MeTastenymy 2010

2010 Second place in Graduate Exhibition

2010 YODEX nominated

INTRODUCTION

MeTastenymy is a plastic product, which includes four kinds of sauce bottle. Each kind of bottle contains a kind of sauce used in Chinese cuisine, ranging from vinegar, chili, salt, sugar. In this project, I used four Chinese ancient heroes to represent the sauce.

CONCEPT

The original word of MeTastenymy is metonymy, a rhetorical style which means "the substitution of the name of an attribute of the thing." As the topic shows, the "to" in metonymy is transformed into "taste" in this project. In this way, I transform the image of Chinese ancients into the bottle in order to represent or substitute the taste of the sauce.

Traditionally, there is no sauce bottle in the Chinese restaurant. Chinese cooks are proud of their seasoning skill and therefore do not offer any sauce bottle on tables. After maintaining several transactions between western worlds, such as America or Europe, Chinese start to modify their hobbit of meals. They start to offer sauce bottle on tables in order to provide a more customized food and greater user experience to their consumer. However, the sauce bottle on Chinese restaurant table is identical to the western world, and therefore, it can not blend into Chinese restaurants well. This project is aiming to provide uniformed style sauce bottle on dinner tables. For the following section, I'm going to introduce each of bottle separately.

Vinegar bottle, representing hero: Wu Sangui

Wu Sangui was a Chinese military general in Ming dynasty. In modern Chinese culture, Wu Sangui is regarded as a traitor. His betrayal of Ming dynasty is because his concubine—Chen Yuanyuan—was captured by one of Ming’s aristocracy. Owing to jealous, Sangui introduces Ming’s opponent: Qing into his country and result in the destruction of Ming’s dynasty.

In Chinese, we usually describe jealous as “sipping vinegar” in the literal meaning.

In the introduction above, we see that Sangui is the perfect person to represent the feeling of Jealous. Therefore, I borrowed the image of jealous from Wu Sangui to produce this product.

Sugar bottle, representing hero: Yang Guifei

Yang Guifei was known as one of the “Four beauties in ancient China” and also the most favorite concubine of the emperor Xuanzong in Tang dynasty. However, a concubine-ship and beauty cannot simply offer her the popularity. The most famous story of her is about her diet. In the story, Yang was so addicted to a kind of fruit—Lychee—that she requested the emperor to transport lychee for her. Lychee is an extremely sweet fruit that can only be raised in Southern China, while the capital of Tang dynasty is located at Northern China. Lychee cannot resist the long transportation time, it rots away quickly. Also, as we all know, the territory of China is impressive, so how did Xuanzong handle the issue of lychee?

Xuanzong handled this problem by ordering his servants to transport lychee by horseback without stop, from south to north China. The rest of stations were set up along the route for changing the horses. Many people and horses were pushed to the extreme of fatigue,” just for winning the smile of the concubine", as a poem depicted. Consequently, Yang Guifei became the synonym of sugar or lychee.

Chili bottle, representing hero: Guan Yu

Two of the most famous feature of Guan Yu are about his loyalty and his reddish appearance. Guan Yu plays a significant role in the collapse of Eastern Han dynasty. During the period of Western Han dynasty, several military generals hold their flag and claim themselves the true king in the empire. Guan was loyal to the branch of royal family and protect the empire as well as his king throughout his life.

The reddish face, however, is the most important thing for us. Normally, when people eat something spicy, their face will turn red quickly. For this reason, we borrow the face of Guan to represent the reddish face when people eating something spicy.

Salt bottle, representing hero: Tao Yuanming

Tao Yuanming is one of the best poet of the Six Dynasties Period in China. In this period, people were suffered from war and confliction. People in that period had to find their way out to release their sorrow. One way for them was to writing poems, and Tao seems like one of the best player in this game.

During the time writing poem, Tao usually put himself in an extremely relax status, even in such war period. He embraced trees, enjoyed nature and did housework only if he wanted to. In our culture, we usually call this situation “Shien”, which means “having nothing to do”. Same as our topic, this project use double meaning to represent the idea. “Shien” can be translated into another meaning—salty. As a result, we use the relaxing spirit of Tao Yuanming to display the feeling of salty.

According to the poem he wrote, Chrysanthemum is the most favorite flower of Tao and the he always bring a bottle of wine beside him. For this concept, I added wine bottle on Tao’s model and put Chrysanthemum on his hand, trying to simulate the quiescence of him.

DESIGN

Sketch

Outline

Orthographic View

Color Scheme

Mockup Making

Carve the modeling clay to it's shape

PROCESS

Step 1. Build the first model using modeling clay.

In this step, I have to carve and shape the clay very carefully. If I make up this model in a room-temperature, the clay itself would turn into a concrete form in a short time. Therefore, I used heater beside me so that I can shape the model in a easy way. This model is designed to produce the template for the later usage. The following section would focus on how I build the template as well as the product.

Step 2. Allocate the space for producing template

After completing the original version of model, it is the time to produce the template! The first and the second step of producing the template is to build the fence around the original model then stick them onto a surface firmly. Notice that if the fence is not stick well on the surface, it will cause the failure of our template. Besides, the space left in the model and fence must be well calculated, because silicone is a luxury material for student. If the space is too large, I might waste the expensive silicone, if too small, the template would become very fragile.

Step 3. Mix the hardener and silicone together and adjust the ratio

The third step of producing the template is to mix the hardener and silicone together. However, the ratio is a constant, any violation of the ratio would compromise the quality of the product. After trying several times and erroring, I figure out that adding 1 gram of hardener into 50 gram of silicone would produce the best quality. If the mixed material is finished, it’s time to pour it into our previous fence-and-model.

Time is everything when pouring mixed silicone into the template. If I pouring in the jam-like material silicone too quickly, it will produce lots of bubble in the template, which would jeopardise my template. Again, if the movement happened too slowly, the production of our template would become sectional, just like an insect body. The best way to avoid this problem is to separate the pouring process into several times, For the interval of each pouring is about 40 min ~ 1 hour.

Step 4. Casting model

Three step above is about producing the template. When the template is finished, the only thing left is to cast the model. In this product, I choose the plastic as the main building material. Waiting for an hour or more, the inside clay would become concrete and well develop.

Step 5. Patching the model

If all the movement in previous step are done without error, the model might be pretty sharp. However, it is highly impossible that the clay in step 4 develop extremely, for production. Therefore, this step is to add the patch on model. If there exist air parcel in step 4, the model produced might look imperfectly. This flaw does not sentence this model into failure. Adding little patch on them would not hurt the perfection of product, for it has to be polished and colored later.

Step 6. Polish and Carve

Polish and carve are also critical for this product. After adding a patch on the model, the model might not seem elegant. I used sandpaper to smoothen the surface of a model. Also, I used carve to justify the projected part of a patch.

Step 7. Color and text printing

Follow all of the steps above will yielding a crude version of our product. This product is in an original color of clay. However, for some people, this color is undesirable. If those people are unsatisfied with the raw color, it is a great time to color model. Finally, feel free to identify them by their name which is printed on the model’s chest.

EXHIBITION & AWARD

2010 Second place in Graduate Exhibition

2010 YODEX nominated

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In the graduation competition, this project acquire the silver award in the 3D modeling section. This competition is the tradition of our school which summon the potential ability of student, aiming to entitle those talented students into higher education.

Besides, this competition is also a coordinated project with Digital Archives project in Taiwan, the nominator can utilize the resource in Digital Archives at National Palace Museum. The Digital Archives at National Palace Museum contains great deal of digitized treasure, such as Jadeite cabbage and Meat-shape-stone. Fortuitously, this product got nominated by our school.