The Mayflower system : representing self-identity through the art of systems.

Abstract

The topic of self-identity has been seen as a commonplace theme in the genre of art. Very often self-identity projects created by artists or designers are marked off as self-indulgent or self-satisfying. But I disagree with this typecasting since self-identity projects are characteristically and culturally fundamental to the study of human beings and behavior. As a designer-cum-artist, working on a final year project based on self-identity helps to market myself to other people regarding my mentality, my illustrative style and my ability to conceptualize differently on a subject matter that has been used time and time again. Also the reason of using self-identity in my project sees fit to my last semester of studying art and visual communications at NTU, it would be preferable and reasonable for me to create an artistic piece that echoes the major transitions in a student’s life, creating a bookmark that would allow one to see my time as an art student before embarking on the corporate world.

My final year project relies on systems as a way to introduce the topic of self-identity to the audience. This is the way that I would represent my existence, using the organizational and organic structure of a natural system to narrate self-identity. I chose to represent self-identity by using myself as an example, a key subject of this artwork, trying to relate the similarities in my human life to those who will eventually be seeing and touching this artwork. What people can expect from this project would be understanding the different ways how our individual existence parallel to one another, the unique methods in systematizing the self, and how self-identity is beyond oneself as it involves almost every single human being that we have come in contact with.