D+P Exhibition Brief

Proposal

For this project I am in charge of producing the labels for each piece of artwork. I aim to use my English skills to help others in the group formulate a concise and coherent written blurb to enable viewers to easily browse the work on display. By doing this I hope to improve my skills in InDesign as I am not confident using this application. When my job is in its less demanding phases I will do what I can to contribute to the organisation of the show, such as providing work for the show reel and helping the curators organise work. 

Responsibilities

For the collective exhibition I was in charge of producing the labels and blurbs for each piece of artwork. I worked with Jason who helped me produce a template for the labels on InDesign which was good as I was able to learn more about this software and practice using it. The proof reading was harder than I thought as some people’s blurbs needed quite a lot of correcting and it was difficult doing this without the piece of work in front of me as I didn’t know if my corrections would make sense next to the actual artwork. It definitely makes you realise how much changing the sentence structure and not necessarily the words really alters what a sentence is saying. Some people also gave me more than a concise paragraph so it was difficult to correct it and stick to the word limit as I didn't know which parts were the most important to include.

I collated all of the blurbs and titles I got sent sent in Word first and read through and corrected them in here. I then copied and pasted them into the InDesign template.

As I was working with indesign quite closely I learnt how to do a few things that I didn't know before like making paragraph and font presets, how to get the text to stop automatically hyphenating at the end of the line and how to add guides to a document. I also probably learnt other uses of InDesign without realising it but these are just some of them that stood out to me. These might seem like small and simple skills but they make all the difference when producing documents and will probably come in useful later on.

Physical works for the show

These were two prints I produced in the print making workshop and were the only pieces I chose to display physically in the exhibition. I displayed them this way as I thought that the trueness of the colours and the texures could only be properly appriciated by putting them in front of the viewers in their material form.

Works for show reel

For the show reel I submitted the final pieces for both the FOS project and the SOC project and displayed them this way for obvious reasons. I was proud of how much I learned in terms of animating using Photoshop and wanted to showcase this achievement. 

T, D+P "Sounds of the city"- making the final piece

To be honest at first I didn't really get how we would collate all the material we got into creating a final outcome. I was bit confused as to how it was going to look and how we would split up the different roles between us. One member of the group decided to animate the person walking and the other two (me included) set out to produce the background imagery for the moving image. I was a bit stressed out at the beginning of the week as I wasn't totally sure on what I was meant to be doing. We probably should have organised the jobs a bit better, making everyone clear on what they were supposed to be doing to progress the project. However as the days went on and I looked through the footage, the ideas started to develop and I felt we began to work much better as a group.

We split the film up into three sections: the person walking through the city, then a more suburban environment, into the park. I was in charge of producing the backgrounds for the more nature filled environments and began by painting a woodland image.

I put this together with one of the video footages we took and experimented with how I might animate this still image, syncing the movement with the sounds in the video. This was the end result:

I also wanted to work with drawing on top of a video layer and thought of making a leaf look like it was growing over my previous video of the leaves rustling in the wind.

I was quite please with the outcome of this as I thought the gradual growing of the leaves and the boiling affect that I made them have seemed to match the sirens in the background.

T, D+P "Sounds of the city"- finalising the sub-topic

During the first days of the second week other members of the group started to come up with other ideas, making us question our original one. One of these consisted of visually communicating the sounds of the city from the point of view of a homeless person living on the streets of London. After thinking about this throughout the day and talking to various tutors about it, we decided it would not be the best solution to this project. The subject matter didn't really fit the brief that well and in order for us not to become stereotypical about homelessness we would have to had to put a lot of research into the topic, research which the time constraints of this project wouldn't allow us to gather.

We therefore decided to go with the original idea that we discussed in the first week.

Project proposal

The city can be a hectic and stressful place. Therefore, given the topic “Sounds of the City” one might immediately think of busy roads, concrete buildings and huge swarms of people trying to get to their destination. However for our project we wanted to focus on the rare and hidden areas within London where one might go to escape the chaos of city life. Through moving image we aim to contrast the “sounds of the city” that might cause people to feel a curtain level of anxiety with images of nature, encouraging people to find those areas within the city that provoke a sense of calm.

In order to explore the two different environments as a group we decided to meet on location at oxford circus and then walk through to Hyde Park. This allowed us to gather visual research of the hustle and bustle of city life and of the more relaxed and tranquil environment within a park. Some of the results can be seen below.

This was useful as it gave us time to experiment with various methods of filming the information we wanted to gather whilst discussing and developing our ideas for the project further. However it quickly became apparent to me that as individuals within the group, we all had different perceptions of the subject and how we might communicate it. For example some of us wanted to use mostly film and others wanted to incorporate lots of animation into the final piece. After discussing and talking through our different ideas for the final presentation of the piece we eventually understood each other better.

