Who is Ai Wei Wei?

          He is a respectable artist who born in 18 May 1985 and active in architecture, photography, film and cultural critism. He was invited to be part of the China's Bird Nest Stadium complex and yet appealing design. Although he is anti-Olympic he still became the consultant on the design of Bird's Nest.

        In addition, his other famous works include sun flower seeds which were made up of porcelain sunflower seeds, It is handcrafted by nearly 2000 workers over a period of 2 years. Each seed, each process and each hand that has gone to making a meaning behind it. As the sunflower seeds symbolize Cultural Revolution, people were saying that Mao Zedong act as the sun and residents are sunflower which grown from sunflower seeds. Faithful Sunflower turning to face sun and sun provides what they need. Just like the Mao Zedong provided people bright and colorful future.

        I feel that the sunflower seed project is a meaningful project because it helped a lot of people in China. People were given chance to earn money for their life, they were given chance to connect with each other through the process of making seeds. Maybe this is not the purpose he create the sunflower seed, but he really helped a lot of people through the sunflower seed project.

Element of Design-Line

Kitsch happens in Malaysia too??

During the previous lecture of Greek culture, we were asked to consider is it Kitsch happen in Malaysia. I was surprised when I heard that the Egyptian and Greek culture has influence on our architecture, which is the column present in some of the building in our country. 

       What does it mean to the owner in our country? I think it mean nothing to the owner and is purely decorative. Because not everyone are learning the history of art. They built the column in their house without the knowledge in Greek culture, they copy the design because it looks beautiful and they don’t understand the meaning behind it. Some of them got it in their house is just because they want to follow the trend.

What is Kitsch?

After I look for the meaning of Kitsch from Oxford Advanced Leaner’s Dictionary, I found that Kitsch means a form of art yet it is unoriginal. It is worthless and is an exact imitation of an extant style of art. I was confused about the meaning of the word ‘Kitsch’ because I assumed Kitsch have the same meaning as the word ‘Plagiarism’.

This is a stadium in Malaysia which influenced by the Greek’s architecture and named Bukit Jalil Stadium. The shape is totally same with the Greek theatre, and it is used for sports event sometimes it also will be used for special event like concert. The reason why the Malaysian architect was using the Greek design maybe is the shape of the Greek theatre is functional, it enable all the audiences to watch the performance clearly and it also have a good ventilation system.

This is one of the architecture influenced by Greek. Malaysia’s Chinese are using the dragon caryatids to support their cultural building which is a place called Temple and people use it for praying. The caryatids of Greek are often carved with women or man, but in temple of Chinese the caryatids are different. They use dragon to decorate the column because dragon in Chinese symbolizes power and excellence, valiancy and boldness, heroism and perseverance, nobility and divinity. They used the dragon caryatids to support their religious building maybe they want to let people know the greatness of their god and their religion.   

This is a picture of a Malaysia’s Chinese coffin which influenced by Egyptian culture. This is related to Egyptian’s belief in afterlife, Chinese afterlife theory are similar to Egyptian and both of them are believe the deceased will be reborn after a period of time, so they use coffin to protect the dead body. But the coffin of Egyptian and Chinese is quite different, because majority of Chinese coffin was using red and gold to design. Chinese use red and gold color to design the coffin because the red and gold color is a symbol of fortune for Chinese. They hope the people who passed away will get a better life in their afterlife so they use the fortunate color to design the coffin.

The above is a picture of Mosque which located in Malaysia. It is a place of worship for followers of Islam and this building is quite similar to the ancient Greek sacred place because it is influenced by the Greek culture. The architecture was using the classical Greek’s design to design the Mosque, they applied the Greece architecture on the pillar of Mosque which called Doric column, the concept column was borrowed from the ancient Egypt, but  the Greeks perfected it and made it their own. The Doric column is used to support the building and it is associated with strength. Our architect was using it to design maybe they want to show the stability and strength of Islam to people and make the building look classical.

The above is a picture which showing the influence of Egyptian afterlife theory. It is similar to Egyptian’s afterlife theory, Chinese believe after human died they will go to another place for their new life. They burn ‘Bullion paper’ or incense for their family who is already died because they believe the money will be received and needed by them to use it during afterlife. Chinese and Egyptian afterlife theory has this similarity maybe the Egypt afterlife theory is logical for those who believe in the presence of god and this is the better way for them to accept the truth about their friend or family has pass away.

What do you hope to get from this particular class?

i hope i can get partners from this class who can share their knowledge with me and it is everything relate to design.

What do you want from this course?

I hope after finish this course, i will be able to analyze people's artwork and give expert comment.