Final Project
Wa*lt*er by Youn-Jae Walter Song
Photograph of Youn-Jae Walter Song’s final project.
Materials
Posterboard, photographs, tracing paper
Student’s Description of his Work
“My whole project consists of this struggle of various media trying to take over each position on the Sudoku board. This struggle is a physical representation of the inner struggle of my thought process and the methodology for the decisions that I make. This struggle is represented by the conflicting media in terms of color versus grayscale, photos versus drawings, and opposing handwriting styles. Each style represents a particular aspect of my decision making protocol (i.e. grayscale=family, drawings=alter-ego, etc). The Sudoku board represents the map in which my decisions dictate where I go, since there are many different situations to take into account, but the fact that there is usually only one solution per board implies that regardless of which factors went into making the solution of a particular box (whether it be dominated more by one medium than another), that box is filled by a particular answer.
This project gave me an opportunity to actually physically represent this inner struggle that I’ve never really put much thought into. I’ve always been “just me,” but never really considered how or why I make these decisions about my life. To really be able to artistically represent this allows me to delve deeper into my mentality to get a full understanding of my inner workings. It lets me explore the abstraction more in depth, and perhaps also helps explain this mentality to others who do not understand.
I have learned that I take a lot of decision making processes for granted. Sometimes I make decisions without really thinking about why I’m making that decision, other than it’s what I feel is right. To get to take a look at the nuts and bolts of my decision process gave me great insight into myself and how I function.”
