Flatlander by Ping elingeling

Curtsey to EDWIN A. ABBOTT, FLATLAND: A ROMANCE OF MANY DIMENSIONS

A publication by AMY YAN PING

FLATLANDER

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Today, all the architectural design stories start with a title and two lines:

“Take design further with AutoCAD CAD software” “Design and shape the world around you with the powerful, connected design tools in Autodesk® AutoCAD® software. Create stunning 3D designs, speed documentation, and connect with the cloud to collaborate on designs and access them from your mobile device.” AutoDesk website, AutoCAD page As a user, I acknowledge every point they make and deeply believe in its power and sacredness, but every hero story has its climax and crisis. Facing its old friend hand drawing, this 2-line software shingon is becoming a seed, which grows doubts in my heart.

“The world around you” What is the world around me? Is it the space I exist in in the very moment? Or is it the imagined sphere that is extended from an existing reference? It can be both. If it is the physical space around me, how I perceive it decides how I create it. Since both drawing methodologies are based on orthographic concept, the outcomes in their forms are identical, and the making process is aligned with the perceiving process. To be honest, hand drawing has a painful preparation process and a stiff demand of hardware. However it always keeps the wholeness of the design. In hand drawing, every relevant drawing is within eyesight, working as reminder as well as reference. While in AutoCAD, the framing, the Xref (external reference), the scaling in the software restrains the perception of the on-going drawing. The understanding of space is a continuous flow and AutoCAD cuts it into pieces and chews them one at a time. If it is the imaginary space, how I visualize it decides how I create it. In the process of drawing, my body extends in a large range. Long lines are generated within substantial body movements; small details are brought out by close operation on the drawing paper; angled structures are expressed by stoops. However AutoCAD is a finger gym. Your upper body keeps one single position, while the arms and fingers intensively rub the table and scroll the mouse.

“Connected design tools” Living in the modern technology era, possessions like tools are the new sexy. Who doesn’t want to enhance their strength and extend their capability? Computer technology however is another story, how people are dealing with this digital world with its vectors and pixels is a coding course. In order to create a perfect circle, instead of using your arm as a compass, you trained your brain to grow another “inhumane” but intuitive behavior: type “C”+“Enter”; in order to give dimensions, instead of counting units out of scaled ruler, you move your hand, click the mouse and drag through lines and angles, leaving no understanding of spatial nature. When bringing efficiency to work, AutoCAD killed two things. Firstly, designing is a thinking and realizing process. Computer programs are certainly powerful, but they have definite restraints in “connection”. As a one-brainer, I think of a space and I draw it out. My brain controls my body

to copy the image in my mind onto the paper. When using high technology, I become a two-brainer; I think of a space, I translate the images into codes, and I type and click. AutoCAD killed the flow of mind and changed the intuitive respond to the imagination into a strategic translation. It slows the brain down and it produces redundantly processed designs. And secondly, although I am unwilling to talk about how people are too dependent on the high technology tools and how catastrophic it can be when breaks down, few and few designers are able to draw out what is in their mind and the degradation of the ability to picture a space is undoubted.

“Speed documentation” Whilst interning I received a small task: renovating a 15 square meter floor area, 6 stairs and their handrails in an existing and functioning food court. The place was designed ages ago and all the supporting information I got was an A0 hard copy of the floor plan. AutoCAD is proud of its speed documentation. From the surface it seems like that but what they didn’t take into consideration was that the change of technology is plane-speed compared to the walk-speed change of buildings. In this case, the original CAD file was nowhere to be found, so no change could be done using hi-tech to the ex-vector lines and shapes. The quality of the speed sacrificed the flexibility in a long term. Ironically, a black pen, a correction tape, a ruler and careful execution, did all the work in less an hour. And the texture of the fixed part drew attention to the change, a layered thinking procedure, and sealed the time difference on the paper. On the second thought, the real quality of “speed” is questionable. According to the article “Slowness” written by architects Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, they claimed that:“ Decisions made slower but they are more permanent, they are less efficient in terms of changes, they are more accurate.” No matter how quick the design is made, corrected, corrected again and corrected again, there is only one decision that is going to be finally built. Speed design doesn’t always mean smart design; maybe that is why AutoDesk only dare to say its star product allows for “speed documentation” rather than speed design.

