Person of the Year

Ever since 1927, Time magazine reveals its choice of Person of the Year (formerly Man of the Year till 1998) by its editors at the end of every year for the person or persons “who most affected the news and our lives, for good or ill, and embodied what was important about the year.”

For obvious reasons, the majority of the selections have been political leaders in U.S. and the world. Most of them proved to be excellent choices in hindsight if not then. For ones related to China, Generalissimo and Madame Chiang Kai-Shek were named in 1937 when they led China to fight against Japanese invasion.  Deng Xiao-Ping was named in 1978 when he returned to power and began a series of reforms in China.  Somehow, Time missed opportunities of putting Mao ZeDong up although it did eventually include him in 1999 on its list of Time 100: The Most Important People of the Century (again, regardless good or evil).

The first time when Time magazine named an unorganized and anonymous group of people as Man of the Year was in 1966, against the backdrop of escalating Vietnam War and the (Afrian-American) Civil Rights Movement in U.S.  It gave them the name The Inheritor and the profile: “ … ran the mile in 3:51.3, and died under mortar fire at An Lao.  He got a B-minus in Physics I, earned a Fulbright scholarship, filmed a documentary in a Manhattan ghetto, and guided Gemini rendezvous in space. He earns $76 a week with Operation Head Start in Philadelphia, picks up $10,800 a year as a metallurgical engineer at Ford, and farms 600 acres of Dakota wheat land. He has a lightning-fast left jab, a rifling right arm, and reads medieval metaphysicians. He campaigned for Reagan, booed George Wallace, and fought for racial integration....”

Almost half a century later in the December 14^th 2011 issue, Time magazine chose The Protester as the 2011 Person of the Year. The cover story recounted the waves of protests like brush fire such as the Arab Spring from Tahrir Square of Cairo in Egypt to streets of Damascus in Syria, and those in Europe from streets of Madrid, Athens to London and Moscow, and in U.S., the movement of Occupy Wall Street. The cover story notes that “All over the world, the protesters of 2011 share a belief that their countries' political systems and economies have grown dysfunctional and corrupt — sham democracies rigged to favor the rich and powerful and prevent significant change. ”Unlike the Inheritors of 1966, there is no ideological consistency and it is global this time. The most indicative of all and the one thing the Protestors do share in common is what Time’s quote of Miral Brinjy, a 27-year-old blogger and TV-news producer who grew up in Saudi Arabia: "I know what I don't want."

There is no doubt that such discontent and frustration expressed on the street have been simmering for quite sometimes and have reached boiling point in 2011. All they were waiting for was another straw or a spark. For the Arab Spring, it was literally the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi when he set himself on fire with gasoline and a match in desperation. In Occupy Wall Street, it was the peaceful protest initiated and planned by the Canadian activist group Adbusters at the Zuccotti Park near Wall Street with the sole purpose to draw attention to the growing income and wealth inequality. But you can easily trace it back to preceding years as seen in the Tea Party movement, or as expressed earlier by singer and song writer James McMurtry in his 2006 AMA (American Music Association) Song of the Year - "We Can't Make It Here" below (see the lyrics here)

There is no doubt that Internet and social media have brought the potential and dynamics of crowd forming to a new level. And there is no doubt that accelerated news cycle and increasing sensationalism by mass media has fueled and incited extreme reactions and promoted polarizations, intentionally or not.

The potential for destruction of the power of crowd has always been feared by many especially those who are in power and favor status-quo. Occasionally, we find few crafted ones such as Adolf Hitler and Mao Zedong who made use of the crowd psychology like suggestibility and contagion to advance their agenda and position at the national scale. Crowds by definition are transient and dynamic. The emotion can explode and dissipate in no time with few memorable moments or meanings in between. How many of us still remember the Vancouver riot 6 months ago? To jug your memory, here is the famous photo of the Kissing Couple of the Vancouver Riot that was just named by Esquire magazine the Photo of the Year 2011.

Gustave Le Bon, the French social psychologist and pioneer of crowd psychology, told us more than 100 years ago in his influential 1895 book La psychologie des foules(English translation The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind) that one key characteristic of crowd is that it “can never accomplish acts demanding a high degree of intelligence.”He observed that crowd is formed when the heterogeneous intellectual individuals are overwhelmed and taken over by common ordinary quality of unconsciousness. Have you ever had the temptation or encouraged by the anonymity and done something that you normally wouldn’t do when you disappeared into a crowd?

Now year 2011 is coming to an end, the more challenging and open question is if and how the energy of the Protestor can and will be transformed into positive lasting changes and new orders. The alternative would be painful but sometimes necessary, which is to go through the full cycle of the crowd development from snowballing to crashing, followed by opportunities to rebuild the new from ashes.

Wish you Happy Holidays and Exciting New Year!

