University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

Mark making: an exploration of the meaning of marking and self

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Mark making: an exploration of the meaning of marking and self

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Content MARK
Copyright 2023 Xinyao Li

TABLE OF CONTENTS
List of Figures.................................................................................................................................iv
Abstract...........................................................................................................................................vi
Preface ...........................................................................................................................................vii
Introduction......................................................................................................................................1
Chapter 1 | “Every Mark Has a History”: Understanding the Meaning of Mark Making ...............6
1.1 The History of Mark-making and Its Relationship to Why I Am Doing This...............6
1.2 Existentialism.................................................................................................................9
Chapter 2 | Marks on the Wall: Graffiti and Art.............................................................................11
2.1 Graffiti As a Means of Mark Making...........................................................................11
2.2 A Comparative Study on the Design of Street Art .......................................................14
Chapter 3 | Marks on the Body: Tattooing and Body Mapping Art...............................................22
3.1 Tattoo and the Relationship Between Art and Body....................................................22
3.2 Body Mapping and Its Eligibility for Mark Making....................................................23
3.3 Expansion on Marks Utilizing the Body Mapping Technique.....................................26
3.3.1 Mark-making out of an Awakened Dream-state .................................................26
3.3.2 Body-mapping With Experimental Painting.......................................................29
3.3.3 Group Study on Body Exercise and Art..............................................................34
Chapter 4 | Marks of the Body: Action Painting and a Cyberspace Performance .........................37
4.1 Definition of Action Painting and How It Guided My Reactive Imagery-making
Process ...........................................................................................................................................37
4.2 The Self-images as Marks in Face of Artificial Intelligence Art .................................39
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4.2.1 The “Lemon” ......................................................................................................40
4.2.2 The “Apple” ........................................................................................................41
4.2.3 The “Rose”..........................................................................................................42
4.3 The “Footprint” — an Interactive Cyberspace Performance .......................................44
4.3.1 The Video as an Evidence of Mark-making Actions ..........................................44
4.3.2 Graphic Demonstrations of Dance and Written Explanations............................48
Reflection: Contemplating Being in Mark-Making.......................................................................50
Bibliography ..................................................................................................................................52
iii

List of Figures
Figure 1: Smithson, Partially Buried Woodshed..............................................................................9
Figure 2: The Design of NO TIME Poster.....................................................................................14
Figure 3: Graffiti at Borough Market, Southwark London, England ............................................15
Figure 4: Stickers on a Fire pit at Dockweiler State Beach, Los Angeles, California ...................15
Figure 5: Wall Stickers in Little Tokyo, Los Angeles, California..................................................16
Figure 6: Graffiti on Chiswell St, London, United Kingdom........................................................18
Figure 7: Banksy, Designated Graffiti Area...................................................................................18
Figure 8: Banksy, Designated Graffiti Area - close-up..................................................................18
Figure 9: Street art and graffiti at Tower Hamlets, London, England............................................19
Figure 10: Graffiti near Southbank Centre, London, England.......................................................20
Figure 11: Graffiti in Upper Las Virgenes Canyon, Woodland Hills, California...........................20
Figure 12: The Design of “Every Mark Has a History” ................................................................21
Figure 13: Lexicon for Meditational Dream Imagery....................................................................30
Figure 14: Meditational Dream Imagery — the Squat Posture .....................................................31
Figure 15: Meditational Dream Imagery — the Bridge Posture....................................................32
Figure 16: Meditational Dream Imagery — the Twist Posture......................................................33
Figure 17 - 26: The Design of Selfie Series — the “Lemon”.......................................................41
Figure 27 - 30: The Design of Selfie Series — the “Apple” .........................................................42
Figure 31 - 33: The Design of Selfie Series — the “Hat” .............................................................43
Figure 34: A Still From the Dance Performance Video — Blue....................................................47
Figure 35 - 36: Stills From the Dance Performance Video — Orange ..........................................47
iv

Figure 37: The Design of Performance Journal — Blue ...............................................................49
Figure 38: The Design of Performance Journal — Orange ...........................................................49
v

Abstract
This thesis examines the conjuncture of art and design through the lens of mark making —
the action of making impressions engaging one’s own body, which expresses one’s mental and
physical state. Inspired by Heidegger’s existentialism, I define art as an emotional expression of
beauty, pleasure and pain, for experiencing one’s authentic self as a being. Conversely, I view
design as a strategic way to make innovative imagery, or creative “marks” for communicative
purposes. I explore different types of marks created by being(s) that express feelings and
emotions at certain moments, so that I can understand the potential power of marks within both
art and design terms. For the exploration of a potential approach to creating innovative products
highlighting sensations, I examine a range of materials, including stencils and spray paints,
camera and digital media, with involvement of body in the performance of mark-making actions.
These actions result in records in the forms of videography and journals, but also having been
published online for the general mass to interact with. The experience with mark making and the
study of marks help me better understand mark making in design as a strategic way of
communication.
vi

Preface
I have always been interested in marks and the meaning of mark making, because marks
provide us with the most honest evidence of time passed, recording the lives of those that came
before us and the ideas they may have had. Gradually, I became attracted to all kinds of traces
that could be understood as marks. For instance, I was out on a beach when my eye caught a trail
of digressive footprints on the sand that indicated the previous presence of a flock of birds
wandering around, perhaps looking for food, or just hanging out. And I investigated marks in my
design practice as evidences of action on a piece of scrap paper, on which colors were tested.
These dots formed unique patterns, not only varying from sheet to sheet, but also showing
excitement or doubt by the density of the dots. On another day, I woke up discovering imprints
of a row of nails in my palm, which could be a sign of my nervousness, as I was unaware of
having been pressing my hands against each other too hard for a long time. All of the examples
above, whether intentional or unintentional, constituted an action of impression predating the
observation, an object as recipient of the force of action, and an enduring mark on a surface,
which was the result of the action. To learn about mark is to establish an empathetic channel
between the subject and the spectator. Likewise, one is able to communicate with oneself
sympathetically through making and discovering his or her own collection of marks. The
emotions read from the marks are mirrors of oneself, whose state of being can then be felt,
visualized and understood.
vii

