Very-Short-Stories
Fall 2019
Columbia University, GSAPP
Critic / Michael Rock (2 x 4), Whitney Dow
Investigations in time, plot and narrative
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This is a collection of short stories. Each story is a study of time, plot, and narrative, under the Graphics Architecture Projects seminar. Along with a reconstruction of storytelling techniques, these projects study different storytelling media and devices ranging from objects, text, images, layouts, film, and audio.
“fall schedule”
object / digital
A timeline of works allotted for every day in the fall semester to achieve the final design project of the studio under Jimenez Lai and Miku Dixit. Using symbols, colors, and keys, one can track the amount of time allotted to each work, days of the mid-term and final reviews, days when each of the critics will be available, when can I have pizza, when do we travel to Cheyenne (the site of the studio) and how much my workaholism is eating into my sleep. Additionally, the timeline is a map of the State of Wyoming, the perfect rectangle, and whose gerrymandering is a subject of consideration in the studio.
object / diagramming time - a schedule of the fall 2019 advanced studio V; a sequence of works, critiques, events, essentials, beer and pizza
“hot wiring”
object
An instruction booklet with no words for night owls like me to learn to use the hot-wire foam cutter at short notice. No words, just images to suit my impatience and sleeplessness.
“no sleep___”
film
A 1-minute film study to represent a trajectory. This is about my relationship with a coffee machine - the enabled and enabler respectively. Or maybe the enabler-enabled and the instrument. Me, in the studio every day with a cup of coffee - the Cluedo version of my workaholism and self-induced insomnia. The every day caffeine is simply a chemical push to stay up. No drugs needed just cheap $1 coffees that are enough to keep me going day in day out. I do nap sometimes on the desk but have been constantly told that “that is not quality sleep, go home”. You, watching, help, please?
“five dates”
object
A study of plot and narrative through five simple objects. The way form of presentation along with the details of the contents visible and veiled narrate the tale of five dates at Shake Shack. Presented as five receipts from the fast-food joint, the menu is visible only in the first one, revealing an order for two. The subsequent pieces only show proof that all five belong to Shake Shack and the total of the order are similar except for the last one which hints that the protagonist ate alone.
object / a collection of five objects to build a plot and a narrative
“These Time, New York”
object
A reconstruction of the first page of the New York Times for my grandfather who used a magnifying glass to read the newspaper. The zine scale makes it easier for him to hold as his frail hands find it difficult to fold the newspaper. Additionally, a little wordplay for a sense of humor.
“Domestic Discographies”
film
A 3-minute film study to make a visual trailer of my fall studio project. An overlay of a single street-front video with stills of house-fronts, the empty and sparse imagery of Cheyenne works in tandem with my critique of American suburbia as a well-planned graveyard. The juxtaposition of Chet Faker’s plucky Dead Body guitar solo and Radiohead’s Treefingers brings out the reality of traveling with American radio and the eeriness of the city.
Music
01. Treefingers, Radiohead
02. Dead Body, Chet Faker
film / Log: a montage of Cheyenne, WY, displaying the primary critique of domesticity in the project ‘Daily Soaps’
“Daily Soaps”
film
A 6-minute film study narrating my fall projects with the same title. The project, ‘Daily Soaps’, is a critique of the domestic sprawl of Cheyenne, Wyoming, like a graveyard of residential stelae, and follows with an alternative model of domestic urbanity social contracts. The film is a black and white episode of a 60s daily soap opera show narrating the story of sixteen domestic scenarios of Cheyenne that emancipate from the monotony of King Metric’s monarchy and through a social hyperlinking establish a new form of domesticity and archetype of domestic architecture. The film is sandwiched between a meta-moment where the narrator reaches out to express his paranoia of trapped in an imbalanced financial society.
Music
01. Paranoid Android, Johnny Greenwood
02. Bagatelle Op 119 No1 Allegrotto, Beethoven
film / Log: the story of my fall project “Daily Soaps” displayed as a 60s daily soap opera
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