Lattice

Matt, Tak and I had the opportunity to participate in a series of workshops by UK art group Proboscis. The workshop was held over about a week from 23/02 to 4/03 at the Information Cultural and Exchange (ICE) office at Granville. Personally I didn't know what to expect, all I knew was that Proboscis used robots and costumes and working with the community gathered information. I saw this workshop as a way to learn to use art to help me develop methods that could involve the community.

It was great bonding with inspiring and passionate people over the course of the workshops especially over lunch and coffee! They came from diverse backgrounds and are:

Cultural Planner: Tiffany Lee-Shoy (artist)
Comic artist: Matthew Huynh
Writer: Sanez Fatouhi
Artists: Tina Tran and David Capra
Digital artists: Ben ho and Tak Tran
Community Architect: Kasama Kumtree (Thailand)
Film Makers: Amin Palangi, Fatima Mawas, Maria Tran (action), Ali Kadhim (parkour)
Hip hop/Rap artists: Ben Penijameni Nitiva, MC Trey and Todd Williams (Brass)

Majority of the time was fleshing out ideas which were repetitive, however what was interesting was the different ways to visualize them. We used cubes, bigger cubes, stickers, drawing tables, film, stop animation and music. The funniest for me was definitely the play dough stop animation, depicting the workings of a smile generator that ended with Jackie Chan getting a piece of the action literally! (smile generator video [starting 4:12]) It would have been better if the results from the workshop were more tangible and we worked on a specific project. However at the end, although no robots were built, to the dismay of some, it was great to meet people who were kicking butt in their profession. –Tak

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