Introduction
At the beginning of my studies in the field of design, I put forth two questions: when do we
think an artifact becomes an art work, and when does working with artifacts become design?
What is the boundary between the fields of art and design and what separates them? My
investigation began with the common ground that both art and design shared — mark making.
Essentially scratching a surface to forge a meaningful shape, marking is a ubiquitous
phenomenon and an integral part of art making. Certain kinds of marks, such as graphic symbols,
numbers, and alphabets, are learned at school and integrated into the fundamental educational
system. These abstract visuals are taken advantage of their indicative functions to convey
meaningful ideas in design works. In short, I want to find a creative way to relate art with design
and have my individual voice contribute to the art and design domains.
In order to pursue the origin of mark making, I point to Heidegger’s existentialist
philosophy, and conceive that mark making could potentially reconnect the record and
performance of marking to one’s self-awareness in terms of an authentic state of Being. Thus, we
should try to read the underlying meanings of marks. As a designer, I have been motivated to go
deeper to study possible ways to generate marks to this end, and to tell the stories behind the
action of mark making. Some of the following sections are accompanied by descriptions of a
corresponding exploration about marks on the body, of the body and with the body. Introducing a
few different techniques and meanings of mark-making at each stage, I named these segments
Action. The prospective value of my studies is twofold. First, the methodology of this study is a
generalizable tool that plays a guidance of finding the spiritual representation of oneself. The
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other function is to harvest the unique results from this process of mark making and apply them
as visual designs to make cultural products, as shown in later chapters.
Based on the medium, marks may be ephemeral or long-lasting, carrying culturally
conditioned or individualized meanings. Symbols that appear on posts and bridge abutments, on
fences of railroads and outbuildings could be communicative signs made by migratory laborers
to express their recognition of places for safe traveling, camping, eating, and people to interact
with. Another example is Australian Western Desert sand drawing being a means of temporarily
accessing its homeland and its ancestors. Of the tradition of Kutjungka women’s public sand 1
drawing in the Balgo community, Watson writes: “The use of the finger as the basic tool to sand
drawing makes it a haptic as well as a visual medium, both in terms of the marks made in the
ground and the kinds of sensory contact the mark maker experiences while making the designs.”2
Public sand drawing is both instructional — it is used to teach Kutjungka children about their
culture — and a means of accessing the ancestors: “The poking of the ground involved in
walkala (sand drawing)… is closely linked with the desire to penetrate the surface of the earth
and to enter the realm of experience of the Ancestral beings — the Tjukurrpa — located
geographically beneath the surface of the ground, but experientially beneath the surface of
waking reality”. In addition, ancient Chinese scripts, or Sinitic writing, was historically carved 3
into bones or shells for ritual and literary purposes. The highly pictorial signs of Anyang/Shang
writing (c. 1250 Bc-1050) underwent schematization during the first millennium Bc (Qiu Xigui
1. Jones, Andrew Meirion, and Marta Díaz-Guardamino. Making a Mark: Image and Process in
Neolithic Britain and Ireland. Havertown: Oxbow Books, Limited, 2019: 17.
2. Watson, Christine. Piercing the ground: Balgo Women’s image making and relationship to country.
Fremantle, W.A.: Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 2003: 74.
3. Watson, 108.
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2000). Even today, proficient users of Sinitic scripts can recognize visual referents in the
schematic forms of some signs. Being a modern counterpart of writings on the walls and also 4
other public surfaces, graffiti art shows up in cities all over the world as evidence that humans
have yet to give up on affirming their presences arduously. Each mark is a proof that a story took
place and awaits further investigation and revelation; each mark is a presence impressed onto a
surface, with the goal of reaching a specific audience or just to exist in wilderness. During my
visit to a number of cities, including London (England), Los Angeles and Belfast (Northern
Ireland), I found proliferating graffiti works, and by using inspirations from the graffiti artist,
Banksy’s and others’ works, I designed a mini poster to respond to the temporality and artistic
value of graffiti.
In order to explore the emotional experience of myself as a Being, I chose spray painting
along with other tools for my experimental mark-making compositions. Written language have
been used to narrate history, teach knowledge and express emotions throughout human history.
Similarly, expressive marks are used to record more intimate and personal meanings, as is the
case for painters and tattoo artists. Inspired by self-care practices like body-mapping and
conversations with tattoo professionals, I conceived an interrelationship between the body and
the marks. In a sense, body can be used to create marks that express the entity’s true emotions
and identity, but can body become a mark as well? In an attempt to derive an answer to this
question, I designed graphic works representing what body looks like and feels like on a flat
space. The symbols in the drawings represent what I saw when I was in an awakened-dream state
doing a meditative posture. The body figure as a way of expression can be seen directly inside a
4. Houston, Stephen, and Andréas Stauder. “What Is a Hieroglyph ?” Homme 233, no. 1 (2020): 10.
3

pamphlet written with “meditative marks” in this manner. Effacing facial features and body
characteristics that are routinely used to identify a person, readers instead are only allowed to
understand the figures based on the strategic arrangements of patterns as well as the color codes.
When I invited people to interpret mark making by creating their own marks on the body in
a meditative art workshop, I was surprised by the way the participants expressed how their
bodies felt during the yoga practicing session using a diverse yet shared visual language system
that generated and explained marks. However, the action of creating marks was weakly
connected to self-contemplation and needed further clarification for the recipients.
In 2010, Banksy (an anonymous British graffiti artist known for his antiauthoritarian art,
often done in public places) and his team made a film about an insider’s view of street art based
in Los Angeles, entitled Exit Through The Gift Shop. The story featured “Mr Brainwash”, who
earned his reputation quickly in the art world with works that he appropriated from masterpieces
of art or that he commissioned other artisans to make. In the movie, Banksy raised the question
about the fragility distinction between genuine art and commodification, which motivated me to
ponder whether the presence of the authentic self bestows originality on the marks in the process
of its creation. How are marks generally produced and how are meaningful marks related to the
exterior objects and/or interior mind? To further investigate the art of originality, I began my
journey into action painting — a subdivision of experimental art that explores the expressive
abilities of motion and the proactive dynamic energy in art making — as I danced on sheets to 5
make prints and created spray paint works on materials such as paperboards and fabrics. For
another project, I sought assistance for a website and utilized AI programs to accomplish a sense
5. Bogdanova-Kummer, Eugenia. “Ink Splashes on Camera: Calligraphy, Action Painting, and Mass
Media in Postwar Japan.” Modernism/modernity (Baltimore, Md.) 27, no. 2 (2020): 299–321.
4

of chaos and randomness in my selfie projects. The multifold performances, indicating my
presence at a certain moment in detail, was recorded and made accessible to the public via
webpage (https://xinyaos-performance-site.webflow.io), which eventually became a mark of my
own as process of an emotional being.
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Chapter 1 | “Every Mark Has a History”: Understanding the
Meaning of Mark Making
1.1 The History of Mark-making and Its Relationship to Why I Am Doing This
Design is divided into the prefix “de”, which can be seen as “do”, added to the word “sign”,
which is essentially a way of marking pertinent to oneself. In other words, to design is to make
unique marks of one’s own. Marks can be used for idea-building, as is the case for mind maps,
plans, blueprints and schematic prototypes. Marks can also be utilized to convey meanings and
feelings, examples of which include signs, posters and advertisements in various media. Marks
have long been viewed on two-dimensional surfaces, from rock cave art to mobile phone screen,
but they are not limited to this. A mark can also be an impression that impact the viewer’s
memory and values. For example, a well-designed stage play performance creates a bright
memory for a visitor to remember. The strong imagery and emotion of such experience imprints
a mark on people’s mind. Intricate combinations of a variety of marks could be powerful tools to
be explored in the field of both design and art. Over the years, graffiti artists such as Mike Giant,
Pursue, Rime and Noah have carved out careers in skateboard, clothing and shoe design for the
links of DC Shoes, Adidas, Nike and Puma. And the wider world of fashion has embraced street
art too. Many artists, such as Thomas Ingmire, whose background is rooted in traditional hand 6
6. May, Tom. “6 Ways Street Art Is Influencing Design.” Creative Bloq, June 20, 2017. https://
www.creativebloq.com/design/6-ways-street-art-influencing-design-51620596.
6

