For the creative response, Lauren and I decided to collaborate on piece. One of the first few ideas we had was to go digital or at least traditional-digital hybrid because we felt it reflected his current art practice in going digital.

We thought of highlighting aspects of our partnership, ideas of movement, parallax visuals, animation, tracking shots from the tasks I did. The idea of Liminality, in -betweenness that he talks about from his work of Retainers of Anarchy. Ideas of creating a more immersive experience using and referencing traditional mediums.

We thought about how our experiences, our remote tasks, in seeing how Howie works first-hand, how chill he is, learning more practical sides of art practice, the feeling of the studio like a ghibli movie, new appreciation for martial arts, interest in animation frames etc.

Initial ideas of the creative response included creating a stop-motion animation, creating a VR documenting our experience, creating a DIY Lenticular print we found online, and a couple of martial art related ideas, from having photographs of us in martial art poses, animating them, to having a live performance of martial art poses.

In the end, we decided that one aspect that we shared and had a high impact for us is Howie’s studio. We both agreed that we really like the studio space and the general atmosphere in it. Our creative response resulted in 2 parts, one is a mini diorama of his studio space, and the other being a looping video of the diorama studio with a stop motion of Lauren’s video work for Howie in it. Within this response, it does bring in several of our initial ideas. The liminality and hybridity, of traditional vs digital, virtual vs physical, material vs immaterial. The idea of the artist’s studio. It is in his backyard, but also a separate space, surrounded by nature. It was a small cozy space. The layering of videos, inspired by the retainers of anarchy. We had several ideas for the digital part of the response as well but decided to go with a layered video in the diorama space. 

The immersive 360 experience was actually unplanned. I happened to have a fish-eye lens handy when we took images of the diorama, and then Lauren animated the video. The default app had the option to play the video in 360, which worked with the fish-eye image. We initially had the idea of simply displaying the video on a laptop screen, but we had a surface tablet which allowed for the handheld panning of the video.

I definitely tried taking more of an organic approach in this project, and I enjoyed the process. If I could continue working on it, I think I would want to add watercolor paint in the diorama, to make it less of a architecture model or doll house and more reflective of the studio experience to us. And perhaps photograph or stitch the initial photograph into an actual 360 diorama as well.

Has it been 4 months already? This term flew by, especially when we only meet once a month. Tried to wrap up my thoughts about this course experience in the reflections below. The experience has generally been positive and I’m a little sad that its ended so soon. My attempt at parsing the thoughts in my head:

Short summary:

I had expected the experience to be somewhat like a co-op or internship where I would be researching into virtual reality and learning more about 3D and immersive technology. Instead, I think I’ve gained more of a mentor, and applied other theories and concepts of visual cognition than I thought. Less on Virtual Reality, but still along the lines of immersive technology and how it plays a part in an artwork. Our meetings were full of tea, flowy conversations, martial art movies, and the atmosphere at the The Drive (the studio) . My understanding of art-making process hopefully has developed further, the idea of the artist’s studio, the role of the artists, and generally getting one step further into understanding and bridging what my intentions are in art practice and where I am in the art community.

What I’ve accomplished

In terms of what can be ‘seen’:

• Video-cuts of parallax tracking shots from 4 full length movies
• Research on the availability of 3D scanning in Vancouver
• Research on the pricing and availability of Lenticular printing

As for those ‘unseen’:

• participated in more events and activities
• Developed more video editing skills, file conversions, knowledge about cross-editing in different platforms
• Getting back into the flow of art-making, since it’s been somewhat on pause since I’ve started working co-op in January.
• Speaking up a little more in discussions, both in-class and in the partnership

What I’ve reflected on

A lot of thoughts went through my mind throughout the course, some I didn’t quite manage to catch in my head space, but the most prominent reflections for me are on the process of art making. To me this includes making within the unknown and uncertainty, and having a planned vs organic process,. I think that generally I am more of a logical-driven person, I often feel the need to plan and find certainty before I start on a project or decision. When I first started drawing I suppose, it was always a space of relief because I didn’t feel the need for certainty. But when I started pursuing art making from a more critical perspective, both these habits clashed. I’ve learnt more ‘ways’ to deal with this, both from the in-class discussions, readings, and watching how Howie work. Having seen it in actual practice I think, really validated how I felt. Although on the other hand, having to validate my thoughts through someone else’s practice seemed like a ‘wrong’ way of affirming to me. I won’t say that I’ve reconciled them completely now, but I’ve find a space where I could negotiate them rather than feeling overwhelmed.

