Somer Centre Exhibition

Promotion of Exhibition


The Exhibition was a great success. It was held over 2 days including a cheese and wine evening where 200 tickets were sold. Over all around 400 people came.

Martin Allister and myself showed several pieces of our work.

I focused my work to interactive design projects which were made up of a interactive 'Virtual Pond' and an Interactive comic both received alot of interest. I had some interest from a school to use my work with foreign students especially my comic as there are no words and the lady was particularly interested in getting her students to use the interactivity of the project and to get the students to come up with their own narrative in English she said' it would be a good way of them practicing using their imagination and improving their grammar'. She was also interested in showing my touchscreen 'Virtual Pond' again she said it would stimulate conversation and also educate them on pond environments especially to children who can't get out into the countryside to see these things for themselves.



I also had an invitation to show my work at another exhibition. This person also wondered if I would do a short talk explaining my projects this will be held in July.




The main piece of work we showed was the 3d animated film 'Another Atlantis' which was a joint project and we had alot of very positive feed back. It was a perfect length to show in an exhibition as I found 4 mins was about the time people were comfortable to sit and watch something. It was helpful to write how long the film was.


Another Atlantis - Group Project




We decided to have a comments board so we could document some initial reactions and the ones we collected were all very positive. We also took some video of people interacting with our work which will be interesting to study for purposes of usability in the future.

Symposium 22nd February

We had a really informative symposium the guest speakers were John Thackara who talked about his role and case studies involving DOT 07, Sheila Levrant de Brettville who spoke about various projects around the world she had been involved with. Rupert Basset who spoke about sustainability, Karen Blincoe spoke about new methodologies that need to be applied when designing with sustainability in mind and finally Mervyn Kulansky who was a founder partner of Pentagram, he talked about his professional career.

John Thackara

I particularly found this talk interesting as I haven't really thought of social design as a way of graphically communicating before - his talk opened my mind to further possiblities. I have recently started a project on dementia and he spoke about a project he had been working on showing awareness of dementia as being an issue that needs to be communicated more effectively within communities so I had a particular interest in this. Also other areas that interest me are the community projects that DOT 07 are undertaking for the sustainability of the environment within schools so it was a very informative talk.

Sheila Levrant de Brettville - Professor at Yale

It took me a while to understand Sheilas ideas, after having a masterclass with her I couldn't really understand the way she was working with us. After her talk at the symposium I really understood what she was trying to communicate and I thought her work was very interesting, alot of her work is displayed in community areas so has a feel of bringing the community together. Her work is very varied and also international. The way Sheila works is to ask a meaningful question to find what the person is really about, she spoke about transference of skills and getting involved in your community, she talked about sharing projects with other community members as this will give them involvement which would lead to ownership of the project. I realise that I have gained new understanding and inspiration from her master class.

Rupert Basset

Rupert spoke about mapping and sustainability he said that you have to get a balance between all elements that need to be addressed to encourage sustainability these areas are social, financial, personal and environmental. He said about asking the question how the product you are producing effects these four factors to measure its sustainability.


Karen Blincoe

Karen has a passion for sustainablity being applied in every area of our work she says that design for sustainability is a design philosophy and practice in which products and services create environmental balance and social well being. Design for sustainability should have limited or no impact on the environment and is therefore produced from sustainable resources, there should be a consideration and assessment of resource availability. The product should have eco- effective design and promote social, community and human well being. There are also non- material aspects to be considered, The golden triangle which is:-

Wisdom - knowledge
Beauty - non toxic, non harmful
Spirituality - reflection for the soul

There are 4 levels of humanity

Mental
Physical
Spiritual
Emotional

You should aim for balance and finding focus, you should take a holistic view and look at the context.

