I think this stop shadow animation is so shit but I am at the verge I cannot edit it no more.

Alexey Titarenko

Yes, this Russian photographer has been lying around on my to-blog bookmark list for quite sometime. Somehow, I never got around to post about how spectacular his works are. These photos come from his series called Time Standing Still (1998-2000), which I think will be quite an exquisite introduction to his works on my blog. I love the ghostly effect, making them not only hauntingly beautiful, but it also helps to reflect the buzziness in nowadays environment. The B&W is really beautiful, I can imagine it would have been a preference of his, I would like to keep it simple and yet striking too. Anywho, I came across this holga and diana F+ lenses for both Nikon and Canon DSLR, I have such a big urge to try them out. Especially knowing that they only cost around $18 on Ebay. I am such a big advocator for Holga, it's cheap and it's great for tons of reasons if you want a lomo camera. I know the lenses will not be as good as the real ones in creating that nice cheap-dreamy quality, but there's no harm in trying them out anyways. Just trying to create that image in my head right now.. how the lense will look so disproportionate compared to how huge D90 is, it will look funny like a small head on a big body.

spinoza

Orderliness. But that's not always the case nowadays. I hope that whatever it is you choose to do, you will always reflect back to your self-destruct capability.

Folding project poster

An on-going poster for my 1b project yet to be done (this relates to my previous post about the folding project), I'm not truly confident with the composition and all. Give me inputs tell me what you think how I should improve on this in terms of positioning as well as black and white contrast. I might need to add my haiku in too.. I am so lost.

Leg works

Don't you just love when you can twirl around and clown each other in public? Uhm probably not, but that day was so much fun, Brighton beach was absolutely magnificent, I wish to come back there in the near future! Some more pictures from the day will be uploaaaaadeeddd.

The Tree of Life

'Where were you when I laid the foundations of the Earth, when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?'
'The nun taught us there are two ways through life - the way of nature and the way of grace. You have to choose which one you'll follow'

'Mother. Father.

Always you wrestle inside me.

Always you will.'

'Help each other. Love everyone. Every leaf. Every ray of light. Forgive.'

'Where were You? You let a boy die. You let anything happen. Why should I be good? When You aren't'

I finally got to watch The Tree of Life last night at Cinemanova. It has been around for so long and I was intrigued by the great actors who are starring in it. Curiousity killed a cat. I have a feeling that people can either love or hate the movie. I personally float in between. I expected more out of the movie, more of a clearer story plot to narrate this genius idea. But apart from that, the movie was hauntingly beautiful. It takes forms of natures, the birth and the death of all with very little dialogue but once spoken, the words can move a mountain. It's also very biblical in some ways, and the story is not completely centered on a tragic event due to the loss of the character's son, instead.. it shows you the cycle of life through the main characters. At first, I actually felt like I was watching something out of Discovery Channel (or some sort) in HD ... and I really reallly hoped a real story would come up, which thank God it did. It might be difficult to understand as it's more of a philosophical journey rather than a fictional movie to me. It came to no surprise though, Terrece Mallick was a philosopher before be became a director. Anywho, go watch it if you're interested, it's beautiful. Very vague but beautiful. At least, that's what I think.

Carefully Scrutinizing

Interrupted, in a good way that is. It is nice to go out after hours and hours being in front of the laptop freaking my brain and eyeballs out. I blame my essays for wanting me to have no life whilst Zaky was here. I finally met up with him though last night who visited Melbourne again all the way from Gold Coast and around the world. I had a really good time! Although I wish I wasn't so tired and sleepy towards the end... came home so late and half light-headed which caused me to wake up outside schedule today. I was supposed to go to NGV at 10, but I caught up anyways by taking a real quick shower. I love going to NGV, it's a shame that I never really had the time to fully explore the museum, so I think today was quite nice. I kind of giggled a bit looking at Mark Rothko's work as it reminds me of when I visited his exhibition at Tate's London. My friends and I knew nothing about the meaning of an abstract work and could not understand why he would spend his life painting just colours, whereas some people would even cry looking at his works. It is meant to be emotionally intriguing so based on that, I guess I started to read more about the background of Rothko's works and fell in love with all the colours.

Word

I have been folding a lot of papers for my design studio lately, not necessarily transforming them into some beautiful origami, just random ones that look proportionally fine as I try to construct fields as they unfold. So basically, the idea of folding papers is like narrating a story, a process, or a journey and it will be quite interesting because we're going to insert images and haiku into the fields. Apart from folding papers, this project focuses on a lot of practical works like printmaking and drawing techniques.. oh yes.. I drew Tim today and it actually looked quite awesome, I made him look juuustt a tiiiny bittt liiike a stonehenge. I will put it up soon maybe.
I'm pretty sure everyone has one of those times where they crave for something really bad. The pictures above depict exactly it, one of those random nights again where I crave for pandan coconut + chocolate gelatos at 11 o'clock. All that I needed was a time waster so kudos to Freddo who should be nominated as one of the best place to eat gelatoss, ever and ever and forever. It's cheaper compared to the others especially knowing that they have got a very good range of flavours. One thing that also makes me go there is because of this certain photograph that I am always intrigued by. I just love everyone's expressions, it feels theatrical but not so at the same time? I feel sorry for the woman who looks so intimidated by the kinky glares of the males haha, reminds me so much of when I used to live in Qatar, never go alone to a public place if you're a woman. Anyways, I am unsure who took this photograph though, it's uncredited on the frame so I took a picture in case some day I come across it on the internet or something.
Last but not least, Rachel Comey's ready to wear spring colleccctioooon consists of all the awesomeness of my neeeeeeeeds.

What do you see up in the sky?

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All is well when there is a touch of blue.

Bottles and more bottles

A couple of quickie drawings for my comparative study "bottles", they're not meant to be accurate or precise or whatever because I was trying to look more into the brittleness of the bottle itself and the fluidity of the water inside.

Collected Artifacts

Michael and I decided to meet up for a good catch-up last Tuesday. He took me out to some gourmet restaurant (which I had never been before), as I lack of food knowledge as well as money. So you guess it, he had to explain everything to me hahahaha. At least the food turned out to be really good! I was meant to take a lot of pictures of the food and interior but we got carried out talking too much. Oh, afterwards he introduced me to this classic hot chocolate at Cocoa Black which was still rich in taste but at the same time not being 'thick' like other ones I usually find.

The thought of this post actually came up when I was at the restaurant staring blank into the wall and didn't realize that the wall was covered with planks. This reminds me of what I have been doing for my art project, collecting artifacts. It's quite interesting really because we put our artifacts up on the projector and they portrayed such beautiful outlines and composition on the board. I found these pictures of Katsuya Kamo's house on The Shelby website, I find them very intriguing because he collects artifacts too! The way in which he displays his neon bugs especially, he contrasted them with a couple of foreign objects such as bottle cans and a butterfly wing and I think this has given the display a whole new perspective.