As well as filming in our group I also took some photographs of my own interpretation of the topic.

I really liked how the early afternoon light at the time made the photographs look. The affect it had on the colours and the contrast within the photographs added an increased sense of tranquility to the already calming atmosphere within the park, enhancing the idea of going to such a place to escape the stress of an external city life.

T, D+P Project 2- "Sounds of the city"

For the first week of this project we organised our group and shared a few ideas for possible project proposals. On the Thursday we did a "Visualising sound" workshop where we listened to different sounds, some instrumental and others more generic that we would perhaps hear in our everyday lives. I found this exercise very interesting as different people interpreted the sound differently and you could really start to see everybody's individual style. Some people's visualisation seemed to be more abstract, using just shapes and colour to portray the emotions they felt when listening to the sounds, whereas others produced more literal imagery related to how the sounds are produced.

One of our ideas consisted of basing the location of our project around a park or natural environment within a city. For some people this environment within a contrasting city environment might act as a calming or relaxing place where they can escape the stress of their fast paced city life. We wanted to focus on the fact that when you are in these natural environments even though you are surrounded by the sounds of the city from outside, the imagery in front of you distracts you from the chaos going on outside.

In response to this idea I went to my local park and took several pictures and videos, to collect possible material or inspiration for the final outcome. I started to film different things people might do or see whilst walking though the park/woods such as walking through the leaves, walking their dog or just appreciating the environment around them. Some of my experiments/visual research through film and photography can be seen bellow.

Dog walking.

Walking through leaves.

The surrounding landscape seen through the reflections in muddy puddles.

Some of these experiments weren't as successful as I had hoped however some were, most notably the last video. I thought it might be interesting to film the leaves rustling in the wind and just by chance some kind of emergency service vehicle drove past outside merging the very peaceful imagery of nature with the piercing and stressful effect of hearing a siren. This was one of the combinations I was thinking that we could create whilst editing the video and sound footage we would eventually collect. Therefore I was very pleased that I was able to capture this and illustrate my interpretation of this topic to the rest of my group.

T, D+P Review

At the start of the project I explored various possible sub topics. I went to Highgate cemetery to take some photos, originally thinking about exploring how the people that are buried there have shaped the society we live in today. However during my first tutorial it was brought to my attention that the images showed a cemetery that was becoming overgrown, leading to the destruction of many of the gravestones. I therefore decided to focus on how nature might take over human environments and visa versa or how we might be able to live in a world where humans and nature can coexist. My initial ideas included visually representing this by layering both photographic and illustrative images on Photoshop. After being introduced to print mak- ing, I realised I could do this through screen printing, experimenting with merging an image

of a brick wall with tree branches. I also aimed to recreate one of my images from Highgate cemetery using both the lino and intaglio printing methods but after complications, I ended up putting the separate prints together on Photoshop. For my last workshop I did Animation which I found to be very useful in representing my ideas. I used Photoshop to create an animation of a city gradually building on a leaf. Moving image helped me to visually communicate how the development of an urban environment over time might destroy the surrounding landscape. Although it was quite a simple animation, this method was very new to me and I was proud of the outcome.

As the final animation took a considerable amount of time and effort I would consider this to be my final outcome. However as I discussed with one of the tutors in my tutorial it doesn't completely fulfil the aim of the project and adhere to the given concept. Although it obviously considers with natural and human elements in our society, it doesn't show the impact of this increased human activity on the nature. This is true for the project as a whole as I should have probably focused more clearly on a definite message that I wanted to communicate, rather than experimenting with different imagery that ultimately portrayed different messages throughout the whole project. For the next project I will aim to come up with a more definite direction earlier on in my development, making the message of the final piece set to a specific concept.

T, D+P Animation workshop

In the first week we experimented with stop motion to create an animation. To get used to the technique I did a simple animation of a line gradually becoming wave and growing.

We also experimented with producing a stop motion animation using cut outs from a magazine. We didn't have a set narrative which probably wasn't the right way to do it but we gathered cuttings of man made and natural imagery and words to continue the idea looking at these two emollients in relation to each other.

In the second week we experimented with using photoshop to create an animation. I have used photoshop before but never to create animation. I have seen people do it before but never thought I would be able to because it looked so hard. But using the basic photoshop principles of layers it wasn't too hard to get the hang of.

After doing the experiment of painting the image of a city on leaves I thought it might be nice to use this same concept for my animation. I think this particular animation technique worked well to show the gradual accumulation of skyscrapers and by drawing another bit of the image frame by frame I could show the literal building of the structures.

T, D+P Further idea development

Creating negative space using spray paint and a leaf as a stencil.

