Feedback from the food experiments

On friday we had a crit of our two week project about dispersal, DNA and molecular. The session was helpful because we were given the task of grading each others work (if it was a fail, pass, merit or distinction). I found that I was being too generous with my scoring because I wasn't taking in to account that when our work is marked properly we wont be there to tell the examiner what we did,  what we researched etc.....so instead of concentrating on the evidence in front of me I asked the person a lot of questions which influenced my grading.

My work was picked as an example of a project that was a high merit level (which turned out to be a much higher grade than I expected). The feedback I got was that my sketch book included a lot of evaluative writing when looking at other artists work. They said that I had written down my own thoughts and opinions instead of just explaining the work of others which is a good thing as it shows my thinking and "you get an idea of alex" in the project- I interpreted this as I gave the project character and originality.

The only thing missing from my notes and research was critical evaluation of my work which for the final major project I will need to record in a log book.
Overall I think they liked my outcome because of my presentation and the theatricality of it. I presented it as if i were in a lab, myself wearing a lab coat and with my test tube experiments laid out in a line and labelled according to what was inside them. I think that the approach I gave this project was successful as I wasn't thinking of it as an art project but more of a science project. In the future I will definitely tackle more of my work like this because I think it is a way to be individual  and creative which t me is probably the most important thing when making work because in the real world the people that get noticed are the people that stand out and do things in a different way.  

 

Evaluation of final design for my food experiments

I am finding it very hard to consolidate my ideas into final designs for jewellery. One of the things i have tried doing is manipulating photos on photoshop and placing different compositions and cut outs of the shape of the test tubes on to a picture of a friend. I am struggling because I have never used photoshop before. But I did come up with an interesting composition where I just took the outline of the test tubes instead of their content and placed it over the figure in my photo.

   It may not be very useful but i think the idea of placing different shapes and forms over a figure is kind of an alternative to drawing that I may find useful for further development stages in future projects. The image does inspire me and makes me think of slightly disturbing/ violent subjects such as the film "the man in the iron mask", being i jail, mental patients...and so on. I don't see how this directly relates to my project other than the fact that the imagery of test tubes and medicine does convey something about being ill, or treating something-maybe used for patients.

I think I could extend this project much further if I had more time. I think the reason for my lack of final ideas is because I didn't manage my time very well and I didn't have a clear action plan. These are things I will need to consider when doing my final major project in a few days. Like I have said previously when evaluating this project, a positive point is that I have experimented a lot with alternative materials which I have not done as much in other projects. In my portfolio I am hoping that this project will add another aspect the the overall view of my work showing that I have the will to be experimental , not worry about final outcomes and embrace the fact that something might not always work.

Evaluating food experiments

For this project I was inspired by the Labs at Whitechapel. I took lots of photos of the test tubes, and containers holding different liquids in the labs. I managed to get hold of some test tubes to use in my project as I wanted to treat the project like a science experiment rather than  design brief. I thought this would give my project an original feel and my research would be much more interesting. This is one of the reasons I used food as a material. 

With my test tubes I have started exploring the possibilities of different substances being contained/ let loose or contaminated. Inside some of the tubes I have placed things such as my grapes, saltanas and sugar from my previous experiments. Then I stared covering them with things like porridge, caramelised sugar, and latex to make it look as though they were contaminated. I think that my test tubes look very exciting when presented in a line next to each other. The colours blend in together and there is a sense of bacteria and growth. 

 I am now looking at how I can relate this experimentation back to my original experiments and I thought of the idea of freezing transformations. For example putting a mouldy grape in to caramelised sugar or latex which would freeze bacteria growth so the mouldy grape would remain at a certain point in its transformations. I think it links nicely to my research of timed experiments in my sketch book. I also thought about creating layers of different foods such as sugar, gelatine, porridge and then coating the whole thing in latex so that it remains contained. 

I am finding it hard to work with some of the materials for example quite often when I melt the sugar its so hot that it melts the other materials such as latex or gelatine. So i am in the process of  making more samples. I have put some grapes on cocktail sticks and also some pieces of gelatine and dipped them separately into different substances such as porridge, sugar and latex to see what works and what doesn't.

