Last Sunday, I went to Earl’s Court for 100%Design London. There are some interesting designs.
The most impressive products are some funitures made of paper. These complex and elaborate lines constructed by paper remind me John Maeda’s work. Both of them have complicated lines, but always in a simple shape.
The most common and direct sample of simplifying complexity is shadow.
Where sun or light exists there is always a simplicity following a complexity.
I went to Brighton on Friday. It’s an enchanting town. It’s peaceful before 10am, then more and more people gather to beach, after 10pm, is a bit noisy because of clubbing people. A traffic accident happened just outside of my hotel.
Anyway, I still like the sunshine of beach very much, especially in morning.
I took some photos of stones on the beach. Their shapes are both round as what we see now, but that’s after millions of years collision. It’s a complex and long journey to become a simple shape.
Dan Flavin was a minimalism artist famous for creating sculptural objects and installations from fluorescent light fixture.
He used fluorescent structures to explore color, light and sculptural space. The light and colored shade of his works filled the gallery interior. 
I’ve filled the tutorial form. Here it is.
Issues discussed/Subject:
I am willing to do something about simplicity and complexity, but how? In what kind of form?
I’ve did some research about simplicity, like John Maeda’s the Laws of Simplicity. How to combine theory with practice?
Simplicity is a quite eastern thinking, how to balance eastern and western thinking in my project?
When I show my work in a simple way, time is changing all the time. Time is complex, and it may change many things around the work. How to consider it? Think about audio as well.
Comments/Notes
Research more practicians of simplicity. Tutor’s inspiration: Dan Graham, Piet Mondrian’s Minimalist art, John Pawson’s architecture.
Keep learning processing to help and develop my project.
Keep researching.
Record every website I’ve seen as a reference and put it on blog.
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Andy give me two great examples of practicians who did many works about simplicity. John Pawson and Piet Mondrian.
John Pawson is a British designer associated with minimalism. I want to borrow John Pawson’s book Minimum.
I just borrowed John Maeda’s book The Laws of Simplicity. It’s a really useful book for developing and supporting theory of my project.
My project proposal is to explore the issue that too many distractions to concentrate. Why does it happen over and over again? Because we live in a complex world, and there is full of information around us through our eyes, ears, mouths and noses.
For an example, if there is a complex, eye candy picture. Audience would say:” Oh, it’s a beautiful picture!” And the audience might forget it quickly. But if there is a very simple picture showing, audience would think about why it is so uncomplicated, does it have some special meanings behind it? Then they might look for the answers by themselves or read description. The simple one should be more impressive than the eye candy one in some ways.
As I mentioned before, the photographer, Hiroshi Sugimoto, who did a lot of simple and meaningful works. His photos always bring philosophical thinking.
Here is a photo of his famous series “theater“, the only thing we can see from the screen in the middle is white light and nothing else. In fact, it’s a movie which he took in one frame. We can see every detail of theater clearly except the movie itself.
I read the interview with Jay Yan.
I am interested in his installation whisper 2005. Freshly cut calla lily flowers whispers into the viewer’s ears. It looks extremely poetic as the writer said in the interview.
The technic of this installation is complex, but the effect and idea is simple and elegant.
I want to create something has random and naturally movements or effects, too.
I like John Maeda‘s thoughts on Simplicity. He likes MUJI, and especially likes how simply Muji expresses their point that achieving simplicity is deceptively complex because it is a thoughtful process.
MUJI is a Japanese company, and the most appropriate retail campany which can explain simplicity.
Here he talks about paring down to basics.
Last Night, I lost sleep.
Not because of moving into new house, just snatchy, drunk music of violin or something else annoyed me. Even pretty music it’s annoying when I want to go to sleep.
I closed eyes, did nothing, but couldn’t help thinking the sound I heard. I spoke to myself :” Stop thinking!”, but it didn’t work at all. I imagined what the player was doing — was he or she throwing up and playing at the same time? The funnier I thought about, the harder to get some sleep. That’s interesting but painful because I planned a lovely morning run on next day.
Then I got an idea: what if totally opposite or different pictures come out when we’re listening somthing. For example, we hear the noise of jet planes passing overhead, but we see an elephant snoring.
That will be interesting in animation what just has simple lines in a black background.
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Next morning when I wake up, everything is perfect. I can hear warble and see the light of the early morning sun coming through the light blue curtain.
I have been busy with my residence in London recently. These days were mess, but fortunately they’ve ended.
It’s a bit late to start blogging now.
Here is my project proposal when I was applying for the course. I need more development and still looking for some inspirations for updating my project.
I want to explore an issue about too many distractions to concentrate on one thing. This is a common situation that people face everyday. Somebody may be worry, but somebody may not mind distraction, never even conscious of it. It’s harder and harder to try meditation (as in Zen) in modern society. I hope my work could let audience stop for a while to think about the issue.
Hiroshi Sugimoto is one of my favorite artists. His photography series “Seascapes” integrate harmonious composition and the beauty of nature to engender a sense of the sublime, of timelessness. Philosophical thinking of time and timeless is always brought from his works such as “Theaters” series. The Hasselblad Foundation’s citation: Sugimoto combines Eastern meditative ideas with Western cultural motifs.
seascapes
I will use interview and survey with people of different ages, different culture backgrounds and different life styles for researching the issue. Photography is a great way to record and search as well. Then I will do many conceptions and tests for completing my theme.
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