Melody Yat Wan Chan is a visual artist and mathematics teacher based in London, Macau and Hong Kong.
She is currently studying for an MA in Contemporary Art Practice at the Royal College of Art. Melody works intuitively and iteratively when creating art and often applies scientific methodology to her artistic practice with the rigour of a seasoned mathematician.
By observing human behaviour, asking generative questions and analyzing information, she combines logical and scientific elements to express her spiritual quest and sense of life incisively and vividly. Melody firmly believes that the objective rationality pursued by science and persistence to seek the truth is one of the essentials of humanistic spirit.
Sic Bo (骰寶) - Digital film - 2:17min
Not only did she grow up in Macau and major in mathematics in college, but her parents also worked as casino dealers to raise her. Gambling has a special meaning in her identity.
In this work, she’s trying to explore the psychology of gamblers. Under the casino's expected value, each game we play has a statistical probability against our winning. Therefore, players never win in the long run but many firmly believe that they can devise a system to do so. This makes gambling terribly addicting and these psychological processes often work to increase said addiction.
Sic Bo is an unequal game of chance widely played in Macau’s casinos. Of ancient Chinese origin, it is played with three dices.
The expected value of a discrete random variable, is the sum of each possible outcome in an experiment multiplied by the probability of its outcome. In other words, the expected value is like a random trial, repeated many times under the same chance, and the average result of all those possible states.
Details:
1. Since photography is prohibited in casinos, the background music of the artwork is a recording of its sounds.
2. The artwork shows the expected value hidden in the table games based on those unique odds in Macau.
3. Use of Morse code to imitate the heartbeat of a gambler during the game.
In Morse code:
--. .- -- -... .-.. .. -. --. / - .... . / ... ..- .-. . / .-- .- -.-- / --- ..-. / --. . - - .. -. --. / -. --- - .... .. -. --. / ..-. --- .-.
/ ... --- -- . - .... .. -. --. .-.-.- / - .... . / ... --- -. / --- ..-. / .- ...- .- .-. .. -.-. . / .- -. -.. / - .... . / ..-. .- - .... . .-. / -- - ..-. / -.. . ... .--. .- .. .-. .-.-.-