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.

Video

The video is now on youtube!

WRAPPING A PRESENT

http://video.about.com/entertaining/How-to-Wrap-a-Boxed-Present.htm

"A beautifully wrapped gift makes all the difference, even if the wrapping paper gets torn off in a flash."


The decoration of a gift is a tool for the giver to enhance the mood of the occasion, for which the present is given.

The Moment of Realization Along a Timeline.

Beginning - Middle - Beginning

The loop.

How do you trace your experience?
Back to the beginning?

How can you guide through the experience you've had, without letting yourself realize that you are repeating it?
When is the most effective moment for you to realize that there is a loop?


The path being followed goes back to the beginning.
A maze that starts from one spot and goes back to that spot.

When finishing that maze, you realize you are back to the same spot physically, what is left is an experience that has been guided by the structure of the maze.



---

There was one TV show called "Yo Nimo Kimyo Na Monogatari" (The world's mysterious stories) in Japan - one scenario, "5 minute-late woman" portrays a woman that has a doppelganger of herself, who always is five minutes earlier than she is. To work, to her boyfriend, to stores...the main character is always five minutes late, therefore she never gets what she wants. What if she had never realized that there were someone ahead of her? Would she have hated her life as much?

---It's about the realization.

Video Sketch

The "truth" between these two photos was video-documented.

The color of the wall on the first photo and the the color of the tape surrounding me in the second photo resemble.

Without any words one can make a connection.

It's the matter of how to make the audience curious about how it really happened.

Inspirations

:School Uniform from Japan:

The constraining rules in Japanese middle and highschools have led students to be express themselves in a more settle way. I don't know if the tradition still exists, or if it is still considered to be cool to do so, but some students got embroideries on the inside of their uniforms. This is not just for the secrecy of their self-expression, but it is believed that this tradition comes from the edo period in Japan, when it was said to be very trendy to have more decorations on inside of the coats than the outside. It is about the moment of when the owner of such a coat takes it off when coming into the house of a gathering and the others notice the inside. Of course, the owner would take it off in a way that is modestly revealing the embroidery. The coat otherwise looks very normal. For the others, the person suddenly becomes a man of luxury from an average modest man only by a glimpse of the inside of the coat.

Keeping the Balance

I think the biggest challenge for my thesis is to find the best balance of what is revealed and what is hidden. If something is too hidden then the audience doesn't notice. On the other hand if the concept is too bare then the climax can be reached really easily.

Truth within a story

What is the "truth" within a story?

Is it the climax, the most memorable part, or the theme?
As a story teller is making the emphasis on certain parts of the story important?

If I were to divide a typical story into a 3 part structure,

1. Before climax
2. CLIMAX
3. After climax

This structure could fit into most experiences: before, during and after.

I would like to illustrate the relationship among these three.
But unlike books, in which form I have been working throughout this master program, I would like to create structures which cannot be reversed. I would also like to create the first stage, before climax, to be appreciated as it is, that the audience does not necessarily have to reach the climax.

By making the climax not easily accessible, the audience has a choice of viewing the work as it is or taking a step further. To reach the climax. The climax is an instant moment that only the person, or a group of audience that dare to break the first stage can experience the whole work. Otherwise the work remains at the same phase throughout the exhibition, and no one will ever experience the climax nor the after climax stage. On the other hand, if the climax of the work is reached then the aftermath of that event is the only remainder of the piece.

Specific Project Proposals:

1.“books of a shelf”

THEME:
Hidden information that can only be accessed when the structure is destroyed.

MATERIALS:
Books, Boards, Strings, A room.

In many cases a book consists of covers, a spine and a content between the covers. The body of the book is hidden by the covers and sometimes the bareness of simple covers can enhance the excitement of the readers, making them more curious about what the content is. I would like to carry this idea of hidden body, or the content, to a larger scale.

I would like to construct a bookshelf made out of a row of books. They will be arranged between two bookstands, or two walls that push the books together, without any support on the bottom of the books. This row of books, suppored upright by the forces from both sides, will collapse and fall down onto the ground if one of them is taken out to be read. The choice of the books, or whether they will be self-made or found, is also also to be determined.

