ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Robbe-Grillet, Alain, Two Novels: Jealousy and In the Labyrinth. Grove Press, January 14, 1994.
Robbe-Grillet's novel has an amazingly objective manner. In the novel Jealousy, methodical and geometric words
lead to a kind of repetitive descriptions of objects replace. After reading this book, I started to think about, if image
could be totally replaced by words with highly particularity? With this question I made my own project.
Source: my own book collection
Cook, Peter. Archigram. Princeton Architectural Press, September 1, 1999.
The book documents works of Archigram. The most important thing I learned from this book is that when we meet
questions in one area, maybe we could find answers in another area. many works of Archigram stretched out from the
architecture area but amazingly solved the problem of architecture. This hit helped me solve a lot trouble when I am
designing something.
Source: my own book collection
Kimmelman, Michael. The Accidental Masterpiece: On the Art of Life and Vice Versa. Penguin Press HC, The First
Edition, August 18, 2005.
This book does not only fill in our knowledge about art but also inspires us to think about connections between art
and the larger world. In this book Kimmelman raised a point which interests me a lot: The real thing that the
contemporary art museums and galleries provide us is not art, but a seemingly closer relationship between
people and art. I used this idea to make my own project though I could not totally agree with Kimmelman's
point. This book is the most important reference for my MoMA remix Project.
Source: my own book collection
Kuma, Kengo. Introduction of Architecture. Beijing, China: China CITIC Press, 2011.
As a book on the issue of history of architecture, this one does not simply tell people great changes of formation of
architectures in different periods. It focus on changes in thinking and points out all the questions and troubles people
have faced. Those questions and queries all linked with each other and finally become a chain of thought. Since I
make my own work with questions and suspicious as guidance. This book helps me to find out a more logic and macro
way of raising and developing questions.
Source: my own book collection
Ishigami, Junya. Another Scale Of Architecture. Japan: Seigensha, January 1, 2011.
There two things that I learned from Junya Ishigam: 1. he does experiment on architecture in a extreme variety of
scale, ranging from huge cosmic size, to micro raindrop size. 2. He set cameras in his work to document people's
activity in the space, he consider the reaction of audience is not a result in his working process, instead of that, it
could be a trigger for new queries.
Source: my own book collection
Calvino, Italo. Invisible Cities. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, May 3, 1978.
This book is a 'faked' version of Marco Polo's expressions of those weird, exotic cities, indeed they are just reflections
on different aspects of Venice. It is a strong reminder for me that there hundred of approaches when doing my own
piece.
Source: my own book collection
Lewitt, Sol. Sentences on conceptual art. First published in 1969
Sol Lewitt says 'the artist’s will is secondary to the process', I appreciated this process-oriented methodology. That
means, we should have an very humble manner when we face given content and subject, and consider our research as
an journey without certain end. All the products and conclusion we make are periodical since whole working process
base on a chain of ideas all linked with one another.
Source: http://www.altx.com/vizarts/conceptual.html
Wilke, Hannah. Hannah Wilke Through the Large Glass. 16mm film transferred to video, 1976.
Hannah Wilke dancing behind the duchamp's famous glass piece. This piece make me look through the subtle
relationship between objects. It's remix version of art. I use this piece as reference in my MoMA Remix project.
Source: MoMA
Rist, Pipilotti. Pour Your Body Out. Video installation, 2008
Pipilotti set huge scale projection installation in Museum of Modern Art. People could be totally merged in the whole
space. She really use projector as material instead of tool of playing video. She's expertise of using projector inspired
me a lot.
Source: MoMA
Screening: later Bradley and Ed Lachman, Shadow. Whitney Museum of American Art, October 28, 2010 – April 10,
2011.
The video work takes as its inspiration the unfinished Hollywood film Dark Blood (1993), which was never completed
due to the untimely death of its star River Phoenix. Seventeen years later, Shadow presents a kind of prologue to the
original film, revisiting Phoenix’s character while creating a new narrative which, when woven together with the
original, creates a labyrinthine tale that blurs the lines between illusion and reality. This piece of work shows a
possibility of creating a new story based on narrative already existed.
Hitchcock, Alfred. Hitchcock Demonstrates Montage. Online video.
After watching this video I start to think about what is the movie editing and what is montage. It is interesting for me
because it brings a new point to me that using montage to edit movie is like making a high density of time. Making
movie is exactly like using time as bricks to build a structure.
Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ruoPT9JeYHA
Rainer, Yvonne. Trio A. Online video, First created in 1965, filmed in 1978.
Yvonne Rainer's dance interests me with its constructive feature. For me, the dancer does not dance on a stage, she
builds a stage using movement of her body. Here body and space become materials.
Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ikaj6QFLZnU
TEN IMAGES WITH CAPTIONS.
Image: "Pavilion for listening to the rain", 1509, Suzhou, China.
