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.

Project 1- "The Fabric of Society"- Idea Exploration

For my "Journey" project I photographed things that I found interesting on my trip around Bulgaria. When we were given the "Fabric of Society" project, I initially considered using the images pictured above, perhaps contrasting the layout and formation of a city in two differing landscapes/parts of the world. Or even perhaps looking at how this might have been affected by a country's historical or political past as Bulgaria was once part of the Soviet Union whereas the UK was Built on a predominantly capitalist society.

I also went around my local area picking spots of significance to my childhood and also exploring Highgate cemetery, an area which I have never been to despite living in the area my whole life. I thought the cemetery could be useful in providing an understanding to the type of people which built the society we live in today. Although they are no longer around, the people that are remembered in the grave yard have all contributed in someway to the development of the world or "society" we live in.