The Walk

1. Route

Parameter: https://randomlyrandom.com/randomdirection

Inspired by: WAI Walking as Inquiry 2024 Spring https://outofedenwalk.nationalgeographic.org

2. Materials

The Intervention

1. Marnyi Pile

Devotion

Appear and disappear

A Line Made by Walking by Richard Long was documented with a picture of the final result but I like how the walking as the process is embedded. So I wanted to document how my Marnyi Pile was built up including the sound from the environment (summer night), the failure in the process (the struggle to find the balance), etc.

I wanted to leave the objects there and go back to see after typhoon but I know I probably won't be able to collect them back.. So I had to disassemble them myself. They looked like stones but due to the balance problem, they were actually fragile.  That reminds me of some other materials I collected along the way -- the little flowers, which sort of represent fragility after falling on the ground. Thus, I used the flowers to "bury" the "stones" and documented their "death" -- how they lay down and went back to the ground.

Relationship with the environment

(1) As the Marnyi stones were originally used for praying, I found the first site where I collected all the materials rather incongruous since it's in the city center with a huge number of people. I went to a bigger park in Pudong where I could sit on a huge lawn and waited till the sun went down so that I could make this piece in a more personal, peaceful, sacred environment -- at night, alone, in front of the grove. Instead of what you can directly see from the results, except the darkness, the environment is mostly influencing the process and the essence.

(2) I think grass under the piles helped support them and I couldn't help but wonder how they would look like on those smooth ground in the buildings. I'm picturing another version of this with water on the ground that could mirror the piles. I haven't had a chance to carry that idea out but I do want to make a juxtaposition out of it.

Reference - What is Marnyi Stone

https://www.gototibet.com/travel-guide/etiquettes-and-customs/mani-stones-in-tibet.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mani_stone

2. Veins and Wrinkles

Reference - My Diptych Assignment

In Communications Lab 2023 Fall, there was an assignment about Adobe Photoshop, where I focused on the topic of "fingerprints" of nature.  The material I collected was actually the skin from dead trees that are often used in park landscaping which I have to admit can't be counted as a direct collection from nature but it is from nature originally haha. Thus this material does have the texture of trees that, in my eyes, is like the veins and wrinkles of humans.  The human-hand-shaped natural material lying in a natural environment is built for the topic of human-nature relationship.

Reflection

I was deeply attracted by the Land Art interventions with more visual interactions with the environment so I had some rough ideas about utilizing colors, shapes, dirt and water but I failed to execute these ideas. I feel that the process of making land art, especially when it's in a smaller scale, is more spontaneous than planned. I'm not sure whether the result will make sense to viewers, but as the creator, the process was very provoking and pleasant.

Appendix