The Ultimate Patriotism

For quite some time, many eyes have been on Italy who is one of the key dominoes at risk in current Europe’s debt crisis. Like many other European countries where public funding for arts is the primary source of income for organizations and facilities devoted to arts, the ever increasing pressure on reducing government spending/debts and the implementations of austerity measures have inflicted severe damages on the development and sustaining of Italian’s culture programs, opera included.

Opera was born in Italy around 1600 and its popularity has quickly spread to Europe and eventually the world. It remains to be a dominant form of performance arts in Italy with more than 40 opera houses throughout that country. It is not an exaggeration if one wants to consider opera a symbol of Italian culture.

Indeed the public sentiment and concern had reached the boiling point earlier this year when the world-renowned Italian conductor Riccrado Muti conducted the performance of Giuseppe Verdi's opera Nabucco in Rome on March 12^th, celebrating the 150th anniversary of the unification of Italy. Muti interrupted the performance after the chorus of Va' pensiero and turned to the audience to express his concern that Italy would be lost with the continuing onslaughts of cuts in arts funding. He then asked the audience to sing along with the chorus to perform the most unusual encore of Va’ pensiero as demonstration of their patriotism. Below is a video recording of the event.

For those who are familiar with Italian opera, the political symbol of the song Va’ pensiero is unmistaken. Giuseppe Verdi, the 19^th century transformational figure of Italian opera, wrote Nabucco which was first performed in 1842, contributing to the Italy unification movement. It tells the story of the Jews' struggle for freedom after the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem in 587 B.C. by Nebucco, the King of Babylon. The best-known song from the opera is Va, pensiero, sull'ali dorate (in English: Fly, thought, on golden wings), aka "Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves” that many had wanted it to be the Italy’s national anthem.

Often we associate patriotism with actions/reactions of people in response to threats on their country’s physical, social or economic existence or well-beings. However when one’s cultural roots are in danger, the outpouring of spontaneous support and emotion by average citizens as demonstrated by the audience that evening is more than remarkable. Any country whose people care so much about their cultural identity is enough to convince me that they will be able to pull through difficult times. Viva Italia!

Before I go, I would like to leave you a few Youtube videos of beautiful arias of Italian opera with English subtitle. What I have chosen for you are from the opera Turandot which is the last opera of Giacomo Puccini (1858 – 1924), one of the most popular 20^th century opera composers. The particular production is the legendary 1987 production of Franco Zeffirelli at the New York Metropolitan Opera with Placido Domingo (tenor) and Leona Mitchell (soprano) and Choreographer Ching Chiang 江青.

It was based on a Persian story, set in China (of Yuan Dynasty), about the pursuit of the ice cold Mongol Princess Turandot by the exiled Prince Calàf. The most Chinese part of the opera, apart from the adaptation of the Chinese folk song Jasmine Flower 茉莉花, is the rule for the suitors of the Princess: a suitor must answer three riddles correctly or be executed.

The first 8+ minutes of the video below is the exchange in Act I between Prince Calàf and the slave servant Liù who secretly loves him and desperately wants to convince him not to enter the contest which in all likelihood would result in his death. As one might expect, the Prince, blinded by his ambition, ignores her plea and asks her to take care of his frail father should he fail. The exchanges are Signore, ascolta! "My lord, hear me!" and Non piangere, Liù "Don't cry, Liù" with the scene ended as Prince Calàf enters the contest sounding the gong.

When Prince Calàf answers all three riddles correctly, Princess Turandot is still resisting and does not want to honor the agreement. To win over her heart, Prince Calàf offers her a way out if she can tell his real name. The result was an all night frenzy of the capital city in search of his name as Prince Prince Calàf sings arguably the most popular opera aria of all time - Nessun dorma! (None shall sleep!), with the confidence that he will win the wager. See the three minutes segment (from minute 3:30 till 6:30) of the video below. By the way, the three riddles are: 1) 'Straniero, ascolta!' - What is born each night and dies each dawn?, 2)'Guizza al pari di fiamma' - What flickers red and warm like a flame, but is not fire?, 3) 'Gelo che ti da foco' - What is like ice, but burns like fire? Want to give them a shot?

As Princess Turandot tries to extract Prince Calàf’s name by torture from his slave servant Liù, Liù taught Princess Turandot the true meaning of love before she kills herself to protect the secret. See the first 8+ minutes of the video below.

Enjoy and talk to you soon!

Color Theory in Practice

In my last blog, I addressed the theoretical aspects of the color theory.  In this installment, I shall turn my attention to the practice and the fun part - the visual perception and illusions as well as aesthetics induced by color.  I will use some illustrations with my work from projects in the class.  If you are familiar with visual arts, you may note the principles have been used extensively by artists for a long time.  If you aren’t, you will see that they are present everywhere from fashions and advertisements to interior design and product packaging.  And you may then realize that you have been conditioned sublimely already.  Here is a quick test: can you name “the little blue pill”.

