Contemporary art Final assignment -The lift- Before reading my essay, let have a look a video about my installation :
We take lift everyday. Lifts exist in nearly all buildings. In our residential building, in commercial building, in shopping center, in school, etc, from the start of the day when we leave our home and when we go to work or go to school, we go into the lift. It is common but I have some special ideas about it. A. The concept of my work We always consider lift as a tool for transportation. We only focus on its practical use, however, the concept of space behind it is overlooked. I want to make audience think about the concept of space of a lift. I have done this by building an installation that block the exit of the lift. The function of a lift is to transport people to different floor. But my installation totally takes away its ‘function’ by blocking the exit. In fact the lift can still function normally, it can still move up and down vertically. There are two functions of a lift mentioned above: 1. To transport people from one floor to another floor successfully, so that people can reach the place he/she wish to arrive. 2. To transport people up and down vertically. My installation keep take away the first function but keep the second function Thus, it brings out a question: if there is no exit for a lift, what is the function of it? Dose it have meaning when we only purely travel in a lift? When I eliminate the default function of a lift, interesting concept of space behind it will appear. It is interesting that we seem to be in the same space when we are travelling in a lift, but actually the space of us is changing. We do have the similar experience when we are travelling in a car. However, there are windows in the car and you can see the view outside. We do not have a window inside a lift and we do not notice that actually we travelling to a different space. We travel vertically in a lift. It is almost the only way we travel vertically in our daily life. (We may have the vertical transport experience when we play the amusement game, taking the helicopter or taking the rocket) surely taking the lift is the most common way to travel vertically. Travelling vertically is more interesting than travelling horizontally: When we travel vertically, that means we are leaving the ground and going into the air. This is the reason why I think that travelling vertically is more interesting than travelling horizontally. Imagine there is a colorless building and a colorless lift, the people travelling in the lift would seems to be moving vertically up and down in the air! Of course there is no such a building and lift. However, this is a conceptual imagination in my work. B. Research about the site for my installation: My installation is site-specific. It must be placed in front of the exit of a lift so that it can block the way out of the lift. The size of exit of the lift must fit the size of my installation so that my work completely blocks the exit. You cannot even see what is outside from the lift. I found that the size of the lift is 1.11m X 2.10m. So my installation should have a width equal to 1.11m and with a height equal to 2.10m C. Production process: It takes me about three hours to complete my installation. The materials I have used include: a wooden broad (0.86m X 1.83m), white paper, five carton of drink, thread of nylon, five nails and some leatheroid I got the discarded wooden board on the corridor. It was clean and could be used for my work. It is about 2mX1m and its size may be large enough to block the exit of a lift.  I took the wooden board to the exit of a lift to compare their sizes. However, I find that the wooden board is not wide enough. The board is wide enough to block the way out, but I want to fully cover the exit so that the people cannot even see the way out. This will surely disturb my work when the audience can see outside. They would try to find the way out and see what is happening if they can see outside. They would not focus on my work. So it is important to widen the board so that it can fit the exit of the lift. I can widen the wooden board by adding other wooden board or by adding paper card. Finally I consider adding the paper card because it is easier to do so. I cut down the paper box and get the cardboard. Then I stick the cardboard to both side of the wooden board by plastic band. 
Finally, I have made a mixture of wooden board and cardboard with its size fit to the exit of a lift. This work has already reaches my requirement: blocking the exit of a lift. However I am not satisfied with it. It is too simple in the way that it cannot bring out the concept of space of the lift. People may have no ideas with a piece of wooden board blocking their way out. Moreover, they will not notice this is an art work and would not think the meaning behind it. D. The improved version and the production process: Then I intended to add something on the wooden board so that it can make the audience understand more about my work. The concept of my work is: the concept of space in a lift--- We travel vertically in the air. So I decided to add some boxes that are hanging vertically by a nylon thread from the top of wooden block. This satisfies the two concepts of my work: 1. Blocks that are hanging by threads show the concept of travelling in the air above the ground. 2. The block are hanging vertically show that we are travelling vertically in a lift The five boxes I have used are rectangle cylinder. I use this shape other than circle or triangle because the lift is rectangular in shape. It is the most suitable way to represent it. Then I collect some rectangle boxes in my home. They are just the package of snacks and the cartons of soft drink. Then I wrap them with white paper to present them as purely rectangular boxes. I don’t want the boxes carry unnecessary meaning. Then I attach a nylon thread to each of the box.   
After that I plunge nails into the wooden board using a hammer. Then I hang up the nylon together with the boxes onto the nail. 
The improved version is then finished. It is a mixture of wooden board and cardboard with its size fit to a exit of a lift. And there are five white boxes hanging in the air in front of the board.  The second version is more powerful visually and conceptually. Visually the five boxes with different size and hanging in different height provide us with interesting pattern. Here I am not turning the work to a work of visual art. I just want to call people attention to my work and make them think about what is happening here. Otherwise, audience may think that the board is not an art work and the floor is under construction only. Conceptually it provides us the concept of hanging in the air and the concept of vertical. And the audience can relate this to the reason why the exit of the lift is blocked. (To think about the meaning when we just purely travelling up and down in a lift without an exit) This provides sufficient information for the audience to understand. | 