I am also worried that I will run out of time to finish the project and will end up with lots of samples and not really a clear idea of a final jewellery product. On the other hand I think I have explored the materials thoroughly. I think the lesson for the future will be don't be too ambitious with what I want to achieve in such a short space of just two weeks.     

   

 

  

Food experiments

For my most recent project I have started experimenting with food because I wanted to explore different materials. So far I have focused on looking at how food can transform through chemical reactions.

Some of the experiments I have done included a grape and 3 saltanas in bleach and another in vinegar. I have also tried putting an egg in vinegar. These experiments have all been the long term transformations because the food goes through the process of going off which takes longer then my other short term experiments. These included mixing washing powder with vinegar which you can imagine is a very fizzy and quick transformation. Another was diet coke and soya milk which causes the two liquids to separate giving 3 layers of substances each with a different weight.  I have documented all these experiments in a sketch book.

Evaluation of Southwark Sound Sculptures

For the last 3 weeks we have been working on a site specific project for Southwark. The project aim for me as a product student was to create something exciting that improves peoples experience whilst in Southwark.

My outcome was a series of experimental models, the shape and materials used to make them informed by the look and feel of Southwark. In articular I was studying the shape of the arches and was very interested in what they had been used for. Many had been converted into Office buildings and as I walked around the site I discovered that the majority of people around Southwark did work in an office. I found that Southwark was lacking in personality it was just full of passers by and office workers. There was no fun or interesting things that made its character (except maybe the Gerwood space).

My sound sculptures were designed to be placed out side one of the many offices in Southwark in the smoking area outside. This picture I took sparked off the original idea. I thought it was funny how three people are completely separate, not socialising. I thought it would be a good opportunity for me to make this daily activity a lot more fun and surprising. The sounds emitted from the sculptures would be activated by the smoke from cigarettes.  

What I came up with was questionable as a product, because it wasn't something that would help people or that they could use. However it was activated by humans and it did answer the brief in terms of making Southwark a more exciting place. On the other hand I don't think that it quite worked because I hadn't fully thought through the sound that would be coming out of the sculptures. I researched the sounds existing around Southwark and recorded them. I planned to use some of these sounds and amplify them to create surprise however I don't think would have worked as well as if I'd taken a  sound from a different context and placed it in Southwark. I was battling with the idea of creating surprise or using sound to amplify the personality of southwark with sounds already heard there. Also by using a sound from another context I didn't want it to become to cliche by using for instance the sounds of the Caribbean or seagulls.

I did come up with a solution tot his problem by looking at text that appeared around Southwark. I though they would be good to use because they already created surprise when you walked around and sae them written, so to hear them would be even more peculiar. I thought they acted as little pieces of information about the personality of Southwark and therefore if I used them it would amplify the 'voice ' of Southwark. If i had used the text in my sculptures they would have been surprising coming from a sculpture that you hardly noticed was there. One of the things I considered whilst creating my sculptures is that the sound would be more affective if my actual sculptures blended in to the environment and were hidden.

Overall I think what did work in my project was my exploration of materials and shapes to capture a sense of the site. I think they blended in well with the smoking area yet were interesting to look at texturally. I think my design would be a nice starting point to brighten up Southwark in a original way. Although when considering the sound aspect I think I would need to do more research into how people use sound and in what contexts. If i did the project again I think I would think more about why I was using sound?, How do I create surprise- with the appearance or sound?, How it would affect people or change their views about Southwark?
 

Fury animals

right, I just thought i'd put these up because i think these creatures are amazing. Apparently they are called highland cattle but i think they look more like something out of where the wild things are....literally i think thats where the people got the inspiration from for the book!
I was just strolling along in Wandlebury, cambridge and i saw them.

The POPUPS CHRISTMAS PROJECT

W eave started a new project in 3D which I'm very happy about as i didn't really enjoy the last one: 10x10x10

I think i approached the project in to much f a fine art way and sort of got trapped in the concept rather than focusing on the making part of it. So to make a fresh start i will try and not do that in this project. So far I have started looking an old lamp shade I found. It can be manipulated and squashed in many ways and i think it responds to the product design brief of looking 'expand and compress'. I found making models in todays session really helpful and decided that I would explore the possibility of sound in my work as I was looking at below shapes and air bag type structures. 

Here are a couple of videos I recorded just to kind of explore what sounds materials make and how they move......sorry about the inappropriate laughter at the end....