Ch'ng Xing Yue E-Portfolio: Culture and Civilizations

Reflection:

Through this subject, I had been introduced to the culture and history of the Western and Eastern civilizations and I personally think it is one of my favorite subject in my foundation year. I have learnt that everything no matter how great it can be, will eventually come to an end. Moreover, it allows me to look at all civilizations from different perspectives and to appreciate the overall process of the formation of a civilization. It is really interesting to get to know how the great minds in those old days think and to look at those amazing archaeological discoveries and artworks. Now, I generally have an understanding on a whole range of different culture and civilizations exist in human history and the projects also improved my data collecting and analyzing skills. Lastly, this subject did enhanced my documentation and presentation skills.

Project 1: The Rise of Civilization
For project 1, we were required to produce an A2-sized graphical timeline in a group of two on the geographical, economy, politics, characteristics, achievements and culture of the ancient civilization we were assigned to. Besides, we need to create our own A5 culture journal on that civilization too. The ancient civilization my group got was China, which is one of the civilizations I am deeply interested in.

The graphical timeline:
The idea for our timeline is a scroll and we decided to use traditional chinese calligraphy paper as our paper choice. We also wrote 4 chinese words in the middle meaning "The rise of China" in the middle of the scroll using coffee. Besides, we made the alignment of each event left and right in sequence to make it zig-zag liked which seems like the Great Wall of China arrangement.

Pictures for my culture journal:

Front page of my journal

Project 2: Message from the Past

For this project, we need to work in a group to produce a play in video form for 20 to 25 minutes for a specific civilization. The video is required to be based on themes such as sociology, engineering, archaeology or myth and legends of the civilization. For the individual part, we need to create a journal of our own character that demonstrates our understanding towards the elements mentioned above. Our video was The Conspiracy: The Man in the Iron Mask, which is based on a famous historical event that happened in France. My character in this video is Queen Anne, the mother to the twin brothers King Lous XIV and Phillipe.

Night scene in campus

Putting the mask on

All for one, one for all

The Queen and her affair with D' Artagnan

Link to the group video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZMpYtfAeW8&feature=youtu.be

Character journal:

I used the idea of a mask for my journal to suit our project video "The Man in the Iron Mask", then I sewed the side of my journal by hand. Then I made it into a flap-liked to show that King Louis was exchanged and replaced by Phillipe in the end of the story.

Cover for my journal

Second page

Project 3: Art + Architecture + Culture

For the last project, we were required to do an A5 coffee table book on the themes and places of our interests. In my case, I have chosen Food culture – Kopitiam as my theme. Emerging towns and city such as Klang, Puchong and Kuala Lumpur were the sites I have chosen. Additionally, I want to create an awareness on the vanishing culture of kopitiam in our lives which is becoming more and more fast-paced and to show the beauty of this unique culture. I named my book the Gem in the City since this culture is quite a rare scene in the city nowadays.