Gemma Aylward
Year 2 Illustration BA2b: Collaboration Project Summary This collaboration unit has definitely highlighted my strengths at using a digital platform for editing skills across both collaborations and in Interchange. I was also surprised to see that when working in a collaboration, both for illustration and with fine art, I had a motivated and managing approach to the groups. This unit has also been important to my practice and I have begun to think more seriously about the prospects I want to take my illustrative career in. The interchange experience was noteworthy because I discovered new skills unbeknown to me. I had never used AVA before and it’s something I want to develop further as I had only been taught the basics of how to use the software. Being a digital-aware illustrator, I believe I’d be able to adapt to this software and be able to use it in my digital artwork for creating flat, 2-D work. I had tried converting my patterns from the session onto an old sketch and thought it was a very convenient way to save time of designing patterns for character layouts or maybe even inputting textures for backgrounds. Another thing I was pleased about with using this software, was the ability to create a fluidity between each repetition which I thought could only be done by careful planning, but this software made it so easy to perform. I can definitely see this software being a time-saver for myself in future projects. I’ve been finding my drawings recently to be inexpressive and boring to look at. The perspective drawing session has giving me insight as to why my work is this way. Seeing Will Teather’s dynamic paintings and the taught session focusing on horizon lines and fish-eye effects, I found out how to make more interesting drawings by playing with angles and perspectives. I thought it was most intriguing when learning to draw what I may perceive to be straight, as a curve and thought that this improved the impact of my drawing more expressively so simply. It really inspired me to just find something to draw something that appears flat to me and really make it dynamic through the lens of my pencil. I’m hoping to make sure that when I draw in the future, I always take this thought process with me to create more vibrant and exciting images. The fine art collaboration of the unit was probably more intense than the others due to the short time schedule we had available and collaborating with people I didn’t know who had a different discipline of art. The fine artists had a major influence on the concept of our work whilst I feel us illustrators were more concerned with the design aspects. My most valuable contribution to the group I felt was my digital skills with Photoshop and InDesign when it came to designing the publication to print of everyone’s work, as my earlier work wasn’t used for our final display, due to it swaying away from our original concept. Although I enjoyed the group I was a part of, I felt uninspired by our final outcome. I found it fairly flat and static against the wall when compared to the rest of the project space when other groups had 3D elements incorporated. The insight of this project of collaboration with people from a different discipline has taught me that I need to be adaptable with other people’s way of working whilst still contributing my own to gain a balance. The Illustration Festival project offered a variety of methods of working. As a group we were always commenting and sharing research and ideas, but we did have difficulties in having everyone present at every session we planned in the studio, which is to be expected with a project spread across a long period of time. I learnt new 3D skills by using foam board to create a ‘3-D version of our publication’. I thought these worked rather well as a translation from our book to the table, inspired by fellow group-mate Peter and his desire to create models. I don’t think I would had taken this approach which the inspiration from a peer which is the beautiful thing about collaboration. My digital skills became a big contribution to the group again alike in the fine art collaboration. I feel very more confident with my digital skills coming out of this unit now that it’s had continued acceptance from fellow peers. A very important aspect I have learnt from this unit is the direction I want to take my career. It’s the first big step I’ve taken in considering what I want to do after university. Whilst working on both my Pecha Kucha and the proposal itself, I’ve been seriously reflecting what I want to do, who for and why. Looking back at work, I see myself as an illustrator for children which I try to make to be playful and interactive yet I’ve never done the necessary research to do so. This opportunity for my Research Report is just what I need before I finish University. I’ve had a little difficulty searching the right sources, but I’m now feeling confident I’m on the right track to finding out the essential information I need to discover in order to make my work both interactive and beneficial to children in the future. Looking at journals and articles, which I’ve never used appropriately before, is a different method of research for me, but it’s being effective because it has allowed me to discover other sources valuable to me also. Overall this unit has taught me both the benefits of collaborating in a group and also the difficulties co-operating in one. I feel that these are good life lessons though as I believe in the art environment, collaboration is always vital and being aware how to perform in one is likewise. For example, if I took a book illustrating career path, I’d have to collaborate with authors of books, and understand the world they’re trying to create, as well as the publishers who need correct files and formatting for printing. Understanding this concept is so important I believe for when starting my career in the art industry, and I’m glad I’ve had the opportunity to experience this throughout second year, primarily as a focal point this unit.
