[Final Project] Childhood Simulation Installation Art

March 09, 2022

[Final Project] Childhood Simulation Installation Art

Very proud of myself for completing my first installation artwork and being able to open this show to public for a week! For my final project, I collaborated with Sally Zhang and Hong Le and together made a collaborative installation art show with the title of Childhood Simulation. This show takes place in the Mudd Library Gallery and is open to public from March 7th to March 11th. Childhood Simulation intends to bring back the memory we have as kids and what subjects we engage with when we are child, and end with the bright and unknown future. The session that we did not plan and include in the proposal but end of improvised while building the installation is the two ropes in between the 2001 and 2022 calendar. With iconic animations doodle drawn on paper and hold on the rope, it indicates the timeline of us growing up while forming our conscious by absorbing the colorful information from the world. This element of time like could fall into the dreamscapes category for the Installation Making Strategy. As Freud states “the dream may be psychological, using metaphors and symbolism to evoke elusive content”. People’s action of walking into the gallery is so dream alike, in fact, many people has given me feedback that they felt like they were child again when they are in front of our work. For the mirror reflection set-up which we mentioned in our proposal. It connects with the Mimetic Engulfment where the viewer are both absorbed and reflected into the art piece. Because the mirror is indicating the childhood is in their pass while it is literally behind their back when they stand in front of the mirror. This installation set-up invites people to interact with our piece in a very creative and intriguing way. We also purposefully adjusted the spotlights to make them directly pointing at the spots where we want the viewer to focus on. Which also helped us to keep light sources away from the animation montage projection.

The experience of putting up a show together helped me to be familiarized with the space in the Mudd gallery. I gained some solid knowledge about the pre-production, production, and post-publication of installation art. After our Monday class, our team decided to open our show to public so our friends can get a chance to view our hard work. The experience of making a poster, posting on social media, telling friends about my personal project all end of becoming the “rehearsal” for promoting my capstone work which will take place in the same location. So now that not only I am familiarized with the space, my friends and the general publics also known more about the space after this show. This is a good step to pave the path for attracting more viewers next term when my capstone is up!