Fri, May 15, 2009 at 7:59 AM
subject"emotion chips" / RE: The idea of first work
Hello Kai-Yuan,
Thank you for all the material this week. You have provided me with a clearer understanding of your thought process and working style. I can definitely relate to this!
In your email on Wednesday, you wrote about three "noises." I liked this because it reminded me of the "shoulder angel" and "shoulder devil," which are used to represent inner conflict. The angel represents a person's conscience on the right side, and the devil represents temptation dishonesty and impurity on the left side. Being left-handed, myself, I enjoy this metaphor immensely.
Regarding your decision to use, "cut off , cut off and cut off," - I do not know what this meant, however I'm happy to learn through the resulting artwork.
On Thursday, you sent me pictures of the first artwork - using breakfast cereal to create sentences, and sentence fragments. Also to assemble the shape of Connecticut and Taiwan. Very clever!
But let's talk about cereal, since it was obviously a deliberate choice. In the USA, some adults eat cereal because they think it will lower their cholesterol, other adults eat cereal because it is a low-calorie alternative to eggs-toast-potatoes-bacon or pancakes or waffles. Some adults are just in a hurry, and cereal is a fast meal, with very little clean-up required. Some children love to eat sugar-cereal. The brand Kellogg's uses "Tony the Tiger" a cartoon character to excite children, and convince them to convince their parents to buy Kellogg's Frosted Flakes. Perhaps even more interestingly, the slogan developed over time from "They're grrreat!" (the word "great" but with "grrr" to represent the tiger growling) to "Frosted Flakes have a taste adults have grown to love."
Lucky Charms is another such cereal which uses a cartoon character, "Lucky the Leprechaun" to sell its frosted oat cereal with marshmallows. Lucky is the gatekeeper, and states, "They're Magically Delicious!" - now what kind of child wouldn't want to eat magically delicious breakfast food?
Now, let's take this back to you. In some of your artwork, you incorporate the consumption of food - what are you trying to achieve by this? How do you select the type of food that you are going to eat for the video camera? Is this food symbolic; perhaps it's identifiable as fast-food? I notice that in your artworks involving food, you eat alone, very slowly - are you waiting for someone who never arrives? If so, has the food been wasted?/
I immediately think of the ambitious project taken on by Morgan Spurlock, who gained 25 pounds in 30 days by eating only McDonald's food. Also, Chris Burden's performance, "Shoot" where he willingly takes a gunshot to the art.
I will do some thinking & perhaps I can incorporate some of these ideas into the first artwork portrait about you. Enjoy 高雄!
All my best,
Eric
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