Anthropomorphism - research 3 of personal work

[proposal draft]

WHEN RABBITS DO NOT EAT CARROT ANY MORE
-THE APPLICATION OF AUTHROPOMORPHISM
IN CONTEMPORARY PERFORMANCE

Leaving aside the science, human's knowledge of the unknown outer world always depends on the imagination, which could be understand as the intellectualization in certain degree. We hope that the external world (non smart body) happen and develop in the same way with us (smart body), not only because of the satisfaction of our curiosity we need also that is the only way we can have the resonance with non human.

"Anthropomorphism is the attribution of human characteristics to non-human creatures and beings, phenomena, material states and objects or abstract concepts. Examples include animals and plants and forces of nature such as winds, rain or the sun depicted as creatures with human motivation able to reason and converse. "

To be specific, which aspects does "anthropomorphism" play?
Putting the life, shape, appearance, characteristics, emotions, personality traits etc. into non-human creatures.

How to explain "anthropomorphism" in performance?
Anthropomorphic animals are often represented by actors in costumes and makeup (e.g. wearing mask, prop or fur coat) , and performed in imitation ( e.g. movement, sound)

What is the function of anthropomorphism?
Anthropomorphised animals can stand as commonly recognised types of human behaviour, in performance. In this way, the performance will engage the audience in three aspects: vitality, newness and resonance.

Which kind of non human creatures wanted to choose? And why?
Animals. Human were evolved from ape man (animals), so that could be so many common points between the two. In addition, using actors (modern people) to perform animals (ancient people), that is not the change in position, also the change in time.

Is there any artistic form related with/ can be used for anthropomorphism?
1, Animation.
in plane (e.g. Doraemon), in 3D (e.g. Toy Story), in puppet (e.g. Sesame Street), in person (e.g. The Lion King)
2, Fable.
In storytelling (e.g. Crosstalk), in live-art ( e.g. Cosplay), in comedy...

reference:
Peter Mayle (2000) A Dog's Life.
Steve Baker (1996) The Postmodern Animal.

questions about “gift”

about what we call gift

gift is the stuff which sended to the person who know how to appreciate it and will enjoy it.

about anti-gift

that must be something what can hunt the receivers. maybe that is a bad memory in the past, or maybe that is a afraid thing in the future. in short, anti-gift is the giver remind the bad thing of the receiver.

about unwanted gift

i think that could be understand as unsincerity gift. that could be the stuff what the giver doesn’t want to keep anymore, or the giver has some ulterior motive about it.

about rejection

for me, first I will reject the unwanted gift (talked above). secondly, I will reject loopback gift because that is also unsincerely. third, I will reject the gift from the person who I hate.

about status relationship

gift always tires people. make poor guy be more poor,make rich person become more and more rich. I have saw a news: on the Mayer’s 50 years old birthday, every villager went to celebrate it. the Mayer hold his birthday party on the hall of the goverment office building, with the big poster on his name. one poor villager even sell his blood to please the Mayer…

about selfishness

selfish people will not care others, they will not spend lots of money or lots attention on gift. they give what they detest and rejest thing.

I don’t understand what is “code around receiving” mean?

gifts tire us

I chosed RED PACKET (a monetary gift which is given during holidays or special occasions) as the object of gift project, as it is the most popular and common gift in Asia.

It comes from a story which I read from newspaper: on wedding, a poor friend of the new couple who had no money to present a trick red packet to bride and groom. Then he put a piece of newspaper inside it, with a big smile, he successfully got though the wedding...

Do you have this kind of experience? For instant, six of your friends have their birthday partys in the same month. In that month, did you feel your wallet become even flat?

Gifts always tire us. They make people extremely tired, feel helpless and embarrassing, even, these socalled gifts make the relationship break up, in addition, they make the interpersonal sociality become more and more complicated and unpure.

Overpowering Power - group work 2

by Filipe, Heejung, Cherry

That's a performance combined three parts text of we three:
In short, the first one is a news of murder about a woman. The second one is a story of a disabled person's inward world. And the last one, tells the story about selling and buying plants in Sahara Desert.

We try to find the common ground between three texts, that's the most difficult part. First, I think that could be made a main role having three identitys together at the same time, then link every part one by one. Then Filipe find that those three are all about power, they all have someone in power someone not, somebody strong somebody weak, and the main role are all competing and struggling with the power. That's ture! That point made me wake, then every thing become easy...