lettering, and Jose Parla, whose art is inspired by the street, are blurring the lines between fine
art, lettering, and graffiti.7
In 1991, a team led by renowned archaeologist Christopher Henshilwood, discovered cave
drawings in the Blombos Caves of South Africa, which have become the oldest known creative
marks made by human. Archaeologists believe these drawings were created by dragging an ironrich rock across silcrete stone, leaving behind a red geometric pattern that is widely considered
one of the oldest drawings in the world. Although the intent behind the sketches remains
unknown, the ochre crayon cross-hatching dates back 73,000 years and indicates humankind’s
innate need to express themselves through mark-making.8
Around 3500 cal. BC, British and Irish Neolithic people were already decorating pottery
using marks, a “primitively” designed artifact in archaic age. Decorations consist of fingernail
impression, linear incision, stab and drag, and a distinctive pattern of opposed cross-hatched
incisions. While other practices are associated with the mobilization and marking of both local 9
and exotic materials, the marking of single static places — rock sites — is distinctive, and seems
to be concerned with a strong degree of attentiveness to the features of the rock surface. The
marking of materials in place appears to call for a different kind of practice; a practice in which
7. Engelbrecht, Lisa. Modern Calligraphy and Hand Lettering: A Mark-Making Workbook for
Crafters, Cardmakers, and Journal Artists. Minneapolis: Quarry Books, 2010: Chapter 9.
8. “From Stone Age to Street Art: The Marks That Make History: In Celebration of Our Latest Los
Angeles Exhibition a Simple Mark, We Look at the Global History of Mark-Making from the Blombos
Caves of South Africa to Banksy’s Graffiti.” Maddox Gallery, April 8, 2022. https://maddoxgallery.com/
news/278-from-stone-age-to-street-art-the-marks-in-celebration-of-our-latest-los-angeles-exhibition/.
9. Jones, 173.
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attention is drawn to the qualities of both materials and place. Each practice is partly 10
performative, and partly relates to a sense of record. It is important that we do not see
performance and record as a dichotomy; in fact, each practice is enfolded in the other. Making
rock art is a performative activity that is intended to leave a more lasting record of the events
performed, and is intended to perform relationships, with other sites, with other places in the
landscape. Conversely, the marking of decorated artifacts is a relatively ephemeral activity,
which leaves little permanent record, but in which the performative act of making is heightened:
the act of making is performative; it is intended to achieve an effect.11
Land art seems to bear a similar fashion, where the creation of artwork is never “finished”
and continues to be altered by the joint force of human and nature. In 1970, land artist and
sculptor Robert Smithson created a land art for a historic event PARTIALLY BURIED
WOODSHED at Kent State University, Kent, Ohio. The piece has since witnessed the growing
of anonymous marks that eventually covered the original building (figure 1). In a September 12
1968 Artforum piece entitled A Sedimentation of the Mind: Earth Projects he wrote, "Embedded
in the sediment is a text that contains limits and boundaries which evade the rational order, and
social structures which confine art. In order to read the rocks we must become conscious of
geologic time, and of the layers of prehistorical material that is entombed in the Earth's crust.”13
10. Jones, 179.
11. Jones, 178.
12. “Partially Buried Woodshed.” Partially Buried Woodshed | Holt/Smithson Foundation, January 1,
1969. https://holtsmithsonfoundation.org/partially-buried-woodshed.
13. Smithson, Robert. “A Sedimentation of the Mind: Earth Works” Artforum, vol. 7, no. 1968:
44-50.
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Figure 1: Smithson, Partially Buried Woodshed.
1.2 Existentialism
Martin Heidegger (1889–1976)’s magnum opus Being and Time is an investigation into the
meaning of Being as that manifests itself through the human being, Dasein. Dasein has a (preconceptual) understanding of Being because it is the place where Being manifests itself. In living
out our daily existence we become alienated from our true selves. Heidegger refers to this as
having fallen, not in the sense that we have fallen from a purer moral state to a lesser one, but as
a falling away from our true selves. As Richard Gilbert argued in Being and Martin Heidegger, 14
“in our average day to day Being-in-the-world, a true, authentic Being remains hidden.” This 15
for Heidegger is to exist inauthentically.
14. Heidegger, Martin, John. Macquarrie, and Edward. Robinson. Being and Time. San Francisco,
Calif: HarperSanFrancisco, 1962: 220.
15. Richard, Gilbert. Being and Martin Heidegger: 9-10.
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Heidegger's philosophy becomes a search for authenticity or "own-ness" (Eigentlichkeit), or
personal integrity. He used the perspective of our sensation of consciousness as his foundation. 16
He starts not with our reason, but rather with the fact that we exist. Our psychological
construction of an external objective world erroneously leads us to think of our existence as if we
were some sort of complex object, but our self-enclosed self-awareness implies an unbridgeable
gap between ourselves and the world, which has a different sort of existence. Philosophy is not
primarily an academic pursuit, rather it is an exercise in understanding how we encounter
ourselves within the world. The sensation of consciousness is important in making art and 17
design works because one’s own experience and emotions are key to a unique final product. In
the following chapters, I will show how emotions are directional in my mark-making projects,
which in turn enhance my understanding about creating distinctive projects of Being, integrating
art and design.
16. “Existentialism - Martin Heidegger (1889–1971).” Martin Heidegger (1889–1971) - Self, Dasein,
World, and Philosophy - JRank Articles. https://science.jrank.org/pages/9283/Existentialism-MartinHeidegger-1889-1971.html.
17. Misselbrook, David. “An A-Z of Medical Philosophy: X Is for Existentialism: Kierkegaard,
Heidegger and Sartre.” British journal of general practice 64, no. 629 (2014): 642–642.
10

Chapter 2 | Marks on the Wall: Graffiti and Art
2.1 Graffiti As a Means of Mark Making
Graffiti comes from the Italian word, Graffio, which means to scratch. It is used to describe
many different kinds of wall writings, and dates back at least to ancient Egypt. In ancient Rome,
an inscription on private property asked people not to scribble on the walls. According to 18
Article 14 graffiti removal and recovery, “graffiti” means any form of unauthorized inscription,
word, figure or design which is marked, etched, scratched, drawn, sprayed, painted or otherwise
affixed to or on any surface of public or private property…19
Apparently minor crime of graffiti is cast as a transgressive invasion into the normative
patterns of urban living which will have pernicious effects if it is left unchecked. Austin argues 20
that graffiti art’s key contribution as art is fundamentally related to its illegal placement in the
public spaces of the city. Illegally placing work on public walls is a significant contribution, even
a step forward for, modern art, and by taking the art beyond the walls of the “white cube” of the 21
18. Toth, Jennifer. The Mole People: Life in the Tunnels Beneath New York City. Chicago: Chicago
Review Press, 1995.
19. “Sec. 49.84.2. Definitions.” American Legal Publishing. Title and Article Amended by Ord. No.
180,708, Eff. 7/6/09.https://codelibrary.amlegal.com/codes/los_angeles/latest/lamc/0-0-0-212281.
20. McAuliffe, Cameron, and Kurt Iveson. “Art and Crime (and Other Things besides … ):
Conceptualising Graffiti in the City.” Geography Compass 5, no. 3 (2011): 131.
21. Austin, Joe. “More to See Than a Canvas in a White Cube: For an Art in the Streets.” City
(London, England) 14, no. 1-2 (2010): 42.
11

art gallery into shared public space we can incorporate sensitivities to the placement of art within
a “pleasurable critique of the standing order”.22
Art worlds frequently incorporate, at a later date, works they originally rejected, so that the
distinction must lie not in the work but in the ability of an art world to accept it and its maker.23
Members of subcultures challenge hegemony by drawing on the particular experiences and
customs of their communities, ethnic groups, and age cohorts, thereby demonstrating that social
life can be constructed in ways different from the dominant conceptions of reality. Following 24
the idea, the author used graffiti and gestural art to serve as a venue for herself to reflect upon the
value regardless of the mainstream aesthetics, bringing awareness and self-consciousness to her
being.
Within capitalist democracy, cultural production has become a monoculture, so the issue for
[Collins] has become how to add diversity to this ecosystem. In addition, Fleming states that, 25
Elizabethan wall-writing is a practice whose easily-made and easily-erased produces cannot be
taught, reproduced or sold as commodities. In other words, graffiti is innately anti- 26
consumerism — it provides aesthetic values without financially benefiting the creator because of
its anonymity and potential violation of law, aka vandalism; however, market has successfully
22. Austin, 43.
23. Becker, Howard S. (Howard Saul). Art Worlds. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982:
226-227.
24. Lachmann, Richard. “Graffiti as Career and Ideology.” The American journal of sociology 94,
no. 2 (1988): 229–250.
25. Gablik, Suzi. “Beyond the Disciplines: Art Without Boundaries.” The Hedgehog review 6, no. 2
(2004): 61–71.
26. Fleming, Juliet. Graffiti and the Writing Arts of Early Modern England. London: Reaktion
Books, Limited, 2009.
12

capitalized graffiti works and its artists in many cases and caused controversy. Banksy criticized
this capitalism in his work, “Love is in the Bin”, by destroying one of his most iconic works,
“Girl with Balloon”, with a secret shredder at the bottom of the picture frame. Drawing 27
inspiration from Banksy’s performative action and his commentary on other works, I designed a
digital poster in an attempt to connect graffiti’s invisibility and artistic value with time.
Action —
(Actions are used to describe or illustrate my discovery process. They are not only the activity of
mark making I committed but also my responses to the prompts for each section.)
In this poster entitled “NO TIME”, I transformed a photograph of a street sign saying “no
stopping at any time” into a mini poster designed to discuss the ephemeral characteristic of
graffiti marks on the streets. I altered the contrasts so only the two words “no time” are
emphasized. Through the transparent portion of the street sign, one could see a Banksy’s quote,
“Graffiti’s always been a temporary art form. You make your mark and then they scrub it off”,
written in the color of bright pink. The layering of the street sign over the background and the
“tearing” of the texts mimicked what happened to street art graffiti in real life, which is
constantly being written over and negated. “No time” is also alluding to the timeless value of
graffiti as a genre of art that continues to influence fields such as design, fashion, architecture,
and many more.
27. Edwards, Jonathan. “Banksy Tried to Destroy His Art after It Sold for $1.4 Million. the Shredded
Version Just Went for $25.4 Million.” The Washington Post, October 16, 2021. https://
www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/10/15/shredded-banksy-painting/.
13

