Mingcheng Song

Lidar scanning did wonders when it came to creating a mock-up for the exhibition. The 3d model it generated came with fairly accurate measurements, so it was straightforward to gauge the real-life dimensions of flat-works from their default width and height. When I unfurled the printed canvases on the gallery floor, they seemed even larger than I had imagined (using my body as a reference), some reaching two meters, which was, as it turned out, the appropriate scale to fill up the space.

Once the canvas is hung up on a wall, its scale becomes quite flexible. I'm beginning to wonder if the only real difference between large and small works is whether they could be "captured" by the eyes or a camera. Like you would instinctively step towards or away from an image to scale up or down to something "optimal", something that encompasses a "full picture" while retaining enough details. The images were blown up and materialized, but they were still more or less always displayed and imagined in full view. A good painting draws you in because it's a pleasure to enter in and out of the illusion. I think sometimes a good photograph does the same because of the inherent complexity to real world objects that supplemented the picture with juicy details better ingested up-close. Maybe it would be fair to say that the images on display don't possess the level of detail that calls for an inflation in scale. And without the crop of a granular view, the difference in scale between screen and canvas was leveled. But the large prints weren't for nothing either, for one they really raised to the occasion in terms of announcing their presence in the gallery space without overcrowding it, maintaining the proportion that was helped decided during the mock-up phase. Now that I'm thinking about it, if I were to reduce the larger prints to a quarter of its size, not only would it leave much space to be desired, but it would also increase the legwork required to shift from one work to another, thus hindering the flow of the exhibition.

Perhaps another important parameter I have omitted so far is the the idea of "life-sized". How does something portrayed in flat-works compares to its real-life counterpart? The two fences, for example, seemed comfortable being within the ball park of their actually measurements. And the final scale also allowed them to serve as much more convincing display stands for the accessories, which though not illegible, were not that welcoming for the casual glances. Maybe the need to "relax the eyes" would be a signal for there being "enough details", providing a good cause for an upsize. The same argument could also be funded by the mosquitos in Oasis, and the leg hairs in Bond, leaving the pink hammer piece to be the only one that fell short.


By the time I have line up the images to print, there was only two days left until the opening, with the only viable option being the commercial printshop in the area. When I called at first, I said I needed to print some "posters"--the only word I could find to remotely match the quality and scale I was looking for. As it turned out, posters were also a specific method of large-scale printing on a thin film, with adhesive on one side to be mounted onto foam boards or directly onto the surface. Unaware of any alternatives, I was very hesitant. The sample they showed me was a dentist commercial with three very pixelated stock photos, the kind that would definitely make you question the legitimacy of the practice advertised. Also because of the flimsiness of the film, it would be impossible to hold up the prints with screws and clips without it curling and creasing. I was not a fan of foam boards either, thinking its addition would call back to some community bulletin. Plus how would you get foam boards that size from Shanghai to home?

After a while, I was finally able to get some of my intentions across, and the printshop suggested I try uv-printing. Delightfully, the booklet of samples were made of materials much sturdier than the poster. In the end I landed on the plain-weaved canvas. When I saw the final product the next morning, most of my worries with the image quality dissipated. I didn't really have any ideas of what prints this size should optimally look like, but I also didn't notice a drop in resolution other than the micro lighting artifacts introduced by the surface texture of the canvas.

The place where uv printing revealed its shortcomings was the colors. For the most part, there wasn't a detectable discrepancy  between the prints and my original files. And I did expect a loss of vibrancy when the image was no longer composed of lit-up pixels. However, it was really made clear to me that the machine struggled with its range of blacks. Window Composition was completely subsumed by patches of dumb, uniformed black tone. And the hammer beneath the ribbon-bond fences almost disappeared in the shadows.


I really enjoyed making the mosquito. It was like a puzzle to piece together, extracting informations from all kind of reference pictures, fill in the blanks (which there was a lot of in the mid-section where everything was mushed together) with a bit of imagination, all the while trying to maintain good typology. The whole workflow is so much like sculpting with clay. Though in clay, what you see is what you get. And with vertices, edges and faces, you are always negotiating between the abstraction of the low-poly base mesh and its subdivided, smoothed-over outcome. Despite having to constantly give input in order to progress, modeling, especially one aimed towards likeness, allowed a degree of auto-piloting. Same with printmaking and crocheting, it's a great opportunity to kick back and sink into the rhythm while feeling productive in the end. Taken at face value, the final model was admittedly more akin to a cartoon, but it's also a well-stretched canvas primed for finer details, until it ripens into a "industry-ready" product.

Finding a comfort zone was simultaneously alluring and dangerous. Most of the time, more work doesn't yield better outcomes. Still images aren't nearly as demanding of its assets as an animated clip, they are facades, only putting their best faces forward. Images are also made of stable pixels, whose capacity for storing details is only finite. If I were to be result oriented, the necessity of good typology would be called into question, since there's hardly a need for deformation. In the end, it didn't matter if the ornaments on the window bar were meticulously made. It surprises me how much the digital tools relies on impressions despite no longer having limitations to image resolution. In painting, you would always start with broad strokes, an unfocused vision, and a rough map for where everything would eventually fall into place. It's a stage where the canvas is full of potential, bursting with energy, and often times, never quite surpassed. Similarly, as a practice of building from ground up, digital imaging should benefit from an easing into the details. For the texturing workflow, I think this implies a departure from the high-res, ready-made materials, in search for something with more noise and unpredictability. I can also see the replacement of volumes with planes, a way of looking at other forms of image assemblage such as collage. After all, who's to tell if the fog is generated volumetrically or just with an image overlay? The options are wide open, and the disbelief in realism could be suspended, it's up to me to familiarize myself with all the tools that's available in order to work more effectively, and efficiently.


Ever since I got out of school, I've grown thoroughly disinterested in explaining "concepts", aka "what it is about". I recognize that it is a fair question, an attempt to get on the wavelength of the author, especially when someone is not sure about how to access the work themselves. The best answer I could give, for this set of images would be, it's about the way it looks. How it's staged, and how one thing appears next to another. In my mind, the merits of these pictures lie within their aesthetic qualities in conversation with the medium, and their meaning is built on a certain kind of visual literacy entrenched in photographs of art-objects. It's not a game of translation but of association, where the currency is image not words.

I'm not object to language and narratives. The reason I felt my jaw wired shut when I heard "what is it about" was partially the lack of practice. For a month I've been looking and drawing and modeling, but never did I put what I was doing into words. During the time of my little critique circle, I could sense myself becoming more and more comfortable describing the works. It was then I was able to excavate small pieces of thought that drove images forward. I wanted a certain tension that's becoming increasingly stranded by the turbulence beneath (the analogy I gave then was--imagine you are on a night walk and club music is playing on your headphones, it makes you want to burst into dance, but you are fighting every instinct not to). It felt like I was working backwards, recalling experiences filtered through the pictures--a personal reading of some sort, separate from the process of making. In the end, I'd much rather not have an authoritative voice than to feign a misguided understanding.  

Despite my insistence on images being self-sufficient, for unassuming eyes, there's nothing to denote them being any more special than a random frame in our perpetually visual world. Maybe this concern just suggests the failure on my part for not producing images that truly stand out. But can you see how easily something so heavily reliant on its visual can be dismissed as farcical and unproductive? It could be the ptsd from the constant grilling from my parents over what the "value" of my art is, and what good it does for the world. I think if I could just expand the images into animated clips or stories, not only would it be a natural progression for the working environment of blender, it would also better equip the works with the tools of self-advocation.