Firstly, I have to say this project is too much fun! I literally tapped the camera to the side of my car and drove around Granville island! I intensionally placed the camera at an angle that we normally wouldn’t see, but could still have a clear and complete perspective. Because the observed can hardly see the camera and the observer can see the entirety of the view, it really feels like a self-made mobile surveillance camera.

For the finished product I will elaborate on this idea and maybe try something different. Another interesting concept is to incorporate the orange indicator into the car idea!

I am pretty happy with the result. The minimalist design conveys the message relatively clear. I intensionally post it beside a “NO PARKING” sign in the totem pole place (the area beside the concrete factory). Then I ask the people around to look at it and think what the message in the sign is. Once they saw the real parking sign beside it they understood it. Most of the viewers said freedom!
This project is truly inspiring and meaningful to me, especially the process stage.

Even though my idea and position is neutral, the sign itself carries a prominent connotation. This becomes controversial to the message that I am trying to send out.

Over the weekend I tried a number of different arrangement with the same idea. Different ways of combining the hammer and the sickle and mixing in a bunch of symbols for tools. At the end, they all seem too symbolic.

Finally, I stopped playing with the symbols and went back to think about my initial idea. What I’m trying to convey is that we live in a world of symbols and signs. Our lives are controlled by sign and symbols because they act as orders that tell us what to do. Sometimes we should stop and think about a world without signs that tells us what to do or symbols that represents a particular thing.

Then I found the best and probably the only way to convey this idea.

It’s really amazing! enjoy

For this weekend, I actually planned to go down to Oregon with my friends to attend to a business convention for 3 days. So I decided to take lots of photos of different parts of Granville Island and work on the sign on my spare time in Oregon.

Friday night, met up with the crew, and started our 6 hours road trip! About an hour later we arrived at the US border. As Usual, we talked to those F*$&ing rude and arrogant US officers and eventually we were sent inside because I was using a foreign passport. After a while, an officer approached me and told me that my international student VISA cannot be used for visiting purpose. Long story short, I was refused entry!

I told my friends to go ahead and called my brother to pick me up at the border. Then I did the “walk of shame” back to the Canadian border. As I was overwhelmed by rage and disappointment, I thought of the DIVA project and had a sudden inspiration when I was standing in front of the Peace Arc.

“I’m gonna make a sign that would piss off the Americans!”

As you can see here, this is a sign consists of the hammer and sickle from the Communism flag and the “Swastika” from the Nazi flag. I choose the Communism symbol because it is the arch-rival of American Capitalism. The Swastika symbol expresses a sense of heaviness and often reminds people of the German Nazi.

However, I rearranged them in a way that the viewers are less likely to identify the symbols immediately. Visually, it is a somewhat cool sign alone by itself, if you don’t apply the political meaning behind it.

The idea is that we can never cease to associate with these symbols through the meanings behind them because that’s how they were created. Now that they are arranged in a different way, why can’t we interpret them without the connotations that they used to have? It is possible that one person can perceive the sign as simply a logo that looks cool?How many people will find the sign offending because all they can see is the hammer, sickle, and the Swastika sign?

At least one thing for sure is that if I make the mockup shown in the last picture come true, i’d probably get shot from the other side of the arc!

oh btw, it is a receding glacier so maybe it’ll no longer be there after 50 years!

The first picture is the original version without any adjustment. There are 4 variations with different settings of curve! I personally prefer variation “2-3″ (the 4th one)!

BMW concept at Frankfurt 2009