“Connect with the cloud to collaborate on designs and access them from your mobile device” I have no objection with the new level of convenience that the cloud brings us, but however powerful the virtual space is made, it is always a reflection of the real space, and it will not transcend its original self. The process of using the cloud involves at least 2 devices in which AutoCAD is installed, one or more wireless printers, and Internet access. With so much additional help, people are actually handicapped in the virtual world. On the other hand, hand drawing breathes the air and experience gravity. The drawing itself can already be considered as a model of architecture. You draw the building with pens and rulers and build it with bricks and cement, leaving two great pieces referencing each other in the same space. Architecture design is a group work. Basically, the bigger the media, the more people can be involved in the conversation. I wonder how much conversation can happen when everyone stares at a tiny screen with one person controlling the mouse and pressing keys. Online collaborations can be more devastating, decisions are made after rounds of replies and no one grasps a whole map about how the project is preceding. Due to technology, the group work eventually becomes a linear discussion. However, once a meeting is called around large pieces of hand drawings, rich discussion takes shape.

All input is shown and clear idea development is mapped out.

“Take design further with AutoCAD CAD software” AutoCAD is a sign of architects’ selfishness. In an AutoCAD empire, the “Towel of Babel” construction is shelved due to lack of common understanding of the drawing language. In an AutoCAD empire, ¬Richard Wagner would not dream of creating the grand Bayreuth Festival Theatre to hold his magnificent Ring Cycle. In an AutoCAD empire, designers would rather carry the high technology burdens and live in its exclusive pride than acknowledge others creativity and improve in a sense of crisis.

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INTERVIEW Jiang Yin Jun, Chinese artist. Now studying Master Degree in Shanghai University Fine Art Collage. A：请问你是怎么起步的？你认为系统学法和大学学习有没有很大不同？有没有想过学习其他的方向？ J：小学时就跟着老师上课，之后一直上的是美术专科学校。画的就是素描石膏，景物，挂像，人物，技术型的练习。对我来说艺术的标准很模糊，但学医似乎标准很清晰，潜意识里我认为自己更适合有标准的门类。前两个月我跟着音乐学院老师学了一些钢琴，现在自学。大学里专注自己的创作，面对自己，和技术无关。人生的主题，一辈子想做的东西，不是做当下大众认可的东西，而是自己的语言。不能自己骗自己。好与不好很难衡量，绘画越来越不崇高了，已经成为一种行为，或是装置，做了就行。表达方式上要发展自己的路子很局限了，国内的网站查的很严，视野也就更局限。最近刚去奥地利，感觉现代艺术的现场感和图片感差不多。古典艺术，现场的震撼感可以让人反复观摩酝酿现代艺术是创作者自己可视的创作的一段时间，个人以为重。 A: Do you mind talking about your learning experience? What are the stages? What are the changes after college? Any other direction you want to pursue if not art? J: I started learning from a private tutor since primary school, and I went to an art specified school for my whole secondary study. The basic learning system at that time was very technical. I continuously practiced drawing plaster statue, still life and people portraits for over 7 years until I got enrolled to fine art collage. In tertiary study I find the standard for art very vague, and I subconsciously think I am a more clear-standard person who want my work to be fairly evaluated. Maybe studying medicine suits me better. I learned piano for two month, now am practicing by myself. In university, everyone is concentrating in his/her own creating process. Instead of talking about drawing techniques, we face our true self and consider the topic of life and what we want to do for the whole life. We are working on our own language but not what the crowd acknowledges. For me fine art is less and less sacred, it became a behavior or an installation that is hard to be evaluated, therefor as long as you come up with something it can be called art. In terms of the form, I found my work restrained by the limited information in China, many forms have been used around the world but I cannot get access to them. I went to Austria recently, and I have a strong feeling that for contemporary art the sense of the scene is weaker than classic masterpiece. The understanding you get from the images online has not much difference from what you see at the site. However in classical paintings the shock and admiration brought by seeing the original piece cannot be substituted. And it allows you too spend ages appreciating it. In contemporary art what I see is the period of time that the artist spent in making; it has the artist him/herself all over it that I couldn’t care more.

