Ziqi Cheng
Documentation
My research method included reading literature, searching online for relevant works, and going on field trips to take photographs. After deciding on the overall structure of the creation, the next step is to begin practising it.
This section is about my creative process and gives a more detailed explanation of the work.
Mind Map
Panic disorder is an acute anxiety disorder characterised by feelings of impending death and loss of control, as well as crying and shortness of breath. I wanted to use dyspnoea (breathing difficulties) as a starting point for my creative work based on my own experience.
The lungs are an important organ that helps people breathe, and because they are made up of many alveoli, I used the shape of an alveoli, a circle, as the basic element of my composition. The circle is a powerful shape for me to use to express infinity and origin, and it also resembles a microscopic cell, which reminds me of an explosion or eruption. A panic attack's suffocating sensation can also be interpreted as a person being contained in a circular space, which reminds me of suffocation or squeezing. Jellyfish's rhythmic movement resembles breathing, a symbol of their life, which also reminds me of flowers.
So, at first, I had four ideas.
1. Drawing + Photography
I would like to incorporate the locations of my memories into the image, perhaps by drawing many red circles on the photograph and having the circles slowly engulf different locations, demonstrating the process of engulfment.
2. Squeezing, suffocating and crowding.
People are twisted in circles until they become deformed and unable to breathe.
3. Video? displaying the change process? Rhythm?
Referencing the rhythm of jellyfish movement, have the circle repeat the process of shrinking and growing over and over again, while the circle grows in area or volume and fills the entire screen.
4. Or a combination of these three ideas?
Material Collection
These are street scenes I have photographed in my hometown and, more recently, in London. These locations hold memories for me, and I wanted to use them as inspiration for my work; after all, panic disorder can strike at any time and in any place. In the meantime, I visited the aquarium to photograph jellyfish.
Experiments
Photographs are being processed and incorporated into drawings.
The creative stage
Eventually, my perspective on creativity shifted during the research process. My work is divided into two parts: a static series of drawings and a dynamic experimental video.
Part One: Drawing Experiments
I divided this series of drawings into three themes "Circle," "Spreading," and "Nothing," which also represent the steps of the attack process, because I wanted to use the process of a panic attack to express painful emotions and feelings.
Step 1: Circle
The initial step is "circle." The concept of origin, point of origin, or infinity is frequently represented by a circle. I wanted to express the fact that one of the symptoms of panic attack pain is a suffocating feeling of breathlessness, so I kept the shape of a circle from the alveoli as the basic element that makes up the picture. From the macroscopic lung to each alveoli, this circle represents the source of my physiological pain and fear, as well as how I feel. This is where the physical pain begins.
Step 2: Spreading
During an attack, the second step, "spreading," expresses the transfer of symptoms from the body to the surface. Because panic attacks can happen anywhere, I photographed street scenes from cities I'd visited and aged them to look like yellowed old photographs. Building are constantly eroded by red and black objects that slowly erupt, swallowing up surroundings. Everything around the panicked person's eyes makes him feel scared and nervous, as if he is disconnected from the crowd and the only one who can sense it.
Step 3: Nothing
In the third step, "nothing," everything slowly dissipates as the panic attack ends and everything returns to normal, the pain he has just felt known only to him. But I still wanted to make everything beautiful and positive in order to encourage people to overcome their pains and difficulties, so I went to the aquarium to photograph jellyfish and incorporate this lovely creature into my images.
Part Two: Video Experimentation
Initially, I intended to create a purely experimental animation, but in the end, I decided to film myself in the eye, capturing portions of it to simulate the obvious symptoms of a panic attack. Simultaneously, I recorded myself breathing, with the changes in the video dominated by my breathing rate, gathered sounds that made me uncomfortable, such as glitches, electromagnetic sounds, and the sound of tin foil breaking, and manipulated the video footage to incorporate the red and black elements and noise from my drawings, the equivalent of drawing over the video.
Everything around me is red—just me, the sound of my brain, the sound of my breath, and so on.