Figure 2: The Design of NO TIME Poster
2.2 A Comparative Study on the Design of Street Art
In the previous chapters, I discussed how marks typically consist of two elements, the
performative and the recording. Modern street art graffiti complies with this standard, since
graffiti works are constantly being reworked, or “performed” upon, filling up the blank spaces
and covering up the precedents. In this light, the sight of the street, and in some cases the
memory of passengers who beheld the creation in the daylight, are in effect the records of these
performances. Indeed, both the performance and record aspects of street marks call for the
artist’s awareness of the fact that the piece is located in the public domain, and thus requires
careful attention paid to its environment. This includes the materiality of the surface that was
worked on, and the space that situates the work itself. In design principles, space refers to the
area that a shape or form occupies. It also refers to the background against which we see the
shape or form. Space can be defined as positive and negative. The positive space of a design is
14

the filled space in the design—often it is the shapes that make up the design. Can the same 28
principle be applied to mark-making, which then inspires design practices in return, and how?
With this question in mind, I embarked on my journey by starting to compare street art
photographs from different geographies and time periods highlighting their usage of space and its
significance.
Figure 3: Graffiti at Borough Market, Southwark London, England
Figure 4: Stickers on a Fire pit at Dockweiler State Beach, Los Angeles, California
28. Design: Exploring the elements & principles - iowa state university ... Accessed July 20, 2023.
https://www.extension.iastate.edu/4hfiles/StateFair/EEHandbook/EEHJPDesign4H634.pdf.
15

In populated cities such as Los Angeles, CA or London, England, one can almost always
spot graffiti of some kind, regardless of whether you are in a street market (figure 3) or on the
beach (figure 4), although the situation and intention differ from case to case and their value can
sometimes be highly controversial. Tagging, which in graffiti’s realm “entailed the repeated use
of a single symbol or series of symbols to mark territory,” is a common practice among street art.
“In order to attract the most attention possible, this type of graffiti usually appeared in
strategically or centrally located neighborhoods.” An example would be the array of “RFS” 29
signatures on the display board somewhere near Little Tokyo in central downtown Los Angeles,
alongside all other stickers and graffiti art (figure 5).
Figure 5: Wall Stickers in Little Tokyo, Los Angeles, California
29. Decker, Scott H., and Glen D. Curry. “Graffiti.” Encyclopædia Britannica, June 29, 2023. https://
www.britannica.com/art/graffiti-art.
16

Another common strategy to draw attention was showing designed images as repetitive
motif of artists’ work everywhere. For example, Banksy used stencil paintings of small animals,
and the rats are especially used as a symbol of his attitude for the authorities he was criticizing.
“They exist without permission. They are hated, hunted, and persecuted. They live in quiet
desperation amongst the filth. And yet they are capable of bringing entire civilizations to their
knees.” On Chiswell Street in Islington, London, a stenciled ghetto rat holding a placard was 30
painted at ground level on a corner of a building (figure 6). The rat’s body was sprayed in 31
black, while its face was the negative space showing the white wall. Light and shadow was
indicated in this manner, and the rat’s facial features was depicted: a small grim face that was
neither too friendly nor too aggressive. Originally, it read “London doesn’t work,” before another
street artist, Robbo, changed it to be “I [heart] London, Robbo.” The push-and-pull game of
amendment stopped after Robbo’s death in 2011. In a similar manner but different context,
Banksy painted a poodle lashed by a security guard in his graffiti piece entitled “Designated
Graffiti Area”, located in the courtyard of the night club Cargo in the heart of Shoreditch,
London (figure 7). Again, the dog figure was divided into light and dark parts, only this time
more blank space for the hair near her head and front body. In addition, the dog was humorously
wearing a ribbon on top of her head and had her nose sprayed in a clownish red color. All these
features were juxtaposed with the guard figure holding a torch light and the wall sign from
30. “Rat Business and Pest Modernism.” Banksy Explained, July 5, 2021. https://
banksyexplained.com/issue/banksy-rat-business-and-pest-modernism/.
31. Boardman, Catherine. “Banksy on Chiswell Street.” Catherine’s Cultural Wednesdays, December
12, 2019. https://www.culturalwednesday.co.uk/sunday-photo-banksy-on-chiswell-street/.
17

National Highways Agency proclaiming this as an officially “designated graffiti area” (figure 8),
rendering the scene quite funny and unexpected.
Figure 6: Graffiti on Chiswell St, London, United Kingdom
Figure 7: Banksy, Designated Graffiti Area
Figure 8: Banksy, Designated Graffiti Area - close-up
18
Figure 8: Banksy, Designated Graffiti
Area - close-up
Figure 7: Banksy, Designated Graffiti Area

There are public walls reserved for graffiti art in certain areas, where collections of graffiti
pieces, regardless of spontaneous or designated ones, possess the whole space to form a sight of
tourist attraction. An example would be the one in Art District, London (figure 9), the advantage
of which was for visitors to see all styles of street art graffiti, including mini-sculptures, fabrics,
stickers and traditional spray paintings altogether. The overlaying of marks indicated their
chronological order, and pieces in the back had endured visible wear and tear. There were even
posters covering a considerable proportion of the surface, not only leaving what was underneath
unreadable, but also making itself vulnerable to other graffiti works. The height of the artwork
was, to a certain extent, related to its quality. Normally the height of graffiti art or large scale
pieces was about or below the reach of an adult person, but some writers managed to stick their
signatures beside the street sign. These, however, were more likely to be smaller, adhesive works
that consisted of simple strokes and/or bold palettes in order to be seen more clearly and easily
from eight feet below.
Figure 9: Street art and graffiti at Tower Hamlets, London, England
19

Under special circumstances, some sorts of protection (like a mural glass) was kept in place
and left the surface in the status quo, as was the case of Banksy’s “Designated Graffiti Area”.
Some areas were quite popular for gathering, and thus populated with graffiti writing, such as a
skating rink (figure 10), whereas other locations that were less accessible have scarcer writings,
such as inside a cave trail (figure 11). By contrast, surfaces that were designated for, or already
had been claimed by someone seemed to be comparatively organized and became private
territories to some extent. These were often more visible on social media and explicitly signed by
their contributor(s) in contrast with other more casual and spontaneous works.
Figure 10: Graffiti near Southbank Centre, London, England
Figure 11: Graffiti in Upper Las Virgenes Canyon, Woodland Hills, California
The previous study prompted me to view marks not as literal, but as a congregation of time
and its reflex in space through the creativity of individuals. This perspective led me to raise that a
mark is unique in that it is a direct reflection of the writer’s reaction to the specific site, a trace of
their action, and “being” at the moment the mark was created.
20
Figure 11: Graffiti in Upper Las Virgenes
Canyon, Woodland Hills, California
Figure 10: Graffiti near Southbank Centre,
London, England

Action —
To highlight this notion, I used letter stencils to repeatedly spray paint the self-quoted
sentence, “every mark has a history,” in different combination of colors, and overlapped them in
Photoshop, resulting in a neon effect. The stencils were taken from stationary stores and
modulated. Eluding to Andy Warhol’s works and pop culture art, the letters were imperfectly
sprayed, rendering some part of the letters a hazy look. I continued experimenting with random
spills and gaps of the paint, which became a declaration of the history that every mark uniquely
claimed. (Figure 12)
Figure 12: The Design of “Every Mark Has a History”
21

Chapter 3 | Marks on the Body: Tattooing and Body Mapping Art
3.1 Tattoo and the Relationship Between Art and Body
Tattoo is a permanent pigmentation of the skin resulting from the introduction of exogenous
substances. If this happens unintentionally — for example, after road injuries — it is called
traumatic tattoo. However, the most common tattoos are decorative, related to current fashion or
to a symbolic meaning. The etymological origin of the word tattoo is believed to have 2 major
derivations: the first is from the Polynesian word “ta” which means “striking something,” and the
second is the Tahitian word “tatau” which means “to mark something.” The oldest example of
tattoo dates back to 3000 BC and is represented by a mummy called “Ötzi the Iceman”
discovered from the area of the Italian-Austrian border in 1991.32
I was interested in exploring the meaning of tattoo because I saw it as part of the markmaking examination, which was essentially scratching a person’ skin to make an art. What made
it an intriguing contrast against the street graffiti marks was that making a tattoo involved a much
more intimate relationship. Just like a doctor who needs to conduct a microscope surgery on a
patient, the tattoo artist needs to work with her customers closely to ensure that they feel
comfortable with the design and the process. After all, if a tattoo mark is permanently left on the
skin when finished, to undo that process means doubling the physical pain.
32. Pesapane, Filippo, Gianluca Nazzaro, Raffaele Gianotti, and Antonella Coggi. “A Short History
of Tattoo.” JAMA dermatology (Chicago, Ill.) 150, no. 2 (2014): 145–145.
22

