Week 6 & 7: In search of creative ways to present visual information – Yunni Cho, BRDD 21’

Transient Stillness started with an intention to better understand and communicate the power and beauty of daylight. The Sun moves around the world at a different speed, and our natural light is dynamic, temporal, and transient in every moment. As daylight changes rather quietly without a notice or a sound, we often forget to appreciate its visual qualities and spiritual values. Through a creation of a pattern book of daylight, this project attempts to reverse this common perception. By documenting the fleeting daylight and its different patterns created by the Sun, Transient Stillness records how we visually perceive natural light. 

Through the use of four different techniques, – (1) white ink, (2) color pencil, (3) cut-outs, and (4) time-lapse videos – Transient Stillness analyzes four preattentive visual properties individually. Preattentive visual properties refer to four information – (a) form, (b) color, (c) position in space, and (4) movement – that gets processed in our sensory memory without our conscious thought. These features are part of our low level visual system, which are necessary for us to perform higher level visual abilities, such as figure to ground discrimination as well as depth perception from perspective or relative movement. In the creative industries, artists and designers use these visual properties to help their targeted users easily understand and use information they are presented with. Following these four features, Transient Stillness allows viewers to understand their intuition and the unconscious mind towards natural light through a constant observation and repetitive documentation.

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Throughout the first half of my Maharam journey, I was able to observe, research, and learn about natural light and finally started to conceptualize and document my project. And the past two weeks were about searching for ways to best present my works and envisioning how the final outcomes would look like. As Transient Stillness is focused on the poetic and abstract nature of daylight and its beauty with the use of various hand drawing techniques, I wanted the final look of this project to also have a somewhat physical quality. I wanted my viewers to understand how this project was realized and also to have a physical interaction with my drawings. With this intention, I started to build graphics to propose a book design. 

All of the pages are currently in A3 size for an easier printing process, and I designed a cover page and visual diagrams to explain my concepts and define each of the visual properties that was used to produce the drawings. To document the process of how each style was produced, I also started to record a time-lapse video of myself making individual drawings. So far, I was able to finish an entire set of 25 drawings documenting the form of the daylight (white ink on black paper), and made a time-lapse video only on this section. As I finish more drawings on different properties with different techniques, I am planning to add more videos and expand this time-lapse exploration.

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Similarly, I also spent some time reflecting on my progress on Choreography of Light. I realized that my previous chapters were mainly focused on architectural exploration of an office, museum, and an urban nightscape. The aim I had for this project was to discuss light in many different areas of study, not just limited to the architectural point of view. Although the written content was about much broader ideas of preserving darkness in the city and how light shapes architectural form and changes the atmosphere of an indoor space, I found the current focus of the project to be quite narrow. With this realization, I started working on two images that can show different aspects of light. The first image with my face shows how different angles and intensities of light alter our perception (in this example, perception of a facial feature). The second image shows a personal choice of luminaires for a private living room from Home Messe exhibition in Hamburg, Germany. This image could be used to talk about light and lifestyle, how the choice of light sources and color temperatures could be very personal. I would like to work with these two images in the next following weeks to further develop Choreography of Light to include broader contents featuring a variety of different perspectives. 

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During the past two weeks, I had three different zoom meetings with different people from Germany, Mexico, and the United States. Every single one of them gave me so much helpful comments and critiques along with supportive and inspiring advice and discussion. I believe that these virtual meetings are the true highlight of my fellowship, as they allow me an opportunity to verbally present my ideas, get valuable feedback, and have fruitful conversations that motivate and inspire me to continue my projects. Zoom sessions sometimes make me forget that my internship is entirely remote, as everyone I “meet” and “interact” with is full of energy and passion.

Before I end this blog, I wanted to share a virtual conference I participated in on July 15th, Heinze Architektour. I got an invitation from Ulrike Brandi, who was one of the speakers. This conference had professionals from various fields related to architecture to present and discuss their current projects and development ideas. I was able to see so many new technologies and hear about creative projects from Europe. Ulrike presented a number of her previous architectural lighting projects. Her talk, however, focused on the importance of natural light and how to make the best use of it through a design practice. She ended her presentation by introducing The Habitat of the Sun that she worked with Luca Salas, who is one of our collaborators from Mexico. She also briefly mentioned my name and the projects I am currently working on at the end of her talk to everyone who joined the conference. I felt extremely grateful and excited to be able to share my ideas to so many professionals who are active in the current industry. This conference also gave me a lot of energy and hope for doing virtual fellowship, as it ended with a huge success despite the fact that the entire event was done online.

Now that I have a more clear understanding on the formatting and the direction for my projects, I am excited to continue to produce more contents and drawings to work towards their completion.