Our performance turned to present the murder, like the news broadcaster, accompanying some simple movement, such as disabled people stretching out his arms, traveller buying plants, and we repeat some keywords of that, without any facial expression.

Now, we have the white space, black clothes, three green plants, three tv set, three wheelchairs, and three broadcasters speaking English, Korean and Chinese.

So, that's our Overpowering Power, looking forward tomorrow's play.

Consumption - group work 1

by Kappa, Yoori, Cherry

That's a projection project with water.

In order to present that the earth is being destoyed more and more, we separated it into three part, as the stages, in different colors. They are clean, yellow (or green), and black, as the symbol of nature.

We made the background in cartoon as the subject of city and natual, which played in the two-sided windows, with the puppet (fish) falling and moving in water,then covered by the dark. The puppet divided in cartoon fish and various language of "fish" to represent the natual world and civilization world. Then, an projector worked at the middle window making the shadow of colorful earth.

Lovely image, and happy cooperation.

reading notes for Chapter 1

1,LIVENESS
You can get the sence of performance by photographes or videos,but you can not have the fully experience,as the life energy is missing, missing something that you establish with the public, and any kind of media can not catch it. so, you have to there. That's the main difference between performance and film, TV and so forth.

2,CRITICAL TOOL IN THIS ERA
Performance is never die as a kind of art, even time is crisis. Somehow performance is appear, performanting means public take the active role in view of the pieces, not just a observer, but also actor to be in the pieces. But there are so many roles, maybe museum, maybe gallery, how interact with this possible and imposible, so the really perfomative work doesnt really work, because the public don't how to deal with that.

3,AN EPISODE OF SEX AND THE CITY
Sex, as a part of nature, also the absolutely necessary in city,is always the timeless and omnipotent subject.

5,EXPANDING IN SPACE
Flexible, do it as flexible as you can.

6,EPHEMERAL NATURE AND ENDLESS POWER
In some situation, we can't say the exactly meaning that delivered by the work of art, but we really being touched and being pushed at that time. Body language is more powerful than anything come out from your mouth, and the body (nature) could exist much long time than the language by the word of mouth, that's the power of nature, not just be concerned by the surrealism.

the small tell the great truth - research 2 of personal work

Javier Mariscal's Cobi was been shown in design museum in the other day. One of his works is a model of car, Cobi drivng inside and having a chat with his friend in screne.

Mariscal made Cobi live as human-being, it enjoys the sunshine on the beach, it drinks beer in the pub, and Cobi thinks social life as well.

On the other hand, Cobi is Mariscal's mouth, speak in simple sentences, in a humor manner, but tell the great truth.Animation is not only for children.

starting from "putting oneself into others shoes"- research 1 of personal work

Putting oneself into another shoes is my start point. See something as another angle and the angle could be everything, but not your own eyes.

Why?

Take the dialogue which happened a few days ago as an example. My friend and I was talking over our view of our motherland of the opposite side. He point out some impression of my country (he is not chinese) which reserving with mine and I never heard before. That made me think from the opposite's point of view to get an objective understanding.

How?

At that time, a piece of cartoon came into my sight. That is a frog, wearing dress, necklace and silk stockings, sitting on sofa, having potato chips, and watching soap opera. That's a funny image. Then a piece of idea called to my mind: why not choosing animal's angle to see our human's life? That mustn't be animals, could be any other kind of living things. By personification, let the living thing to tell the social world.

Then how?

According to personification, I would like to pick animation, that could be several ways, and there are so many examples of that:

1, in plane (Doraemon)

2, in 3D (Toy Story)

3, in puppet (Sesame Street)

4, in person (The Lion King)

how far could designers play a part - recording "Kellerman"

Kellerman is really an amazing performance of what I seen, which combined film, animation and live action into a new performance. What's more, it interspersed with the past, future and present to tell the whole story at the sametime.

Last week, we discussed about the difference between film and TV, also talked about that among theatre and cinema. Then this performance makes me think again. As I said "performance", even though it combining so many kinds of form. Take another example, High School Musical, we are all familiar with it, that is a film combined with musical element, but we still defined it into film, why? What is the final rule of definition? Medium, I think.