Jayna, who is the owner of a local tattoo shop at downtown Los Angeles, had a conversation
with me about what tattoo meant to her and her customers. According to her, tattoo art is a kind
of adornment on the body and typically carries messages that are often memorial or expressing
the identities for the customers. Most people who visited her shop did not regret getting their
tattoo, although on occasions some would come back to make adjustments to the existing design.
Jayna herself got quite a few tattoos and thought them as time stamps. She also acknowledged
that tattooing was a life-altering decision for her and a lot of people. To her, the aftermath was
part of the journey. Elder people in the family might disapprove of her getting a tattoo, and she
had experienced spending extra time prior to a video shooting to cover up the tattoos on her
body.
Tattooing exemplifies how people connect symbols and imagery with their own body
through marking. In the following section, another mark-making practice in relation with the
body is introduced, which foreshadows my own project.
3.2 Body Mapping and Its Eligibility for Mark Making
Body mapping’s genesis arose from a desire to understand health, embodiment, and trauma
from the perspective of marginalized groups. The method was celebrated for its ability to
creatively represent embodied experiences and life events in a meaningful way for those
involved. In its original inception, body mapping was developed as a method combining 33
33. Boydell, Katherine. Applying Body Mapping in Research: An Arts-Based Method. United
Kingdom: Routledge, 2020: 44.
23

research and art within a therapeutic process. de Jager et al. (2016) described the three key
attributes of body mapping: (1) social justice with the aim of advocacy and therapy; (2) artsbased inquiries designed to elicit embodied awareness; and (3) knowledge translation, allowing
for knowledge and research dissemination, particularly for those participants who would otherwise remain unheard. Body maps allow for a visual representation of how individuals think 34
about their own lives and identity, and give voice and visibility to participants themselves via
engagement in a critical examination of the meaning of their unique experiences. By its nature, 35
audience understanding of the body mapper’s embodied experience (as depicted through their
body maps) involves drawing an analogy with one’s own body: we understand what we
understand about others’ embodied experiences based on our own bodies. The transformative 36
power of art genres has the power to engage individuals with the “emotional and embodied
experience of an other, allowing them to access an internal experience”.37
Since its initial introduction, the body-mapping technique has been applied to countless
scientific, social and cultural researches, thanks to the increased access to information about
body mapping via the Internet, the push for methodological innovation in many research and
community settings, and the enduring role of the body as signifier of our uncertain cultural times.
34. de Jager, Adèle, Anna Tewson, Bryn Ludlow, and Katherine M. Boydell. “Embodied Ways of
Storying the Self: A Systematic Review of Body-Mapping.” Forum, qualitative social research 17, no. 2
(2016).
35. Boydell, 105.
36. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, and Donald A Landes. Phenomenology of Perception. Abingdon
[England]: Routledge, 2012.
37. Lapum, Jennifer L., Linda Liu, Kathryn Church, Terrence M. Yau, Perin Ruttonsha, Alison
Matthews David, and Bruk Retta. “Arts-Informed Research Dissemination in the Health Sciences: An
Evaluation of Peoples’ Responses to ‘The 7,024th Patient’ Art Installation.” SAGE open 4, no. 1 (2014):
12.
24

Despite the popularity of this approach given its advantage of yielding deep and rich data,
Orchard (2017) cautioned that the setting in which the method originated must be acknowledged,
along with how the approach is adapted to meet the study aims and ensure the well-being of the
participants and others involved. These principles align with what Openjuru et al. (2015) call 38
“knowledge democracy”, referring to the equitable evaluation and consideration of indigenous
knowledge and practices that are taken up “locally” and internationally through different
research, funding, and development agendas. The method’s creators’ culturally distinctive 39
knowledge and aesthetic healing practices were markedly transformed through their consumption
and objectification in the global cultural economy, all of which are hallmarks of cultural
appropriation.40 41 42 43
My approach leads a slightly different path from body mapping, and instead of using words
and signifiers to straightforwardly narrate a specific event or past experience, my maps construct
abstract and spontaneous marks to depict the feeling and imagination on the basis of body
movement or gesture. Its focus is more on creating diverse and expressive compositions and less
38. Orchard, Treena. Remembering the Body Ethical Issues in Body Mapping Research. 1st ed. 2017.
Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2017: 101
39. Openjuru, George Ladaah, Namrata Jaitli, Rajesh Tandon, and Budd Hall. “Despite Knowledge
Democracy and Community-Based Participatory Action Research: Voices from the Global South and
Excluded North Still Missing.” Action research (London, England) 13, no. 3 (2015): 219–229.
40. Hahn, Hans Peter. “Diffusionism, Appropriation, and Globalization. Some Remarks on Current
Debates in Anthropology.” Anthropos 103, no. 1 (2008): 191–202.
41. Haig-Brown, Celia. “Indigenous Thought, Appropriation, and Non-Aboriginal People.”
Canadian journal of education 33, no. 4 (2010): 925–950.
42. Root, Deborah. Cannibal Culture : Art, Appropriation, and the Commodification of Difference.
Boulder, Colo: Westview Press, 1996.
43. Ziff, Bruce H., and Pratima V. Rao. Introduction to cultural appropriation: a framework for
analysis. Borrowed Power : Essays on Cultural Appropriation. New Brunswick, N.J: Rutgers University
Press, 1997: 1-27.
25

on recollecting and healing one’s pains and traumas, although the core process — reflecting and
expressing oneself on the paper with genuineness — remains unchanged. This parallel practice
has the advantage of being a vehicle to convey the idea that making marks on the body-shaped
maps and looking for an authentic being are connected to the participating audience in my
interactive workshop, who might otherwise have more difficulty understanding this relationship
without the allusion.
3.3 Expansion on Marks Utilizing the Body Mapping Technique
3.3.1 Mark-making out of an Awakened Dream-state
Mark-making is a “disruptive” action in the present-at-hand world in that it projects
spontaneous, self-driven mind onto a surface which is sometimes not explicitly prepared for that
purpose. In the meantime, it also gives rise to the possibility to uncover an authentic being in the
existentialist term. While graffiti artworks don’t often suggest a perspicuous message to connect
with their makers behind the scene because of their anonymity, the excitement to produce
spontaneous marks outside regularity urged me to replicate the process on paperboard, fabric and
other materials. This might help me gain a deeper understanding of the meaning of marking and
its relationship with true selves, and how I can utilize them in the process of design, since the
dialogue created between the map and the self was projected onto the works of body mapping,
and thus could be analyzed and understood by the creator oneself as well as others.
26

The body is created and known through a myriad of socio-economic, political, and sexual
practices that are realized through the experience of embodiment, a transformative agential
process through which subjectivity emerges both materially and emotionally. Practically 44
speaking, people commonly face pressure from working and other real-life scenarios. When they
lose their feeling of purposes, they may feel anxiety, or “nothingness.” However, the goal of my
meditation is not to get rid of those feelings of anxiety, for it is the natural step to realization of
“Being”. Rather, I followed a series of body movement exercises and projected the collision and
release of the pressure within my Being onto a map of the shape of my body using mark-making
techniques.
Action —
To portrait body in the space requires a coding system encompassing perspectives,
differentiating left and right, and upper and lower limbs as well as the direction of which the
head is facing. In this exercise, I used thickness to signify the body and legs, and butterfly shapes
to signify the way which the face looked toward. The butterfly shape came from an abstraction of
the contour of grey matter in the spinal cord, which was crucial for the body to move and feel
sensations. The figures were in various meditative yoga poses that were intended to help release
my mental and physical stress. As I put myself in those positions, I conducted my attention to the
inner flow of my flesh and mind. Then I pictured the marks and symbols of my sensory
receptions and allied them with the energetic anatomy using lines, shapes and irregular strokes.
For example, the pain in my scapula was marked by teeth-like imagery in the Cat-cow graphic.
44. Shildrick, Margrit. “‘Why Should Our Bodies End at the Skin?’: Embodiment, Boundaries, and
Somatechnics.” Hypatia 30, no. 1 (2015): 13–29.
27

