Cartography of a chain reaction
Narrative Pictogram
Madeleine CHAN 陳綺雯
Student of SM2105 Narrative Strategies and Aesthetics of Time-based Media
Abstract
This work is secondary creation for the video The Way Things Go, where a tire sets off a sophisticated process using sparks and fire as a propelling force and motif to push forward a long series of movement. The pictograms I created is a visual recreation to break down in detail the use of meaningful details; it is a complex visualisation of chronology (temporal process) and cartography (the spatial share created). In meticulous details, I combine the forms of solid objects and motion into an abstract but perceptible structure, which is a circular chronology. The pictograms are arranged the way it is because wheels as a motif suggests the presence of the next step always in a long series of actions. A wheel, i.e. a circular chronology, is not linear but multiple: when the sparks cause a small fire on the spot, it activates a radiation trajectory; as the next point is reached, another fire is ignited, and this repeats on to every next point. As I reviewed the video again and again, I managed to obtain more details and turn them into the overall structure of the final pictograms. I have spent a lot of time on planning my pictograms, and I hope viewers could view the work as a whole, and compare it to the actual occurrences of Fischli and Weiss’ video. And yet I also hope they would spend time zooming in to see the fine details of the pictogram, such as how the sparks and fire are represented as lines, presented like a kind of topography.
