sin_blog

Bottom: clipping from South China Morning Post (September 26, 2008)

Background: I took pictures from Facebook profiles of friends, manipulated them with a website, and posted the finished pictures in a Facebook album. (Website URL provided in album description. Written that it was not Photoshop production from me.)

Intention: Pure joke, just for fun.

Reaction: Some classmates thought I edited the photographs myself. Some were concerned about copyright issues involved.

Result: A 33-page presentation of random thoughts on copyright.

This is the infamous sin logo which 99% of the viewers think, looks like a moustache. Without much speculation, it is thought to be a moustache. Which makes sense, since I’m a big fan of Dalí.

It wasn’t a moustache.

At least it wasn’t intended to be. It is simply a graphic version of the word “sin”, my name. The above cutting is the prototype. The logo actually started as a little decoration for my wall. If there is anything that influenced the form, it would be Matisse’s paper collages rather than Dalí’s moustache. More closely yet, Air’s logo of mirroring A and R could be a direct influence on graphic treatment. Oops, I’ve just neglected Einstein’s advice to hide my sources.

In fact, the logo could be more things.

It could be birds

It could be a naked man looking like Jesus

Or maybe it could really be Dalí’s moustache

Originally: The Sartorialist

Stealing another one. It seems that there is a red fetishism going on…

I’m currently busy with the newly purchased Flickr Pro. Unlimited uploads allow more things besides artworks. Mostly postcards that I excused myself from scanning and uploading just because I did not have a pro account. Actually, there is another collection of paper — receipts. Most of the old ones faded and are therefore not good for scanning. Let me make a brief summary of them by snaps, before proceeding to share new ones at Flickr.

There is of course the corporate standard

Some brands, however, prefer pure text

Maybe a bit of colour

Or a face of corporate colour and logos everywhere. (Is the coloured paper, printed on both sides, environmentally friendly?)

Some have a lot of information

Some are exceptionally long for no reason

Repetitiveness could be their reason

Some are big

Some come in two

Some are exceptionally big and come in two

Most fade

Some fade…to a large extent

Some don’t seem to fade at all

Some don’t fade. They are nicely printed, simple and tiny. (My favourites)

Some change in paper and format

Some remain the same throughout the years

There are special occasions, such as travel

Or work (Most of these were of when I worked for a summer job at this company. Did I earn or did I pay?)

Here they are, pieces of paper bought with cash.

Originally: The Sartorialist

Picking up some drawing. Copying from photographs is probably uncreative but something fairly approachable to start with. The Sartorialist has a lot of really beautiful pictures that I want to draw. This is actually the first that started the idea. I’m interested in the folds but wasn’t patient enough to do them… Hope it’s not too spoiled.

Left: (normal) view of the previous monitor
Right: (simulated) view of the new monitor

This is no exaggeration. All the (relatively) light colours are almost gone in the new monitor. Just when I thought a bigger monitor would improve life a bit, it brings trouble, which is what we always step into during new phases. I didn’t realize/face the problem until I saw with another computer all the grey areas which appeared white before. I knew the new display pal has sharp contrast and colours that are too sweet, but tried to convince myself that these were mere difference from monitor to monitor, which is normal. I even felt happy because everything looked so nice. But it is now discovered the contrast is so big that some elements are simply invisible rather than appearing different. Don’t know if the problem is technical or mechanical, but adjusting monitor values did not help, and the staff hasn’t replied. I have to use the old one now so as to see and tune things right as much as I can. God. If you think some of the pictures that I made lately are gloomy, don’t mistake it as suicidal hint. I just happened to have the wrong eyes.

Maybe I should say different eyes, for no eyes are “wrong”. I’m currently reading How Dogs Think by Stanley Coren (Chinese version). It says that dogs can see colours but of a limited range due to less and different cone cells in their eyes. This makes me think of a thought I had when I was younger, concerning if organisms from another planet can see the colours that we see (if they can see), or if light on another planet is different than ours. Evolution enabled us to have the ability to differentiate colours in the environment, meaning the property (possession of colours in this case) of the environment is real and it influences us in a way. But we had the potential to evolve and have the concept “colour” because we have eyes the photosensitive organs in the first place (sure, eyes are product of evolution too and are result of the environment). The conception of truth thus depends on the hardware, and the type of hardware, that we have. Differentiation of colours can also be achieved by detecting the frequency/wavelength of electromagnetic wave or molecular composition without actually having to see the colour, but since human bodies are not computers and we have eyes, the colour we see becomes the truth we hold. The majority of us claims to see more than the colour-blind, while we probably have limited colour vision as dogs do, only that we are better than some animals. Ask an alien and maybe the world appears as a map of textures instead of colours, what remotely describe the world to them.

Back to my monitor. I’ve been totally blind for areas of light shades. This makes me realize again how little we can do to accomplish a certain task if we do not have the right tools. For athletes, the right genes. It doesn’t mean blank slate is impossible, but we still have to refer to the fundamental body. If you were born a PC, it would be hard to make you think like a Mac. If my monitor is mechanically flawed, it is hard to tune it to normal. Right, back to my monitor. Help.