Research, Investigation, Reflection.

Throughout this project, I believe I have definitely come on a long journey to get to my final outcome, and a successful one at that. Instead of coming up with ideas of something I wish to make beforehand which I would usually do in previous projects, I felt that the first few tutorial sessions and workshops where we began to mix with the other students who I had never previously worked with and to brain storm new ideas helped me to adapt to new approaches and methods of working used by other artistic students. I found the first few weeks challenging, but in a good way as I had never previously done anything like this before such as making a manifesto for my work. I will try to continue to use this approach as I felt it really help me get a theme and feel for my work that meant it had a meaning behind it. Which then led me on the creating a sensational experience.

One main inspiration behind my work throughout a sensational experience was the influence of flotation tanks. I found these particularly interesting having done a lot of research in to them online, and through Joe Rogan podcasts. After finding out they had some in Manchester I straight away went to get a first-hand experience from this so I could use the information throughout my work.

When forming new groups I finally thought that this would be the chance to collaborate with new students that I was extremely looking forward too, but unfortunately with there being too many members in our group we decided to split down leaving just me and Hannah to work together which was unfortunate as we had already done previously and was one of the main reasons why I chose this unit. This was not too much of a problem, as I know me and Hannah always have similar interests and always bring interesting and different techniques which work hand in hand to our collaboration.

After initially wanting to make some sort of hammock like structure, and researching into artists such as Ernesto Neto, an artists who himself try’s to create an experience for a viewer by letting the audience walk in to his pieces and he wants them to be able to feel, smell, touch and experience their own sense of mind through the art work which I found really inspiring through our chosen theme. However, this did not go accordangly to plan as not only cost wise was this not affordable but for health and safety reasons we would have to think on how we could hang the piece, or if we would have enough time/ money to make a supporting structure which I felt was too much of a risk at this point so we were back to the drawing board again.

whilst trying to create a similar personal experience like one gets when meditating, we decided that we were gonig to create a teepee. We first researched into different colours and symbols related to meditation combined with visuals seen in a flotation tank. we wanted the exterior of the teepee to be bright and vibrant to represent the traditional chakra colours, however wanted to play on the idea of meditation and escapism by keeping the inside of the teepee submerged with darkness keeping it a very minimal environment for the viewer. We made the tepee from bamboo and distorted the sticks by wrapping recycled fabrics and wool around, which created an interesting textured surface. The tepee was made from two structures, the inside structure is the foundation; which was going to be covered in a waterproof material, to allow for bad weather. will involve the fabric wrapped bamboo, which will also have a combination of knitted, woven and tied fabrics between them.

However, when we presented this to the fellow members that owned the rooftop space, they did not like our idea therefore had to come back to the drawing board for a third time. Here is where we come up with our final installation piece where we felt like instead of taking too many risks like we had done, instead from advice from mark and kate should work with our strong skills, so therefore I began to use photoshop imagery, and also create some visuals to project to be a part of the installation.


Using many new techniques within our experimentation period such as working with fabrics, and knitting which I do not usually work with meant that I was able to come out of my comfort zone. I was then able to combine this with my stronger skills mentioned above and believe the final outcome was very successful after everything myself and Hannah had been through.

Video Projection

I also created a video projection from the Photoshop manipulations and scanned in acetate prints as we wanted to layer up and do a backwards projection to create layers and textures within our piece. However, I believe this would have worked much better inside a darker room as with it still being light nearing on 9pm you couldn’t see the full effect of the video and the white sheet behind sort of ruined the piece.

         
         Unit X: ROOFTOP PROJECTION - Textures from Nicole Gordon on Vimeo.

Final Rooftop Installation

Bearing in mind myself and Hannah had less that a week to come up with another final piece and most of the equipment we would have like to use such as the laser cutter and projectors were fully booked up until after the deadline. As well as having changed our piece twice previously and spending a lot of money on materials, the overall outcome of our installation I was exceptionally happy with. Considering some groups had up to six members collaborating in the timescale we had, I felt like we had achieved a lot on our own. 

Within this project, even though we didn’t get to work with other students from courses like I would have liked too. I still believe that Hannah and myself worked out of our comfort zone and definitely pushed boundaries within our piece, for example using techniques I had never worked with before such as knitting. which he had never been inducted on so was all done by hand and took a considerably long time compared to the machines in uni. We then combined this with our stronger areas that are Photoshop and projections to create a strong final piece.

We were worried that the acetate wasn’t going to be bright enough, but with the natural sunlight shining through this really picked up the different colours and textures through the images and worked better than expected.
This was the first time I had successfully created a final piece on a large scale as usually we just sample our ideas and processes through mixed media and its more about the exploration and challenging, rather than actually making a final outcome on a large scale. I really enjoyed working with new techniques such as the knitting and would definitely like to continue with this and hopefully get inducted on the knitting and weaving machines next year so I could create some samples on a much larger scale in a quicker time. Still using technologies that I had previously used through all my projects such as light and projection to combine within.

 

Julia Dault

INSPIRATION:     

 

Julia Dault mixed media based installation pieces inspired me to experiment with acetate through out my work. I like the colour and transparency achieved throughout these pieces in particular, and believe that the bright colour tones work well layered on top of each other creating an opaque textured depth of field. I like the layout and compostion of her pieces, and has given me lots of inspiration for future outcomes.  

                 

Preparing Final Piece

 

Due to the extremely windy weather on the rooftop, we were lucky enough able to begin to build our peice in a room inside so that we could attatch the acetate to the bamboo without it blowing away. As most people had already set up there final pieces and we were still yet to make, and to also set up the digital side of things, pressure was really on our hands, but we managed to keep our time management in place and got everything done on time succesfully.

Rooftop Space

 

After going to check out the rooftop space, we were then able to get an idea of how big we wanted to create our final outcome, where it would hand and how we would attach it. We found that the ready built shelter was the most appropriate as we could us the fishing wire and cable ties to attach it, and with it facing the stairs and being so bright and vibrant it would instantly catch the viewers attention as they entered the roof to.

 

Photoshop Manipulation

After scrapping the teepee idea we just started to create several small samples of the knitting in different colours and then scanned them in to play around with on Photoshop. We began to get a colour scheme which was very bright and vibrant still linking in with the chakra colours from our meditation theme.  This is what we wanted as felt this would have been appropriate after checking the rooftop space as it was very natural and green and we wanted our piece to be unique and to stand out to everyone else’s, creating an experience.

After being inspired with transparency and layering, we decided that we wanted to combine our digital prints on acetate, and mix it in with the larger pieces of knitting that we created.