By contrast, when I was doing the dangling, my shoulder felt more relaxed, which was traced
with a looser patterns that looked like grass leaf. The character was gender-neutralized and
faceless because that’s how I conceived myself when I contemplated on my own Being. The
marks represented blood cells but also a rhythm of the tension and relief happening in the
moment.
The chakra system believes that by activating chakra energy at different levels, the balance
and blending of the “male” and the “female”—the electrical and magnetic—in our bodies is
achieved, and within that harmony, there is healing of the mind, soul, spirit and body. Most 45
authorities agree that chakras are subtle energy centers that are located at the main branchings of
the nervous system. They function as collection and transmission centers for both subtle, or
metaphysical, energy and concrete, or biophysical, energy. Dr. Hiroshi Motoyama, a scientist 46
and a Shinto priest, found in an AMI (the apparatus for measuring the functioning of the
meridians and corresponding internal organs) test that increased activity of the heart chakra area
actually produced a weak but measurable physical light. Subjects were asked to press a button
whenever they thought they were experiencing psi-energy, or psychic sensations such as
inexplicable feelings, pictures, or sounds. These internal feelings correlated to objectively
measured periods of heart activity. Experiments similar to this one led Motoyama to conclude
that mental concentration on a chakra is the key to activating it. Inspired by this, I categorized 47
my thoughts into three major groups: intellectual contemplation, which was colored in bright
45. Rich, Mark, and Gosha Karpowicz. Energetic anatomy: An illustrated guide to understanding
and using the Human Energy System. Dallas, TX: Life Align, 2004: 242.
46. Rich, 236.
47. Rich, 239.
28

yellow; self-compassion, which was colored in green; and mind wondering, which was colored
in purple or magenta. These roughly corresponded to the division in the chakra models, but were
with more freedom as I retained my inclination for certain tints or shades.
Contemplation could only happen on one’s own and that made it one of the reliable venues
to enter the realization of being. Feeling what affected my mood and body led to the return to an
authentic self that existed outside the present-at-hand world.
3.3.2 Body-mapping With Experimental Painting
Action —
The tripled of meditational dream imagery includes three body-mapping works that combine
physical and digital processes. Among the previous meditative exercises, I selected three
postures and designed stencils to recreate the patterns with spray paints in proportion to the size
of my actual body. Then, I photo-scanned the life-size body map to add other components,
including the background and the additional digital drawing marked in white. The drawing and
background amplified the symbols and marks that visualized my sensory receptions, exemplified
by pain, pressure, relaxation and so on. A lexicon chart at the bottom explains my drawing.
(Figure 13)
The multi-facet perception of body can result in mixed, sometimes even contradictory,
sensations, but I strived to use design elements to fully illustrate these similarities and
differences. In the squat-position imagery (figure 14), for instance, the column of “omega”
29

symbols on the back of my body indicated a feeling of outward-going spikes. These were echoed
by the column of “lightening” icons to the left of the body, which represented pain. What’s more,
I surrounded the figure with fire to express the tensity I felt when contemplating in this posture.
On the other hand, the “lotus” shape above the head meant a peaceful feeling, which was exactly
how I felt as I put my palms in front of my chest and practiced a mindful meditation in a squat
posture. Likewise, in the bridge position’s imagery (figure 15), a few clock-shape drawings
appeared in between “sweat drop” shapes around my shoulder, because it felt both pressure and
relief at the same time. Besides spontaneous shapes and icons, the rainbow color was evidence of
the fact that I also took inspiration from the chakra system to indicate the flow of energy in my
body. Strategic positioning of the indicative marks makes the viewer understand my feelings of
the body thoroughly and effectively.
The dream imageries have been set in a poster design, but could potentially be transformed
into cultural products such as shirt designs or play cards. The application would not be rendered
meaningless, as it could be helpful for promulgating the methodology of body marking and
meditating.
Figure 13: Lexicon for Meditational Dream Imagery
30

Figure 14: Meditational Dream Imagery — the Squat Posture
31

Figure 15: Meditational Dream Imagery — the Bridge Posture
32

Figure 16: Meditational Dream Imagery — the Twist Posture
33

3.3.3 Group Study on Body Exercise and Art
Action —
I coordinated with Dr. Eden Goldman to assist me in a yoga-and-art hybrid workshop and
invited friends and strangers via social media and poster distribution. Approximating mark
making with body mapping could enable me to study how people express themselves through
drawing self imageries and, in turn, become aware of Being. The experiment also exemplified
diversity of marks in different individual’s interpretation. In two hours and a half, people had a
meditative period with basic yoga moves first, and subsequently created body map freely with
the previous exercise in mind. Only two of the twelve participants had prior knowledge of the
technique of body mapping. Each participant was provided with crayons, pencils, markers, inks
and a variety of craft objects such as stamps and pom-pom balls to create their own maps. In
addition, I gave out blank sheets of body map templates although whether to use them or not was
of their own choice. The exercise lasted for about 30 - 40 minutes and most people preferred
using ready-made templates as guidance for drawing.
The graphs drawn by the participants showed an adequate understanding of body mapping
with regards to the doodling on various parts of body-shaped silhouettes. Most people
concentrated on the head and central part of the body, while a few extended their marks onto
limbs as well as areas outside the contour. Some people who were introduced to the chakra
34

model got inspirations for coloring the body map. A rainbow from bottom to top was a common
theme across several maps, and red-and-yellow was used as indicative colors because they
popped out and composited contrasting palette that is the most emotionally-accessible pair. The
most popular ways of drawing were lines, curves and simple icons, such as a heart or star’s
shape. As expected, these were shared characteristics when I was improvising marks in my own
contemplating-and-marking-making exercise. It was also supported by research which found
glabrous skin of the hand and the forehead were the areas of highest spatial acuity. The more 48
sensitive and frequently that an organ or part of the body is used, the more likely that people
were going to portrait it in a reflective exercise about themselves.
The exercise was quite welcoming and received positive feedback from the audience.
Several participants talked about having quiet time to think and reflect upon their lives while
engaging in the artistic process. It reminded them of their self-importance as well as the need to
take care of themselves. As quoted from one of the participants, “I really appreciate this
opportunity of unifying yoga practice and art. You don’t often think about health and body
having anything to do with creation and generating new work.” Dr Goldman, who taught yoga at
USC, was encouraged after this workshop and said that he might consider integrating body
mapping exercise into his teaching in the future.
Because the whole process was constrained by a limited amount of time and that the
audience members were coming from outside the artistic professions, only a preliminary
48. Mancini, Flavia, Armando Bauleo, Jonathan Cole, Fausta Lui, Carlo A. Porro, Patrick Haggard,
and Gian Domenico Iannetti. “Whole-Body Mapping of Spatial Acuity for Pain and Touch.” Annals of
neurology 75, no. 6 (2014): 917–924.
35

connection of body and being was embodied during the exercise. It was also probable that
participants struggled with using art to express themselves because the complexity of sensualvisual transitions were difficult to represent by hand drawing, which caused them to simplify
what ended up on their maps. Therefore, it was suggested that to achieve a comprehensive
understanding of how creating marks could be a way to reflect and reveal one’s existence, further
investigation and continuous practicing are called.
36

Chapter 4 | Marks of the Body: Action Painting and a Cyberspace
Performance
4.1 Definition of Action Painting and How It Guided My Reactive Imagery-making Process
A canvas, according to Rosenberg’s famous essay from 1952, “The American Action
Painters”, “began to appear to one American painter after another as an arena in which to act —
rather than as a space in which to reproduce, re-design, analyze or ‘express’ an object, actual or
imagined. What was to go on the canvas was not a picture but an event”. Rosenberg’s concept 49
of Action Painting entitled not only the painter’s physical activity which produced an “event” on
the canvas but also the “acting out” of the painted forms upon the canvas. Action (as opposed 50
to the various essential tasks necessary for biological sustenance, which Arendt called labour)
entailed the way in which humans accommodated themselves to the external world through
various creative endeavors. By bringing something new and unprecedented into the world,
human actions create a coherent public sphere. Essential to Arendt’s conception of action was 51
its dramatic component which had both temporal and existential ramifications. To act was to be
an actor, an undertaking that situated someone within a temporal matrix of beginnings, middles,
and (always provisional) endings, and which entailed a degree of artifice and role-playing.
Action understood in these terms was, according to Arendt, not only essential for substantial
49. Rosenberg, Harold. “The American Action Painters”, Art News 51, no. 8 (December 1952): 22–
23, 48–50.
50. Rosenberg, Harold. The Tradition of the New. New York: McGraw-Hill (1965): 33.
51. Arendt, Hannah. The Human Condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press (1958): 218.
37

historical and political praxis but, more essentially, also for authentic human existence (as
opposed to bare biological life).
Action Painters (or, for that matter, Abstract Expressionists) sought to project a degree of
unconscious immediacy into their art while nonetheless producing material images with
communicative potential. That is to say while the gestural method of Action Painting (or 52
Abstract Expressionism) ostensibly aligned itself with a model of precognitive parataxis
analogous to the structure of dream thoughts before they are represented pictorially, it is
precisely by the artist that allows the viewer to take on the labour of the waking consciousness
and produce affective associations whose relationships can eventually be interpreted. Action
Paintings like Pollock’s can be seen to operate through a process of abreaction in which a viewer
could, by “reliving” the compositional decisions of the artist, recreate and re-experience the
dramatic content underlying such ostensibly abstract and highly personal imagery.53
Based on the elaboration of Action Painting stated above, I design my performative piece so
that viewers are able to understand the meaning of my movements, and start to reflect in their
own life where their movements can also convey a certain meaning to other people. In other
words, action in its essence becomes a way to communicate. To complete the mark-making
“event” demands careful attention paid not only to what goes onto the canvas, but also the
constitution of the scene in which the creator makes her marks. This dramatic moment of action
is also part of designing practice. If my works can induce people to think creatively, how should
52. Freud, Sigmund, and A. A. (Abraham Arden) Brill. The Interpretation of Dreams. 4th ed.
London: G. Allen & Unwin, Ltd., 1915.
53. Laplanche, Jean., and J.-B. Pontalis. The Language of Psycho-Analysis, trans. Donald NicholsonSmith (Norton: New York, 1974): 111-14.
38

