This time, my conference title is “radioactivity and beauty”–yes, another work about Japan. Since I am still new to the outside world, at the very beginning, my topic was about New York; however, the loose idea could not become something which is in a system. Hence, based on the figure of cherry blossoms and radioactivity, my conference structure slowly comes out. I constantly think about the topics about Japan because of my own instinct interest. I definitely like their cultures and symbols, while I dislike several aspects of it. My favourite symbol of Japan is cherry blossoms, and I chose the radiation as the contrast against the beauty of the country.
Coincidentally, I visited the show of Japanese artist Yahoo Kusama in New York and was really inspired by her. The circles she made were diverse from other similar patterns to me. I’m actually afraid of images or symbols that concentrate together, but her work just leads me to overcome this fear. From her work, I understand that dense symbols can bring a different effect to viewers. Thus, I wanted to try this kind of pattern for my conference as well.
The original image of my code is a flourishing cherry blossom tree. Then, I convert the flowers into a loose status–making them look like “the cherry blossom rain”; the final image is like symbolised, grey, faded flowers with the spiral lines– I have to say it is my favourite object of this course, because the regular rotation can be endless, and the pattern it has also fits the “system”. Actually, the cherry blossoms are converted by snowflakes. I changed several variations to make them be like radioactive elements, and the spiral lines are also like radiation lines.
The successful part was to make the falling of snowflakes and the rotating spiral lines. Before I tried that, I thought it would be a little bit messy but it seems like look nicer that my prediction. It also went much quicker and better than I thought. This time I tried to avoid mistakes since I had spent much of my time being inspired and structuring my work. Hence,I checked several codes that I wrote before to see how I can avoid unnecessary mistakes. Fortunately, except some errors that happened to the changes of variations, I barely made mistakes! I felt really good and satisfied with this progress.
The only thing that really confuses and becomes the most time consuming part to me was to add more things to my work. However, due to the concentration of the flower symbols, I thought a lot of diverse patterns which would not generate the scent become too messy or denser. Then, Kusama’s exhibition inspired me again–the amazing, cute white circles just send me an image of snow–another traditional symbol of Japan to me. Though cherry blossoms will not appear with snow simultaneously, the scene of the two symbols combining together still makes the work look better. In Japanese, there is a special phrase to describe the flurry of falling cherry blossoms.Interestingly, the direct translation should be “cherry blossom blowing like snow” (桜吹雪, sakura fubuki). I borrowed this idea by adding “snow” to emphasise the strong contrast with the radiation lines–when two opposite elements meet each other, the feel and demonstration will be more unforgettable.
Consequently, although my final work is not complicated enough in coding, but from my perspective, the artistic idea should be more essential and important. It is also what I learned from this course by seeing various famous works from modern artists; and now I also understand that arranging more time for inspiration is definitely not a waste of time. It will help you to have a clear structure to illustrate your idea.
