“Black & White Film”

Artist Diaries

12/2/25

When I started creating the Heads or Tail Checker Chess Project, I ran into one particular really good different patterned piece and decided to deviate and not stop. I loved the white border imperfection edges. When I feel this happiness and acceptance of a piece, is when I know to continue. Dove into deep thinking on why I feel so comfortable with this imperfection of my choosing and the first obvious idea that came is against society’s expectation. But that didn’t feel like the final one, so I continued thinking and then the “aha” finally came… it’s against my accounting job that everything has to match by the cent in excel. This idea gave me a resolution. For example, patternmaking has to be “perfect”, but it does have space for angles, pockets & fillers. It’s more open for playfulness in which accounting is not, or at least I’m not interested in researching how to make accounting playful, but I guess for those who do enjoy it… will find the creative side of it while sitting 8h a day in front of a computer. In conclusion this was my rebellious thought that transferred into my technique for this project.

Another active idea while looking at it all together, is the intention of sitting down in stillness and meditation music, makes you pause for a breath, feeling lost in the quiet chaotic pattern, like the Black and White Film. It makes me go back when there was no antenna signal in the old TVs. It was a blur of black, gray, & white texture movement and horrible noise of disconnection, and somehow made you keep looking at the TV expecting that suddenly, a miracle would happen bringing the signal back and allow you to continue watching the show. This project became a push to go back to basics. Stillness & mediation, instead of constant distraction of a tsunami of images and information from social media.

I made 28pc in this project to build the size to simulate a large TV screen. The pieces should be all together side by side and a black frame around the outer edges. The papers can be mounted on boards to be seamless, or if they are in individual frames, the inner seams leave them white. Would love to have it display in a big white wall with a sitting arrangement in the front like a sofa in the living room. Could be a long bench, a sofa, or several sets of reclining chairs. Because of the size of this screen, makes you feel like you are in a movie theater, and with the intentional seating area, viewers will be included to sit and look. I can see people sitting in front of the wall TV and viewing it as a whole, until they start asking themselves “is it possible they are all different, is it a set repeat?”. They will be so intrigued to find the answer that they will stand up and get as close as possible to come to the conclusion that each paper has 3 lines, and every single line is unique. That makes it 84 unique hand free styled patterns. The experience they feel far away will be very different from the one up front. Viewers might even question, what is the intention far or close? Maybe they’ll step away back to the chair to try and see the next clue. Somehow becomes a game mixed between the movie Da Vinci Code and Optical/Stereogram Art. Is there a next clue or a hidden message? Since high school, I have always enjoyed doing hidden messages in a condensed art work, and have always been obsessed with black and white. This is why this particular piece feels very natural for me.

All the papers are labeled in an exact sequence how they should go. I organized them by texture & technique mixed with and dark & light groups. See image that indicates the order.

There are 4 rows. The first row A1, starts with dark/complex on the left and moves into a simpler/lighter to the right stimulating a wave in motion instead of stillness in terms of eye movement. Second row it flips (lighter to darker). Is it me trying to avoid the stillness that I’m actually trying to create…? The addiction of the next swipe…?

I made a predictable eye pattern of dark/light & light/dark to form an image as a whole considering the rectangle of the TV and that the change of density didn’t through off too much from the actual old “no signal” movement. If I made it too drastic, it would have had a different meaning than the TV concept. In general, I consider everything in nature having it’s own pattern and an indirect mathematical equation to it. Not sure how this happened, but the very rebellious technique that originated in this project with the border imperfection edges, turned around to honor nature’s natural way of movement.

It also crossed my mind to fill in the line gaps that make me so happy… but is it the unconscious to cover up the scars, and make an excuse for society instead of letting the gaps be and face reality and avoid criticism?

All of this becomes as a reflection from the individual to society as a group, where are we heading? Are we conscious of what is happening in society in terms of screen addiction and consequences that even I had a hard time avoiding while supposedly being conscious? I do recognize that screen time as a subject that has been studied more in the past few years, and there have been a lot of post demonstrating the results of it, but I don’t feel too much is being actually done to take action and break the pattern. Just visit a restaurant and count how many kids have a screen on their hands instead of a game or a book… Sometimes even couples having dinner with an iphone on their hands. The next study will be the actual results instead of the warnings. Only a few will manage to show they were able to escape it. But there is always hope. Take a look at page F3, it has a very bright top row. It only takes 1 shinning star to awaken the sky and make a movement.