Films using the photonasty of films to record the real situation, and dramas are seen by our eyes directly. Films are limited with the camera lens, audience can only see by the lens' moving and swiching, in contrast, we can make the choise to focus on different part in the stage. That's the first thing. The second is that, what we seen in the films are always actual location, but on the stage, that must be man made settings and screens. Sure,that must be other distinctions...

Turn to the performance...

Admittedly, the mainline of the story is ambiguous and crabbed, without any obvious ups and downs plot. However, i think that's a absolute visual performance, no wonder some observers commented that "near as dammit a total work of art".

Then I want to ask, how far could a designer play a part in performance?

In Chinese drama, we always dig and explore the fascination of language (actor's dialogue), and the stage, lighting, sound are not so multivariate, they are the accessories of the actors and acting. But here, i smelled that designers are playing more important effect in group works, or can be thought that form is more engagable than content in western. Hence, sensory stimulation is more powerful than the spiritual touching.

"climate change" continue

That's a great series of documentary photographs named "facing climate change", which tells the stories though local people's daily life. Although climate change is a global problem, every community has a local story, they are not great but they really touched me.


Noel Lyman-Saint Paul, Minnesota
Noel Lyman tries to keep cool during Saint Paul's 19th day above degraas in 2007. Elderly, low income, and socially isolated individuals are amongst the most vulnerableto heat waves, which will likely increase in number, intensity and duration by the end of this century.

photos by Benjamin Drummond, words by Sara Joy Steele

even dead - thinking about climate change

About the climate change, eastern and western people have a little bit different attitudes.

Yes, there is no doubt that we should do something for our earth, and for ourselves. We do have the law of plastic bags controlling in my contury, additional we are shouting the slogan of saving energy, we are increasing the green areas, and being encouraged to do so.

At the same time, the theory of Buddhism said that: everything have the causes and consequences, birth and death are in the inevitable cycle, and humans can not resist any natual phenomenaes. Imagine that, there will be one day that is human's lastday, ofcourse we will, as the end of dinosaurs, then there will be a kind of new living beings live on earth. We don't know that which way we will be die as, maybe same with the film "the day after tomorrow", who knows? And we don't know when, 500 years later, 100 years later, or ... the next morning after you wake up?

That reminds me a piece of art work called "the art of death". Werner Reiterer assumed various states of death of himself, as the same size as true, then he stood with them together. As far as i am concerned, that is a calm way of facing death, and that's a brave manner.Why not follow Werner's way?

By the way, Englishman prefer talking about climate, that is really true.

a expected start and end - recording 'The Author'

Visited so many experimental performance, but I havent seen such an experimental one before which being displayed without stage, without screen, without curtain, even actors, I mean the conventional actors that we get used to.

Simillarly, the play happened occasionally. Everyone was talking and laughing, waiting for the dark before the start, just like watching films in cinema. Unfortunately, there was a guy (looks crazy) speaking exciting to anyone next to him before the lated dark. Someone replied him with smile and someone embarrased under the eyes of the audience, as they had been aware of the play starting or not.

In this way, the audience participated in the play as an unsual way, as a part of the performance, not just the not interested spectators.

Like this, another person started talking, suddenly. Then one by one, shouting, singing, whisper... Most of the time, there is not direct connection between their speeches, just talking about their personal things, like loony tone soliloquy. So I said that could be another Waiting for Godot in some certain aspect. As the performance of every entered actor, the whole play was really... I would say expecting, you never know what will be happened next. As a result, even if four characters had all left out of the auditorium, I still sat there looking forward the last surprise, but there was not.

As I sat in the first row of one side of seating, I cant focus on the performance of TIM and VIC. Also, to be honest, I hadnt learn any vocabulary about masturbation, incest and sexual organs in english. Anyway, that could be understanded gernally. One of the main reason is that the form of performance under the audience's eyes is overweight the content of that play itself.

In fact, everyone was intoxicated in that new form and ignored the main core of the story, indeed. Then I put my hands to research the relationship between the two: content and form.

Which one comes first? Which one is more important? Which one is more attractive?

Our elders always say: "dont just focus on the surface, look inside of the things" . As an established knowledge though long social practice, content is always theveryfirst thing of any work in my experience. However, the accessories are better than the main part now. There is no right or wrong question essentially, in this day and age. See, those so-called contemporary art is just playing the the form for fun, isnt it?

Finally, quoting the dialogues of the actor, I would say——It's great, I love this, all this.