I make a mark that engages my own Being? I began by recording myself on the camera on
occasions where certain feelings and moods appeared. Then I interpreted the situation using a
variety of techniques and expression venues — such as dancing and other body movements, ink
pressing and journaling as well as a few digital editing processes — to make different design
pieces. These gestural-art making, or action painting, coincides with Rosenberg’s discussion of
Action Painters. The digital series of “marked” faces are indeed actions in a different medium.
The taking of photos and synthesizing of imagery is less as a physical activity than their
traditional counterparts, but such is retained as the nucleus for a dramatic act, like showing
unexpectedness for the audience and leaving room for imagination and reflection. Together, the
group of my mark-making works became a visual performance that went public online
illustrating what I thought for the question above.
4.2 The Self-images as Marks in Face of Artificial Intelligence Art
A photo could be used to contain as little or as much information depending on the
photographer’s intention, but there was no denying that, at its core, the image was the record of
the subject(s) at a specific time and location. In other words, taking a picture could be
metaphorically treated as leaving a mark, ie., a proof of presence at the moment, with the help of
camera as a “mark-making tool”. On the other hand, given that the popularity of AI art and AIaltered photos, the authenticity of the image becomes less credible compared to pre-AI times. AI
art is any form of digital artwork, such as images, text, audio, or video, created with the
assistance of artificial intelligence. (Artificial Intelligence is the simulation of human cognition
39

by machines, particularly computers.) The algorithms (a list of rules laid out in code) used to
generate AI artwork can range from simple ones that use randomness or chaos theory-based
approaches to more complex methods such as neural networks, deep learning, and natural
language processing. The visual marks, created by myself, were published online to allow the 54
general mass to have the opportunity to view my own presence, making myself vulnerable to the
judgement of any visitors who came across the website: were the images deemed to be original
art? Or were they merely the copying of an empty shell? This action shared the same intention
with graffiti artists who created works in the street. These two connecting points laid the
founding bricks for my project concerning selfie pictures and their variations.
4.2.1 The “Lemon”
Action —
The first piece of this series, entitled “lemon”, was made of 18 selfies with the same
composition and could be combined to view as an animation. The original photo was taken on
December 1, 2021 on an iPhone 12 Pro, in which I was holding an oval-shaped lemon to cover
the right half of my face. It was a pun in Chinese regarding the name of the fruit and a curse to
express dissatisfaction of being ignored. My expression echoed with this connotation, with my
eyes looking downwards, narrowed, and my lips stretching to both sides to form a thin line. On
the website Openart.ai, I input descriptive prompts and my original selfie as references to acquire
54. Wall, Shoshanah. “What Is AI Art and How Will It Impact Artists?” The Online Game Design,
VFX & Animation School, March 14, 2023. https://www.cgspectrum.com/blog/what-is-ai-art-how-will-itimpact-artists.
40

drawings of random objects that had interchangeable shape and color. Results with coherency
were selected to form a two seconds’ loop movies. The repetitive motif of my “expression” was
thus transformed into a “mark” of my own, giving an iteration of my facial and mental status at a
particular moment.
Figure 17 - 26: The Design of Selfie Series — the “Lemon”
4.2.2 The “Apple”
Action —
This photo was taken on December 28th, 2022 at a tourist attraction in Las Vegas, Nevada. The
vivid redness of the props in the game house caught my attention and immediately reminded me
of the story of Snow White. In this fairy tale, the heroine, Snow White, bit a delicious-looking
41

apple and got poisoned, because it was a trap set by the evil queen. Apples have long been
symbolizing a combination of lure and danger, partly because of its iconic color. In the biblical
story, Adam and Eve were exiled from Eden because they ate the forbidden fruit, which was of
course the apple. In the picture, fake apple props colored in bright red almost submerged me, the
sight of which conveyed a sense of uncontrollability. Despite this situation I was in, I still tried to
reach out to grab an “apple” from my surrounding, hinting on an unhinged lust. The motion
picture looped in graphics of objects such as tomatoes, cherries and even a rose blossom, all of
which were appealing where daily encounters might occur.
Figure 27 - 30: The Design of Selfie Series — the “Apple”
4.2.3 The “Rose”
Action —
The original photo was taken in summer 2021, when I dressed up as a character in the anime
Black Butler and took a professional photography shot. Pink was commonly viewed as a girly
42

color, although the case was opposite a hundred years ago. Once, pink was regarded as
masculinity because it resembled faded bloodshed fabrics, while blue was in contrast “more
delicate and dainty”. It was named after a plant and used in fashion for its unique eye- 55
catchiness. The color got backlash because of its proximity to that of infantile skins, and
reminder of sexism. Products for females, iconically in pink, had notoriously a higher price
compared with the males’ counterparts. This was also known as the “pink tax”. Although the 56
original photo and my costume was fairly roseate, I experimented with different prompts to
generate creative scenes and went from a pink flowery hat to a flamingo. And even though it was
the AI program who created the pictures, I argued that the input from artist was indispensable
when it came to initializing the proper prompt as well as deciding which was let go and which to
stay in order to develop the theme further.
Figure 31 - 33: The Design of Selfie Series — the “Hat”
55. St. Clair, Kassia, The Secret Lives of Color. New York, Penguin Books, 2017: 115.
56. St. Clair, 117.
43

4.3 The “Footprint” — an Interactive Cyberspace Performance
4.3.1 The Video as an Evidence of Mark-making Actions
The transitional nature of the “act” in action painting renders the artwork, especially when
that is the sole things left behind, more mysterious and intriguing, but readers who are
intellectually engaged in viewing the work might have a desire to crack the procedure and learn
about the artist who created them. A studio work, in this light, has the advantage of a more
controllable environment with reliable recording equipments to document the whole progress.
This means that, along with marks that I am creating, the methodology is also important in that
the entire procedure is turned into an act with a live audience in mind, as if I was putting on a
performance. This setup is helpful and instructive in that it provides myself an opportunity to
visualize my own relationship between gestural language and expressive feelings.
The documenting of the processes was an indispensable composition in Action Painting Art
decades ago. The fact that Yuichi Inoue (avant-garde painter who pioneered action painting and
abstraction in calligraphy during Japan’s post-war years) was photographed in such a tense, 57
confused, and (to judge from the diary) uncomfortable state, suggests that the photograph is an
intrusion into the artist's intimate space that depicts him doing some thing highly personal and
emotionally exhausting. However, it was this image of the half-naked calligrapher stretched in an
acrobatic movement, smeared in black paint and with a strange facial expression, that attracted
57. “Artist - Yuichi Inoue.” SEIZAN GALLERY. https://www.seizan-gallery.com/artist-yuichiinoue#:~:text=YUICHI%20INOUE%20井上有⼀,during%20Japan%27s%20post%2Dwar%20years.
44