A: 你希望如何表达你的作品？如何使之受众？ J: 这些都不重要。不能只推敲观众的想法，每个人的阅历背景都不一样。场地，空间，来看的人数都不重要。就只有一人来看，一人理解，就可以了。艺术家展示出自己的作品是很勇敢的。把自己完整的赤裸裸的展现出来是需要勇气的。而有些人反而都不关心，所以不能完全预测别人的反映。我曾经碰到一件艺术作品给我留下很深的印象，一年后我碰到了创作者，我们交流了打动我的作品，它使我们成为了好朋友。这是我所理想的艺术品和观众的互动和结果。 A: So what do you want to show in your work? How do you want the audience to understand it? J: All of those are not important to me. Everyone has his/her own educational background and living experience, so I don’t guess or predict what people are going to say about my work. Neither of the site, the layout, and audience experience matters to me. Even if only one person saw my work and understood it, I can’t be more satisfied. I think it needs courage for artists to show their work in public, for it is brave to thoroughly expose your self in front of others. People might not care about my work even though I put much in it, so I don’t predict the reaction I am going to get. I once got deeply impressed by a piece of artwork in an exhibition and I happened to meet the artist after a year. We talked about the work that moved me and we became bosom friends. This is my ideal form of interaction and with audience and I want my work to result like this.

A: 你现在的创作状态是什么？作为国内艺术家，你希望走什么方向？ J: 我现在还是学生，在做实验性绘画，立体作品。我想把想呈现的东西理明白了先。每天创作的时间不多，一二小时在作画整理上，其余都是阅读思考和感受生活上。艺术家的生活里艺术不重要，是工作，而生活更重要，生活要把握一个主题需要经历，需要思考。对于以前的作品，不想重复自己，现在的作品方向不同有很多作品都不是很满意。对我来说，不论是病态美学还是肖像系列，以前的作品偏向自己所谓自己向恶的一面，我会疑问自己作为艺术家的创作系列为什么完全不同，哪一面是真正的自己。而现在希望做光明一点的作品，粉红色系列，体现出自己向善的一面。我在创作中的策略性和无意性，机缘性都有参杂，对我来说，灵感来自事情，人，物，时间让我发现自己。我需要沉浸在一个艺术状态能够成就作品，但是心无旁骛的状态很难，会不小心随波逐流，取悦大众。 A: What are you working on now? What do you want to do as a Chinese local artist? J: I am a student now and I am working on experimental painting as well as threedimensional pieces. I want to sort out what I want to present first. The actual time I spend on creating and organizing is less than 2 hours every day, while the rest of my time is spent on reading, thinking and experiencing life. As an artist, art is not the most important thing, life is. It is hard to grasp one sole topic for his/her whole life. It needs

experiencing and thinking. My previous works were recognized in the art circle, but I don’t want to repeat myself. I am working on something totally opposite now, although there are a lot of pieces that I am not convinced by. In my pervious collection I was talking about morbid aesthetic, dark portraits, which were vastly inclined to the evil aspect of me. While now I want to do something brighter, a pink collection, focus more on the good side of me. I create in a strategic way as well as an accidental way. I get inspired by those people, objects, time and matters that discover who I am. I need to emerge myself into an art status to create, and that is another hard thing to accomplish, because people have short attention deprivation and always tend to choose popular orientation.

