UNIT3

CRITICAL THINKING

Preparation for the Exhibition in July

The initial sketch.

The artist initially wondered whether to extend the painting onto the wall, given that Jennet had previously suggested that the wall should be used. However, after talking to other tutors at a later stage it was felt that less was more and too much would lead to a confusion of focus.

The exhibition
in July

⬅️This exhibition received a certificate of best progress.

The artist has improved the presentation of the work in the March exhibition by hanging it diagonally from a fish line. Forcing the viewer to look up at the work reinforces the viewer's empathetic experience of women who have had abortions. The QR code has been reworked to simplify the process. The viewer only has to scan the code once to be redirected to the ar page of the website and click on the corresponding image to view the corresponding ar effect.

Critical thinking in response to unit2 feedback

1. Lack of dialogue
Interviews and conversations to get more perspectives

2. Project dubbing still needs improvement
Find more professional dubbing effects, give up dubbing myself

3. AR technical problems, relatively single effect

Learn new techniques and software

Preparation for UNIT3

1. Talking to outsiders：

Interviewing some Chinese perspectives on the topic of abortion.

2. Re-organise the proposal

3. Contacting the external organisations:

art healing organisations?
Conversations with other feminist artists

4. Doing some writing

Pre-reflection on the November exhibition

The artist has combed through the existing work and tried to find a better presentation for the November exhibition.

The ar part：
The previous ar technique was too weak: should I find a new form of expression?
1. create a filter?

Combine the audience's reaction with the work? Uploading to ins to increase the impact
2. create animations?

What kind of animation? What is it about? How can I make a connection with the work I already have?

The illustration part:
Six pieces have already been produced

Next things to do:
1. explore artistic healing
2. Interviews with specific people: identifying the target group

Unit 3 research-
Artistic healing

To learn more about art healing, the artist read CREATIVELY MINDED, an initial mapping study of participatory arts and mental health activities in the UK, by David Cutler.

General framework for art therapy activities

The artist considers the genre of her work to be more in the direction of art and health, aiming to enhance identity and promote mental health. In which the form of visual art is chosen.

"Visual arts (broadly defined to include, for instance, sculpture and ceramics) seems to be especially widely offered. An independent evaluation of the Art Room, which offers therapeutic interventions for young people aged 5-16, demonstrated a number of benefits including an 87.5% improvement in self-reported mood and self-esteem.25 It is widely offered by specialist arts and mental health organisations working across art forms, for instance Artlift in Gloucester, The Dragon Café in London and Arts and Minds in Cambridgeshire. In Essex, Open Arts, which is run by the NHS trust, has a scheme which offers participants placements in studios with suitable support as a progression opportunity. Core Arts in East London started out when artist Paul Monks who was working in the old Hackney Hospital attracted the attention of mental health patients."

Unit 3 research-
specific interviews in Chinese contexts

A total of 103 copies of the anonymous questionnaire were distributed and a total of 16 people were interviewed, and the artist eventually chose five of the more typical ones.：

women who have experienced abortion in the post-70s, women who have experienced abortion in the post-80s, women who have not experienced abortion in the post-90s, and men in the post-90s.

Women who have experienced abortion in the post-70s：
"We were family planning in those days. I worked in a state enterprise, if I had an overpregnancy I would lose my job. So the natural choice at the time when we found out we had an unplanned pregnancy was to have an abortion because that's what everyone around us was doing. Psychological shadows? Nothing. I never thought much about it either, maybe it was just the general environment."

Women who have experienced abortion in the post-80s：
"I had an abortion because I was on the rise in my career and I just couldn't keep the baby. I had suffered when I was young, so I thought it would be more responsible to wait until I am in a position to raise a child. Although I said that, in the beginning, I felt ashamed, remorseful, intolerant, and guilty at night, always feeling sorry for this little angel. "

Women who have not experienced abortion in the post-90s：
"I think abortion is a woman's freedom. China has more atheists and is not bound by religious beliefs, but there is still a taboo attitude toward abortion. I wouldn't look at a woman who has had such an experience in a different light, I would just feel heartbroken. After all, who wants to go through that pain if they can avoid it? But it's probably still inevitable that they'll be judged in the marriage market ...... After all, it's still a patriarchal society that always tries to judge women on their reproductive value."

Men in the post-90s：

"I think it's hard not to care ...... Isn't it said that women who have had abortions are like dead houses? If my future wife were to hide the fact that she had had an abortion from me it would be absolutely unforgivable once I found out. I think it's either make it clear from the start or never let me find out. If I found out, I wouldn't necessarily forgive even if she got down on her knees and begged me."

Men after 00:
"I think this is a woman's right, I guess. It's not something that would affect my opinion of my friend, but if it's someone you're talking to about marriage it might still be something to look at as to why the abortion was performed. But even though it seems easy to say that now, I don't know how I would react if I were in a situation like this. "

Through the interviews I was able to learn more about the diversity of ideas and to think more critically about my work. At the same time I was aware that my work itself could easily be controversial and I was prepared for this.

Self-rejected
plan A

Initial sketch of the exhibition

Post-refined diagram

The initial plan I still wanted to show in a similar format to the previous one, with six illustrations above and six iPads below. iPads with my ar filter program built in.

Advantages：
1. the ability to combine the audience's real-time reactions with my work
2. the viewer can view my work in a single order

Disadvantages：

1. too much content will cause viewers to confuse the focus or feel a strong sense of fragmentation in the work
2. Post-investigation revealed that the signal at the venue was not very good, which may have affected the viewer experience
3. a filter would mean adding the concept of "face" to my project, which could lead to ambiguity

After careful consideration, I abandoned this version of the exhibition design and looked for a better solution. As I had previously debated between filters and animation, I chose to create an animation this time.

Final adopted
plan B

One of the things that has plagued the artist in previous exhibitions is how to present the paintings in a linear fashion. After viewing one painting, one can move on to the next - until one reaches the mystery of "Happy Death Day".

After the last plan was rejected by herself, the artist found that the animated form was just what she needed for a single reading chain. So the artist began to think about what kind of animation she wanted to do. After a lot of searching and research, the artist chose the form of frame interpolation to test the waters by first fusing six illustrations into a continuous animation.

A collection of six illustrations made into a frame interpolation animation.

Based on the data from the previous interviews, the artist realised that the viewer/experiencer's feelings in the moment should influence her/his view of the painting to some extent, and therefore introduced a new variable, ai, to allow the emotions to interact with the original image by manually entering keywords. Furthermore, in order to make the animation run smoothly as a whole, the artist intercepted the middle frame of the initial frame interpolation animation as the basis for the ai drawing.

After this the artist created a large number of ai intermediate frame illustrations using ai tools combined with specific emotional keywords.

Once the illustrations were created, the artist selected the more typical and relatively less intimidating parts of them and combined them with the artist's initial illustrations to create five frames of interpolated animation. The separation is to facilitate the adjustment of their respective internal illustration transitions, as well as the overall timing. The artist has set the single transition to a duration of one minute, while making the image stand still for a few seconds at his own illustration to allow the viewer to grasp the point.

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