Yourself?

School!

Haha I'm really excited now school's out. At a Kaur lecture, where she goes on and on about renal anatomy. I think renal is really interesting except that it's all been mostly thought out throughly.

I've been through a lot of things this hols, and thankfully I have some time now to write about them. Since I'm supposed to be in a lecture, but I can do both reflections and listening at the same time. The only thing I really need to know anyway I already know.

I spent some time of my holiday in hall, working on the sets for hall play. I haven't posted a picture of the set, but I shouldn't also because I want it to be a surprise if you're going to come watch the play. I also did the photography of the poster, which was reproduced faithfully by Chee Hao and made into this wonderful poster at the UCC.

I just love the people in hall. It's such a microcosm of society, where everyone has such unique abilities and are such fun to work with. It's too bad people have to graduate and leave or go on exchange.

Besides hall I've been giving my room a much needed overhaul. It's not completely done yet. I've got quite a bit of budget more to go, but it's my first designed space, and i just love starting with a completely clean room and getting things to fit into this living space.

Part of the whole design thing that I've got going on this holiday was a really welcome break from Medicine. I think coming back, it gives me a much broader perspective on the beauty of the human body and medicine. I've been reading books on design, and actually went to the SPACE showroom and the Knoll showroom to view the original pieces. I think they are pretty expensive, and some designs are really out there. But you see the originals and the imitations, and it's just amusing to see the hand of creativity, practicality, cost, and interpretations riff against each other.

For example, I was reading Karim Hashid's book on Designing your Life and he actually is an active industrial designer. He made a wastepaper basket that was designed for Umbra, and I actually saw an original of that in Takashimaya. 14 bux for a wastepaper basket with a swoopy shape. But next to that was a similar wastepaper basket with a similar shape, but refinements in the design (more squat, lower CG), and rubber padded handles, and it cost only 9 bux.

Part of design is in it's inventiveness, but nothing says that we can't use those ideas and develop them further and at lower cost. A copy might not only aspire to be a copy, but may aspire to refinement. Who says we need the best leather, the best steel and the best materials for a simple couch? Materials should fit the use, and design should serve function at the right price.

But I'm glad that in this world, some of us are taking a brush to the ugly grey, dull modernity, and exploring the forms, colours and fuctions that are available to us now.

What Singapore lacks is the basic design language. We haven't yet developed a form that is our own (except the HDB block, and our roads). Somehow what we have are riffs of other people's designs from other cultures. The nicest buildings we have are one particular mosque and one particular temple.

I was thinking about this topic as I was in town running errands (a phone to repair, a few shirts to exchange), and looking at modern designs in the World of Sport and Sony. I then happened to chance upon this book in the Orchard Popular book store, about Chinese Furniture. In it, a chinese professor of furniture history chanced upon a leg in a scrapyard (where they were destroying valuable antiques during the Cultural Revolution), which was made of the most exquisite chinese wood. He carefully picked up the various pieces, where they were being taken apart and sold for scrap, and bought the entire table. The table happened to be a Ming Dynasty royal table, but to own such a fine table was to risk execution if it were found.

I just felt so lost upon reading that passage, because that event in our history was what caused the loss of a large portion of our design language. How we of today have no way to express what we feel because our techniques, our sense of beauty has been disassembled into tiny pieces and sold as scrap. Our masters have not passed on their knowledge. Our forms have now become so simplified and uninspiring. We have lost a language. And hence we have lost our cultural place in the world.

I was looking at the designs of the Buddha figures when I was in Thailand. There are lots of places in Thailand where you can buy wooden figures, furniture and other things in this huge market. Thailand after all, happens to be a major exporter of timber. But looking at all the Buddha figures large and small, they all had different, unsatisfactory poses. Either the curves were not pleasing, or the posing looked stilted, or the faces looked bored, or sleepy.

What would a Buddha figure look like? I just had perfection in mind when I was looking for a Buddha figure. Don't they make perfect Buddha figures anymore (I'm not Buddhist BTW, I was just getting one for my dad.) It's weird tho, you'd think there'd be some template where everyone copies, but that's not the case. So much of it is the artistry of the woodcarver himself. So much of it in the eye of the woodcarver, and his understanding of Buddhism (factoid, almost everyone in Thailand is buddhist and has spent some time in a monastery as a monk). So it's not unreasonable for me to expect a beautiful Buddha statue from a Thai woodcarver.

But as I was lookign, I was thinking that maybe everyone's idea of Buddha is different. Maybe perfection has different meaning to different people, our sensitivities to light, colour, shape might be different. Maybe if we insisted on the perfect buddha, we might not find one to sell in the first place. Maybe all disagreements come from different Buddha figures. Maybe we should just find a Buddha that would suit us. Or maybe that's wrong, and we should have no Buddha.

I'm getting worried. I can hear my Wifi router chirping. I can hear the bits coming in and out of the router. They occur in time to the pulses of the LEDs.. :(

posted by Downhere. @ 9:06 am