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For the research report, I have gathered a rough idea of a topic to use for my research report. I had been thinking of ideas since the task of gathering 4 quotes from 2 books that I find would be relevant. At the moment, I want to research into Child Development at an early age and how they learn about the world. I've come to learn that I want my work to be engaging for children and I feel looking and researching around this topic area will be beneficial to my practice in the future. Berger, J. (2008) Ways of Seeing. London: Penguin Classics. "Later still the specific vision of the image-maker was also recognised as part of the record. An image became a record of how X had seen Y." (Berger, 2008) The artist purposely selects the composition of the subject matter and contextualising it in a way to show the audience how they perceive the subject, not what it is explicitly. It’s about what the image-maker wants to display to others so that they can understand how the image-maker personally feels upon the matter. I think this is important because I believe displaying personal relation to the matter explains why I’ve wanted to capture the moment and how I personally feel, expressing and communicating my emotions and thoughts through the image. I feel that this quote explained that perfectly quoting the work as a record. "...the sense of touch was like a restricted, static sense of sight. Every square inch of the surface of this painting, whilst remaining purely visual, appeals to, importunes, the sense of touch." (Berger, 2008) Being able to representing different types of textures that are recognisable is important I find. By looking at the textures, it becomes possible to understand how a person may react to the touch of these and how it can affect them, provoking certain emotions. Giving the impression of a tactile surface creates a mental understanding of how it would feel when touched and the emotions tied with it. Expressing emotions through texture that can only be seen I feel helps the audience understand what’s being represented within the artwork and engages them on an emotional level. I find achieving this a highly successful approach to the artwork if the audience can engage with the artwork itself. Linden, D.J. (2016) Touch: The Science of the Sense that Makes Us Human. United Kingdom: Viking.
"The raw stuff of tactile sensation must be combined with the imprints of our life experiences - starting in the womb and continuing to the present moment, soaking up culture and gender roles and personal history along the way - to ultimately produce our highly nuanced perception of social touch." (Linden, 2016) Certain textures to touch create certain emotional responses but the same touch can be different for different people due to experiences and I think this shows that the touch sensory is a personal matter. I like my work to be able to represent personal emotions, and the way people touch and respond to their senses illustrates their views and opinions on the matter, and perhaps as to why when tied with past life experiences and their connotations. This quote highlighted to me the importance of these experiences and how we relate to them, take a role in our lives and affect our responses of touch. "If our long childhoods are not filled with touch, particularly loving, interpersonal touch, the consequences are dramatic." (Linden, 2016) I related to this quote quite well as I like to target my work towards and be approachable for children, so to understand the importance of touch and the social side to it for children to develop in society is crucial to know. Children are always learning through their senses and more aware of how they’re learning through them. Creating tactile work that’s interactive is important as it’s engaging them through their motives to explore and understand the world around them. My group's city location was the shopping mall; Chapelfield. One of the major points we spoke about together inside chapelfield was it was like it's own sterile city of consumerism. After speaking with the Information helpdesk, we discovered a history behind the shopping mall, about how it use to be a chocolate factory. We all immediately became fascinated by this and planned how to take this further.
It was this that we all decided to go and research into a bit more detail about how the plot of land developed throughout time. We linked that this plot of land had been very consumerist, developing from a chocolate factory, which makes the products, into a shopping centre that then sells these type of products off it's shelves.
Out of all the choices from the Linguistics categories, I became interested in learning about the history of languages and how it evolved as humans developed. I find that when it comes to research, by default I like to look into the history of the subject as I feel comfortable knowing the general understanding why something is the way it is now from how it evolved over time. I feel that this makes me comfortable in learning about the subject theme as it gives me something to subconsciously refer back to when understanding what makes it that. Abley, M. (2005) Spoken here: Travel among threatened languages. United Kingdom: Arrow Books. Crystal, D. (2014) Language death. United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press. Janson, T. (2002) A speak: A short history of languages. United Kingdom: Oxford University Press. The reason why I chose these three books to originally research from were due to because these were the only three books of the 417 category available at the time in the Millennium Library at the The Forum.
Due to prioritising my time to finish the Fine Art Collaborative at that current time because of the shorter deadline, I only managed to read the book above efficiently as it was the one that I think had information that I wanted to know about linguistics. The notes I pointed out above were facts that I found intriguing from the book. I think these are things that people aren't aware about even though it's the development and evolution of something we all use to communicate everyday. Using these to develop further could be something we use as an educational sense for people to learn from our future event.
The mind-map session was a great way of putting my foot into ideas around my own practice and the subject theme. Writing all these key words and thinking about opportunities, as to where I could find the information I need, gave me a good head start to begin finding sources. Children's psychology is a very broad subject and I think this session led me on to start narrowing down to the post-it notes that I was given which evolved around gender and development.