A: 请问你有没有喜欢的艺术家？或者是喜欢的作品？ J: 作为技术活上来说，我曾经很喜欢Johannes Vermeer和Diego Velázquez。现在比较关注Matthew Barney的实验电影。但大多数都在关注艺术之外的东西，比如说佛教。我现在还在认识阶段，本科就开始学习佛学，但现在更投入，可能信仰成为自己生命中最重要的东西，艺术性可能会淡化。我对世间出世间有感触。原来所信仰的道德，概念边界在接触佛教之后都不重要了，善和恶之间的交换只是存在在每个个人身上的不同状态。所以艺术家会有出入很大的系列。人生众多事物都对我失去了吸引力，而宗教的不可视的强大力量在默默运转，让我接触了很多，找到了感兴趣的人生主题。很多道理很多终点，原点，真理都是不明确的，信仰的存在只是一种宇宙观，只是扬善惩恶是每个宗教的共同点。现代社会精神领域上的问题很多出在环境上，多方面理解。歪曲的真相也不会受到追捧，比如说佛教不会出现太多对政治很短暂的利益关系，没有关注永恒的关系。 A: Do you have a favorite artist? Is there any artwork that inspires you? J: When I was still working on my skills, I used to love Johannes Vermeer and Diego Velázquez. Later on I was interested in Matthew Barney’s experimental movies. But now I focus more on things out side of art such as Buddhism. I got in touch with it back in under-graduation study. At that time I was learning about it but now I am recognizing and practicing it. Art for me as a form for a career might fade away and my religion may become the topic of my life. I was intrigued by the notion of this-worldly and otherworldly affairs. The interchange between good and evil is just different statuses in each individual person, and that explained my confusion in why I have so distinguished practices. Within the fading out of my interests in all affairs around me, I felt my religion operating quietly using its enormous power pushing me to confront and to seek. Regarding art, I found similarity in Buddhism that the end, the start and the truth all have vague boundaries. I accept other religion, for me, having a belief is having an opinion about the world, and every belief pursues praising the good and punishing the evil. Buddhism allows me to understand things from all perspectives. We believe that the problem of blurred society spirits is connected to environmental issues. Twisted truth will not be sought after in Buddhism. Therefor politics, as a temporal beneficial relationship, will not be remotely considered in the permanent relationship of life.

A: 回到现实中，你是怎么看待国内艺术圈的？ J:我之前说的艺术家正是我现在的女友。她在信仰上是我的导师，接触的也比我早，但是艺术上不够注重。我们准备在北京办个双个展。艺术圈就是自己玩自己，很多复杂的东西。正真重要的参观者是画廊老板，顾问来看，卖画主要卖给收藏者，对他们来说是投资，是做买卖，商人的事情。对艺术家来说这是正真的吃饭家伙，学校是不会教的。艺术没什么高尚的，事在人为。 A: Back to your practical living condition, what do you think about the local art circle?

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J: The artist I was talking about became my partner. She got in touch with the religion earlier than me and is my mentor now. We are going to hold a bio-solo exhibition together in Beijing end of the year. I am a bit worried that she takes art for granted and whether we will accomplish this or not. In the local art circle, everyone is playing with him/herself. There are so many complicated interest relations in it. For us, the most important clients are gallery owners and art consultants. We also sell works to collectors. For them, buying our work is an investment, is pure business. That is the solid income we get, and I believe no one can learn this fact from school. Again, there is nothing sacred about art, people do what they have to do.

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Forward ||| This is an experience similar to thousands from my hometown.

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A Family Judgement My hometown of Shanghai, with its political culture, ubiquitous ambition and occasional snobbery nurtured generations of redundant competitions. Sucessors survive not only with their skill but also their tolerance of stress, a bit of luck and a well-connected family. It is not a necessarily negative thing, I sometimes feel thankful since this society creates all kinds of mature and systematic institutions that teaches everyone to cope with exams. Here in my hometown, as long as you want, you can be anything.

I was once very close to. Due to our similar ages we were always compared to each other. We both loved drawing Manga and he was generally considered better than me. According to our parents, his drawings were more loyal to the original characters from the book and since I changed their expressions, clothes, gestures, and sets, the drawings were no longer recognizable. In their opinion I was drawing carelessly and imprudently so drawing was not for me. Baring this premature family judgment, I had to move my passion I have a cousin who underground. First

was drawing on small pieces of paper hidden behind textbooks. Then the trick developed into drawing on the back pages of textbooks so they had nothing to confiscate. The tension continued for a couple of years until one day when my dad once accidentally stumbled upon one of my secret drawings in my desk drawer. In the later years, when we look back as a family my father always says proudly“It’s because of my keen eyes, we saved a talent from the family.”

