Sophie Calle
Sophie Calle is a controversial conceptual artist, writer, photographer, and installation artist. She discusses the identity, short in human relationships in her artworks. Her work often requires the participation of others, sometimes actively, sometimes passively.
I was interested in her work because I was doing a work about identity. My experience in character design told me that if a character If you want a character to be multi-faceted, we can't label them and typify them. We need as much detail as possible. Sometimes even if it is a very unimportant supporting role,I also need to write a small story for him to ensure that he is not a thin role. It happens that Sophie Calle collects a lot of information from other people in her works, and some of it is very personal. As far as I am concerned, I prefer this method, rather than reading some very academic articles. I feel the detailed evidence she presented and the true reflection of others made me more convinced of her idea, which was more authentic.
I am also very interested in her description of her work as "private game". I understand it as a way of communication, which is restricted by different conditions and has different results if there are different restrictions. I also think of the work I've been doing recently like a game, whether it's imagining the lives of former residents based on the content of the letter, or swapping content of the boxes with my audience. I've been collecting things or information from other people, but my concern is no longer about identity, it's about everyday objects, and what started as an inward exploration of the object itself has now become an outward communication.
"She’s Dead", 2018, Sophie Calle
"The Tie", 1993, Sophie Calle
"The Hotel, Room 28", 1981, Sophie Calle
"Sophie Calle: And so Forth"
Unflattening
"Unflattening" is a graphic novel that interprets multidimensional observation. While he elaborated on the topic of what is multi-dimensional, the importance of multi-perspective observation, the way we think, and how to observe, he also demonstrated the possibility of comics becoming a doctoral thesis with his book itself. He believed that images are not subordinate to language, but equal partners in the process of expressing thoughts.
For me, it is very important for me to use pictures to express the story in my works, whether it is for my works to interpret the everyday objects themselves or for my works to show the process of observing everyday objects. I have also tried to use symbols (" How Many t-shirts Will I Have in My Life ", "The Key Office"), and tried to use linear narration similar to comics (" Lost and Found "). However, what I saw in his works were not only linear plots connected by pictures and words but also structural annotations combining language and pictures. Therefore, I tried to tell stories in this way in my graduation works.
Moreover, for Sousanis, imagination can integrate information from different sources into a "third space", which combines the characteristics of various information to produce new structures and make the familiar world unfamiliar. Inspired by Sousanis, I seek information from other people (such as other people's letters, other people's objects, interviews with friends, relatives, and strangers) in various ways, trying to link the known information with the unknown information, and constantly add the unknown and things from others to form a dynamic work.
"Unflattening", by Nick Sousains
"Unflattening", page 69
"Unflattening", page 67
Jorge Luis Borges
Jorge Luis Borges was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet, and translator， I recently have read some of his novels. Many of his novels are about philosophy, mathematics, logical reasoning, religion, infinity, time, full of elements such as mirrors, mazes, libraries, dreams and the universe. It has been said that his novels have almost no plot and the image of characters is too thin, emotionless, and has no personality. Sometimes I also didn't understand his story, but I don't think the plot of a novel has to revolve around the character. The sense I get from Borges' novels is that his novels revolve around his preconceived concepts or ideas, which may be the analysis of the immortalization of infinity or the conjecture of time. In a word, it seems to me that he is matching one of his concepts with an appropriate time and space, character and plot.
And I think that's exactly what his novels have in common with some of the artworks, which is less linear logic. For me, some of my works rely on imagination to complete a story, such as "Boring Amusement Park". When I was creating the work, I felt that the characters in this story were unimportant, because I assimilated them into one group of people. At this point, Borges' novel made me realize the figuration of abstract things and how the relationship between reality and illusion affect the concept behind the work.
“ The Garden of Forking Paths", by Jorge Luis Borges
“ The Library of Babel", by Jorge Luis Borges
Steven Pinker
Steven Pinker is a cognitive psychologist, linguist, and popular science author。So far, I have read some of his books on language and cognition and seen some of his speeches. He talks about what the human mind is, how it evolved, how it works, and he argues for it in terms of visual perception, reasoning, logic, emotion, social relations, and so on，And how language as a kind of instinct exists in human beings, the understanding of language in a broader sense, the mechanism and application of language, and so on.
Sometimes I already know how to do my artwork, but the theories in his book made me clearer about why I did it. For example, he mentioned "mentalese" in his book "Language Instinct", which roughly means that language is not the only way of thinking, but can build a connection between things in the brain, sometimes expressed as "mental image". It also reminds me of a theory of "sixth sense", namely the sixth sense does not appear out of nowhere, but your brain summarized a lot of your life experience, then give you a conclusion. This kind of abstract thinking in the brain, let me think about the interactive part of my work. The process of letting the audience select a box by feeling might use the abstract "sixth sense" in the audience's mind, or there is some connection between the picture on the box and themselves, and then I would use that connection to complete my first step observation. In a word, based on such theoretical support, I know what I am doing and can continue the work according to this idea.
In addition, he also used a lot of materials and explained the basic principles of some sociological experiments in the book, which helped me a lot when I was thinking about how to interact with the audience.
“ How Mind Works", by Steven Pinker
“ The Language Instinct", by Steven Pinker
Marc-Antoine Mathieu
Marc-Antoine Mathieu is a French cartoonist whose work is very experimental. In his comics that I've read, I personally think he's always creating a very narrow space, and then he's going to give you a direction and make it impossible for you not to follow that direction. When you keep going in the same direction, where all that happens is a to b, b to c, no branching. What I mean by direction is that, for example, he's in his book ' 3” ', the story begins with a mirrored image and ends with a mirror reflecting from one to the other, so the reader follows the direction of the mirror to see the whole story. And in "Le Dessin," the story revolves around the infinitely magnified "picture in picture." And in "Sens," the only character in the story is simply following some arrows all the time. He doesn't seem to want to build a grand world in his book，and I really like the consistency and the absurdity of it.
For me, since I have been drawing some stories, I will look for some interesting ways to tell stories. I think he set up a unique structure of storytelling in comics. Although I haven't found a specific way about how his work relates to my work, I know that what I want to do uses my way to explore the possibility of expressing stories indifferent structure.
' 3" ', by Marc-Antoine Mathieu
" Le Sens ", by Marc-Antoine Mathieu
" Die Zeichnung", by Marc-Antoine Mathieu