My visit at the Norwich Heritage Centre offered plenty of imagery to help us visualise what the factories used to look like when they were under different management. Owain also found old advertisements and newspaper cuttings at the archive, which provided a visual artistic representation of advertisement in the consumerism around chocolate in those particular years. This blogpost was a valuable resource as it gave an in-depth, historical, overview about this particular factory and the different managements it went under, although it speaks most about Caley's, the original founders. We all found this a great insight about the history of the plot of land being very consumerist and decided to visit the local Bridwell Musuem as we were aware that they had collections about the old chocolate factory. Now that I'm aware of using archives as a research source, they're something that I've become excited to go into when I'm researching about local history and communities. Without knowing of its value beforehand, the possibility of discovering these memorabilia would not have had happen. Using archives is now something I'm going to apply to my practice regularly for research, as I find the jewels I would not think as easily attainable.
As a group we gathered a broad range of research about linguistics. Although I found my category interesting to read about, others felt unimpressed with theirs and preferred the approach to sign language. I think sign language would be easier to take forward as it has a more visual aspect to it rather than words, therefore making it easier to produce visual artwork for the subject. We received some positive feedback about our display of research and some good notes on how we could possibly take it further. A general census was that the sign language proved to be most successful that people were intrigued by, as well other ways of communication that is non-verbal. In response to the brief for the 3D Model Tableau, we agreed to narrow our research to sign language. I still wanted to try and incorporate what I had learnt from my research as a possible route to take and decided to experiment with carving; an old format for writing. As a group deciding how we could display some 3D sign languaging, I remembered this piece above by Marcel Wanders from his Pinned Up exhibition that I visited at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam 2014. Chloe had been experimenting with mod rock in her fine art collaboration, so as a group decided to use sculpted hands for our display.
So far as a group, we're collaborating and bouncing ideas of one and each other well. I feel that we're going to produce some productive and innovative work. Listening from the 3rd years calmed me down knowing how their journey through their research developed greatly from their proposal and it's not all set in stone.
We saw a vast collection about the history of Norwich and its part in trade and consumerism, particularly with Caleys/Mackintosh chocolate factory. Thankfully, the volunteers at the museum were of great help with extra information that weren't on display. One major point we took note on when the volunteer was providing us an in-depth tour mentioned that whenever she used to visit the city, all you could smell in the air was chocolate. This tiny detail made us realise how important this chocolate factory must had been to Norwich's identity, and this was proven with the collection available to view in the Bridewell Museum. The discovery about Alfred Munnings providing a lot of advertisement for Caley's provided more artistic information about how we could go about creating an installation about this chocolate factory. Further investigation to caleys and mackintoshs package designs. I noticed that with consumerist products, that branding the packaging with the name was a vital aspect. We discovered more about the desperate campaign to keep the factory from going in the 90s. This proves more to our point about how this factory was a key part of Norwich's identity in the past 100 years. Due to the failure of this protest, Norwich gained it's new aspect to it's identity, Chapelfield, which created another reasoning for people to visit the city that don't live near big-branded shops. We noted that this plot of land had provided the manufacturing production of consumerism, and is now providing the selling of consumerism today through Chapelfield. Our tour guide also mentioned that one of the reasons why we associate canaries with Norwich is because in the factory they used to have caged canaries to listen to them sing for entertainment. This led me on to notice that the branding of birds had played a role throughout the land's identity as birds are also logos for the brands Nestlé and Intu. I think this could be developed further for creating a visual link between the history of the factory and current shopping centre.
Mod Rock Hand Moulds - Who, What, Why, Where, When, How.
Plasticine Alphabet from Chloe Dennis on Vimeo.
Plasticine Hands - Alphabet Animation
Above are the contributions I made towards preparing for our Model Tableau. The clay carvings represent the historical research I had made for the previous week. Working with the others in the group, we sculpted the hands and created plasticine hands for an animation of the British sign language alphabet. As sculpting our hands took some time, we thought it'd be a good idea to limit ourselves to the Question Words; Who, What, Why, When, Where, and How. We thought this would be most suitable because we can associate them with questions to BSL, and answer them so that we're giving the audience some background information about BSL. With the theme of researching at a library, we believe that by giving information about BSL is also raising awareness about deaf communities today that rely on this method of communication.
We received fair criticism about our display about what our peers liked and found unnecessary. Based on looking at the final display and the feedback, it's clear that our main theme is sign language and the historical references aren't working at all. I'm happy to start developing sign language as the theme with the group because I find it such an important social topic. Sign language builds a bridge between two people who cannot communicate completely through verbals, and communication is key in today's society. When I've experienced language barriers, I find it frustrating and isolating that it's difficult to converse to another person due to lack of understanding each other and I can only imagine how deaf people may feel about this. I think incorporating awareness to learning sign language and the benefits of doing so is the right direction our group should lead because if it means we can help build a bridge over a gap between two people communicating, I'd feel accomplished.
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