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Allatonceness Project: 夜路 Walking into the Night

夜路 Walking into the Night MV In tribal societies we are told that it is a familiar reaction, when some hideous event occurs, for some people to say, "How horrible it must be to feel like that," instead of blaming somebody for having done something horrible. This feeling is an aspect of the new mass culture we are moving into — a world of total involvement in which everybody is so profoundly involved with everybody else and in which nobody can really imagine what private guilt can be anymore. - McLuhan, p. 61      Walking into the Night is a song Roger and I thought it should be a traditional Jazz depicting a woman walking on the street at night. The feeling of fear being followed or being gazed is something that women still cannot get rid of in nowadays. There is a kind of freedom that women can hardly enjoy.      However, with writing out the lyrics, I realized that this feeling can be generalized to everyone. We are all under the controls of something else, and it could be
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Photography project: NOTHING is happening

"Weirdcore is an online aesthetics and art centered around amateur or low-quality photography and/or digital graphics that have been constructed or edited to convey feelings of confusion, disorientation, alienation, and nostalgia or anemoia." - Aesthetics Wiki Flickr album: NOTHING is Happening.liminal... Weirdcore photography has a strong connection with another concept, liminal spaces, a location which is a transition between two other locations, or states of being. This makes it feel frozen and slightly unsettling, but also familiar to our minds. The process of making the online album, turming into a photo book, and fnailly putting a photo in the exhibit was interesting and meaningful. It makes me discover something I might not be able to try, and this project provided me an opportunity to get into photographs: what photos can convey and how they would be received differently in various formats. 

Soundscape: Different Shapes of Water

Different Shapes of Water What is your impression of water? When I say "WATER", what would you imagine? A glass of water? A river/lake? Taking a shower?       When I think of "SOUND", I was thinking about water. Water is such a common element on this planet that we need it every single day, and it easily changes its shapes. Also, it can create "MUSIC" that so naturally comforts our sensations and minds.  "The highest purpose is to have no purpose at all. This puts one in accord with nature, in her manner of operation." - John Cage Water is so common to see ans to hear that we might have barely considered it as "sound", not even possible as "music" (or we call it "ambient"). This soundscape is nothing more than my daily interactions with water in different shapes and seeks "joy and revolution" as John Cage believes. 

Experimental Video: The Past is Never Dead

The Past is Never Dead  The idea of the video is inspired by the game series called Rusty Lake.  Logo of the game series When I read "march backwards into the future" by McLuhan, Rusty Lake was the first thing I thought of. It uses a surrealistic and symbolic narration to depict the relationship between the past, present, future and the inescapable fate. “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”  ― William Faulkner I used this quote from Rusty Lake in the video, originally from the novel Requiem for a Nun by William Faulkner. As we move ever forward into the future, we cannot predict the future, but can only see the past. When the past becomes a memory, becomes a fact, it also becomes a destiny; and when we face the future - in fact, we face the past - we still cannot escape the shackles of fate. Water, trees, and tarot cards symbolize destiny, and although the tarot can tell fortunes, the predictions are still the reflection of the past. The scenes in the video, except

Me, Museum, Poetry, and Music

Our “Age of Anxiety” is, in great part, the result of trying to do today’s job with yesterday’s tools  - with yesterday’s concepts.   --- McLuhan, p.9          Even after about 50 years of the publication of The Medium is The Massage, we have not get out of from such “age of anxiety”. We are still “crossing barriers, erasing the old categories…”(McLuhan, 10)       It is anxious to change my academic focus from psychology to museums in the third year, and it is anxious to reconsider the nature of museums. It is always hard to cross barriers, to say goodbye to yesterdays. From today’s views, museums must be yesterday’s things. For me, a museum is more than a physical collection of artifacts, but an interactive space where thoughts, aesthetics, and emotions at different times blend and connect with the mind of visitors, constituting an inspiring journey in search of beauty and meanings in life.     Fred Wilson's museum intervetions Fred Wilson enlightens me to look at exhibits in a c