Project #4 Exquisite Corpse

Description

For the fourth project, I collaborated with Norio and Yibo to create an exquisite corpse image together. Exquisite corpse is a surrealist technique where players take turns to draw a portion of a figure while not being able to see what has already been drawn by other players. The drawing gets revealed at the end, which tends to create surprising and unexpected forms and narratives. We first get to come up some figures so that we could exchange with each other, then came with the most exciting part, piecing all the parts together.

Background Stories

Robot background story: This robot is influenced by Matt Dixon’s lonely robot in the artwork of “Transmissions”. He has been left alone in the world and trying his best to live his life, adventuring all the wonders around and finding a meaning for living. Rather than looking sad and broken, he is more melancholy and peaceful, while making sense in the quiet wonder around him, which it is something we can relate to. Matt Dixon’s work link:https://www.mattdixon.co.uk/transmissions

Design Process

When I got two other pieces from my teammate, I chose to keep my lonely robot’s head, took the minion’s body and Astro boy’s leg, to come up with this exquisite corpse, I call it J. I want to do things so that J will be in the outer space and traveling in a fast speed, looking for a new adventure. When trying to piece them all together, I transferred the threes pieces into sketch, then into code. Here are the sketches I have and the sketches I got from them.

The minion is from Norio and Astro boy is from Bob. As soon as I got the basic shape down, I looked for what could I do to make it in the story I have and I wanted to do something with the background to show the interactions, which I decided that the background needs to be changing color while there are stars and with all this happening it could explain that he is traveling fast outside the space and finding himself a home, needing a new adventure. With lots of coding for this project, I find it very neat and helpful when you have the user-defined functions, It helps a lot when it comes to having so many different shapes involved. And I also find it important to keep these codes in order so that you won’t mistake them as the project goes. For the background color, I referenced Cecile’s raindrop, and for the ellipses to be moving in a fast speed, I referenced Norio’s spaceship.

Reflection

This project is about exquisite corpse, without knowing what would I get for the body or feet, a strange, fun, interesting figure is born and created. In this way, it unlocks the way we think of normal bodies would look like and have fun exploring the new way to express the figures as well. When unexpected surprises happened, it added on something different and something unique to this figure itself. J is that figure, giving me the most fun coding and making him alive. Also, it tells me the importance of working with others, they might come up with the most brilliant ideas ever, which could influence you and give you the inspiration to work.