Event 3

For the third and final event, I went to the Design Media Art exhibition-"Delete Me". This is an exhibition by the graduating class of UCLA Design Media Art that focuses on the various form of deletions of life. Delete is not simply an act of removal. After we delete, we will have more space and can utilize these space for better. From this various form of deletions, we will get something new about our daily life. 



Shanzhai
Untying the messy rope
The exhibition is huge with many artworks, the most artwork among all the events I have been to. There is a girl trying to untie a messy rope. This is a behaviour art by Symrim Chawla that demonstrate the action of deletion with a ball of rope. Through her action, she “deletes” the messy rope and transform that mess to an organized rope ready for future use. There is also the wall of Shanzhai(counterfeit of consumer goods) by Yuehao Jiang. The artist uses foam to create some commodities that have often been the target of Shanzhai to create 3D effect. At the same time, she incorporates animation to add different images onto those commodities to create something new. Through her wall, she believes that though Shanzhai can be harmful to the original brand and people often tend to prohibit/delete them away, it is still a form of creation of something new.







Me by the Twister
In the middle of the exhibition, there was a giant, well-embellished tree that caught my attention the most. Its name is Knicker Twister, and it is my most favourite art piece among all other works. The tree on its own is entirely white; white leaves, white branches, white decorations. But there are colored lightings that adds a sense of vibrancy to the dull colored tree. The tree is decorated by toys, a symbol of childhood, and has screens showing twisted adults. Throughout the tree, there is a stream of running water in a pipe, probably symbolizing the continuation of life from childhood to adulthood. On the tree inside all the toys, there were also three screens showing pictures of different adults. These pictures of adults were continuously being winded and unwinded. The tree is also tied to a rotating disk by strings, by pulling the string, the tree will also twist. I did not get the meaning of the twisting at first, but it was an interesting combination.



Knicker Twister with
Toilet rolls in the middle
In the middle of the tree, there are three rolls of toilet paper in a glass jar. Besides being white, I could hardly find a meaning of those rolls. From the artist, Lander, he explained that the purpose of his artwork- how people can turn a small issue into big deal. Everyone can be annoyed by something insignificant, like the toilet rolls in the middle. It is ridiculous yet very true. According to Lander, he thinks people nowadays are getting more sensitive. Many a times, we get mad when we have little reason. These small details that are driving us crazy is like twisting ourselves mentally, making us like the pictures that are shown on the screen. Also, the combination of toys and pictures of adult is to stress this common phenomenon among people of all age and gender. 

The View from our Mobile Phones on our Daily Life
Overall, this is an awesome exhibition that I would love to go again. Personally, I believe these arts can even be exhibited in a proper museum outside and should not only constrain to a campus exhibition. There are many more arts that I have not discussed which also have amazed me. From this exhibition, I realized deletion is more common than I believe; there are many other ways deletion work in our lives. But my biggest gain from this exhibition is the artists’ attitude toward after deletion, which is delete for better purpose. Once we delete, if we do nothing else, we are losing that thing. If we can put our deletions to better use, then we can and we will create better things.
Below are some other arts from the exhibition:

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