Progress of Project 1 (9/11/2018)

For my first project, I wanted to go a little bit out of the box and create an interesting installation. First, rather than asking people what they thought of me, I asked them what song they might hear or associate with me. Based on how they know me and what the song lyrics talk about, I wanted to take images to reflect both.

So far, I have asked my sister (who knows me best), a friend from Colorado (who I worked with a year ago) that I reached out to on Facebook, and a stranger I met while smoking in one of the smoking areas around campus. In that order, I got “Nikes” by Frank Ocean, “Jesus of Suburbia” by green day, and “Midsummer Madness” by various artists under 88rising.

For each song, I asked for an explanation for their song choice. My sister told me “Nikes” seem to fit me because of how different I am compared to a lot of other people she knows. I think she chose this song because of how much I love R&B, rap, and experimental music, and this song talks about how much consumerism can affect an individual and his relationships to others. This song was particularly interesting because of the lyrics, which explain this relationship between the self and his materialistic values.

My former co-worker told me that he thought of “Jesus of Suburbia” because of how often I would complain about staying in Colorado. The song is about the desire to leave home in order to leave past mistakes behind, and I felt like that song reflected my mindset at the time I worked with him.

For the stranger, I find it interesting that we connected on hip-hop, and he told me how much he loved Asian hip hop. When I asked him for a song, he flipped through Spotify and said that “Midsummer Madness” seemed to match me best. Whether it was because I am Asian myself or the fact that I love hip-hop music, this song choice was, by far, the most interesting because of its seemingly carefree vibe yet depressing lyrics.

For the images, I took items I often use and clustered them based on how these people characterized me based on their song choice. After taking these images, I am still figuring out whether to use color or black and white images. While I think it would look great in color, I think having a black and white color pallette will emphasize the idea of how complicated of a person I am. I think it would be interesting to play around with the contrast to see how the images would turn out ...

Once I decide on what to do, I will be printing them on inkjet printers and transferring them onto a medium-sized canvas (18×24 in). I would ideally like to create some spray paint templates with the lyrics sprayed onto the canvas so that it is still legible yet rough-looking. At one point, I thought about carving out the words on the canvas and installing LED lights into the back, but, after some careful thought, I think it would be most interesting to include music with my “installation.” Since my bluetooth speaker should be able to fit itself in the back of the canvas, I think it would be awesome to play the music alongside the lyrics and pictures.