Friday, April 29, 2005
Minutes of NUS Law Interview
"in the tate modern, there is an exhibit which is an elevator. it goes up and down all day, as elevators do. the musuem paid a few hundred thousand dollars to aquire this piece of artwork, as musuems do. by virtue of the fact that it takes up space, it is a sculpture. The most important thing is not the space taken up by the sculpture, but the space not around the sculpture.what do you think of that?"
Posted by i confound myself at 12:11 pm
Wednesday, April 27, 2005
pay it forward
i just read through my last post, and realise how spoiled and anal retentive i sound. i have this thing about reading and re-reading previous entries. i read my journal ( the paper and lead-pencil version 3.0) like a storybook. its so narcisstic, i know. exactly the sort of navel gazing that i accuse bloggers, of which i now am one, of. actually, its quite unbelievable, but i've become converted within.. a week. yes, okay, the fort of meaningless resistance against digital decadence has indeed crumbled. i admit that i still harbor old-fashioned elistist views-- its so much less romantic to be pouring out your soul in ariel font on a glowing screen, than scrawling on bound paper. but blogging somehow suits me quite, as i've strangely come to realise. the idea of having a space, albiet and virtual one, and the distant possiblity of someone other than yourself actually making meaning out of what you wrote, its actually intriguing in a kind of perverse way. i mean admit it, the stuff you don't want people to know most is usually the stuff you want to write a starr report about. what did i just say? cripes i am so 1998.anyway, courtesy of my little blogging forray with idea factory, i've come to learn alot of new things about blogging that i didn;t know before. did you know that they use it to keep dementia and alzheimers patients "intellectually active"? and that conservative uk politicians turn it into some online opinion and support group, complete with all these cutesy illustrations that make politics seem so benign and ntuc-income-like? and that some guy called will richardson and gang use it big time in schools? ( assesment: 10% oral presentation, 20% essay, 20% blog, you get the idea). so basically its pretty much more than a collection of interlinked self-pity-cesspools, of which i am now part. cool. newly part, let me emphasize. which kinda explains why there aren't those linky things on all the names i've mentioned above, so you can click on them and they change color and you get to the site in question. wow i sound like some caveman, or alien giving a report. like robert lepage in la cache de la lune, which is an absolutely wonderful and eccentric film and you should watch it. oh yes and did i mention that someone claims blogging is an art? okay that one i'm not so sure of. like then anything can be art. and then we go into the question of What Is Art, which is worthy of a thesis and about 6 hours of mr chia's art history lesson, so lets stop here and leave it to the kids. its quite funny cos this blog was supposed to be an experiment of sorts- the blog about the blog, that's what it was supposed to be. a purely intellectual, (re)percive, ideate, ____ ( pls fill in other ideafactory jargon) activity, and totally detatched from me. author to assume false identity. write about my-so-called-life. attract worldwide attention, start smoozelling ( what a cool word! go ahead, say it!) around with mr brown and xiaxue. but well, being me, i couldn;t keep it up. you just want to start telling the bloody truth, especially if you're gonna sacrifice a whole 10 minutes of battery, connection time, brain power and a very satisfying and truthful lead-pencil journal entry just to do it. the sheer opportunity cost of a lie. geez i'll make such a FANTASTIC lawyer.
Posted by i confound myself at 4:39 pm
Tuesday, April 26, 2005
designer advice (part 2)
affirmation number 1. ken koo (reddot)2. media/producer type guy who did 20/20
3. huiyu, jacks, various voices from (gasp) dsg
4. chris something ( local designer, Friend of Dsg Who Gets Into ______ (dsg event) Without Invite/Card)
5. chris bangle ( the one)
to all those people whose names i forget, sorry, i only remember the names of people who constantly get on the papers/TV/coffeetable books (like the reason why you remember ferrari and not lamborghini how'd you spell it), or whose names just come in full ( like lee kwan yew vs p. nathan what?). but your advice weighs in just as heavily. and yeah i know i'm mainstream.
anyway, the bottomline is that design in tough stuff. i already know that. but its more than tough to be good-- its tough to be good at anything. what it is is, its tough to succeed. and then again tough is not the right word. i believe it can simply be a breeze to some, yet totally test the mettle for another. the design, and perhaps business world, in my own shallow understanding, is exasperatingly unfair, yet exasperatingly fair. everything's on the table, literally. you are what you show, its all laid out. and yet, its so dependant on a thousand and one other factors, of which i still think ( no matter what they're always telling you in those dodgy motivational classes with quotes by einstien and other nuts) luck constitutes 99%. luck opens the door. of course you have to go through it, slog through it, sometimes you nearly die just trying to find the bloody door and when you get there you have to try like twenty keys. but luck, gee do they teach that in school?
so am i backing out? am i a wimp? hi, i'm going to cambridge to read law because i'm a wimp. some lawyer i'll be. i hope someone from lck reads this, you know. or even better, someone from caths. then they wouldn't know what to do with this. because no one knows who i am, and even if they do, (hi, my name is janise and my ic number is S87439452Z), this is off the record. totally. which reinforces my point that university admissions and scholarship applications are the stupidest things ever. they are simply designed to give old senile men jobs ( as professional interviewers). so what if you have a super cv and grades and great answers and supposed morals, in 10 sheets of paper and 5 minutes of interview. you will never know what the person is really thinking. and you don't need to know, so cut the crap trying. the art world is the fairest, and so the cruelest. you are as good as what you show. who cares about your degree, your brand name design school, your supposed morals. just make me say wow.
note: for designer advice (part 1), please approach the particular panelist ( luke skywalker's father). the interview has, fortunately or unfortunately, been documented by me in a more private portion of my anatomy. which is, if you were wondering, my brain. the left one, because it makes sense. and in my diary, just in case.
