THE PROJECT OF
"ANTI-TIKTOK"–BECOME A TIKTOKER
ARTIST BIO
Tina, Yeung Yin Ting who is an emerging artist based in Hong Kong. She majors Visual Arts at Hong Kong Baptist University. She went to Georgia College & State University (United States) for academic exchange. Tina attempted to convey her aspects on different social issues and interpersonal relationship through her artwork which base on her own experience.
Most of her work inspired by personal feelings in different periods. In “Tiny Things” which is a scanography series, Tina expressed her struggles and doubts on nowadays people thoughts, social issue and her relationship problems. The main objects of whole series – plastic toy, elastic and tiny toy dinosaur. She is sensitives with color contrasting and material flexibilities which created extraordinary combinations of each scanography work.
Instead of using traditional art forms like painting and sculpture, she is attracted by unique and experimental art forms like moving image, photography crossover sculpture, and scanography. Apart from her sensibility on images, she also challenged performance art crossover videography. She created an invitational artwork — “Scan on Scars” allowed audience scanned the QR code on her body. This artwork is attempted to share her being bullied experience which breaks through the boundary between audience and artist.
ARTIST STATEMENT
Inspired by the recent trends of social media platforms, TikTok a video creation app has been turning into a craze for many people to produce videos that can be nonsensical. In view of this, the artist attempts to use a cinema set-up to create a huge contrast and subversion between traditional movies and Tik Tok videos.
A word that was invented by a well-known writer Wong Yeung Tat - "Saline culture". Saline drip is used for instilling nutrition to a patient instead of eating food. The contents of TikTok instills no thought process. Instead, it brings out an immediate unconscious effect on a person.
The artist aims to exaggerate the importance of time period; she designs a series of an interactive setting for the movie ticket. Generally, considering the fixed time length is 45 minutes for television shows, 1 hour 30 minutes for one movie. The extent of the video length of this artwork would depend on the moment of entrance and departure from the cinema (the starting duration to the end in which will be recorded by themselves).
BRAINSTORMING AND DEVELOPMENT
A meme made by me, express my point of view on TikTok
Updated on 14 April 2020
Video ideas
• Make a tutorial video of making Winnie the Pooh on Blender ➡ divided to many videos
• Mute video with Cantonese text
• Forbidden topics on China
Setup ideas
• Plith with a phone ➡ audience can access the TikTok account and view the video
• Large projector screen projects on the wall
Updated on 20 April 2020
Video ideas
• Tell stories by only using text instead of sound (subvert the TikTok video full of music)
• Play with the background music of TikTok videos and classic movie scene (exchange their background music)
• Tik Tok montage (mix TikTok and classic movie scene video)
• Audio description (inspired by Netflix) ➡ only use this to describe the music or sound on TikTok video
• Play with the "word" ➡ selfie with filter (with a real filter)
• Take video with boring content with TikTok music (e.g. the microwave is running)
Set-up ideas
• Watch those short-videos on cinema set-up (an ironic symbol of people absorbing the information rapidly but in a traditional and formal way to view and experience them
• I am the one controlling the what the video screen will be played by real-time
**Test piece... Somehow my laptop keeps crashing all the time. Whenever I used the Array modifier xox
I will try it on my brother's laptop :(
Reference of set-up
• Samson Young
Utopia Trilogy
Canon
Muted Situations
Palazzo Gundane
Updated on 26 April 2020
Video ideas
• Around 191 TikTok videos
** (average movie length=96.5 minutes, every of my TikTok video is within 30 seconds)
• 191 videos will be view by the TikTok platform
• Possible to add a machine to produce a movie ticket and record audience viewed time on TikTok videos? maybe a time recorder?
Setup ideas
• New approach on using phone and phone stand on cinema chair
• Create a cinema mood (?) ➡ concern the room lighting and the safety of the audience
• The arrangement of the chairs ➡ space is a narrow unlike cinema
Video testing
Tina_TikTok_VideoTesting
Tina_TikTok_VideoTesting
TikTok_Testing_A Life of music
TikTok_Testing_Wonder
TikTok_testing_The trueman show
TikTok_Testing_BeginAgain
TikTok_Testing_Titanic
Updated on 3 May 2020
Setup ideas
• Design the cinema chairs with a user-friendly hanger for headphones and stand for putting the phone
**after discovered the function of "shape smooth", I applied it almost on everything
• Testing for the exit signboard ➡ either white or black background ➡ black is the final choice
• Also played with the" location" on mapping node, just like scrolling LED sign (consider to make a video for making a scrolling LED sign)
• Some documentation for the setup so far. The gallery without any wall is quite surreal
• The whole approach of my work will be a cinema with only one exit and entrance specifically (the reason will be explained in another paragraph)
• The queue stands will block another two entrances and exits which connect to other classmates galleries
• Testing of the cinema carpet
Updated on 5 May 2020
Setup ideas
• Design of the movie ticket
**click on it and have a closer look
The outcome of the movie ticket (the audience will write down the ended time of watching my movie )
• Design of the movie ticket vending machine (as movie tickets also have same color palette)
• Outside the cinema also is part of the work. I love the texture of the alarm clock so much (by reducing its roughness)
Updated on 9 May 2020
Video ideas
• Almost done with the Blender part. The selected movie will showcase in a brand-new way in TikTok with my creativities
Updated on 14 May 2020
Video ideas
• I did not put all the movies I mentioned above because I do not have time to find all the movie
• Here's 41 videos in a new way to showcase (remember turn the sound on**)
Setup ideas
• Consider the artists next to me also have two exits to enter my galleries. I have designed a notice for that
Final stage – on Blender
Updated on 16 May 2020
Final review
An interview conducted by me (the artist) and myself (short form: Tuna 🐟)
(Left: Tina Right: 🐟)
🐟: Thanks for making time to meet me. It is great to see you during this circumstance.
