Wednesday, August 19, 2015

Travel as Culture, Travel as Interior Space - Project Photos and Statement



‘Interior’ is defined as “situated within or inside; relating to the inside; inner.”  As it relates to this project, there are two salient points about this definition.  The first is that what a person, place, or thing is situated inside of is not a defining quality of ‘interior’.  To be an interior does not require a physical manifestation.  In the exclusion of physicality as a defining characteristic, we are open to suggest that an interior need not have such.  The second noteworthy point in the definition of interior is the appearance of the word ‘within’.  Within means inside, but its meaning is not restricted to inside of a physical or experiential something; it can also be used in relationship with time, a something exists or happens within a period of time.  Another relevant, if not intentional, truth about the word ‘within’ is that it is a compound of ‘with’ and ‘in’.  It is possible that this holds no historical value, but it is nonetheless true and valid in the context of this work.  Interior is not only ‘in’, but ‘in’ and ‘with’ and that reverberates in the ways in which I consider the ‘Interior Space’ of our study and travels in Japan.  Coming back to the description for this course, ‘we will not learn about Japan by traveling there, but we will learn from and with Japan.   
Perceptions of Interior Space, as it relates to travel, range from the Obvious, to the Reinterpreted, to the Conceptual or Experiential.  The Obvious includes the physical structures we as travelers inhabit or visit, examples from our travels include: hotel rooms, museums, trains, restaurants and temples.  Reinterpreted Interior Space of travel includes gardens, neighborhoods and sacred sites.  Finally, the Conceptual or Experiential Interior Spaces of travel for the purposes of this paper are groups and specific activities. 
This project seeks to create a representation of each of these types of spaces using four examples.  The representative spaces will be both three dimension and flat.  Their flatness speaks to the superficiality of a recreated experience.  A manufactured sensory representation of an experience will never achieve the authenticity we desire in trying to recreate memories.  Playing on the idea of the stereoscopic views of vacation destinations found by looking into a View-Master® I created a box to represent a small room with wall screens that can be changed to represent the four different example ‘Interior Spaces’ from our travels in Japan.  The ‘Interior Spaces’ depicted are ‘Hotel Rooms as Interior Space’ as an example from the Obvious category; ‘Kyoto (City) as Interior Space’ and ‘Fushimi Inari as Interior Space’ examples of the Reinterpreted category; finally, ‘Class Group as Interior Space’ is an example of Conceptual/Experiential category.
           By lifting the box to your face, you block out other views, leaving you peering into a room surrounded by photographic imagery from the study trip.  The box itself is made specific to Japan by its construction with washii tape and its vermilion color, which is a reference to the ubiquitous hue that appears prominently at many of the Japanese landmark sites we visited including the torii at Fushimi Inari, the structures and gates at Sanjusangendo, the pagoda at Kiyomizu-dera, as well as at the Daito, or Great Pagoda at Danjogaran in Koyasan.  The interior of the box is inspired by Japanese wall screens that often tell a story or a history of a place and the tatami ‘floor’ acts as an additional visual reminder of our regular encounters with this traditional interior design element.



Travel as Interior Space Journal Pages







Sunday, August 16, 2015

Travel Journal

HHNNNGGGGG!!!! *cough* I mean, it's travel journal time. First 10 pages are whatever and the last 6 are comic stuff. READ THIS FROM RIGHT TO LEFT because I started in the back of the sketchbook because I'm 2cool4skool.










If you went through all of this, you're a nerd.

--Zach

Thursday, August 13, 2015

studio proposal






Final Project

link to video


            During the trip, I began to wonder why tourists take photos and videos. The conclusion I came to is that people are scared of losing memories of unique experiences. However, I also realized that every moment I tried to capture, I also lost as an experience. I am interested in exploring this topic as well as how photos and videos of a place (or souvenirs of "lost experiences") can be assembled to create a new experience (different from the original place). In my own piece I used film from my grandparents as well as my own footage. I purposely left my footage "tourist-y", which was shot on my iPhone. I left it this way because I wanted other people to relate to my footage, as if they could have taken it themselves, instead of something that looked shot by a professional. I want people to think about tourism, and ask the question of why they take photos or videos themselves. By juxtaposing my footage with my grandparents (which is also "tourist-y" of that time period), I hope to complicate these questions further. What happens to these tourist photos and videos over time? Has photo/film/video taking become a ritual and tradition in visiting these places as much as other centuries old traditions and rituals (throwing coins/cleansing with water before entering)? I do not think these questions have definite answers, but I think they are important topics to be conscious of and think about while visiting a tourist site. On a more personal level, my piece is also about trying to connect to my grandparents and the places they visited through time and space. I feel that there are definite moments of connection as well as disconnection, which I tried to highlight in my video. The center panel of my video is one of water and koi fish, which I used to symbolize the passing of time but also a constant presence. I structured the panels like the paths through a Shinto shrine - a walkway in the middle with two water channels on the side. The "tourist" footage takes the place of the water channels (in which the water is always moving, but always present as well) while the video of water and koi is a constant, uncut shot (in terms of video content) which symbolizes the steadiness of the path, but also the ability to look between both channels while the channels themselves can not "mix" with the other.

Wednesday, August 12, 2015

(belated) omiyage

Given : a t-shirt from GU and a capsule machine toy

I knew right away that my given omiyage would need to involve a shirt with English writing on it because there were some really funny ones. There were so many to choose from at GU that I actually ended up buying several for friends and family back home. I thought the one with the phrase “Don’t be late!” on it was especially appropriate for this trip since we were always on the move and because every time we broke up for the evening we would get sent off with the next day’s meeting time and a reminder of why being on time was respectful.

I feel like every time we got together as a group, at least one person would pull out a weird new phone charm or keychain and show it off. I picked the fastfood girl (didn’t get a picture of her but I think it was the one with the fries?) because I thought it reflected the accessibility and amount of food in Japan (something I’ve missed every day since getting back), along with some of the weirder stuff I saw on the trip. It seems like tiny naked women with giant food is quite popular there right now.


Also, I’m sorry Allison! I didn’t realize there was a spot of chocolate on the shirt when I bought it. Kind of a bonus gift, I guess? I ate a ridiculous amount of candy on this trip so it’s fitting.

-- Tess



Sketchbook