Jing’s Drawing Class

My passion was finally recognized and accepted, but they insisted finding a teacher to get me proper training in academic drawing. I was 14 when I first saw a drawing class and met Jing. Approximately 20 students were divided into 2 rooms based on their drawing skills. “Once you get good enough, you will be put in the good room. Some people take only half a year. Let’s see how you go.” Said Jing. After 2 years, Jing asked me to go to the good room and said: “This is a trial, prove to me that you belong here.” One year goes by, he said: “Now you know who draws the best in the room, try to be as good as him.” Looking back, I couldn’t tell whether I was having fun drawing, but what I can’t

deny is that my skill was skyrocketing. The excitement stimulated by competitions became my strongest motivation. I learnt from Jing for over 5 years, during which I not only recognized my true drawing skill but also got to know him. He was a rebellious and enthusiastic person when he was young. Sparkling with talent, he was already invited to give drawing lectures in his early 20s. During the 10year Culture Revolution, he worked as a labourer and taught himself English, which got him a confirmation of enrollment from Harvard University in Oil Painting. A sudden bad news reached him at the time that his wife was diagnosed wth gastric cancer. He decided to stay with his wife and

his 8-year-old boy and gave up his American dream. I never saw his wife as she died one month before I became his student. Luckily he kept his adventurous spirit - together with his other students, I was given the chance to draw something unconventional. We traveled and drew sceneries; we tried some 12-hour continuous drawing sessions; we hired 2-hour housemaids to be our portrait models. Our improvements happened very suddenly, almost like epiphanies. His story was always an encouragement for us and I am grateful that the experience in his drawing room taught me so much more about life. previous page |||||| my old drawings from Jing’s drawing class (age 16-17) next page |||||| image from Chinese drawing exam, my university works from Shanghai second next page |||||| my drawings from“Drifts”

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A Plank Bridge, Thousands of Hopes

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The students stud- 3-hour system. The ying drawing main- fine art secondary eduly had two purcation in China was poses: One was the like assembly lines hope to get into fulfill demands and tertiary education produce piles of prodin fine art colleges ucts. “3-hour” is the to pursue their art breeding ground for dream, and the attention deprivation other was to make and shortcuts seekers; up their insignifi- “3-hour” is the fucance in study and neral of critical thinkget extra scores to ing and imagination; go to university. “3-hour” is the plank Either way, they bridge where thouneeded to attend sands of people rush a citywide drawahead. ing examination. The exam was held My last couple of years once a year and the learning in Jing’s content was always drawing room was not the same: Produc- pleasant. 3-hour rule ing a pencil draw- was mandatory for ing and a gouache exams, which put the drawing according cruel reality in front to the photo in 3 of the creative minds hours, and produce among his students. an one-hour quick People were complainsketch of a picture ing, compromising, of 3-4 people in coping and quitting. different gestures. Drawing was after all Therefore, the ma- an investment to the jority of the draw- future, a lifetime tool, ings I produced and a chance of winwere 3-hour length ning the competition. drawings. Along Drawing was never for with all the other drawing’s sake. students, I never once doubted the reason behind the

Hypocrites The past five years of hardwork trying to get into university was officially “wasted in vain” after I got enrolled into Landscape Design. “The first thing I want you to do is to forget what you have learnt for the exams.” That was the goal set by my teacher in the first class. “The drawings you did before are foundations for you to reach the next step. You were drawing things like what you see, now you are drawing things against it.” Overwhelmed by all the freedom I could eventually embrace, the outcome on the other hand was passible. I felt lost in this uncontrollable, groundless, fraudulent means of drawing, and additionally I found the drawing was a title too

