16”

Projector

Projected Diagram I and Me

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Ways of seeing.

People have ways of seeing. Even when confronting the highest resolution, detailed depiction, the reading of an image can be distinctive, depending on how the viewer interprets things. Our channels may diverge from one another but still, the building blocks of our framework always reveal, and gravitate toward reality. “The earliest theory of art, that of the Greek philosophers, proposed that art was mimesis, imitation of reality”.4 Contrary to detailed figurative representations in art, abstract art is subtracting mimesis and the detachment from reality, yet the reading of an abstract work inevitably stems from the recognition of reality.

Six Interpretations26 second animation

Abstract Visual I6 second animated gif.

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Denis-P J1058.7-154812 second animated gif. web page

Abstract Visual II6 second animated gif.Translating Denis-P J1058.7-1548

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Practice.

Abstraction in images makes forms recognizable by exclusion. Using free form objects, and the processes of reduction can add flexibility to our perception of reality. Kenya Hara talks about ‘Muji’ where ‘Mu’ directs our attention to absence and an understanding of the limitless potential reasons for its existence. Our cognitive perception can explore unusual ideas and derive new meanings when the image is less representational. Therefore, abstraction is a method I seek to use to shape a meaningful read and allow for a wider approach to the subjects that I discuss. Graphic design does not only solve problems but also raise awareness. It can open up dialogues in creative ways, promoting education and encouraging change.

Body Series6 second animated gifs.

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Body Series6 second animated gifs.

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Body.

The forces of culture and mass media encourage an ideal standard of beauty, and simultaneously enforce negative connotations at the opposing end. My approach is to employ abstraction and ambiguity to neutralize this experience and attitudes toward the perfect and imperfect body image. The work I create arises from personal childhood experience of trauma, what it means to be different and how these differences are viewed. My story endeavors to examine our cognition with regards to an unexpected, extraordinary body image.

HandAnimation

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When the palms are lightly folded together, the space within is so mall that a butterfly can barely flap its wings Here, in this empty vessel, ready to hold something, is the origin of one more tool, a vessel.Kenya Hara, “What is Design”

Kenya Hara observes that the basic form of a hand when combined with the mirror image of the other hand, creates a vessel, and the hand becomes an object and an instrument to shape an alternate view. I isolate and manifest my hand to foreshadow an image that defies expectation and opens up a wonderment of disfigurement and fracturing. The trauma can be resolved by connecting to fantasies and new ways to communicate, and therefore, offers a framework for understanding the outside world.

The abstraction of a human figure, a simplified unrepresentative form, is to conflate the ideal with the deformed, collapsing the two by setting them on a mutual level. Therefore, the use of abstraction is a creative approach to body perception. More than an attempt to correct prevailing stereotypes and discrimination, I am interested in exploring new ways of viewing the difference and question how altered properties can shape a meaningful reading and alternative approach. The project is to question what perception do we have towards reality? What do you expect to see, and what perception would you create when encountering the unexpected? Through animated video, it allows this reformulation to stretch an object’s dimensions.

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Bruno Munari.

I connect my work with Bruno Munari where his focus is on “the exploration of the perceptual and sensory faculties, and the search for ways to overcome objective limitations”.5 Munari’s works extend the way of looking through the method of searching for an expressive opportunity in every imaginable form.

“His continual oscillation between the organic and inorganic, the figurative and the abstract, he aspired to find the connections that link each element of the universe. … using precise mathematical and harmonious relationships...he was able to interpret this knowledge in his work in a poetic form”.5

Notes

1. Moggridge, Bill, “What is Design” Lecture, Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, 2011.2. Berton, ‘Artistic Genesis and Perspective of Surrealism,’ New York 19413. Bolton, Christopher, Animating Poststructuralism, 20124. Sontag, Susan. Against interpretation, and other essays. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2007. Print.5. Bruno Munari. My futurist past. Cinisello Balsamo: Silvana, 2013. Print.

Seated Man + Solar Apparition 1932Abstract Composition in Space 1932

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Questions.

How can an abstract art be utilized as a tool to generate positive reads and allow the various level of access points?

What do viewers read, and how do they fill in the gaps when the detailed depiction of a body figure is altered and abstracted?

If we are drawn to an ideal image of a human form, then how can we use the process of abstraction to neutralize and counter this tendency and to focus on the reality of the imperfect, extraordinary human figure?

Can abstraction be a way to empower the subject, or disrupt the apparatus, or further re-configure the view itself?

People force abstraction on to others - and can that be a powerful thing?

How do people perceive micro/macro mechanisms of abstraction?

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Precedents.

Bruno MunariHerbert BayerJoan MiróRené MagritteEmmy van LeersumLisa BufanoLucy McRae and Bart HessTony Oursler

Bibliography.

After the end of art: contemporary art and the pale of history. Lawrenceville: Princeton U Press, 2014. Print.

Annink, Ed, and Ineke Schwartz. Bright minds, beautiful ideas: parallel thoughts in different times. Amsterdam: Book Industry Services (BIS), 2004. Print.

Aparicio, Carmen Fernández, and Joan Miró. Miró: the experience of seeing ; late works, 1963-1981 ;. New Haven, Conn.: Yale U Press, 2014. Print.

Bolton, Christopher, Animating Poststructuralism, 2012

Bruno Munari. My futurist past. Cinisello Balsamo: Silvana, 2013. Print.

Caulfield, Sean. Perceptions of promise: biotechnology, society and art. Edmonton, Alta.: U of Alberta, Department of Art & Design, 2011. Print.

Dupin, Jacques, Joan Miró, and Paul Auster. Joan Miró. Barcelona: Ediciones Polígrafa, 2009. Print.

Jäger, Joachim, Gabriele Knapstein, and Anette Hüsch. Beyond cinema: the art of projection: films, videos and installations from 1963 to 2005: works from the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection im Hamburger Bahnhof, from the Kramlich Collection and others: curated by Stan Douglas ... Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, 2006. Print.

Lupton, Ellen. The ABC’s of : the Bauhaus and design theory ; from preschool to post-modernism ; exhibition 8 April - 11 May 1991. New York: Princeton Architectural Pr., 1991. Print.

Lupton, Ellen. Beautiful users: designing for people. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2014. Print.

Miró, Joan, Anne Umland, and James Coddington. Joan Miró: painting and anti-painting: 1927-1937. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2008. Print.

Miró, Joan, Matthew Gale, and Marko Daniel. Miró: the ladder of escape. London: Tate, 2011. Print.

Moggridge, Bill, “What is Design” Lecture, Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, 2011.

Munari, Bruno, and Patrick Creagh. Design as art. London: Penguin, 2008. Print.

Roegiers, Patrick. Magritte and photography. New York, NY: Ludion, 2005. Print.

Sherin, Aaris. Design elements: color fundamentals: a graphic style manual for understanding how color affects design. Beverly, MA: Rockport Publishers, 2012. Print.

Sontag, Susan. Against interpretation, and other essays. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2007. Print.

Wood, Ghislaine. Surreal things: surrealism and design. London: V & A Publications, 2007. Print.

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