Therapy?

Speak to your bedroom wall

When finished, tell it that it will never understand your pain

Ask it why you’re paying it an hourly rate

Take a photo of the wall

Send the photo to your parent or guardian

Call them once they’ve seen the photo, avoid talking about the photo

Inspiration

My inspiration for this score came mainly from two sources. The first were Yoko Ono’s own scores in Grapefruit which involved performing a fairly intimate personal action, then taking the results of that action and sharing them with someone, but not drawing attention to the action. One example is a score involving finding a stone roughly the size of yourself, grinding it down, and delivering the powder to a friend but not explaining what the powder is. The other source of inspiration came from my own experiences and observations that, while most people (arguably especially in college) could benefit from speaking with a therapist, most of those people either are too self-conscious to do so or refuse to for other personal reasons. Because of this many people in times of need look to their friends and/or family for support, however sometimes those conversations can feel as though you are speaking to a brick wall depending on how responsive your supporter is. So through these sources of inspiration, I formed the instructions of the score. I purposefully left the instructions on what to talk about with the wall and how long to talk to the wall open to allow participants to speak however long and about whatever subject they wanted. When I spoke to the wall it started fairly normally (as normally as speaking to a wall can be) but then eventually did become more personal. When I was satisfied I took a picture and sent it to my father. I waited a bit until I could see him starting to respond, then immediately called him to speak with him. He initially did not ask about the wall, but near the end he asked if I had meant to send the picture and I said I did, and he seemed confused and curious but I avoided a straight answer of what the wall meant. It definitely created a confusion and almost a tension in the conversation, but we made it through the whole call without directly speaking about it. The experience was interesting and I think was fairly successful for what I wanted it to inspire and simulate in terms of the awkward tension of avoiding a potentially serious topic hanging in the air. The photos attached show pictures of myself speaking to the wall, the picture of the wall I took, the message I sent to my father and the call I had with him.

Flying Fruit Juice Score

1. Prepare four kinds of paper: One yellow menu of chick, one white blank draft paper, one white blank notebook paper and one 8.5*11 blank paper

2. Prepare four fruits: casaba, Hami melon, purple and green grapes

3. Put one paper on the floor and draw one circle on the center

4. Knead, eat or throw fruits, stand straight and spill juice

5. try to make juice fall on the shape of paper

Others:
I tried several combinations and show them in the pictures

Artist’s statement:
My idea was inspired by the opinion that game and art are originated from the life. More details are when I was eating grapes, I remembered the article “Grapefruit” by Yoko, one sentence in it left an indelible impression on me, which is imagine one thousand suns and make them bring us the sunshine. I can smell the soft flavor of nature when I read it. She recorded the impression of nature. Hence, I also want to use another way to leave the fruit in my impression by different views and ideas. Like my score, fruit juice not only means the delicious taste, but also can imply other things.

In fact, at the beginning, I want to make some more serious and technical scores, however, later I found the flexibility and special is the key idea of the score in the Fluxus. And Fluxus is not a moment in history and should be one way of doing things. The unity of art and life is the best choice for the score. In the lecture, the professor mentioned someone broken the glass and made the art. This make failure and broken things become the process of art and game.

Hence, I consider the process of enjoying fruits and use its juices can create something new. Because the process of eating is more important than eating result. Furthermore, the juice was regarded as the dye to draw the nature picture. The process of enjoying fruits can be regarded as the happening of this score.

What is more, because crashing the fruits and falling of juice will fall on the paper randomly. The randomness is another key idea of the score because I remembered in the outdoor course, every score wo chosen is random happening. This was the whole initial idea. Later, for adding more elements to the score, I thought this action can create one implicativeness, which mentioned in the “Fluxus and essential question of life” book – laboratory of ideas. Hence, I drawn one regular circle on the paper and I tried to spill the juice in the shape on the paper when I stand up. The implicit meaning of this shape is the rule in our life and juice means actions we made in the life. Although in life we always try to avoid breaking up rules, we have to do something wrong accidently and inevitably. For instance, in my one of assignments in my one computer course, I tried my best to read the description of assignment carefully and want to avoid for violating the rules and lose points. Unfortunately, at the end I still lose points because I misunderstand the meaning of instruction and did not add the name of our group members on the top of the assignment paper. I got 10 % points for penalty. By comparing this failure and my score, I can find it was same that I tried to avoid for violating the rule, however, the result was less than idea.

I tried four different papers and four kinds of fruits. The mixing of juice color is interesting. Indeed, in my previous try, I just used one fruit and one paper. However, after the course and professor’s suggestion, I understood the iterations can make my score more colorful and rich. Four papers can represent four different situations I met and with four rules corresponding to them, four fruits are four actions I did for facing these situations and tried to avoid for violating those rules. The flying juice score implies my life and show one special happening for me.

The whole process connected the life, game and art together. Because the exquisite corpse mentioned the different collaborations can be constructed a new thing. I tried it and enjoy the beautiful of it.

Abstract:

This piece is meant to demonstrate a point. Ideas and thoughts are passed on more successfully when the curiosity of the audience is evoked and want to know more about what is happening. The application of this technique can be applied in many ways.

What  you will need:

1. Chalk
2. Blackboard
3. Class-room setting with rows of desks for depth
4. A facilitator

How to play:

1. Draw a palm-sized circle on the blackboard
2. Break up a piece of chalk into small, diced-sized pieces
3. Give the pieces of chalk to students in the class
4. Tell them to try to hit the circle
5. Facilitator to deliver the message

Message:

The idea of an institution for learning is a wonderful one. Students should be ingrained with the idea to never stop learning. However many students fall short in entering top tier institutions because they are unable to cope with the stringent standards brought up by the institution. Education is not a “one shoe fits all” situation. If Cinderella was in this situation, Prince Charming would have never found her. People come from different cultures and backgrounds and have different values and morals. Everyone has different ways of learning and understanding material. There needs to be a reformation on the ways of teaching and inspiring students.

In this demonstration many students will fall short of hitting the target. Students sit in rows and the students in the back will have a harder time than the students in the front to hit the target. In addition to this students all have different throwing abilities.

Author’s Note:

School was always a challenge for me. It was not easy for me to conform to the rules set by the institution nor was it easy for me to learn by reading a textbook. I found the best type of learning was when I was self-motivated to find out the answer and this was further instilled by the many great teachers I have had throughout my education.

Yoko Ono’s City Piece in “Grapefruit” sparked this piece:

“Walk all over the city with an empty baby carriage” (Ono).

As a bystander on the street going about your daily routine. If I saw someone pushing an empty baby carriage I would ponder about the possibilities of why someone was doing something like that. If the opportunity arose I would probably ask the person why he or she was doing something like that. It is not that I cared for the answer. It is about finding closure to my curiosity.

When people are exposed to an idea being spread they often put up walls to counter the idea. However, when they are drawn in by a well crated route they expose themselves in order to know what is going on. When we look at optical illusions we often look for hours to find the duck hiding in a rabbit (image 1) and when we are unable to find the duck we ask for the answer until we get it. Once we see the duck we remember where it is forever. This is the power of curiosity. If an idea wants to be spread, we have to craft it in such a way where the idea can be delivered without the initial judgement of the audience. It is only then will the idea be remembered.

Image 1: Rabbit/Duck

Great companies evoke this technique. A famous example evolves around two competing companies in the tech industry: Apple and Microsoft. Apple was successful in portraying themselves as a more user friendly product than Microsoft because their advertisements targeting why you need and Apple product rather than what specifications does the new product have.

Gordon Lo