I visited some Chinese traditional gardens in Suzhou four years ago. I got an unforgettable impression of a small
pavilion surround by flourishing plantains, called "Tingyuxuan". The name of this small scale architecture in Chinese
means "pavilion for listening to the rain". It's the time when I was in college of architecture and urban planning. For
me, architecture was just related to density, society and ideology, or cold-proof, defense and protection in earlier
times. This is the first time I knew that, people could build an architecture to just listen to the raindrops falling on the
leaves of plantain. This small architecture broaden my horizon in a flash.
Image: "Ancient male figure", Hunan Museum, Changsha, China.
I once viewed an ancient male figure holding a piece of ‘hu’, a tablet held before the breast by officials when received
in audience by the emperor, in Shanghai Museum, and I firstly misread it as a man holding a remote control. He was
so absorbed in watching an invisible Televetion. This piece of work was created by ancient Chinese people according
to their own experience; while viewing it from today‚ it is inevitable that I will view this piece differently than an
ancient Chinese person. This ancient figure is the starting point of my exploration on misreading. Misreading
certainly exists in Design. The viewer of a piece of design can read the work in a way the designer may not have
intended. Since every single person is different, it is impossible for the viewers of a piece of work to completely as well
as perfectly 100% understand the ideas of the designer. Vision transmission, just like many information transmission
processes, must be a transmission method with information loss. Traditional image design education and image
design knowledge systems are mostly based on design element structure, including fonts, typography, color and
texture etc, to express ideas, aiming at minimizing the misreading, which is a sort of “anti-misreading”. Misreading is,
therefore, ruled out from design's scope. But what if we treat misreading in a totally reverse direction?
Image: "peddlers' design", 2004, Shanghai, China.
In China, Selling something on the street is illegal. So that peddlers design their own tools of selling, trying to run
faster before police catch them. Design to fight against a standard (Chinese law) is based on life instinct.
Image: "Corridor", Bruce Nauman, 1970, Guggenheim Museum, New York.
For me, It is interesting to look at an art piece with certain non-art standard. Can we analyze Bruce Nauman's work
Corridor with a view of Ergonomics (a tellingly scientific standard of scale)? The minimum width of a public corridor
is 1600 mm, this size ensures that two people may pass through simultaneously. That means, any corridor with a less
than 1600 mm width is actually a private place. The interesting point of Bruce Nauman's Corridor is that, it's a private
space with two-way opening. I guess when Bruce Nauman began to compose the Corridor in his mind, there would be
at least two people presenting in this piece, one was the participant, another was the viewer. When you participate,
you could not see the whole piece; When you see, you could only stay outside. Since the space is both private and
public.
Image: "Imponderabilia", Marina Abramovic and Ulay, 1977
Challenging, uncompromising and often shocking, Abramović’s durational practice continually tests and experiments
with both her mental and physical endurance and that of her audience. "Imponderabilia" seems like a sexual
embarrassment version of Corridor. With a nude couple standing sideways, audience had to make two choices:
Should I pass through? Should I face to the man or the woman?
Image: "Three Transitions", Peter Campus, 1973.
In three short exercises, Campus uses basic techniques of video technology and his own image to create succinct,
almost philosophical metaphors for the psychology of the self. In these concise performances, he employs video's
inherent properties as a metaphorical vehicle for articulating transformations of internal and external selves, illusion
and reality. To some extent I followed this simple but strong approach in my own work.
Image: "One minute sculpture", Erwin Wurm.
Since the late 1980s Wurn has developed an ongoing series of "One Minute Sculptures," in which he poses himself or
his models in unexpected relationships with everyday objects close at hand, prompting the viewer to question the very
definition of sculpture. I am interested in how he use normal things in daily life as his materials, since all the
materials that surrounded us could be useful, as well as the objects, topics involved in contemporary society.
Image: "Room with Broken Sentence", Mark Manders, 1993-1998, Courtesy Zeno X Gallery, Antwerp.
Mark Manders' works have a sort of linguistic manner. He uses daily objects as words to build 'a sentence in space'. I
am trying to put this kind of metaphor into my work.
Image: "Technological dreams series: No. 1", Anthony Dunne & Fiona Raby, 2007, z33 Gallery, Hasselt, Belgium
I am interesting in Dunne & Raby's piece because they impose man made products personality. It allow people to
rethink about the relationship between man and object.
Image: "Night Revels of Han Xizai", Gu Hongzhong, 964, The Palace Museum, beijing, China.
A Drawing with Chinese ancient perspective. In this ancient visual world, The law of perspective was not included.
This is totally different from the western's painting in that period. Perspective indeed does not exist, we can see it
because of physical structure of our eyeballs. Chinese ancient painting is interesting for me because it shows another
possibility of drawing and documenting, here making replica of what we really see is not so important.