What I think I need to work on

I am stubborn, when it comes to facing uncertainty, I realize. I usually consider myself an open-minded person in that I am open to understanding new ideas, even if I don’t agree with them. But, I am really stubborn when it comes to facing uncertainty, even though I know that uncertainty will always be present, even though I’ve tried to normalize uncertainty. This shows in my habits, I tend to over-think and brainstorm in the beginning stages, but the project ‘dies’ off because it never really took conception. I need to slowly, consistently, move the conception from my thoughts into something more tangible, and then carry out the project there.

What will happen next?

Still going digital, I think that I’m still going towards this direction. Seeing as how digitization is likely not going away anytime soon, it will still be relevant, and hence will need more thinking and consideration, about its use, the normalization of technology, what it would mean for the future. I will continue working with Howie still after this course ends, not sure for how long, but at least for another term.

Artist Assistant (Digital media initiative) – Howie Tsui  |  September 2017 – Current
Vancouver, Canada

Assisting the artist in the process of integrating and transitioning into digital media while learning more about art practice

• Conducted research into potential digital media initiatives to integrate into artworks, research topics include but not limited to: 3D scanning, lenticular printing, parallax visual culture
• Further developed video editing skills using Final cut pro & Adobe premiere pro in editing old Hong Kong martial art videos for Howie
• Ability to work independently and maintain communication from carrying out remote tasks for the Artist

#LatePost

Finally making time to write my reflection on my third check-in point, these thoughts have been sitting and marinating for a while.
Had my third in-person meeting with Howie on November 24, I’m glad the plan to meet in-person once a month is still panning out. I was worried that my work schedule, and Howie’s family duties would clash but thankfully I have some flexibility with changing my work schedule to an extent. Again, our meeting point was at Howie’s studio, when I walked into his backyard I remembered feeling slightly surprised at the sight of the studio space. I felt as though something has changed, it felt a little emptier, maybe the rain or the damp fallen leaves. About a week before this meeting, Lauren and I were reflecting on our experience and brainstorming on what to create for our creative response (more on the post about our creative response). I think, at one point of the conversation, I had painted this image of the studio space in my head that had turned somewhat idealistic, and the discrepancy of the image and reality hit me in that moment. Also, this is the first meeting where our check-ins had fallen into more of a routine. I was more conscious of the studio space and also made sure to take some pictures to reference for our creative response.

On thinking, making, creating …

So far our meetings with Howie had always had a similar flow to it. Howie would start a spontaneous flow of conversation, and offer tea at some point. This time, he talked a lot about his work in progress, his process and where he thinks the direction of the work may go. Again, I appreciate the insight into his organic thought processes. After having experienced some VISA courses that were more research- and concept- heavy, it was a nice change of pace. I still think that prior research important, but to me it is something that I carry out naturally as I pursue an idea rather than forcing it out. Finding a balance between thinking and conceptualizing, to making and doing, is still a process of negotiation for me. That negotiation however, is often accompanied with a high level of pressure and often ‘paralyzes’ the making. I’m definitely more drawn to this organic way of creating, I enjoy it and I find it fun. But, the impression I have is that making art shouldn’t be ‘fun’, it is ideally critical, uncomfortable in the way that makes you think and hopefully grow, and I feel quite conflicted about it. My short-term resolution to this feeling is that it could be a balance of both.  Another question I had was about, when do you decide to scrap a project? At what point would you decide that the idea is no longer working or going in a different direction, does a project ‘die’? He didn’t really have a straight answer for that but it was, expectedly, spontaneous like how he works (maybe spontaneous is not the right word, but it’s the closest description I got right now). My conclusion from his response is that he simply exploring different ideas simultaneous, and whether they pan out of not in the future, it’s to be decided. And well, for ideas that may not have turned into something tangible, they are simply ‘there’.

On going digital

I finally asked about why he decided going digital with his artworks and the answer is quite simple and practical, space. And I assume money would go with that as well. This is Vancouver after all, and using digital means to save space is a logical move. It got me thinking of why I’m interested in going more digital. Apart from the new potentials that technology offers, time and space is definitely one of my motivations.  I like the afforded mobility, the idea that I can create work anywhere anytime, as long as I’m connected to the world wide web. The seemingly infinite virtual space and its affordances is an area that will continue to be relevant seeing as it will likely be here for a while.