Merging the spray paint imagery with London's skyline. I like how the spray paint has created an interesting texture when blended with the image of the city.

Research

(artist unknown)

Merging man made imagery of a city with the natural form of a leaf.

I have arranged multiple leaves to resemble skyscrapers and painted on a city scene using acrylics.

T, D+P Idea development and multi media experimentation

Mark making experimentation using watercolours to create natural forms.

Graphite and watercolour illustration looking at how I might present nature as the more powerful force, taking over human ways of life. A tree growing into the water bottle, implying the damage that humans are inflicting on the natural landscape.

Blending an illustration of a human face with the image of contour lines from a map to further explore the idea of human and nature coexisting. 

Watercolour experiment merging the image of a closed eye with a natural landscape where the veins in the closed eye lid form the outline of the mountains. 

T, D+P Print making

Silk screen printing

For the second technologies workshop I did print making. Having very little previous experience in this area, most of these processes were very new to me. Because I am interested in textile and surface design I thought it would be useful to learn how to do silkscreen printing. I found the process very interesting and it was a lot easier than I thought. However , like with many of the other techniques it was very time consuming.

Lino printing

Dry point/ intaglio printing/ etching

In the second week I decided to do relief printing and ethching, I was origionally going to combine the two techniques but I printed in the wrong order so I couldn’t. I quite liked them as individual prints, however I layered them in photoshop to see what they would look like together and to try and recreate the original photo.

T, D+P Research

Nuncio Paci

Nuncio Paci's illustrations and mixed media artworks focus on nature as the more powerful entity growing into and physically becoming apart of the human body. This compliments the idea of the roots growing into the bodies buried in Highgate cemetery, perhaps hinting at the idea of creating an environment where humans and nature could coexist. 

In every piece of artwork showing the person's face, each expression seems to be different, some seem to be welcoming of the natural forms growing on or inside them whereas others seem more reluctant to this process.

This suggests that people might react differently to an environment when humans and nature are treated equally.

I particularly liked how well Paci has been able to blend the branches and other natural forms in with the human body, strategically choosing structures that are quite similar to perhaps suggest that humans should treat their environments better as we depend them to survive.

I also liked how he has been able to illustrate a similar message through a mixed media approach. Here he has illustrated on top of XRays drawing attention to the fact that although we may not always be able to see it, we rely on our natural environments to keep us alive and therefore we should make better efforts to maintain it.

"Fabric of Society" - Identifying a sub topic

After having my first tutorial this week I have decided to explore the relationship between humans and nature as elements of our society. In my graphical applications workshop I experimented with layering images of made made structures such as bricks with natural forms like flowers and trees.

This experimentation helped me to realise that a lot of my photographs from highgate cemetery showed the natural taking over a very man made landscape of rows upon rows of graves stones. This is probably because the cemetery is very old and as a result much of it has become overgrown.

I found it interesting how there seemed to be so much life in a place that is usually associated with death.

In the part of the cemetery pictured above the land has become so overgrown the graves look as though they have been transformed into other living forms.

All this vegetation could evoke the image of roots growing deep underground into the people that are buried there. These human bodies therefore become apart of the landscape.

In this case nature seems to be an almost "evil force" destroying a human place of remembrance. However this could be seen as nature fighting back against all the damage to it that humans have caused around the world.

The idea of nature taking over human landscapes got me thinking about an image I had seen of Gougi Island, an old abandoned fishing village on China's Yangtze River. 

I then started to look at other examples from around the world where this has happened and surprisingly came across quite a few.

Kolmanskop- A Diamond mining town in Nambia (Desert) abandoned after resources were exhausted in 1954. The homes that were left are now filled high with sand.

This is an abandoned train station in Abkhazia Georgia, deserted during the Abkhazia war that went on between 1992 and 1993. The surrounding vegetation has since taken over and grown into the architecture.

This bike was left beside a tree for so long that as it grew it became part of it.

"The Fabric of Society"- Graphical applications (workshop 1)

In this workshop we were looking at how the deliberate placing of rectangles and squares on a page could help to depict what the "The Fabric of Society" of society means to us. During the first session I still wasn't sure of what aspect of this topic I wanted to focus on. I decided to look at how the monotony of city life might contrast to the more relaxed way of life one might experience in the countryside and how this might affect the people living in these environments.

We were then encouraged to use our layouts as "cameras" filling the negative spaces within the rectangles with different background of patterns. Above you can see some of my resulting outcomes.

I then moved on to experimenting with layering some of my sketches and photographs in photoshop, looking at how I might depict how humans might impact the environments in which they live. Some of the images above combine both man made and natural forms, focusing on how humans might destroy natural landscapes as they inhabit certain areas.