open for me to make decisions. All that anxiety didn’t last long once I immersed myself in the university atmosphere. Universities in China are generally known as hard to get into and easy to get out. Once I became accustomed to university pace, everything started to lie back a little. Especially in design institutions, teachers never explained what they wanted from us and why, all they did was reading out the curriculum, showing us works from previous students and waiting for submissions. Students attended classes, extracted key elements from others’ works, cheated in exams and waited for holidays. The competition was still

there, however not on the academic level but mainly political. Everyone wants to be in the student committee that is run by the School Party Secretaries. Once you have pleased and gain trust from them, benefits come along. Sooner or later, the hierarchy in the class was formed. External projects, gallery invitations, recommendations went to only a certain group of people, leaving the rest “peacefully” finishes their degree. Chinese university was like a small Chinese society: connections, popularity speak volume, abilities and hard working keeps quiet.

Drift

Waving goodbye to exams, life became rather odd. Accustomed to a task-driven life, I found it hard to psychologically cope with an aimless life-

style. Inadvertently I fell into a paradoxical behavior: I pursued a drifting condition but was thirsty for missions; I broke down harmonious parts of my life to create a chaotic, fresh impression while my deep fear was always losing order; I was subconsciously avoiding people attachments and doing everything by myself but still needed remembering and attentions. Not knowing what to do, I took a sketchbook, a camera and started wandering around. Living in a city for over 18 years, I only had my first chance to appreciate it. Not the fancy shopping malls or the cutting-edge art districts, but the behavior, the personality and the mood, which was revealed by the architecture, the traffic, the climate and the community.

The school works were still about getting rid of the mindset from previous years of practice. My first reaction towards that was to abstract the drawing content. Instead of resembling, the focus was put on visual balance, volume, and ambience. A part of me was also longing meaning behind the drawings, the ironical or the representational. I was â&#x20AC;&#x153;mythicizingâ&#x20AC;? everything I drew and trying to add my personal marks and codes to everything. However no matter how much thought I put in, the works always seemed to be pretentiously made. And no matter how much I wanted to be unique, the works always occurred to be familiar. I was not the only one. Due to that the exam-oriented education was so

grounded, design students had very narrow and similar taste, we believed in one right way to draw and we were subconsciously focusing on skills rather than ideas. Due to the dated and slouchy tertiary education, the criteria and judgments from the teachers were vague, contradicting and confusing. No one was teaching any learning and thinking method, nor any design philosophy. The aesthetics senses were uniform, and the graphics and presentation means was stereotyped. Overall, when it comes to design, people seemed to know exactly what is right and what is wrong, while when it comes to ethics, they were confused and mostly indifferent.

Pure Pleasure Another group of people caught my attention. A much larger

kinds, and they appreciate and collect artifacts by nobodies. Their existence was chaotic but colorful, far from extreme but different.

to pure pleasure, a living philosophy. More or less through them I made a breakthrough in drawing: why spend time digging meaning, twisting narratives, objecting ideas, and abusing creativity? Drawing Those people were is a flow of mind; it is a not professional drift and pure pleasure; designers but just keep doing it. showed more creativity than anything I have ever seen at school. Those drifters were my generation’s version of “derive”. They didn’t have manifestos; not any claimed form of methodology; movements were naturally formed by curiosity and free minds. They were gathered by modern information era, seeking phase, performing air. Ironically as a design student all my attempts of pursuing them failed, for I am practicing creativity for security, for money, and they were dissimilarly withdrawing

Postscript ||| I find it hard to reflect on my drawing life in Australia for the past 3 years. Maybe I have fallen into an ugly drawing behavior, or maybe I have reached a peak of my time. Only by distance myself geographically as well as temporally will I find the answer. Looking back the time surviving completions in China, I am glad I have this shared memory with my generation and my hometown. After all, who doesn’t want a small unfair background story to whine about from time to time?

than expected “drifters’ group” was active on the Internet. They were from different disciplines and were inspired by different things from a vast rage of areas. They shared the common characteristics of avoiding mainstream influence, breaking existing boundaries, savoring the very present, and appreciating aimless experience. They do things that people from my generation have not experienced: They climb trees on the backyard, sew their own clothes, go to churches and mosques, learn Latin, paint graffiti, write songs and play hard. They travel without maps and go with the flow, they watch loads of experimental movies and make unbounded opinions, they browse foreign websites of all