On a tangent, I also started a conversation about conflicting feelings about displaying artwork in a gallery, the exclusivity of art in a gallery setting as opposed to how I felt art should be more accessible to all. I felt kind of relieved having this discussion to a practicing artist outside of an institution setting. Perhaps going digital is one way, and Howie did show me some platforms where people have shared their 3D virtual works. Of course, there are other connotations to creating digital work, questions of authorship, viewership, accessibility, ‘reality’,  etc. It’s also very different, in terms how ideas become ‘tangible’. People already extend humanity to inanimate objects, the virtual, artificial personas ans so on, so what next?  But, one question at a time.

Studio Visit – Brendan Tang

After our meeting in the studio, Howie took me to visit Brendan Tang, who is having his residency at the BAF. A chance for me to visit both an artist and institution partner that are part of this class! The two are actually good friends, both being not from Vancouver. Brendan had a small gift for Howie’s new baby and we went around, looking at his current work in progress. He talked about a little about his ideas, process and current plans. It was fun to see how they interacted, a mix of friendly banter, catching up, and throwing ideas here and there.

Howie joked that he thought it’d help to bring us to an ‘actual’ studio visit, more hands-on activities, since most of the work we’ve done has been remote and  virtual. It was to get a feel of a different working studio space. Aohan and sarah were there too at the time, helping him with sanding. As a short response, I made a word cloud summary of our impressions on his current work:

Since the situation seemed appropriate, I asked about how they met, and in general, how do they meet other people in the community and also out of the community. Brendan is an extrovert apparently. It was nice, getting a feel of how they interact with the community as well. I have a feeling Brendan had the mistaken impression that I have difficulty finding friends^ ^’. Afterwards, we then took a look at some of the work currently on display in BAF.

Updates from Escalator edits + Lenticular prints

The film editing has taking a bit of pause at the moment. I haven’t had the time to sit myself down and edit videos. Howie suggested looking into possible ways of displaying the work, how the setup might look like in an exhibition setting. As for the Lenticular prints for the VAG, after looking into the quotes. A friend of Howie’s had a bad review of the commercial printing place where we intended to print it. Admittedly, the person who I called for the quotes didn’t sound as professional but it’s hard to tell. I think Howie is thinking of taking a risk with the print quality. I looked up some more companies that could do lenticular prints, none in Vancouver unfortunately, and sent him links to that. In the meantime, still need to prep the lenticular files….

This post is long overdue from when I had initially intended, but here it is:

Had our second in-person meeting with Howie last month. The general atmosphere, I think, was still the same as the time me and Lauren had our orientation meeting. The personal, cozy and open backyard studio space, the on-pouring hot tea and just general down-to-earth–ness. Perhaps, a little bit of tension and anxiety from expecting his second-born was lifted, but in general, our interactions were still the same. I think I like this, this flow in the studio space. Talking about art, in a tiny but open studio space, surrounded by nature, makes me feel like I’m in a Ghibli movie. Apart from the general conversation, we went over the video that I initially compiled to compare shots that work and those that didn’t.

Slow – on Art practice

TLDR -To summarize the first 2 weeks of November or so:
More busy, less time for art, but also ‘no time =  not a priority’ so… need to make art more of a priority

One of my goals in this course is to have a better idea of the kind of art practice I could pursue.  For now, I’m still figuring out the process and time for balancing art practice and working full-time. It’s difficult at times, especially when work gets busy and fills up all my head space. As some of the work I do is more project-based, I do tend to ‘take them home with me’. I find this to gets exhausting when it accumulates, should I be limiting work to ‘work time’ or scheduling in more ‘art time’? The ‘no time = not a priority’ is a gist of a video I recently watched, a reminder for myself that I need to make time to do the things I want, instead of letting time decide for me.

Escalator edits – parallax-tracking

So far, I’ve completed the video cuts for 4 films. It’s definitely not going as fast as I hoped, 30 movies may take awhile.  The most recent movies that I edited are 8-diagram pole fighter and Black Tavern. For Black Tavern, Howie had provided the time stamps but, 8-diagram pole fighter was my first attempt at finding these parallax shots on my own. Previously, I had taken ‘tracking shots’ quite literally, so in the first movie, I had tasked myself to go through each frame and identify these shots. During our second face-to-face meeting, he expressed what shots worked and what didn’t. Admittedly, there were still some that I didn’t quite visually understand at the time. The gist of it seems to be: more foreground to background parallel relations, no still tracking, more ‘flurry’ of movement, no handheld and no pans. After he clarified what he was looking for, I had a better idea of what shots to avoid. I managed to get a gist of it with only a few pans in the beginning that I mistook as tracking shots.

