Adam Smith used the example of human death to show that although we have empathy, we still cannot fully bring ourselves into the situation of someone who is going to die. I think it may be that the development of modern civilization has prevented us from seeing death in our daily lives, so we may be captive to a visual level where the departure of people seems extraordinarily alienated and we are the source of this strange feeling. This has led to the phenomenon that many people now live and do not want to do anything about it, and habitually lie flat. We don't understand what it means to be alive, and the concept of a world without entropy was introduced in my project to explain that as long as we live we must fight against entropy increase all the time. Living is hard, while dying is easy. I want to portray a place where no entropy exists, where there is no living nor dying, but just a certain state of life preserved, thus evoking the audience to think about the meaning of life, whether it should be dynamic, from life to death, or just preserving the static, i.e. preserving the best state.
Cover of first edition (1759)
If I may be allowed to say so, our own living souls in their inanimated bodies, and thence conceiving what would be our emotions in this case. It is from this very illusion of the imagination, that the foresight of our own dissolution is so terrible to us, and that the idea of those circumstances, which undoubtedly can give us no pain when we are dead, makes us miserable while we are alive.
Excerpts from Part I Of the Propriety Of Action,
Section I Of the Sense Of Propriety, Chap. I Of Sympathy, 13
In creating the project, I was influenced by Marc Quinn's garden installation series, his work triggered me to think about the life and death of life. Marc treated the flowers with frozen silicone oil and then preserved them in the refrigerator. The flowers are preserved at the perfect moment to reach the state of being intact forever. Everything seems real, yet not so real.Now I am imagining what a place without entropy would be like, so I brought this intuitive visual sense to my collage project.
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Type:Sculpture
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Year:2000
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Medium:Cold room, stainless steel, heated glass, refrigeration equipment, mirrors, acrylic tank, low viscosity silicon oil held at -20°C turf, plants, flowers
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Dimensions:320h x 1270w x 543d cm
In some clips of the animation, I tried to use the effect of Glitch Art, a seemingly imperfect and destroyed picture that implies accidents and changes. It is also possible to further distinguish the state without no entropy and the state with entropy by the incompleteness of the picture.
Reference is made to the work of malfunction artist Giacomo carmagnol, which destroyed the shape of the subject matter in the original picture by a vertical way.
Lava rules everything around me
digital collage
variable size
2014
Church Fire
digital collage
variable size
2014
René Magritte's used the eye as a window to reflect the image seen. What attracts me is that it gives the viewer a certain optical illusion because the area depicting the sky and the pupil is flat, while the corners of the eye and the rest of the eye structure are portrayed in a very three-dimensional way. So, I brought the element of the eye into my animation, trying to transform the two spaces of entropy and non-entropy through the change of the eye.
The False Mirror, Oil on canvas, 54 x 80.9 cm, 1929
In the animation, my characters are female characters who need reference from different angles.Lorenzo's DISARMONA photography series has individual static female poses as well as dynamic combinations of female poses. One of the things that attracted me is that he reorganized different poses to form a new picture, in which he designed the pose with continuity as an effect of overlapping shadows. Using the nature of the photograph, the figure seems to move in the static photo. It also conforms to his creative concept of trying to record the moment of action limbs by freezing time.
Usually photographs record the state of a person at a certain moment, and if continuous action is recorded usually by means of video images. This series showed me how continuous action can be represented on still images, which is very tense. I tried to use this approach to create this paradoxical effect in my frame-by-frame animation.
DIS-ARMONIA PaperSoft (Yarn, Cotton, Fabric), 150 W x 50 H x 1 D cm, 2020
At the same time, I also refer to Mucha's paintings of women, which are characterized by his smooth and vivid botanical lines and his depiction of feminine figures. In his first decorative painting of The Seasons (series), he used contour lines to outline the delicate bodies and hair of these figures, flattening the drawing technique to change the spatial perspective and weakening the sense of volume, and using circles or arches as the background of the figures to stabilize the image, and using flat painting technique to give the image a watercolor-like light effect. In my animation, there are many female figures, I try to deepen the contour lines of the characters in a similar way to highlight the softness of female limbs.