It’s a challenge for the audience to “destroy“ work. Once the information is revealed (when the books are taken out) the magic of the forces on two ends of the row of books is destroyed and cannot be redone. Is someone really going to take the risk? How valuable is the information inside, or how daring is it from the outside that someone would do it? How to treat the aftermath of the falling books event that it can still be considered a piece, rather than just books on the floor?




2.“At the right time”

THEME:
Information that can only be accessed once.

MATERIALS:
Various

This is a series of works that can only be seen at once. Otherwise the information is overexposed or underexposed.

1. Video that is exactly the length of the work being shown. The still image is carried through until it reaches a very short climax. The climax is the truth of the video. Once this climax is over it goes back to a still image, which portrays an aftermath of the event(climax).

This will investigate the notion of chance for the audience. Suddenly, by complete luck, those who happen to be present in front of the work, become special. It is not a selective process and done completely by chance. The ideal outcome would be that those who have been “lucky“ spread the rumor that there is something more to the work than a still image, which will attract attention from the wider audience, but there is nothing for them to expect.




3.“Wallpaper Clock”

THEME:
Hidden information that is gradually revealed overtime

MATERIALS:
Wallpaper, a room

In many old houses that I have been to, especially the ones that haven’t been taken good care of, the old wallpapers are worn out and peeling off the wall, baring the dirty walls and the moulded glue on the backside of the wallpaper. In more contemporary houses there are no wallpapers and the walls are usually painted white. You never think of, at least I never do!, what could look underneath the white paint.

I would like to create a patterned wallpaper, of which patterns are to still yet to be determined, but possibly text and images, which will be pasted image-side-down on the wall, so when it’s pasted on all the walls (4 walls, ceiling and the floor) the room looks completely white.

Overtime, because of the strength of the glue, or by inviting the audience to peel off, the backside of the wallpaper is being revealed: the “truth” comes out.

The more dysfunctionality the wallpaper turns into, the more color and patterns it brings to the room, playing with the functionality of a familiar material.

Thesis Proposals:

Original Proposal Brief:

The topic for my thesis project will be: “Inside Information” – it will focus on the exploration of how a hidden piece of information can be revealed with an appropriate dynamic that creates a greater experience for the audience. How can the audience be divided into two groups? : one that appriciates the work as it is and the one that finds out the real information by taking a step forward?

I would like to look into the concept of the term information design, which was originated by Pentagram in London.


The product will have two phases:
 1.Normal phase, where the “information” is hidden, or not revealed, and yet the product will stand seeming as a  
  complete project. It will challenge the audience to experience more, by giving a hint of the fact there is a hidden
  information;
 2. A complete experience phase, where the hidden information is revealed. Once this truth becomes revealed then
  the work is not the same as the normal phase before the revelation, although the post-revelation becomes the
new “Normal phase.“

I would like to relate this project to my normal work ethic, which depends in large part on the labor. By hiding the labor that is put into each piece, the audience’s appreciation towards the piece becomes greater once the secret is revealed. I am not yet sure whether I would like the hidden message to be the labor itself, of which idea is what I have been incorporating into my works in the past.

This project will most likely have more of a fine art approach to it, but my other main focus during the process of this project will be how to incorporate what I have learned about graphic design during the last year and a half, capturing what my classmates have done and what I have gained from classes and lectures. This will be carried through typography, layout, additional printed materials and techniques. (Show Postcards, signs etc.) Therefore, rather than finishing the term with one product, I would like to have an installation of different small projects for the exhibition, which seems more appropriate for showing the research process.

Aside from the main project, I am planning on working on small projects, which adds to the research of the topic, which will possibly be shown in the exhibition.

Quote:

Judith Butler:

"the real is positioned both before and after its representation; and representation becomes a moment of the reproduction and consolidation of the real"

"Force of Fantasy"

FIRST ENTRY

Hello.

This blog will be used mainly for inspirations and thoughts that will lead to my MA thesis project that will be a part of the Konstfack Spring Exhibition in 2008.

I also have a blog that illustrates more of my life and photos on yutsak.blogspot.com
so if you want to see what kind of life I am spending please check that out.


I have been quite lazy since the winter break. I will update this blog more regularly from now on.