Lenticular printing – tokens for the Vancouver Art Gallery

Currently, I am still working on preparing files and looking into print quotes for lenticular printing. I’m trying to create a lenticular print template that Howie can reuse, while looking into lenticular printing shops in the Greater Vancouver area. Looking into imaging quotes for two print sizes at the moment. These prints are intended as a donation for an auction in the Vancouver Art gallery in May. Kind of like a souvenir from his major work, Retainers of Anarchy, I suppose. He did mention during our first meeting, how he would be working on some ‘collectibles’ after this major work. Its just my impression but, he seems not too enthused about it, but at the same time, recognizing the need of it.

On the side, I am looking more into video displays, loops, and inverse videos. Currently my idea is to simply have simple video cuts, and playing them in loop using simple mechanisms like raspberry pi. Someone suggested potentially a video streamer like VLC, which I’m not too sure about yet, but will look into. The idea is to research on an potential exhibition display for the escalator edits project.

1-month mark

This marks about a month since Lauren and I had our first orientation meeting with Howie. We haven’t had another face-to-face meeting since, and we’ve been corresponding mostly through email. It doesn’t affect the work we do as they can be done remotely, and Howie has been very responsive as well despite being busy with expecting his second child (the little one was born 2 weeks ago!). I really appreciate the fact that he sends us thoughtful responses within 1-2 days. Since our orientation meeting, I’ve tried to clear the workflow a little more by sending him a google doc of my thoughts and process. During one of our class discussions, I thought about how I need some form of structure to work with. In response, Howie explained that his process is much more organic when it comes to art practice, going with the ‘feels’ and letting things ‘marinate’. While I agree, I think that a form of ‘structure’ and discipline is needed, to allow for ‘chaos’ and creativity in other areas, which is why I’m trying to settle on the logistics and admin side of things. Not sure how that will work out, I suppose we’ll see. I suggested having a short weekly check-in, some tentative deadlines and face-to face meeting sat least once a month (we are planning to meet this weekend for October).

Art practice & Archival methods

In learning more about Howie’s art practice, another aspect I want to work on is establishing a routine. Whether this means setting a specific time range out of the day, or going to the studio to practice art. The idea of providing that time and space to “tinker and get lost, and to be outside of yourself and consciousness” in Howie’s words, bringing back the notion of Not Knowing and Making within it.

As part of my goal in this course, I also inquired about his archival methods for his artworks, both physically and digitally. He doesn’t have much of a physical archive as most of his work is with an art dealer in Shanghai. He does archive traditional media digitally through high resolution scans or photo documentation. He also mentioned museum conservation resources online that discusses ideal temperature and humidity for certain media – “Materially, look into archival, acid-free, ph, and ‘lightfastedness'”. Otherwise, he stores his work in his CPU, in Hard Drives and investing in a Pro Dropbox account. He shared with me his Dropbox account to get an idea of how his work is organized. He would sometimes share his Dropbox accounts to curators as well, interesting to see how this virtually substitutes the ‘browsing of the artist’s studio’. On the other hand, since the curator would never have visited the artist’s studio, how much does it take it out of context? Also, what kind of context would an online Dropbox gallery have? Some things to think about (and maybe ask Howie) as everything gets increasingly digitized.

Escalator edits

I have been mostly working on video editing for Howie. I had some video cuts done for Howie for the movie: ‘One-Armed Swordsman’ based on the timestamps that he provided. The idea is that initially, he would provide the timestamps but I would eventually get the hang of the types of clips and be able to find them on my own. At first, I tried adding some clips of literal tracking shots, and ended up with about 10 minutes of content from the cut. Later, I learnt that he is looking for specific tracking shots where there is a foreground parallax relations.
To give some more context, parallax refers to the perception/apparent position of an object viewed along 2 different lines of sight. Because of the way of our eyes are biologically, we always perceived objects along 2 different lines of sights. This is the general explanation of why we perceive things in ‘3D’, and perceive depth. The parallax effect is visible in movies, animation and also web design (parallax scrolling). Parallax creates illusion of depth, by varying the motion speed of the background and foreground. On another note, astronomers also use principles of parallax to measure distances to nearby stars, also know as ‘Stellar parallax.’

In cutting the clips from these old martial art films, we are exploring the foreground and background relation, perception, and flurry of motion as captured by the camera. The idea was partly inspired by his experience in filming the back of a persons head on the long escalators in Hong Kong.