The Seasons (series), Lithograph, 103 x 54 cm, 1896
Bill Viola used a triptych composition to show three different signs of life through the medium of video. They are birth, a body floating in water, and death (from left to right). For him, birth and death, the signs that delineate our life cycle, "are mysteries in the truest sense, not to be solved, but to be experienced and inhabited. This is the source of their knowledge" (Viola 1995). The fact that the three states are presented to the viewer at the same time gave me something to think about: perhaps death is eternal in a certain sense. In the second collage project, I sealed the dead state in a bubble, and around the bubble were some young children. Death and new life are shown in the same image, which is contradictory and memorable.
Nantes Triptych, Video, 3 projections, colour and sound (stereo), Duration: 29 min., 46 sec, 1992
Reference
Adam, S (1795) The Theroy of Moral Sentiments. printed for Andrew Millar, in the Strand; and Alexander Kincaid and J. Bell, in Edinburgh
More about Adam Smith.
(Accessed: 16 November 2022).
Marc quinn biograpy. Avilable at https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/marc-quinn-2600
(Accessed: 12 November 2022).
Marc, Q (2000) Garden. Avilable at https://entergallery.com/collections/marc-quinn
(Accessed: 12 November 2022).
Giacomo,C biograpy. Available at
(Accessed: 20 December 2022).
Lorenzo, S (2020) Interview with THE EXPERIENCE THAT MAN LIVES.
(Accessed: 20 December 2022).
René, M (1929) The False Mirror. The Museum of Modern Art: New York.
Alphonse, M (1896) The Seasons (series). Browse Works - Gallery - Mucha Foundation: http://www.muchafoundation.org/en/gallery/browse-works/object/80 (Accessed: 11 January 2023).
Bill, V (1995) Nantes Triptych. Collection by the Tate Gallery Foundation.
Creative conception and process
What I am expressing in this phase of the project is my personal connection to the no entropy world. If entropy is zero, plants will not wither, people will not age, machines will not rust... I want to be no entropy , where I can hold good memories in my memory, whatever I want to hold. But at the same time I'm scared of this place. I am a creator as well as a thinker. I can keep thinking and trying in the field of art. If I stay in the no entropy environment, I can't keep thinking.
Thoughts rush, inspiration can be a flash in the pan, and vitality is manifested by its dynamic nature. In a no entropy world, everything is static, which may freeze the beauty, but it lacks the vitality of life.
Because I want to show the effect of dynamic and static, I choose to show the project in the way of animation.
Sketch and thought process
The animation is divided into three stages. First, when the girl is thinking, her thoughts will extend to the drawing paper along with her hair. Vitality is created on the drawing paper, just like blooming flowers, and her thoughts are intertwined with blooming flowers.
In the second part, the girl opens her eyes and sees herself in them. As the clock stops and enters the no entropy zone, the girl retains the most beautiful moment of her inspiration in a hollow sphere, and the sound of her heart gradually fades away. Meteors streak across the sky, but the planet is stationary.
In the third part, the girl slowly opens her eyes and tries to escape the no entropy state. She desperately tries to break the barrier with all her strength.
Back to the state of increased entropy, creativity, vitality can continue.
Fluid experiment series
In this part, I tried to record the dynamic flow, mixing and interweaving of different colors as well as the static patterns formed after different colors are stacked and blown to show the blooming stages at different times in turn. It vividly records the picture state when entropy increases and without entropy.
Among them, I combined part of the dynamic image with my animation, trying to combine realistic scenes in the animation to show.
texture with Radial bloom, 30×40cm, fluid acrylic on canvas
texture with bloom, 30×40cm, fluid acrylic on canvas
