Self-Portrait (1)

Overview

SELF-PORTRAIT by Lin Zhang
Art making in Graduate Study in Digital Media, Rhode Island School of Design.
Instructor: Erik Conrad, Paul badger
2009 Feb-May

Self-portrait is an interactive media installation presented the topic about women generation gap in the history of my family. Mapping the women-history, idea inspires from the daily arguments reality. Seven digitally cropped concentric mountains as women portraits put on the table. (Figure 1) Their shape scanned from five generations women members’ photo collections in my family (great-great grandmother, great grandmother and two sisters, grandmother, mother, mum-sister and myself). This was done in collaboration with a student in the architecture department by using a program, which controls a laser to cut a shape created directly from a scanned image. (Figure 2) Artist design herself as a robot travelling through the mountains, represents one of typical modern Chinese women. The FSR sensors (pressure sensor) are installed on the bottom of each mountain. The viewer moves them and sounds the communicate noise (pre-recording each mountain’s sound file) as mixing rhyme as a result. In the meanwhile, robot is interactive with audience’s actions, like handclapping once means let it stop; handclapping twice means let it change walking in the opposite direction.

Chinese history is the power of art itself, history of women’s change that reflected from dramatic constantly changes of Chinese society. These histories are embedded in my self-identity. Through this piece I am questioning who am I in this collective history. I want to touch them, communicate with them, cannot climb up them even afraid of them somehow. I always dream of this poetic scene:

Hundreds of years ago,

With her hair worn in a bun spirally,

and her clothes swinging,

She was walking between the Halls of Red Wall and Green Tiles,

It was amorous feelings

For her own, from and to say myriad respects,

As the seasons changing and the youth passing,

They whispered the legends lasting for a long time in the palaces.

It was about the right, the love, and being alive.

They were all beautiful ladies just like flowers,

Smiling in silence, but whether was it happy or grief?

Whether did they display their charming?

Or these flowers are blossoming?

Whether did they like the sorriness in their memory?

Figure 1: A “mountain” created from the portrait of my great-great-grandmother.