never shutting up
first post.. scary..
hello to everyone i sent this to… this is kinda intimidating because i don’t really think i’m that much of a writer,, but i’ve decided to take on this daunting task to start writing again. right now, this newsletter is very, VERY informal (probably not even gonna properly punctuate this ngl) and mainly for my close friends. this is not going to be structured and is mainly just a sporadic sprawl of thoughts. i figure this is definitely a much better outlet than frantically spamming thirty posts on my close friends story.
i guess my goal with this is kinda to just to put what i’ve been thinking about lately out there, in hopes that someone reads it and wants to talk to me about it.
i just wrapped my first year of uni… it’s corny to say, but the year really did fly by. i know it’s a normal human experience, but i’ve grown a lot in the past couple months. i’ve learnt a lot about how to interact with art & design in uni.. it’s crazy… it’s almost like that’s what i’m studying.. but like also, in a way, i didn’t really expect this when i enrolled?? like so much has informed my own practice, as a creative, and i thought i would just be learning mostly technical and practical skills in uni, but i’ve really developed a new way of processing information?? .
if you follow me on letterboxd, you would know that i watched, suspiria (1977) and alucarda (1977) last month. theyre both really beautiful films with intricate sets and unique visual languages. suspiria crafts a colourful, fantasy-esque version of art deco, and alucarda was very much a part of that mid-century medieval revival. why don’t we see these sorts of intricate sets anymore? like yes of course there are great films that have beautiful sets now, but none of them are as theatrical. like i noticed a trend in current set design, is that they aren’t meant to feel like a set(?) if that makes sense. in both the aforementioned films, you can tell they’re sets; you can feel that the lights are rigged up, there’s a sound team holding a microphone, that the brick wall is really just styrofoam — you can feel the fourth wall. and that’s neither a good or bad thing, it’s just part of the film’s character.
i’ve noticed that a lot of contemporary art and design is obsessed with immersion. like just think about the design of the modern smartphone — little to no use of tactile buttons, wireless headphones and how the ui is designed — nothing that reminds us we’re looking at a screen. when the first iphones launched, a big feature of their appeal was the skeuomorphic style of their ui (visual language that imitates the physical world), but as the smartphone gets more and more integrated into everyday life, the designs flatten and we lose that connection to the physical world. the current trend is neumorphism, which aims to find the balance between the two extremes, but i’d argue that it’s still part of this obsession with manufacturing a tether between the user and the screen — manufacturing the sense that we can’t really live without whatever silicon valley tries to sell us.
another example of this would be the marketing and design language of large language models like chatgpt. the corporations behind these LLMs present them as a magical being that contains all the information in the universe. just look at their logos; google gemini’s sparkle, meta ai’s mystical blue ring and the entire exixtence of grok. it’s deliberate. it exists as a veneer hiding the irreversible damage caused by carbon emissions.
anyways the point is that, i’d like to see a change, in a global scale, for art and design to move away from presenting itself as a way to mindlessly step into another world. i want to experience it, knowing im experiencing it. there’s a beautfy and sense of wabi-sabi with theatricality.
music i’ve been listening to!
Stage Girl by Eli — this girl is the next big thing in pop music.
Lifetime by Erika de Casier — listened to this a couple times and it’s incredible. great public transport album.. like it’s peaceful and makes me want to stare out the window.
M3LLI55X by FKA twigs — lovee this ep. im obsessed with the sonic textures urghh
Berghain by Roslía — makes me really wanna back into playing the violin. music is beautiful. music is wow. anyways i need to listen to the entire LUX album
film recs
My Dinner With Andre
Pink Flamingos
videos to watch..
where are all the thinkers?
i’m thinking this will be a monthly thing.. once a month, i sit down and write some stuff i’m thinking about and send it out. also maybe you guys can read this every couple of weeks and know that i’m okay.
also writing like this pushes me to think and research about these topics i like which is nice.
Hello daphne guan