Tina: Yea, no problem. It is a pleasure to meet you.
🐟: Let’s begin with basic questions on your recent project. Would you like to have a brief introduction to it?
Tina: Sure! This work is from my major course – Spatial practice which consists of three fields – video, sound and 3D space. Due to the recent COVID-19 pandemic, my school has suspended on-campus classes. Therefore, we did our artwork in virtual space.
🐟: Ohh...It seems difficult to do artwork at home. Would you like to tell me more about your project?
Tina: It is not a big deal to execute my artwork idea in virtual space. This work named “Anti-TikTok – Become a TikToker” which based on my daily observation on social media. Since I am kind of indoorsy person, I love browsing on social media at home. I discovered TikTok, a controversial mobile app in recent years which spread out silly content with noisy music publicly.
🐟: I saw a cinema inside your gallery. What is the intention of this special setting?
Tina: The academic essay of the spatial practice is about TikTok lowers the thresholds of video making. Unlike the traditional way of making a video, TikTok only required a mobile phone but it contains all the functions of video shooting, editing and sharing. I wish to build ironic symbols on “phone screen” vs “cinema screen”, “nonsensical content” vs “deep content” as well as “short duration” vs “long duration” on TikTok videos and movies respectively.
Firstly, the audience requires to purchase a movie ticket from the ticket machine. The movie titled “TikTok Marathon”. Then, they enter the cinema. The cinema screen replaced by phone screens. Every audience has their seat, phone screen and headphones individually. The phone screen will be played a long video compilation of the famous movie scene with TikTok style background music. In the end, the audience departs from the gallery and record the time by themselves.
🐟: That’s sound interesting. Any concerns on the artwork setting like the lighting and colour?
Tina: Yes. I applied the colour scheme of Tik Tok (robin egg blue, fuchsia, white and black) on both the ticket machine’s screen and movie ticket. The colour scheme is a hidden message. Well... Maybe an obvious message haha.
To speak with the lighting inside the gallery, I put the curtains on the entrance, and two curtains to block other exits inside the gallery. I do not want people to depart from other exits, otherwise, it ruins the experience of my work. I also put light strips on the floor to guide the audience. When I finished the setup, I realized I forget to consider if people can see the headphones or not since it is in black. I afraid people would not notice the headphone and they can not hear the sound. In the end, I added some fluorescence labels on it.
🐟: Anything you gained from this project?
Tina: Umm... I will say mostly the skills on Blender. I also gained some skills on Unity but not proficient. Besides, I acquired some new perspectives on video and sound. Although the sounds on my project are music, they perform important roles in my videos. It sounds crazy that TikTok music matches scenes of the movie. I had so much fun while working on the videos. Also, when I watched the movie scenes frame by frame. I studied some aesthetics and composition of them.
🐟: How long does it take to make one TikTok video?
Tina: I spend a whole day researched the right movie's scenes since they have to be precise and significant. I picked music on TikTok music gallery and other TikToker's videos (there’s a music button on every TikTok video which allows other use the music too).
It depends on my luck haha. Sometimes I only spent 1 minute on choosing the suitable music; sometimes I spent over 20 minutes on one short video (Ehh.. I suffered from the noisy music at all)
🐟: What kind of elements did you consider while picking the suitable music?
Tina: The rhythm is important but the mood is the main consideration. Occasionally I only focus on rhythm so the video looks so hilarious. I made balance rhythm and mood on the video. For example, the video on “The Great Dictator”, Charlie Chaplin (as Hynkel) played the globe inside the office improperly. I used music to fit the rhythm on the video. Another example will be “The Pursuit of Happiness”, Will Smith (as Chris Gardner) with his son stayed overnight in the public toilet. The song is actually about no pain no gain and works hard.
🐟: I love movies so much. What a big surprising combination of TikTok music and movie scenes. Any new direction after finished this project?
Tina: Well... There are only 41 videos in the compilation. I would like to make more clips for that. And also keep exploring some new aspects of the relationship between new technology and human being. I am satisfied with this work but probably it can develop in a better way in future like the scale, arrangement and so on.
🐟: Cool! Congratulations on your new amazing artwork. It is great to hear the intention and process of it. Thank you so much!
Tina: No problem! Thanks for your interview invitation too :)