<aside> 🗣 This is where I consistently update the work I’ve been doing! (shorter descriptions; more items)
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Hello! I'm Laurent (they/them), a queer non-binary Chinese Singaporean media artist/designer. I just moved to London in Sep 2022 to start an MA in Graphic Communication Design at Central Saint Martins (CSM). Earlier this year, I completed a Bachelor of Computing in Information Systems with a second major in Management from the National University of Singapore (NUS) [the #1 university in Asia/ #6 university worldwide for Computing (I don’t like rankings but they say a lot about the academic environment)].
For the past 3 years, I’ve held multiple design jobs [full-time; part-time and freelance] in the Singaporean tech industry and music industry, and explored my personal practice outside of client commissions (both on my own and with collaborators) — while maintaining a full (sometimes higher) workload of classes, all at the same time.
My practice is heavily informed by my background and identity, as I (un)learn through making, and engage in making as a form of knowledge creation and sharing. My practice is always communal and conversational — mirroring everyday conversation which is rarely straightforward and occurs through constant, caring negotiation.
[[OCT 2022:] My art for the queer party Mismatch Presents: Ferosha projected in Hard Rock Cafe Singapore, with people vogue battling in front of it. Video credits: @/vexxamen on Instagram](https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/secure.notion-static.com/872dc2aa-57dc-402d-bcba-2f4ae6768840/FullSizeRender.mov)
[OCT 2022:] My art for the queer party Mismatch Presents: Ferosha projected in Hard Rock Cafe Singapore, with people vogue battling in front of it. Video credits: @/vexxamen on Instagram
<aside> 💌 CONTACT ME: email: [email protected] instagram: laurentyeework
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[CW: EXPLICIT SEXUAL IMAGERY + TEXT]
Two-face spread in my final publication (a connect-the-dots colouring book). The algorithmically-generated poems I wrote are printed, and used as dots upon which different shapes (my oil pastel illustrations) are imaginatively interpreted. I approached creating each illustration the same way I wrote poems — each illustration lends a different approach and meaning to the overarching themes (approaching illustration like code isolation.) The illustrations in this spread are inspired by books I found in the erotic art section in Rambooks.
A Eureka moment — “playing” the computer: the blackout poetry I wrote algorithms to generate are highly reliant on their shapes for meaning. This algorithm randomly generates spacing such that every time the reader loads the poem it will be different, and the shape of the poem changes as the reader changes the size of the program window. The screen itself is an important part of the artwork.
Interactive search algorithm mirroring the futility of searching on the busy phone sex ad catalogue. I highlighted the irony of a digital search producing a useless output (the terminal asks “what are you trying to reach?” over and over until the user enters a word in the database — upon which it spits out the first index this word occurs in the database.) Writing this algorithm was striking to me as the algorithm itself was a Programming 101 algorithm but it produced interesting and meaningful results — creative coding does not have to be technically complex!
Cover of my final publication (a connect-the-dots colouring book), where the cover of the original porn mag is contained and manipulated into my design. I stuck different physical price tags on the cover to reflect the fluidity of pricing in Rambooks.
TIMELINE:
[OCT 2022] — 2 weeks
TEAM:
solo (developed with many conversations with different people)
METHODS:
creative coding; publication design; illustration — weaving in and out of softwares, using as many free, open-source design tools as possible
THEMES:
SPACE (including fuzzy boundaries between physical and digital space; digital representations of the erotic), INTERACTION; HUMOUR (porn as outlandish imaginative worldbuilding)
A love letter to Rambooks [a secondhand porn bookstore in London] and the hilarious, imaginative worldbuilding possibilities of porn. I translated a physical vintage porn mag [from Rambooks] into a database in Python and wrote 12 algorithms to generate blackout poetry based on the text in the magazine. I then translated the code output (the poems) back into a physical publication, this time a connect-the-dots colouring book where the way I created illustrations around the shapes of the poems subverted the cishet white male gaze of the original porn mag. Through the publication design process, I used as many free, open-source tools as possible, weaving in and out of 9 different tools — as a metaphor for the playful, personable negotiation that occurs through the space of Rambooks. I also drew parallels between the lost visual languages of ‘00s British porn magazines and the lost visual languages of ‘00s video game computers.
<aside> 🏩 “29yr OLD 36-28-38 her wet cunt”
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