the attention of the wider public, more than the works of abstract calligraphy themselves.
Photographs of Pollock making his "drippings" were also at least as famous, if not more so, than
his works. By the same token, Mathieu elaborated that the main message of his art was not 58
expressed in words, but lay in the speed of his paintings, because "by painting quickly, I am able
to capture things that cannot be captured otherwise" (Mathieu and Imai, "Confrontation," 60).
Philosopher Jacques Derrida (1993) points out the essentially blind character of the act of
drawing and mark making. While marks are produced across a surface in the space, mark 59
making is an essentially temporal activity. Marks and lines produce a physical trace of a portion
of time. The activity of mark making is exploratory, on-going, and characterized by 60
unknowability and the difficult-to-grasp. In the opening discussion of his recent book on 61
contemporary sculpture, the sculptor Ian Dawson observes “…that gestures that later might
become iconic are sown from simple intuitive responses, and come from a stance of not
knowing; that artists, irrespective of the scale of their work, endeavor to work from a position of
unfamiliarity, the anti of discovery still the bedrock of the making process.” Like drawing, 62
other forms of contemporary making are marked out by their ambiguous and experimental
58. Bogdanova-Kummer, Eugenia. “Ink Splashes on Camera: Calligraphy, Action Painting, and
Mass Media in Postwar Japan.” Modernism/modernity (Baltimore, Md.) 27, no. 2 (2020): 299–321.
59. Derrida, Jacques. Memoirs of the Blind : the Self-Portrait and Other Ruins. Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1993.
60. Harty, Deborah. "Trailing Temporal Trace." In Drawing Ambiguity: Beside the Lines of
Contemporary Art, edited by Phil Sawdon and Russell Marshall, 51–65. London • New York: I.B.Tauris,
2015. http://dx.doi.org/10.5040/9780755603763.0008: 58.
61. Jones, 14.
62. Dawson, Ian. Making contemporary sculpture. Ramsbury, Wiltshire: Crowood, 2012: 9.
45

character. By utilizing this additional lens, I would be able to connect my action with the marks 63
and understand my process and results on another level.
Action —
The following two sets of photos were taken respectively on Santa Monica Beach and my
studio, and the dates were close enough to genuinely reflect my memory of the incident in
question. During a whole day on the beach, I went through a range of moods, from happiness and
elation — while I was dancing around in the crowd, to tiresome and boredom — when I sat
down, leaned over and hugged myself. In the studio, I endeavored to recreate the different mental
stages using gestural movements, compositions and color palettes. I started with experimenting
with paint, ink and stamp pad to make marks on the two sets of printed photos. Covering my feet
and palms in color, I did a variety of exercises on the paper, including crawling around on my
back, jumping and dancing, banging on the floor and so on. The result was a collage of randomly
generated marks of drips, tracks, and my footprints and handprints. Some of them were more
complete and fully pressed on, while others were more obscure, showing merely a proportion of
a hand or a foot. I also designed distinguishable dressing and rhythm in the two scenes. For
example, in the scene demonstrating negative moods (figure 34), I appeared wearing all black.
Often in a static position, I was looking downwards and moving just my head or arms. By
contrast, in the other film about the happy time (figure 35 and 36), my clothing was changed into
an orange top accompanied with a red skirt. Focusing more on my feet movement, I was making
faster steps and my hands were rising up in the air. This type of movement aimed to achieve the
63. Jones, 15.
46

goal that even though the audience were not seeing my facial expressions clearly, the videos
could convey separating pairs of emotions based on the visual clues and carefully chosen
settings.
Figure 34: A Still From the Dance Performance Video — Blue
Figure 35 - 36: Stills From the Dance Performance Video — Orange
47

4.3.2 Graphic Demonstrations of Dance and Written Explanations
Action —
The intuitive movements based on my mood prompts predictably ended in results of marks
that seemed chaotic and unreadable, but a closer look yielded some interesting findings. First, the
results on the top piece, Blue (figure 37), were made of a group of color such as blue, green and a
dose of blonde. In comparison, the ones on the bottom one, Orange (figure 38), consisted of
orange, magenta, rose, etc. Secondly, larger areas of painting were present in Blue, while Orange
had smaller, denser marks. This was caused by the differentiating rhymes of the body movements
and gestures in each scene. For instance, I intentionally reduced my locomotion to convey a
quieter, sedentary feeling, which corresponded to the photos that I was making my marks on.
Treading only in horizontal or vertical directions, I left a fairly regular pattern of my footprints.
In addition, the repeating movement of my hands swiping across the floor — as captured in the
documentary — also contributed to the formation of a more transparent, coherent shades of bluecolored ink. In the case of its counterpart, I made a lot of more defined impressions of my feet,
particularly their front parts, because I was jumping rigorously and exerting a considerable
amount of pressure each time when my feet touched the paper. This coincided with what
happened in the photos — I was making dance steps on the sand — only this time away from the
crowd and without my shoes on.
48

Figure 37: The Design of Performance Journal — Blue
Figure 38: The Design of Performance Journal — Orange
49

Reflection: Contemplating Being in Mark-Making
Marks are always one of my interest as both a designer and artist learner. In this essay, I
have come from observing and comparing graffiti art in the streets on a global scale, generating
marks in body-mapping’s space as a way of meditation to find the meaning of being, to creating
marks out of body-involved performances that expressed my personal viewpoint and reaction to
the world. The Action sections following every research introduction in each chapter describe the
process of my mark-making explorations. These practices take place not only in controlled
environment such as ready-made paper sheets and digital softwares, but also on found surfaces
such as paperboards and recycled fabrics. This diversified usage of materials emphasizes the
importance of being physically and actively present at the location when performing a making of
marks. In the workshop aiming to disseminate my mark-making discovery among the group of
people who were interested in experiencing and learning the relationship between body and art, I
found the diversified usage of markings that carry meaningful messages in the participants’ eye.
The essay also discussed the concern of mark ownership in an AI (artificial intelligence)
age. In the concept of action paintings, along with most traditional art forms, the act of painting
is the core reason for the the painter and the work to be interdependent on each other; however,
the relationship is less clear given the condition that AI generator is the agency who produces the
actual work. Similarly, adding to other people’s mark and claiming it as of ones’ own used to be
thought of as straight plagiarism, yet copyrights are mingled by online resources nowadays,
because almost anything can be accessible from the Internet. It is realized that someday artists
and designers alike might create a mark that is no longer of their own, and thus the importance of
50

reminding one’s authentic self by practicing mark-making with sincerity becomes increasingly
prominent.
Going forward as a designer, I understand how different types, shapes and colors of marks
affect communication and pay more attention to how design influences the way people feel, think
and behave. Nike, for example, has adopted designs by graffiti artists for its shoes and won
popularity among the young generation. Making spontaneous marks is comforting. It is a way to
confront one’s true inner self, and perhaps to allow oneself some time to contemplate ones being,
when too many of us has forgotten to do so because our time has been occupied by technology
and other simulations from the material world. According to Rosenberg, “what gives the canvas
its meaning is not psychological data but role, the way the artist organizes his emotional and
intellectual energy as if he were in a living situation”. The results of the exercise, which are 64
capable of being transformed into cultural products, have unique personal values and are
marketable. Another advancement of my study was having devised a mechanism that everybody
could relate to and potentially embark on an independent voyage, just like myself who found my
own marks. In that light, every mark is remarkable.
64. Rosenberg, The Tradition of the New, 29.
51

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55

Abstract (if available)

Abstract This thesis examines the conjuncture of art and design through the lens of mark making — the action of making impressions engaging one’s own body, which expresses one’s mental and physical state. Inspired by Heidegger’s existentialism, I define art as an emotional expression of beauty, pleasure and pain, for experiencing one’s authentic self as a being. Conversely, I view design as a strategic way to make innovative imagery, or creative “marks” for communicative purposes. I explore different types of marks created by being(s) that express feelings and emotions at certain moments, so that I can understand the potential power of marks within both art and design terms. For the exploration of a potential approach to creating innovative products highlighting sensations, I examine a range of materials, including stencils and spray paints, camera and digital media, with involvement of body in the performance of mark-making actions. These actions result in records in the forms of videography and journals, but also having been published online for the general mass to interact with. The experience with mark making and the study of marks help me better understand mark making in design as a strategic way of communication.

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Asset Metadata

Creator Li, Xinyao (author)

Core Title Mark making: an exploration of the meaning of marking and self

School Roski School of Art and Design

Degree Master of Fine Arts

Degree Program Design

Degree Conferral Date 2023-12

Publication Date 12/04/2023

Defense Date 10/30/2023

Publisher Los Angeles, California (original), University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag authentic self,mark making,marking,OAI-PMH Harvest

Format theses (aat)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Greiman, April (committee chair), Junker, Eric (committee member), Wojciak, Ewa (committee member)

Creator Email 2539550657@qq.com,lixinyao@usc.edu

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