The focus and interests of artists are obviously different from the scientists or technologists.  Scientists seek to understand, explain, and to predict the occurrence of a phenomenon.  Technologists seek to create methods and tools that allow people to perform tasks which are otherwise difficult or laborious.  Artists on the other hand are interested in expressing themselves and to communicate through human sensory systems using available media and tools.   As such, it is the totality of the work when one composes or puts together component parts (in our case, the colors) that interact with each other and with the viewers.  Here are some cases in point about the Interactions of colors: 

Seeing afterimages is one experience that we all have had regularly but may not be aware of it.   It is an optical illusion whereby an image continues to appear in our “vision” after we have stopped looking at the object.   It is now known that our eyes automatically adapt to exposure of light to protect them.  For instance, if you stare at a bright red object for a while, your eyes will tune out the signals at the red wavelength.  As a result, one sees afterimage of the object in green which is the complementary color of red (at the opposite end of the color wheel).  Try it, you can easily verify the effect by staring at a bright colored object for a short while and then shut your eyes.

A more intricate effect is the so-called simultaneous contrast that can produce interesting deceptions to our vision.  The figure on the left below is my attempt of making the center squares (which are of the same color) appear to be two different colors utilizing the contrast with their backgrounds.   The figure on the right below is my attempt of making the center squares (of two distinct colors in this case, as shown by the two rectangles at the bottom) appear to be the same color.  Both illustrate the notion of simultaneous contrast.

 

Yet another famous example is called The Bezold Effect, named after the rug designer Wilhelm von Bezold.   He discovered that he could change the appearance of a rug design by simply changing one of the main colors in that design or by adding one other color.  My two designs below show his idea.  They share an identical pattern in three colors of which two are the same in both designs.  Do you see them as two distinct patterns?

 

Switching gears, more often than not, artists are constrained to use a two-dimensional surface to convey a 3-D experience.  A common way of creating the perception of space and depth is to make use of perspectives developed from our visual experiences in life.  For instance, we are accustomed to linear perspective whereby objects appear smaller when they are further away from us.  We are also used to the relation of overlapping objects when the nearer objects obscure the viewing of objects further back.

Artists and designers have created many interesting optical illusions by intentionally giving conflicting perspectives as shown in, for example, the famous “never ending staircase” of the lithographic print Ascending and Descending by the Dutch artist M. C. Escher.  Note no color was needed in such illusions. 

Color no doubtedly offers additional dimensions and opportunities as exemplified in realism paintings.  For example, we are all familiar with the vanishing point and the atmosphere or aerial perspective where the contrast in color and value are much weaker for objects at distance which appear to be more bluish.  Such an effect could be explained with the scattering and obscuring effects by particles in air.   Similarly, we often perceive objects in warmer colors (red, orange, yellow) appear to be closer to us than objects in cooler colors (green, blue).  It is related to the chromatic aberration as our physicist friends would say.

At end of the day though, each artist need to choose a particular color pallet to express certain mood and atheistic feels.  Some have used a single color family to achieve impressive results.  One possibility is monochromatic color scheme - nuances and contrast can be created by varying the value of a single color when mixing it with different amount of white or black.  The painting below on the left is one example by Pablo Picasso in his Blue Period (now you know why the name).  Another possibility is to use different values of gray mixed with a chosen color as the painting below on the right illustrates.  It is done by the famous early 20^th century Italian painter Giorgio Morandi who often paints in chromatic grays. 

There are of course numerous color schemes that have been documented in color theory and believed to achieve certain style and feel, be it harmony or discord.  Examples include triadic (three colors in 120 degree apart on color wheel such as yellow, blue, red used in Burger King logo) and analogous (three or more colors close to each other on color wheel such as red/orange/yellow used in A&P supermarket logo).  The grand finale of this semester long class I am taking is to create an art or design work one that uses the principles learned from the class.  My choice is create an image of a personal (Chinese) chop/seal. 

When I was growing up in Taiwan, I always dreamed of owning a personal chop one day with a design and material of my choice.  Such a feeling is not uncommon among Chinese youths since personal chop has been used in China for thousands of years like a public notary seal used in U.S.  It is required in business and symbolizes the acceptance of one’s identity by the society as a legal entity.  Chop thus has been a subject of Chinese artists and calligraphers through history and my choice for my final project.

The resulting work is shown at the right.  My design is based on the traditional red inked square chop with my three-character Chinese name that reads from top-down and right to left.  The last character means “seal”.   The script I have chosen is the Small Seal 小篆 the first unified script over 2200 years ago under the First Emperor of China.  The distinct feature of my design is a self-portrait in the background which is not present in traditional chops.

The color scheme used in this design is double complementary, in particular, the tetrads – red/green and yellow-orange/blue-purple which as 90 degrees apart on the color wheel.  It is completed with monochromatic green and chromatic gray with green that are applied to the self-portrait such that it recedes into the background to provide spatial perspective.  

Now I have shown you my chop.  You can figure out my Chinese name, can’t you?  Talk to you soon!