Kako Ueda

Just remembering the days when I used to do works that are so labor intensive...

I think I will do some cutouts in the books for the bookshelf piece, which will be photographed for the website of the exhibition....in this way the viewers are able to preview the content in the books before coming to the exhibition, which will hopefully encourage them to take out the book....

we shall see.

"Seeing the Seen"

Thanks to Kimmy Fung, Alex Robbie and Annie Song!



Appearance is only one aspect of an object. Surrounded by so much information and so many objects, we tend to assume we know much more about things based on just appearance. Almost everything we use in our everyday lives has been manufactured or manipulated through human or natural processes - a history we often neglect once the finished product is in our hands.

My thesis is an exploration of the relationship between visibility and the invisibility of a work; how to challenge the audience's patience, fear, and observatory skills by confronting them with an opportunity to witness another aspect of the work at hand. Only after the outer layer is breached can the audience experience the work as a whole and cause the link between image and substance to gradually unravel.

Tomorrow is the deadline

for the text:
here is what I have so far:

The appearance is only a partial aspect of an object. Surrounded by so much information and objects around us, we tend to assume that we know more about objects, based on their appearances. Almost everything we use in our everyday lives have been manufactured or manipulated through human or natural processes, which we tend to neglect once they are in our hands.

My thesis is an exploration of the relationship between the visibility and the invisibility of a work, and how to challenge the audience's patience, fear and observatory skills, confronting them with an opportunity to witness another aspect of the work. Only when the outside layer is broken the audience is able to experience the whole work, as they have seen the seen, the unseen and the dynamic between them.

So much more work to do!

Critique Last Week

Long time no see.

We had a midterm critique last week. We only have 6 weeks left until the final presentation. Boo.

I got good critique. I think all the feedbacks were positive and I was quite surprised. I felt like I hadn't spent enough time into my works but yeah, I guess time is not the only thing that counts.

All others were presenting more complete, very time consuming works...perhaps it's time to shift my works towards more complete looking projects...well, I tried to and that's why I had tried to make different versions of the tape video and the bookshelf, but I feel like the original versions were better.


The images seen above are of another version of the bookshelf. I built the shelves myself to fit the size of the book better than the IKEA shelves that were used in the previous test. I think visually this is more simple and makes sense to the project, but it loses the interesting aspect of an alternative way of using an already existing object - the shelf.
I'm still not sure if this concept of "alternative..." should be added into the piece, because I feel like it's another statement that I am not intending to address in the exhibition.

Are the IKEA shelves losing the simplicity within work and adding an unnecessary factor
to the piece?

Another question to think about.


-----

I tried the video piece with both blue wall (and this project was really spontaneous..I saw a blue wall, I was wearing a shirt that was the same color and I happened to be holding two rolls of tape)

I don't like the tape that is hanging from my back at the beginning, because you as an audience can expect what actually happens later in the film. In the second and third run I created a little room with black walls...I like the bumping into the wall part, but perhaps that is also kind of unnecessary....just a blue wall, which is really big, is good enough. "Already existing material" idea again, but if that idea is common in two of the works I it might work better.

I will only do another filming of this for sure, I don't want to be taped ever again.


The wallpaper piece will be investigated further, and new works will be created next week.

OFF TO BERLIN!

Process

The sketches for all three projects are now in progress...



1.Another video project:
this time with the black background - I got rid of the blue color because I couldn't think of much significance to the color blue. I'm still not sure if I would like to keep the color scheme of my presentation monochromatic (Swedish), so this is a test to see if black works....I think it works better than blue for some reason. But at the same time I feel like this looks much less spontaneous than the work I did earlier, it could be because I've done this three times already.

Next step will be trying this out with a patterned background (wallpapers will used for this trial)




2.Bookshelf project:
I just used two shelves that were not used in my room...made by IKEA. I just borrowed some random books from the city library to see whether these not-so-sturdy shelves can hold up some heavy books. Well, not so heavy but at least SOME books.
They did and the tryout turned out to be a completely different result because I kind of like the DIY look of it, almost seeming like a suggestion to an alternative way of using shelves. The color of the pinewood and also the IKEA sticker on the shelf are starting to add to that aesthetic.

I'm not sure, again, whether I will be keeping this aesthetic or making it look more clean. Next week I will be constructing more fitting sized shelves, or two boards on the sides so we will see what happens with those.

During the meeting today with Hans, my tutor, we discussed about the possible use of loose papers instead of books, so when they fall onto the ground all the papers just scatter around. The colored papers, some with photos, some with statements....it becomes another story but I think that would actually be interesting. Maybe I should try that to see how that would work....I will just have to get a lot of paper and stuff...maybe I can try with some free newspapers? I will definitely be stepping into the fleamarket this weekend to check out some cheap books and so on.




3.Wallpaper Project:
I made a quick sketch model of my installation. Imagine the three white surfaces being wallpapers pasted face-down - and the surfaces are three walls that create a corner of a room. I would like to make a settle "hint", a small one, that gives the audience an idea that the space, what seems to be a white room, is filled with patterns that they cannot see, after catching a glimpse of this corner where the wallpapers are cut out and flipped backwards to show three different patterns. When the audience sees that there are three patterns, they can imagine that there could be 6 different patterns in the room - 4 walls, 1 for the ceiling and 1 for the floor. I'm not sure the scale of this part of the installation but I imagine it to be quite small, because I don't want it to be too obvious.

Got a kindly sponsorship from Duro!

Insider information / Outsider Information

Transparency on a mechanic:

"packaging" a system within a form.
By making the inside system more bare the owner of the form becomes more aware of what goes on.

This watch tells two stories:
the time, which is the purpose of the whole system and also the "insider-story" of what tells the time you are looking at. But what value does it add to telling time?

It might make you understand a little more of the complication the watch goes through to tell you the time. By seeing the little metal gadgets inside you notice that the time the watch is showing you that this little device goes through a number of processes (each gear connecting with another) to show you what you see.

The gears, if you were to look them without any result, are just processes to a result. It would be easy to see that they are doing something, but it's hard to figure out what. I've always had passions for inside of mechanics just because they don't tell me anything. It is of course because of my lack of knowledge in mechanics, but I think that is helping me to imagine what it could do.

A small portfolio

Just as a summary of what I have been doing at Konstfack:



Say Yes: Think No
For the Bystander Project (Collaboration with the Museum of Living History)
The aim of this book was to illustrate the difference between what a bystander thinks and says. When a person is faced with an extreme situation that could cause them a harm, they tend to pull themselves away even if there is something to be done. This book was a manual for people in such situations to think of smart things to say to get themselves out as soon as they can.


A Memory Trip to Berlin(To be finalized later):
For Word & Image Final Project
Images in the books were collected from facebooks and they were combined with my memories of Berlin when I lived there between 1999-2002, to create a fake trip as a contribute to the trip to Berlin in April 2008 that never happened because of having to work on a final project for this course!


16.2
For To Use Lautrec Exhibition at the National Museum
The thickness of the book was exactly the same as the difference between my height and the height of an average Swedish man. Inspired by Toulouse-Lautrec feeling outcast because of his physical disability, I wanted to make a personal piece of illustrating how different I was from the people in a place I lived, Stockholm. The book consisted of my experiences of being short, or feeling foreign, photos and illustrations.



A modest exploration of colors (beta):
For Artist's Book Final Project
The paint samples from Ralph Lauren were cut out by hands to be made into 6 different books. All colors are different, but once you flip the pages the aesthetic of the book is ruined by the rather stern logos on the back of the colors being visible.