Video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKV22OkHjoU

Storyboard

Artist statement

Title: Back to Reality

Inspiration:        Based on personal experience. One of my lecturer asked me why do I look sleepy in class. When I told the lecturer it was because I am lacking of sleep and only slept for 1-2 hours every night, the lecturer told me that was impossible.

This video basically explains why I am having lack of sleep. It is divided into 3 main reasons. Each reason comes with collective data that I have been collected within the period of one week.

Knocking on my door

Living in my parents’ house means I will be called upon a lot. Reasons vary from fixing the water pipe, cleaning the fish pond, fixing the modem/internet connection to buying groceries. Being the elder of the two that still live in the house, the responsibilities automatically fall on me.

Nature calls

The consequence of drinking too much coffee or water to stay energized when doing work/assignments means frequent toilet breaks. Peculiar thing is that it always happened when I’m asleep.

Notification from hell

It is the most annoying thing that can happen while you are asleep. Being connected to lots of different people means that I am being forced to sync to lots of sleeping patterns/timing. It seems that there are no social courtesy on when you can call someone or post article on their Facebook page or send twitter message or worst, invite someone into a group chat and spam the chatroom. Things happened randomly and often at inconvenience time. It’s hard to filter all or switch off or silent the phone altogether because I might miss on something important.  

Facts about SLEEP

11 Facts About Sleep

1. Teens need between 8.5 and 9.25 hours of sleep each night.
2. Sleep helps you remember important information. During REM sleep (a phase of the cycle characterized by rapid eye movement) your brain determines what’s important to know and stores it for future use. (Key take-away: Get some quality zzz's before your next big test.)
3. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has estimated that more than 100,000 auto crashes annually are caused by drowsy drivers and add up to more than 1,500 deaths and tens of thousands of injuries.
4. Nearly 30 percent of American adults sleep less than 7 hours per night.
5. Lack of sleep can result in a number of issues including fatigue, irritability, lack of concentration, and increased stress. In the long run, a reduced amount of sleep can lead to a weakened immune system, depression, and high blood pressure.
6. Women who sleep less than 5 hours a night gain a significant amount more weight over time than those who sleep 7 hours or more.
7. More than 10 percent of Americans suffer from sleep disorders such as sleep apnea, insomnia, and narcolepsy.
8. Some researchers believe dreams are a meaningless byproduct of sleep and consciousness.
9. Most people can't stay awake for longer than 48 hours, but the record not sleeping is almost 19 days. As a result, he suffered hallucinations, paranoia, blurred vision, slurred speech and memory, and concentration lapses.
10. Too much sleep can be too much of a good thing! Nights of elongated slumber can negatively disrupt the body’s ability to use insulin, which increases the risk of diabetes later on in life.
11. The average person spends about 649,401 hours sleeping during his or her lifetime.
12. source: http://www.dosomething.org

Photos

Concept Board

Artist Statement

Title:     Prejudice – Don’t judge a book …

As the saying goes, “Don’t judge a book by its cover” which carry the meaning of don’t make pre-judgments or assumptions to someone or something based on their looks.  For my artwork, I’m making a book which covers the issue of sexism and racism: the two biggest issues of prejudice acts.

For sexism, there’s a silhouette of a man’s face overlaps a silhouette of a woman’s face. It represents a few things. Firstly, it shows that even though women have been recognized to be more than capable of achieving and doing the same tasks as the men but yet still statistic shows that men still dominates women in term of income and influence. Secondly, it represents that there’s a woman trapped inside a body of a man. The public are being more prejudice towards a man expressing his feminine side than a woman showing off her masculine side. The fact that we take the silhouette as an image of a man and a woman based only on the outline or the shadow proved that we all have a preset judgment on how a man and woman should look like.

For racism, my approach is a little bit more direct. There’s a silhouette of someone that appears wearing a scarf or hijab holding a rifle overlaps a silhouette of someone that appears wearing a suit holding a pistol. “Islamophobia” is a term to explain someone who is afraid of Muslims or someone whose appearance resembles the typical Arab looks: brown skin, lots of facial hair, etc. In my book, there’s a quote “This is terror” when you look at the first image and a quote “This is cool” when you look at the second image. This is to compare on how the westerners or most people perceived an Arabic soldier trying to defend his or her homeland as a terrorist and an agent, trained to assassinate and kill for money and fame as cool or awesome and sometimes be regards as a role model or an icon.

Silhouette is a good way to express things without much exposure. We make judgment based on our experience, surroundings and social conventions. I’m using silhouettes to expose on how shallow we are and how society shapes our minds into giving assumption and being prejudice.

Concept Board

The unfinished quote on a book cover shows that even though we are familiar with the saying “Don’t judge a book by its cover” and have an understanding of its meaning, we still doing it on daily basis. The simpleness of my concept board is to show that to pass on a great message or to give impact to society, sometimes the simple method is the best way to make them realize.