Eyes vs Design

This week co-exist, our lecturer gave us to watch a video about a designer who named Olafur Eliasson. We had to take down some notes when we are watching the video. Then we had to write our reflection on blog.

What I like the most in the video?

It's a 45 minutes video. I can't really remember the whole video if I didn't take notes. There are many artworks he has shown us in the video. He has also share his designs' idea or the meaning behind the design in the video. The most interesting artwork is the yellow room. I think most of classmate will have the same felling with me when they first see the yellow room.

Basically, he uses the yellow light to fill in the room. When the people walk in the yellow room, they can see the any other colours except yellow, grey and white. One of the yellow room, he just put a red rose there, and turn on the yellow light. The people who are in the room can't recognise the rose is in red. Another artwork he show with yellow light is he out a yellow lightbulb before a colour board . When the yellow light is on, the people can only see the black, grey and whit colour on the board; but when they turn on the white lightbulb, they can see the board is fill in different colours. He says that white light can help the colour to reflect into our eyes, then only we can see the colour.

Another artwork that I like the most was the indoor rainbow waterfall. The technique that he use is also light and its reflection with our eyes. We can see rainbow is because of the reflection of light and water. He tries to make a waterfall and use the white lightbulb to make a indoor rainbow. However, he says that this artwork can only to be known as an artwork when there is someone there. If there is no one come and look at this indoor rainbow waterfall, this is no consider as an artwork. This is because rainbow will only show when there is someone using his/her eyes to look at the waterfall.

He also like to play around the mirrors. I remember that he tries to play with the mirror in the video. As we all know, mirror will show our actions in the same side. However, when he tried to wave his left hand, the mirror will show his action in the opposite side but not the same side. And also, the mirror will not show his action in the same time, but be more slow. He is good in playing the perspective and create different effects with mirror.

What was the most useful idea discussed in the video?

The most useful idea is an artwork is we can play around different materials rather than just using paper to make an artwork. For example, Olafur Eliasson uses light, mirrors, and also nature resources like water, ice to create an artwork. He has also apply biology, physics in his artwork. I think we should try to learn more knowledge, so that we can use them to develop our design. Not only that, I realise that most of his artworks are large and in sculpture format. This can make the artworks look more interesting.