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LOOKING FOR PHILIP GLASS

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I first heard of the name Philip Glass in a pub. “I had this most amazing experience watching his show. ” Said my friend, “There was projection, recitation, playing. To be honest I am not a big fan of Contemporary music, but that just blew me away. ” And then she brought out a piece of paper and wrote down two lines:

“PHILIP GLASS & LEONARD COHEN BOOK OF LONGING” If you think that’s the beginning of me loving music then you are wrong. Funnily enough neither the poems nor the music inspired me one bit. Bearing with it, I tried my best to extract key points about collaborative performances and finished my essay about chamber music and space design. Then the book and the CD were left in a dusty corner of the room and stayed there until two weeks after its due date. The name was brought up again in a studio class. The topic was about the poetic aesthetic countering bulky technology in applying multimedia. “I went to his opera Einstein on the Beach five years ago. For the whole four hours I was drawn by his feast of creative fantasy. I have never seen a stage like that” said the teacher, after which she opened an excerpt from Youtube:

“ONE TWO THREE FOUR, ONE TWO THREE FOUR FIVE SIX, ONE TWO THREE FOUR FIVE SIX SEVEN EIGHT, ONE TWO THREE FOUR, ONE TWO ...” I was not surprised by the whimsical music and dance or the magical set. And I was certainly not as blown-away as I pretended to be. Not understanding my exaggerated affection, the discussion between the teacher and excited the class and Einstein on the Beach instantly became a must see for every student in the class. It didn’t take long for the ardor to fade away and all I remembered was the name Philip Glass and the hovering echo of that tedious number-counting sequence. Due to the re-staging of Philip Glass’s operas, enthusiasm was awakened in the class and everyone promptly brought a ticket for the music carnival. I was no exception, although my attention was really drawn to the curiosity of this mysterious person, and perhaps how an opera could actually take place with people leaving and returning all the time throughout the performance.

“……” I was stunned. And I still can’t say exactly what changed during the watching experience. The stage was filled with power. It was progressive yet capricious, logical yet miraculous, meaningful yet effortless. There were so many answers yet so many problems. For me everything resolved in a wordless aria sung by a soprano upon which a narrow illuminated rectangle slowly rose up on the backdrop spanning over ten minutes. The emptiness, the hollowness wildly filled the theatre. I was speechless. Walking out of the theatre is like waking up from a daydream. I hadn’t realized that I didn’t go to any of the Champaign intervals to meet my friend until my phone rang. “What is this baffling thing!” On the other end of the phone, my friend shouted, “I tried to stay and finally ran out of patience after an hour. People kept leaving and I heard a snoring sound from the back row. I was eager to prove that I am a sophisticated and profound music lover but eventually gave up, it was beyond me.”

||||| ||||| A MISSED OPPORTUNITY One of my most memorized pieces of music is by Leos Janacek: From the House of the Dead, Overture. The reason is not because I particularly like Czech music or am moved by the story behind it. On the 27th of August, the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra held a concert in the newly renovated Hamer Hall in Melbourne. They opened the concert with that piece and I missed it by 1 minute. I had the most awful experience holding the ticket watching the screen outside of the gate, imagining the live sound of a worldwide known orchestra warming up and thoroughly releasing its power.

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SCORES Terry Riley’s in C changed my idea of classical music circle. I understand solely mastering one aspect of this enormous subject takes a lifetime. But it still slightly irritates me when I hear “Wagner nuts” warmly discussing the most insignificant differences between the 1990 and 2010 Metropolitan Opera Ring Cycle productions; or arguments about whether a certain pianist’s exaggerated postures suit performing Mozart. It is time for a change. Once my music friend told me he is playing in a concert without any combined rehearsal with other players: “There are 10 of us playing, we haven’t even seen each other before, and the scores we are using are basically instruction of bars.” I was surprised when I first saw the music after the concert. Everything on the score was familiar but nothing was recognizable when it comes to its acoustic outcome. Playing with a chance-based ideology, an experimental approach and a minimalist purpose, the piece successfully created a complex, rich and stunning sound from several simple bars. Creativity might not necessary mean adding, it can be shifting, and it is wisdom.