Mervyn Kurlansky

Mervyns spoke about how he started in the graphic communication industry he gave an interesting slide show of some of his early work and how he has changed some of his philosophy and how he has completed projects for the community and worked for free - giving his time and skills back to his community

Meeting about Exhibition

We have a date now for the set up of oue exhibition. March 15th for set up and 16th and 17th will be the exhibition. I had a meeting with the organiser who wanted to know about insurance and about equipment. She told me that there would be someone sleeping over night for added security, but suggested that one of our team members stayed with our work through each day of the exhibition. She wants to know how many tables we need and power sources etc. I told her I would talk to the uni about insurance and also the other team members and discuss all points raised and get back to her as soon as possible.

Irma Boom Lecture

Irma Boom's lecture was really fasinating - I studied her work for a project I completed in the 2nd year and I was particularly interested to hear her speak in person. Her layouts and use of the page space has really inspired me in earlier projects. Hearing about her ideas behind some of her book designs were really inspirational and I was really disappointed I wasn't able to take part in her masterclass she gave in college. One particular book that I thought was very interesting was a book that read in two ways it was designed for an interior designer who wanted to show both inside and outside areas of her design work so Irma used a soft cover so you could flick through the pages, she printed all the outside areas on one side of her book and if you turned the book the other way up and flicked through you would see all the interiors - very clever!!

London Galleries

Trip to London included a visit to the Design museum - impressive exhibition by Zara Hadid. Her architecture is very organic and she looks at negative space within a building really amazing. We also went to the Tate always love Louis Bourgoius had an exhibition on her work. Also saw the crack - still thinking about that one!! Managed to relax in the Rothko room (one of my all time favourites) :)

Lecture - Paul Minott

The lecture was called Aesthetic of conspiracy - really enjoyed it. Paul brought together lots of images of the assasination of John F Kennedy from hundreds of sources and collated them trying to make sense of the case. Looking through the images it becomes apparent that there are lots of questions unanswered. Paul decided to make a piece of graphic art using the images he had ideas of using physical webs to tie the images together - in the end the final installation was a projection of the images all playing at random times conveying the information which was shown in a very erratic way which gave you the idea that the case was answered in a like wise way.

Progression of 3D project

I seem to have been very busy with my 3D project which is about depicting global warming in a short film. We are using both 3d and 2d imagery. We are creating the 2d artwork using etching to make the images authentic and give them a raw feel of reality. We have planned our story board but need to tighten up on detail. Which includes camera angles specific imagery needed for each frame. Progress is good and its a great project :)

Peer Reviews

The peer review was interesting - not quite sure how useful some of the questions were we had to answer about our work. It was really useful talking to other people working in different disciplines within graphic communication. It was also really useful hearing about how people worked through their projects to come to their final outcomes. Mostly we talked about the 'provoke change' project and what we learnt from doing the project. I think what we got out of it is that we are all very much at the same stage of working. We all felt that we would like peer reviews regularly through the year.

Progression 3D Project

I have started researching Atlantis - I have found a plan of it which we could use that was described by plato. Also I have found some descriptions which are interesting we could incoporate these ideas in a metaphorical way.

I want to spend some time listening to some music tracks - I was thinking about trying to relate the 'Atlantis' idea with the 'new world' music. I like some of the arabic music tracks and also the aboriginal sound which is very different from western music.

3D animation Project

We have started on our next project by having a brainstorming session. We have come up with some ideas which we want to build on.

Working with a music track that is from the New world genre. Hopefully this will mean that people wont relate it to a group or another video that might have been produced already for the track. So we will be researching a suitable piece.

We want to take onboard from the crits of our last project that we should use the skills of others on areas that we aren't expert. So we want to use an existing story or myth for our theme behind our animation. Our first thoughts are Alantis or the phoenix but we are still developing these ideas.

Building on my skills

For my next project I am working with Martin and Allister as we want to produce an animation made using 3D max to a music video. For this project we need to build on our skills so we have been attending a 3D Max workshop. We will continue with these classes and also work on tutorials in our own time.

