Something Better (more)

Taken at the 2011 MAAF...

New (2011-) Photo project - SOMETHING BETTER

11-12-30-2010

back in the day, i loved taking photos inside bldgs. there's something about spatial relation - goes back to growing up in hk i'm sure. sometimes, the decor or art or whatever is just interesting. after 9/11, no more photos in the lobby... at least no standing in the middle with a camera gathering attention. lol. anyway, the atrium here (which isn't a lobby i don't think :P) had some really cool mannequin tree decorations for x'mas. so for a month, i tried to capture them with the blackberry while moving as a part of the a.m. commuting masses...

365 days

the vid is compressed to 5% (to fit the 100mb max here) - hence the pixelation. it is 6 mins long. the set of (11) still photographs was taken at a restaurant in chinatown. it's repeated 365 times. while you're 'stuck' watching the Sisyphean repetition, with the option to pause/fast forward, 365 is the number of days/year most businesses are opened in chinatown here (366 for leap years). 6:00a.m. to 8:00p.m. (or 12noon to 2a.m. depending on biz/shift) 7 day/wk with 1 day off/month schedules are not unusual. my grandmother used to talk about having to work so much that dying would be the only way to have free time; but one might be too busy to die...

for better quality: http://www.vimeo.com/20314136

20 nights

for a month, i left the office the same time with this woman (she worked in a different building i think - i'd only see her at the corner of wacker/la salle - the pale blue jacket caught my eye at first). even though we were both heading towards the subway station later in the evening, we never once made eye contact/acknowledge each other's existence. that's kind of interesting from a social experiment pov, i think.

3 mins

set of 6 still photographs (at 5 fps) repeated to form this 3 mins vid. 3 mins of impatience, 3 mins of one's life waiting for the train (with luggage) to get somewhere, and repeated how many times? and is the 'where' where we really want to get?

a.m. tuesday

just tuesday a.m. going to work. the subway was relatively empty as it was before new year so most people were still on holiday. it was interesting to see people talking, since usually most people are doing something with their cell phone/mp3 even if they are with people they know (sometimes guilty here).

don't think i can cope outside urban areas, but sometimes city-living makes me think Albee's Zoo Story...

for better quality: http://vimeo.com/atyl/tuesday-morning