Life


 * LIFE, MORE SPECIFICALLY, HUMAN LIFE**

I don’t believe anybody could ever comprehend every single quality of human life—that’s the whole beauty and frustration of it. Whether we fathom it or not, it still remains as the supreme medium, governing the interactions of life with other forms of life. Without life, there are no other mediums nor interactions that matter. This was my initial thought before I began my project—the singular idea of other lives intermingling with our own life. However, what I later discovered were the different lives within our one life. After studying the biological, physical, chemical, emotion, mental, and spiritual processes which control our very essence of being, I realized that one side of ourselves will always be conflicting with another side. This extremely convoluted tension between binary forces (which I plotted as the natural versus the supernatural) also acts as a state of equilibrium—trying to find a sort of balance within the chaos of our lives. Suddenly, the proverbial “know thyself” statement becomes not only annoying, but problematic. Things in life aren’t always so easy to define. As I began the process of trying to plot the infinite connections of life, my initial brainstorms became immensely messy, illegible maps. My next step was to attempt to create a super-legible, orderly map that stayed true to my perceptions of life. Things that I found important (or at least interesting): the connections between chronological and mental/cognitive age, as well as the birth and death line that respectively governs age. Everything must have a beginning and end; alpha and omega. Placing every other item between those frame of references, I created what I believed to be rationally-designed concept map of life. However, what I failed to realize was that life doesn’t look like that. Life is complex. It’s full of connections, juxtapositions, and other things that simply don’t make sense. In short, my map didn’t look like life. It hardly looked alive. In my attempt to change the dominating pastel colours of the map, I started by adding six photographs (that I had previously taken during Nuit Blanche 2007) that coordinated with the six major life lines. By addressing the importance of colour within my map, it had indirectly created my reflection of life—as the ambiguous but intriguing medium that it is. I still decided to keep the six groupings (biological, physical, chemical…) equidistance from each other, simply because I do not believe that any one area is more or less important than the next. (For example, I don’t believe that we become more spiritual as our age progresses. I believe that we are born as spiritual beings just as fairly as we are born as biological beings. The difference is made whether or not we address this aspect of our life.) Later, I drew vertical lines through the main topics, connecting the top biological line all the way to the bottom spiritual line. I later added horizontal lines to the points that I felt had the strongest associations to each other. Finally, I added relational words to help explain how I believed the topics were tied together. Sometimes, the horizontal lines run across other vertical lines—which creates even more links that can be made. What finally resulted was the culmination of what I call simplexity: the amalgamation of the simple and the complex. AKA: life.
 * RATIONALE**

- Audrey Chia

A. J. Greimas' semiotic square: "any initial binary opposition can, by the operation of negations and the appropriate synthesis, generate a much larger filed of terms, which, however, all necessarily remain locked in the closure of the initial system."
 * How to explain LIFE?**

Life, in its most basic form, can be quantified by age, calculated in years, representing the Earth's astronomical position in our solar system (and possibly the universe beyond) Two main forms of age may be identified: 1.) chronological age 2.) mental age
 * How to quantify LIFE?**

Different areas of life: biological, physical, chemical, spiritual, emotional, mental.
 * How to measure LIFE?**

Two distinct groups can be made: "Natural": biological, physical, chemical "Supernatural": spiritual, mental, emotional

They are also in binary opposition to each other: biological <---> spiritual physical <---> mental chemical <---> emotional

This was my first initial step to jot down whatever I could on how I felt life should be organized. On the left is the measurement of age, shown through the chronological and mental line. In between are the 6 main areas: biological, physical, chemical, mental emotional, and spiritual - all of which interact with each other. On the right is the activities and relationships lines - which somehow appears to lead to death. (?) There is a diagonal line that draws from the natural (upper left) and supernatural (lower right). In all, it was an extremely messy attempt to plot life, so my second challenge was to uncomplicate it.
 * CONCEPT 1.0**

My second concept map feeds off the first. However, all the complicated messiness is replaced by extremely rational design. Everything seems to be so sterile and banal. Of course, life isn't like this. Also, I faced a problem with where I placed certain things on the chronological timeline. ex: we use our digestive system throughout our lives - not just between ages 30-40. So, i later tried to group things based on what made the most sense.
 * CONCEPT 1.2**

These were other quasi-star-shaped experimentations - neither which sufficed.
 * CONCEPT 2.0**

This is my attempt at a pinwheel design - a knockoff from concept 2.0. In this diagram, one can read the opposing forces much more clearly (ex: biological vs. spiritual, physical vs. emotional, chemical vs. mental). however, i faced a problem: as you progress in one area, you digress in another - which isn't necessarily true. also, i foresaw problems with including information later on.
 * CONCEPT 2.1**

This is a vertical diagram similar to concept 1.2.
 * CONCEPT 3.0**

This is the computerized version of concept 1.2 - the experimentation that i felt was the most successful.
 * CONCEPT** **1.3**

I later added two colours, green and purple, to empahsize the division between the natural and supernatural realms. I wanted to stick with a neutral palette. I thought about using pink and blue, but that might correlate too much with gender (ex: natural - blue -  masculine; supernatural - pink - feminine). The pinkish-orangey lines is an indicator where most interactions with other human life forms occur. Yes, it is slightly sexist.
 * CONCEPT** **1.4**

A skeleton shot of concept 1.4
 * CLOSE-UP SHOTS**

A close-up shot of the middle of concept 1.4 with the wireframe selected.

A close-up shot with an emphasis on the pink relational lines.

I added visual tabs to the 6 main groups, to give more emphasis on them. I also colour coded the areas, so there was more definition between each binary force.
 * CONCEPT 1.5**

In my final critique, I realized that my diagram wasn't really a concept map - it was too linear and didn't tell a story. So, I drew vertical connecting lines through each main grouping, and then added horizontal lines to the relations that i felt were the strongest. I also added some of my ambiguous photography in the background (corresponding to each respective colour) to add some LIFE into my concept map of life.
 * FINAL CONCEPT 1.6**

My experimentation with colour.
 * EXPERIMENTAL CLOSE-UPS**

Close-up shot with a red photograph (which I ended up using for the mental line).

Final concept map (couldn't include the large pdf version without sacrificing proper colour): [|ChiaAudrey_conceptmap.jpg]