Progression of Dissertation

I have been working quite hard researching and continuing to write my dissertation. I have completed over 5000 words now and am waiting for Grahams advise to how I can improve what I have written so far - I am looking to complete the main body of the work this weekend and then concentrate on the introduction and conclusion so the final draft is ready to hand in on the 23rd of November.

Crit of Provoke change

Martin and I managed to complete our model of our sculpture and I was happy that it portrayed the concept. We also projected our 3D visualisation work on a screen. So the overall look of our presentation was good. The crit went well we had some constructive advise to how we could improve it - one being to work with an artist who specialises in sculpture to produce our sculpture - but I feel that we only wanted to produce something that would convey our idea not to produce the actual sculpture, but the advise was noted. But overall they liked the concept.

Progress with Provoke change project

After our tutorial we decided to do some experiemental work with mirrors and water and reflection to try and see the effects we could create. While doing this we came up with some new ideas .We thought about making our project smaller scale and having a smaller sculpture. After working with some mirrors and looking at reflections in them we thought of trying to get a kalidescope effect with mirrors tilted at different angles on top of different height pillars so you get reflections at different angles.We decided to make a model to try to recreate this idea. We decided to model the pillars out of clay . Pictures at bottom of blog. We want to create backgroud of some building in bath (probably the Crescent) and we will hopefully show how this will reflect at different angles in the mirrors. It will give an interesting effect, if we place the mirrors close together it will give more of an effect.

Provisional dates for Exhibition

After deciding to organise an exhibition to show some of our work. I had a preliminary meeting to discuss dates and venue and it looks so far that It will be on the 15th - 16th March. It will be held in the Somer centre in Midsomer norton. We will be exhibiting our work along side a local artists who use different media and would be pleased to let us have some space.

Black Swan - Frome

I went to see the exhibition New Generation Graphic Design put on by the 3rd year graphics at The Black Swan. Julia Moszkowicz gave a lecture on 'From Ethics to Asthetics'

She talked about making a bridge between technology and art and the crossover between fine art and graphics, and how the gap between the two are blurred - and she was asking the question of how graphics and fine art is valued. Are they judged as equal?

Artificiality - making graphic more human and seen as natural, making design worthy of attention.

Examples of work



Ben David Zadok - Black Field 2007
This new work Black Field continues to investigate Ben David’s interest in visual trickery and illusion in relation to a fascination with science as a vehicle for progress. A major installation, it completely permeates the left hand side of the gallery allowing the spectator only one vantage point from which to view this spectacular work. Both witty and playful, the piece seduces its audience by creating a deception, easy to unravel but magnificent in its simplicity.


Ian Stevenson - Lost Heros
Gary Hume - American Tan at the White Cube
Lucy McKensie 2000
Luke Best

She was also discussing the idea of 'free will', Representation of self and others, freedom of experience.

She also talked about some ideas of Jacque Ranciere and his ideas on Politics of Aesthetics.

Rhythm of design

The major Regimes of art

Ethical regime
Art is not identified as such but is subsumed under the question 'to ban or not to ban'

Poetic regime
Justification of value, imitation verses truth. Abstract more poetic.

Asethetic regime
Seen as 'art' IT IS ART. Pure instance.

Provoke Change Project

After talking through my ideas within our group Martin had some really good ideas which would enhance my idea of a water scupture in front of the Royal Crescent. We decided to team up and put our ideas together. Martin had the idea of using roman gods to represent different aspects of the city
Apollo - god of prophecy, music and healing and
Minerva - god of wisdom
Athena - the goddess of wisdom. She also was the goddess of handicrafts and strategy.
Juturna - the goodess of springs

We thought we could represent these gods in an abstract way. We are still thinking about this.
We also are considering other areas in the city that could benefit from a 'tourist attraction'. We will be looking at sites where the developement of the water front is happeneing and other sites around bath.

We are also going to be looking at other ways of using water to create a sculpture eg. fountains, water jets.

We want to present our ideas using some visualisations using 3d max .

