Intro to Research Final Project
Published 2023/11/23
Introduction
In this project, I would study the theme of “Injustice.” I want to explore how groups of people with disabilities have historically been marginalized and “otherized”, suffering from various experiences of segregation, discrimination and oppression. Examples of oppression of the disabled from the Middle Ages to modern times are listed, reflecting the mainstream society’s disregard and prejudice towards the disabled for a long time. This “otherization” exacerbates the vulnerable position of the disabled. I would like to call on people to pay attention to the rights and interests of the disabled, implement barrier-free environment, and improve relevant laws and regulations.
In medieval Europe, people with disabilities were often seen as being in league with the devil and needed to be separated. Some areas even practice the barbaric practice of drowning disabled babies. This reflects the fear and prejudice against disability that prevailed in the Middle Ages. In the 19th century in Britain and the United States, disabled people were inhumanely sent to madhouses and chums, where they were interned with the mentally ill. This severely deprives them of their personal freedom and treats them as “others” who need to be excluded from society. Under Nazi Germany’s euthanasia program, 300,000 disabled people were systematically slaughtered. The disabled were regarded by the Nazi authorities as a group whose “life is not worth living” and were subjected to horrific genocide. To this day, in many countries, persons with disabilities are segregated in education, public Spaces lack accessibility, and there is a variety of explicit and implicit discrimination in employment. This reflects that mainstream society’s disregard for the rights and interests of the disabled still exists.
Why Conceptual Art?
This is a project for social good, the core of which is to communicate and discuss social issues related to people with disabilities, rather than simply pursue aesthetic experience. It attempts to arouse the public’s concern and empathy for people with disabilities through installation art, trigger the public’s reflection on the mainstream social prejudice, and promote the rights and interests of people with disabilities. This is in line with conceptual art’s focus on social issues and concepts.
Site Specific
I will choose to site on Central Park because of its seamless integration with the natural surroundings. This setting provides an optimal environment for people to truly immerse themselves in the installation and enhance their overall experience.
Links to Seminar
First of all, in the grant proposal, I will emphasize the social impact of the project. In the application, data and cases should be used to fully demonstrate the reality of the difficulties faced by people with disabilities, and the far-reaching positive impact that the success of this project can have on the promotion of disability equality. This can impress donors. Then I can try to scale up the promotion. Promote the project through social media, schools, communities and other channels to gain more audience participation and maximize project influence. This makes it easier to secure higher levels of funding. Finally, a variety of supporting programs are presented. Such as volunteer recruitment, online publicity, questionnaires, etc., so that funders can see the comprehensiveness and sustainable impact of the project. This can increase the rational use of funds.
Prototype
I utilized a bottom to up installation. The foundation is a 10×10 grid built out of twisted sticks. On top, I constructed realistic structures using various materials. Soft wool was used to pave roads, while shiny, reflective papers created metaphorical obstacles. The exterior was covered in disorganized wool tufts.
Through this installation, I aimed to communicate two ideas. First, the soft, woolen roads represent the proper path that should be followed. In contrast, the highly visible reflective obstacles signify pitfalls that can be noticed and avoided if one has sight. Second, the chaotic external wool tufts symbolize negative events. A seeing person could easily navigate around obstacles and reach the endpoint. However, as a blind individual, the journey would be much more difficult filled with unknown barriers.
Critique
Leia suggested me to take a new perspective, not only to reflect the difficulties in the lives of disabled people from the device itself, but to directly let healthy people feel the difficulties in their lives more intuitively. In addition to making the road more rugged, I should try to better restore the daily feelings of disabled people from the physical level. For example, I should have made a pair of glasses to make their vision more blurred, but that was a little too deliberate, and Heloise showed me a good way to start, not with clarity, but with the direction of vision, if I could redirect the normal person to see the deer, so that instead of looking straight ahead, he was forced to look down. The direction of vision is distorted, and the road is more rugged, so as to better reflect the feelings of the disabled.
Process Point
This is the type of eye glass I’m going to manipulate:
This is the final installation prototype I built in blender, The right part is the Angle you would see if you put on the glasses.
Further Planning
I plan to purchase a variety of metal tubes to create more rugged pathways. These tubes, along with clay, will be used to craft crutch shapes, symbolizing the challenges faced by people with disabilities.
My vision for the final project is a life-sized interactive installation featuring my specially designed eyes. The dimensions of the installation will be a 4x4x2 cubic meter cube, consisting of 100 grids filled with diverse obstacles.
I estimate that crafting the glasses will take about 3 hours, while the production time for each crutch will be 1 hour. To form the obstacles, I intend to make approximately 20 crutches, totaling 20 hours. The construction of the entire frame is expected to take around three hours.
Critique Notes
What I took away from the comments was, first, that Prin emphasized deep thinking about the audience’s interaction with me. He advised me to think hard about how I wanted them to feel when they interacted with my passport. Then Bryan made two very constructive suggestions. First, he suggested that I create a ground installation related to my subject to add more dissonance. Second, he encouraged me to create an audio to better give people a visual and auditory sense of what it’s like to be disabled.
These two pieces of advice have been very useful to me. The first piece of advice helped me establish more clearly my theme of improving empathy for people with disabilities. I want them to be able to empathize and appreciate the chaos and pain of everyday life for people with disabilities. The second suggestion gave me more possibilities to improve the device.
In the next project, I plan to finish the remaining three installations first and make sure they fit in with the theme. Secondly, I will set out to create a corresponding ground installation to further enhance the viewer experience. Finally, I plan to start working on an audio program aimed at getting people to better empathize with the feelings of people with disabilities. This series of steps will make my art work more comprehensive and more deeply touch the audience’s emotions.
So next I’m going to build a finished scene by buying the planks to support the whole setup, and then I’m going to buy more wire, twisters, and chains that made up the installation.
Finally, the installation will become an accessible cuboid area, where people can walk around and feel the device. It took me 5 hours to build a quarter of the area, so I have 15 hours to build the rest of the area, and then the whole scene should be 5 hours to build.
Self Accountability
This is my work from the beginning of class:
I spent most of my time using blender to design the ground effect of the installation, in order to better simulate the feeling of disabled people, I designed the ground to be uneven. Below is a design of the ground I built in blender:
Process Photo
Presentation
Final Reflection
What I learned from combining research with making a project was that research provides crucial context, inspiration and depth to inform the concept and execution of the project. Exploring the historical marginalization of disabled groups gave me insight into themes of injustice to integrate.
What I learned about how to communicate my ideas through this medium exploration was that installation art and symbolic objects can convey concepts in an experiential, emotionally resonant way. Tactile interactions through art elicit visceral reactions that written or verbal communication cannot.
Writing the Spark Grant Proposal was helpful for making the Studio project because it forced me to fully flesh out my vision, including specific details about the artistic goals, audience impact, and logistical considerations. Developing the written proposal enabled me to approach the creative work with more intention and strategy.
What I learned about myself as an artist/designer during this project was that I am capable of addressing complex emotional themes related to human rights and inclusion through art. Pushing beyond my comfort zone to explore an ambitious installation project showed me that I can leverage my technical design skills to send a meaningful message that resonates with viewers. This built my confidence to tackle evocative subjects creatively.