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Cover Story ||

||FORGERY BY AMY YAN | OF || RACHEL | WHITEREAD || || HERRINGBONE FLOOR STUDY | 2001 || || PALE BROWN INK | ON PRINTED OUT COPY || TO SCALE | 29.5 X 42.5 CM ||

How I relate drawing in an interior design oriented mindset:

DRAWING AS SPATIAL MEMORIES Human beings have been gifted with the ability to draw, which was clearly proven by the 32,000-year-old drawings of horses in the Chauvet Cave1. Over thousands of years, the basic drawing strategy has never changed: we managed our body postures, got the tools ready, approached the media surface and made marks. For the purpose of drawing, our body generated those unintentional habits that were memorised as conditional reflexes. These reflexes were even more obvious in the process of drawing. I used to spend a lot of time watching drawing demonstrations. The demonstrator had every precise movements when he was making the same approaches: Leaning forward and colouring in a pupil with a raised pinkie, or breaking out and making a short pause after a wild brush stroke. During drawing, the intention penetrates into our movements, our body successively performs out our mind. Besides our body memory adapting drawing practice and forming our skills, the visual memory plays a main role in executing images too. “Everything you can imagine is real.”2 The real life is the reference for everything we draw. But we are not photocopy machines that understand the world as pixels. Although making an overall draft before digging into details is the generally known trick for drawing, with or without a whole picture in mind, we have to start somewhere. Unlike retinal memory, visual memory is logically processed with a spatial arrangement. If a person is asked to draw a tiger, he probably won’t start with the woods. In our brains we “tag” everything for what we see and keep the information. Sometimes we even deduct the perspective data. People commonly don’t have a birdseye view of a space, but when they are asked to draw the composition of their house, a plan is what they normally come up with. Regardless of how accurate it is, drawing is called from our spatial memory whick happens in our brains before it is developed onto the paper.

In terms of the drawing itself, the media that the drawing is presented on is as well the media for a physically layered memory. The aged paper, the textured brushworks, the overlapping colours, etc. are all traces of the drawer’s working. For the erased, the covered, the washed and sometimes the cut-out, the lost records are the ruined layer of drawing memory. “A healed memory is not a deleted memory.”3 Those changes show traces of drawer’s thinking and extend the memory sealed on the drawing. Since all ruins leave traceable clues, there is a higher and higher risk to regret when you draw. The fact that every second is irreversible makes the finished drawing a strong memory, and the more risks you take, the more related it becomes to you, and the stronger and richer the memory you create on the drawing. For me, drawing in flatland is dance in space. They are inter-influenced and interacted. As dancers we bend, we jump, we march, we withdraw; we draw out lines and curves in space with our arms and legs; we attribute moves and resolve scenes in the end. As drawers we rub, we dot, we wield, we trace; we perform out spatial flow on to a piece of paper; we gather doodles and align ideas together. Perhaps that is why so many drawers are obsessed with drawing dancers while dancers on the other hand like to be described as “guiding audience towards drawing after drawing”. Both of the art forms appreciate memories as the fragments of experience generated from the world is carefully memorized and actively responded to. The tripod of drawing, space and memory stereoscopically evokes understanding. I am never a powerful memorizer, but the blurry information that I consciously and unintentionally retrieve from my memory gives me a powerful mind. 1. The Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc Cave in the Ardèche department of southern France is a cave that contains some of the earliest known cave paintings, as well as other evidence of Upper Paleolithic life. (Wikipedia) 2. Pablo Picasso, Spanish Cubist Painter (1881 - 1973) 3. “Forgiving does not erase the bitter past. A healed memory is not a deleted memory. Instead, forgiving what we cannot forget creates a new way to remember. We change the memory of our past into a hope for our future.” -Lewis B. Smedes, American Author (1921 - 2002)

ATLANDER FLATLANDER