Next >

The next step would be: more video cuts, looking into edits for 30 films. Howie has also expressed interest in getting some form of motion activated input to activate the videos. The video would be grouped into the direction of motion, and the general idea is moving in a certain direction will activate and correspond the direction of motion in the video clips. In process of more research. Another topic of research on the side is on prepping files for Lenticular printing. These are the printed images where you get a 3D or holographic effect.

Poster Overview

For more detail, go to the Pdf File of the Poster
You can also visit Howie’s Website

My partnership with Howie Tsui so far has started with a few factory work tasks that need to be completed for the projects he is working on. For me this is as expected as my main objective to assist him in his work while learning what I can from the tasks I complete.

So far, my main project is “scanning” educational drawings from martial arts books using my camera. I need to turn these images of martial arts poses into a digital format so they can then be used by the animators. There is no set deadline but my plan is to get this done within two and half weeks.

We also have to research a way to 3D scan physical objects and/or a way to present 2D within a 3D space or vice versa. He’s interested in finding a way to make 3D objects into something he can work with digitally.
Once we finish our individual projects we will meet together and discuss our findings and any other ideas that came up. In terms of communicating, we do so via email or text as needed.

I think it’s really interesting working with an artist so far. I have to try and think about what kind of art he makes and the topics he is interested in whilst working on my projects. I think it’s a fresh change of pace to be thinking about art through someone else’s perspective rather than only my own. I think it will help me keep an open mind and broaden my own perspective to making art. I also have the opportunity to contribute any of my own findings and ideas so the art making and discovery process becomes more of a collaboration rather than just individual work. It reminds me of how artist run centres or art making communities works and build off each others ideas. I’m looking forward to coming back together as a group to discuss our ideas and find a way to make Howie’s art a reality.

First meeting

Both Lauren and I went to meet Howie at his Studio which is also right by his house he calls ‘the drive’. The meeting was more casual than I expected. We prepared a list of questions but they simply flowed into the conversation. Howie lead most of the conversation and he tried to give us as much context as he can. My general impression is that the project is very flexible and open to our area of interests.

Having just completed a long-term project, ‘Retainers of Anarchy’, there are two main directions he could go, either to extend on his previous work or to create something new entirely. He is currently at an exploratory stage, part- finding ways to archive and create other forms of his previous work, but also part- researching and trying out different ideas and see where that leads him. He seems to be very open to our input and really appreciate that. I think this partnership will be helpful in getting a direct insight of how an artwork ‘lives on’, what the artist does after completing a significant work and also how he/she starts a new artwork, this would be a nice aspect to share in class. I could see our role in this project as either being an assistant to the creation of the work, or on the other extreme end, to potentially become collaborators that become one of the creators of the work.

Project Outline

(Note: The project outline is still subject to change, further edits may be made over time)

As far as project outline goes, I would say that we don’t have a defined structure as of yet. We talked about areas for further research but he does not have a final goal in mind just yet. I expect that we would need to take more initiative on what we are particularly interested in, and he would try cater our tasks towards it. We also learnt that Howie is expecting a second child in October so, that would perhaps be his most significant personal ‘project’ for now. This is why I could see that we would need to be more proactive in setting our own project outline.  I think it would be beneficial to set up my own deadlines and then consult him about them.

I do have my personal goals in mind and one of them is to practice archival methods. The tentative deadline I had set for myself is to learn, gather and choose a method by the end of October and then practice them throughout November. Afterwards, I can reflect on how the process worked for me. Another goal is to meet and talk to more people in the art community, in which Howie did mention that he could take us to studio visits and events. We also don’t have a set schedule to being on-site as the tasks can be done remotely. Our current communication structure is through email and for sometimes through text, he is open to us texting him for questions at any point in time. Feedback and check-ins are currently on-the-go although I think I will suggest at least a weekly check-in.

Escalator Edits/Parallax Visual Experiences

Currently, I am helping him with some video editing by cutting and compiling some tracking shots. I am given some movie clips and a document of timestamps where he would like the cuts. The video clips would then serve as material for a potential project, which doesn’t have a clear form yet either. He explained that part of the inspiration was from taking videos on the long escalators when he was in Hong Kong. From my cognitive systems major, I also learnt about visual cognition and perception, so this task could relate on perception through the engagement with parallax visual experiences.  Apart from video editing, I will also be researching into 3D scanning and parallax visual culture. I think it will be fun, drawing in my experiences and knowledge and cognitive systems into art practice, and I am always looking for ways to integrate the two together.