Group meeting to discuss timetable and progress

Sally, Allister and Martin

For our group projects we decided to draw out a timetable of scheduled work. We also discussed our first ideas about what sort of projects we were going to look at.

We have decided to work on a 3d project which will be mostly a project to help us gain skills using 3d max. We are then going to work on our exhibition project which we felt would probably end up with our own individual outcomes but we want to organise this exhibition as a team. I thought that I would concentrate on an element of experiemental graphic art for this. For our main project of the year I want to create a short film using stop motion animation. I feel we have to really concentrate on producing a really strong script and then take each stage as far as we can. I want to make the most out of the college facilites and use the photographic studio etc. for our work. I am very excited about these projects and feel if we can keep to our schedule of work we will set ourselves we would have started off on the right foot. For next weeks meeting we have decided to write all the goals and deadlines we want to achieve over the year.

Sallys Blog

Bath Spa University
3rd Year Graphic Communication


Project 1. Provoke Change

Lecture 'Small Town' Thinking about how we could provoke a change in our own city.

Initial Ideas

Interactive shopping assistant. Cut down the amount of time you need to walk around looking for the product you need. Go straight to the 'Eshopper' and use a touch screen to locate the item and the price so you can go straight to the place to buy that product, no danger of not being in stock or not being able to find it.

Second Idea

Looking at the city visually. We talked about in our lecture 'Small Town' about how Bath was stuck in its way and has little modern architecture and infact has little scope to change. All the new developements will be built in the same style of Georgian architecture. My idea is to reference the 'Mirror' in Bordeaux France and to bring this idea into Bath. One of the most iconic buildings in Bath is the Royal Crescent. This particular area is a hot spot for tourists and I would like to enhance the appeal of the crescent by creating a mirror illusion infront of the crescent. This particularly fits here as in the design of the crescent has a 'Ha Ha' which is a wall infront of the buildings which allows for a drop in levels which seperated an area of land where they could keep animals but as it was on a different level the animals couldn't escape and it kept them seperate. When looking out from the crescent this level change created an optical illusion that the land was infact on the same level. So I thought you could use this historical reference and still have this illusion of a level area of water which would reflect the crescent. So instead of trying to change the architecture we are celebrating it by duplicating it.
I thought we could expand this in graphical terms by creating some visuals of what it would look like using 3d graphics.

Lecture - Richard Higgs - Big Squid Bristol

Very inspirational - really enjoyed our day with Richard, his work was really interesting. I loved the workshop we did together. We worked on brainstorming in teams. This really demonstrated how beneficial it is to work as a team. It was great to feel so enthused and we really did come up with some ideas that in the future we could turn into projects.

1. Promotion of smoking - great project just an hour was spent on this but we had alot of fun coming up with some really good ideas.

2. Taking a law that was inforced and finding a way of selling that idea to make it lawful.
We chose a law which said topless women were banned from Liverpool unless they were Tropical fish Clerks - umm Weird!!! but true.

We brainstormed this and came up with some great ideas - the one we went with was a 30 second film showing a football match and watching the spectators enjoying the game. The camera panned around to show men and women alike some men were taking their shirts off in celebration and waving them in the air. The next shot is of an area where there is a women who copies likewise and while celebrating picks up a child she had been rocking next to her in a pram and starts to breastfeed. This was an idea of why would a women want to be topless anyway? so we thought of the only reason would be to breastfeed. So we used this idea in a masculine environment. We were going to finish the film by showing a logo which was the male sign and female sign with dots in the middle looking like breasts and underneath have written breastfeedingcampaign.com so people would understand the connection.

We found this a really useful lecture - one that will stay with me and inspire me.


Ideas for self initiated projects

Work in team groups as much as possible

Create own self initiated projects

1. 3D animated piece

2. Short film - work on a script and visuals

3. Organise an exhibition locally on graphic art/communication

4. Organise a trip into Bristol to see exhibitions

5. Redesign my website

6. Keep this blog/diary of my thoughts and progress

7. Form own study groups to work on skills and to support each other.