FROM 5 TO 12
“Desires are an integral part of human nature, they are what motivates us and drives us towards our goals. We exist because of our desires”.
My research began from my interest in how Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari described the human mind as a desire machine itself, as a system that continuously processed desires. Furthermore, a machine requires an input to create an output much like Health Robinson’s machine illustrations that demonstrated the complexity that goes behind something as simple as making pancakes.
Apart from looking at Deleuze and Guattari’s analysis of the mind I was intrigued by Freud’s categorisation of the mind. According to Freud, the mind is separated into three sections; the consciousness, subconsciousness and unconsciousness. Upon further investigation, I discovered a metaphor that likened the mind to a computer. It described the consciousness as playing the part of a computer’s monitor displaying everything the subconsciousness or RAM would be feeding it whilst the unconsciousness would be the computer’s disk drive in storing long term memories.
From this, I wanted to create a sculpture that would epitomise these notions through the use of optical illusions. My main focus was to create a sculpture that would appear 2D from the front but from other angles 3D. This would result in an interactive artwork that would not only interact with the viewers mind but portray underlying notions of desires. Moreover, the idea that desires often appear static on the surface, a flaw of human nature that holds us back but in reality is a driving force for humanity. If we didn’t have desires than what would we live for?
I was inspired by how surrealists underwent psychoanalysis in order to “unlock the power of imagination”(The Art Story, 2015) but also how this process could reveal insight into human nature. One of my early experiments involved spinning around for a full minute before someone would ask me to respond to random words with other words I would associate with them. What I found interesting was how disorientated the mind would get and how this affected its productivity. Moreover, the responder would temporarily forget older memories but instead only remember the previous words articulated.
Moving on, I decided to further my research into sculptures and found Marcel Duchamp’s Rotary Demisphere rather inspiring. I discovered an artist’s technique that involved painting an object in matte white paint then outlining the edges in black. I tested this technique on paper cones and compared the effect to plain black cones with other people. Based on my feedback, I decided to stick to plain black since white often reflected light especially in flash photography. Furthermore, I decided to stick to using one cone instead of three instead since using three often meant one cone would obstruct the view of another.
Leading up to this assessment, I found myself gaining inspiration later during the day and decided to research into this. From this, I realised how the mind would be less stressed during the night and therefore more creative. Hence I decided to name my artwork From 5 To 12 because I want it to be viewed only between these times. It is through this that the viewer’s imagination is unleashed and more likely to generate desires. Therefore it is by allowing viewers to inspire their own ideas from my artwork that these may breed into individual desires and continue driving humanity.
My research began from my interest in how Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari described the human mind as a desire machine itself, as a system that continuously processed desires. Furthermore, a machine requires an input to create an output much like Health Robinson’s machine illustrations that demonstrated the complexity that goes behind something as simple as making pancakes.
Apart from looking at Deleuze and Guattari’s analysis of the mind I was intrigued by Freud’s categorisation of the mind. According to Freud, the mind is separated into three sections; the consciousness, subconsciousness and unconsciousness. Upon further investigation, I discovered a metaphor that likened the mind to a computer. It described the consciousness as playing the part of a computer’s monitor displaying everything the subconsciousness or RAM would be feeding it whilst the unconsciousness would be the computer’s disk drive in storing long term memories.
From this, I wanted to create a sculpture that would epitomise these notions through the use of optical illusions. My main focus was to create a sculpture that would appear 2D from the front but from other angles 3D. This would result in an interactive artwork that would not only interact with the viewers mind but portray underlying notions of desires. Moreover, the idea that desires often appear static on the surface, a flaw of human nature that holds us back but in reality is a driving force for humanity. If we didn’t have desires than what would we live for?
I was inspired by how surrealists underwent psychoanalysis in order to “unlock the power of imagination”(The Art Story, 2015) but also how this process could reveal insight into human nature. One of my early experiments involved spinning around for a full minute before someone would ask me to respond to random words with other words I would associate with them. What I found interesting was how disorientated the mind would get and how this affected its productivity. Moreover, the responder would temporarily forget older memories but instead only remember the previous words articulated.
Moving on, I decided to further my research into sculptures and found Marcel Duchamp’s Rotary Demisphere rather inspiring. I discovered an artist’s technique that involved painting an object in matte white paint then outlining the edges in black. I tested this technique on paper cones and compared the effect to plain black cones with other people. Based on my feedback, I decided to stick to plain black since white often reflected light especially in flash photography. Furthermore, I decided to stick to using one cone instead of three instead since using three often meant one cone would obstruct the view of another.
Leading up to this assessment, I found myself gaining inspiration later during the day and decided to research into this. From this, I realised how the mind would be less stressed during the night and therefore more creative. Hence I decided to name my artwork From 5 To 12 because I want it to be viewed only between these times. It is through this that the viewer’s imagination is unleashed and more likely to generate desires. Therefore it is by allowing viewers to inspire their own ideas from my artwork that these may breed into individual desires and continue driving humanity.