FMP: Last 2 weeks, problems setting in.

It is now down to the last two weeks of the project and I have got a lot of work to do not only for the hand in date on the 1st of April but also for the exhibition on the 17th of April. To help me tackle both of these deadlines I have decided to make my final piece for the hand in date about how I display or present my objects which will also make it easier to decide what my work will look like in the exhibition. I have started looking at various methods of display such as cabinets or shelves. I asked the library if they had any going spare or any that I could rent out for the show but they are being used for another subject so this was a dead end. To overcome this problem I visited the scrap yard near my halls which although I didn't buy anything from because of the large price of some of the antiques, it instead gave me loads more inspiration as to how I could display things. Here are some pictures I took of things I found:

These glass bells were particularly appealing to me because they reflected a medical way of displaying things e.g. the darwin museum/ the welcome trust which I have visited in the last few months. The only thing is that because they are behind glass you don't see the texture of my objects and the reflection of the glass distracts away from the aesthetics of them. Also it restricts interactions people have with them. However It is a good way of formalising my objects and making them look more valuable than they actually are- relating back to the results I got from my questionnaires. When asking people to forget that their valuable object had any value or use to them and what would they now do with it, all of them said that they would display them in some way or frame them giving them the status of a piece of art work. This is why making my objects non interactive might be a positive way of resolving my project because it might make people question why they are framed of displayed in this way- would people value the objects behind glass or much prefer to be able to touch them. Maybe the fact that they are behind glass would make the will to be able to interact with my objects stronger.  

With this cupboard I thought I could add shelves to it and stack my objects around it and people could then walk inside and be surrounded by my objects. I think storing them as a collection you get the full effect of how many objects I have made. I could make it an interactive thing so that people could lift my objects out and then rearrange things. However the cupboard cost £100 pounds and was over my budget so it was another dead end.

After visiting the scarp yard I started using the workshops again and creating moulds of various objects I had made out of alginate, vacuum forming and clay. This is what I came up with:

My first attempts at making moulds of my objects didn't quite work out. Alginate is a very tricky materials to use because it sets very quickly if you don't get the ratio of powder to water right, so these experiments turned out a bit lumpy and didn't look that tidy. The fact that the colour is so candy like also does not appeal to me, in the shop they only sell this colour so this is another reason why perhaps it's not the best material to use. Also this particular piece is only half of the object because I didn't have enough alginate left to do the whole thing, so if I were to use this technique again I would have to buy a lot of it and this would be very expensive. All in all this material would be too expensive, complicated, and unattractive to use in the presentation of objects. 

The second experiment I did was using the vacuum former to act as holders for my objects. I think the result is very pleasing and is an effective alternative to glass to frame my objects behind. The only thing that I'm not sure I like about the appearance of the plastic is that the machine puts a pattern on to the rest of the plastic. I think it makes the plastic look to much like actual packaging used by Argos or a company for mass production. On  the other hand this is quite a nice contrast to whats inside e.g. the packaging reflects a generic mass produced system whereas whats inside is one off and unique. The way of overcoming this would be to remake my clay models and then attach them to a smooth board so that the pattern did not come out on to the plastic. The problem with this is do I have enough time to make 9 of them- the time consuming bit being the making of the clay models. One thing I was going to experiment with further is framing the plastic with wood- like a photo frame which would make the edging look nicer. I would then be able to hang them up like photo frames.

Here an example of one I made in the wood workshop:

 I think the frame makes the plastic edges look more professional and less cheap but I also think it dominates most of the piece, you can't concentrate on whats inside. I might solve this if I painted the frame white so it blended in more or if I cut it thinner so it wasn't so bulky. Either way I don't think I will carry on with this method as it took a very long time and although it might look good to have all my objects in frames lined up suspended in the air I don't think I'd have time to make the frames as well as all the vacuum forms and clay moulds. 

This was my most recent experiment which involved using foam board to cut out the shape of the objects so that it slotted inside the board. I tried to disguise the outer edges of the board with white cotton so that you could not see the foam layers- overall trying to make it look neater but I'm still not quite sure I achieved this. I also tried lining it with white electrical tape with this was too shiny and contrasted too much with the matte foam board. I wanted to create a book with my objects slotted in to the pages and instead of using an existing book to do this I would make my own using thick foam board pages attaching the whole thing together with two big metal rings. The only problem is that as people turned the pages the objects would fall out. Also each page would be extremely bulky and maybe not that appealing. Although this would be a nice way for people to interact with my final piece I think that displaying them so that they can immediately be seen as a collection would create a bigger impact.