Disruption 3 - Final Piece

We had our final tutorial with John before hand in and we discussed different ways we might present our work. John reminded us that is you don't necessarily need to discount any ideas which made me think that a book would be the best vehicle for my ideas. I thought this for a number of reasons. First of all, if I included all the imagery I'd produced in this project, the book would be a map of my journey through the brief. The book seemed also like a good medium for mapping because of it's nature it suggests a chronological sequence, so it could be a map of my thinking; what I thought at first and what I think now etc. Another reason is that in the images of the psychiatrist's office I made and also in the story I wrote in the very beginning, books are mentioned, and I think it is something you would very much associate with a psychiatrist because of their long training and hard exams. This made me think I wanted the book to look like one of the leather bound ones you would see on a shelf in their practice. Another convenient reason is that I am doing Hilary's bookbinding workshop alongside this project and had just learnt how to made a pretty convincing hardback book.

I already had all of my imagery, I just needed to put them together to make the pages. Usually, I would have found this part hard, but I restricted myself to 2 or 3 images per page and worked zoomed out from the page so I could focus on the overall look of the layout before I concentrated on the detail. I liked this way of working, and will keep it in mind for the future. Here are some of the pages:

After working out the pagination, I printed the pages and sewed them together using a french sewing stitch. I glued on a back covered in a red leathery bookbinding material ant the book was almost ready. I hadn't put anything on the cover, so I decided to make a dust jacket in the same colour as the material. I didn't want any images on the jacket because I wanted it to look as clinical and textbook like on the outside as possible. This I think is quite a nice contrast to the abstract imagery inside.

I received good feedback from the crit session, the only thing that was really mentioned was the dust jacket. I printed it on standard printer paper and it looks a bit tatty and not very exciting, I would maybe re-print this onto glossy paper.

Disruption 2

We all presented our work to John and he noticed that we were thinking too much about the final piece and not experimenting enough. He told us to go away and do a full day of experimentation. So I did. One approach I took was to look at the work of Lucian Freud, the grandson of Sigmund, who I had already featured in my work. His painting is very expressive and I decided to turn the photograph of Sigmund I had into a painting by Lucian. I painted over the top of the page and scanned it in. From there I played around with the image and created a Freud/Warhol portrait.

Another idea I had was to twist some bits of wire into the lyrics. After photographing them and editing them, I came up with these images

I quite liked these images, as a small part of a larger image but I didn't know what I was going to do with them yet. The next idea I had was to take the lyrics and turn each individual word into it's antonym. Sort of like a word association game they would play in a psychiatrist's office.

Isn’t Diane well, Isn’t Dierdre well, Isn’t Donna well Isn’t Dorothy well yesterday,

Mrs Mosque, Debbie's out home

you're brave she is, Mr Birdeath

Delia's attendance solution isn’t under control

The Lancashire country home person hasn’t hesitated to appoint

Delilah to any partial private home chaos

Oh Mrs Mosque, You’re more happy than me to forget of Demi's attendance

And doubtfully, inclusion is any problem!

You’re brave inclusion isn’t also any problem

It isn’t any statement from any partial customers this Diana isn’t legally sane

This girl wants nothing, normal,

This girl wants nothing, impurely normal

This girl wants nothing

Stand up under any table! That doesn’t this kind?

I’m two fruit! I’m sane out of any peanut!

That doesn’t this kind? This girl wants nothing

You have saved my life I, this girl wants nothing

Let go of two digeridoos, I had two solos

Then where you estimate minus three

This, this, this, this, this girl.. girl wants nothing

she is blacker than two pillows

or she only destroys real tongues

Ski slopes are below, charity stops above

Do you once show me any truth about

Indians! G-G-giants, any cowboys or, Fron, Frontier Psychiatrist

You... you feel regularly aware

You are out of the same moon, two moons to zero boys

or cheese! circles, from a dentist, any woman without any silver eye socket

or loosen my breasts, catch pulp under my forehead

You might give your boyfriend you've, any bow, bow, bow ...

From here I put these lyrics next to the original lyrics and made a rawshank's print out of text

Along the idea of word association, I printed out a grid with the lyrics in alphabetical order. I then drew pencil lines between the words I thought had a connection for example eyeball-buttocks (body parts). This didn't look great on its own, but when I scanned the image in upside down on top of it, it created some interesting word pairings and gave new meaning to the lyrics.

Another experiment was me taking pictures of my mouth as I said the words 'Frontier Psychiatrist'. The contact sheet looked quite interesting:

Along these lines I tried an experiment where I danced to the song with my camera in my hand, taking pictures at regular intervals.

I knew these images would look good as some sort of background but I had no idea what my final piece was going to be now.

Sound and Vision: Disruption

This is the 'song mapping' project. The starting points were songs chosen by the tutors, from which I picked 'Frontier Psychiatrist' by the Avalanches. I have to say I was completely confused by the brief at first and it took me a weeks or so to even come up with any ideas. As it was a mapping project, I began first by analysing the data of the song, the beats, instruments, samples and lyrics. I didn't know where I was going with this at all, and whilst waiting to see John about it, I doodled a picture of what I thought a psychiatrist's office would look like. When I showed this to John he explained that this would be a good starting point as a map can be anything you want. This was the map of the scene in my head when listening to the song. The first image I made was a collage of furniture to visualise this more clearly.

Along with this I gathered some more found images and put them together for example:

Here I started to think about the final piece much too soon. I was panicking about the definition of a map and went back to the data of the song. I sorted the lyrics into alphabetical order and counted how many times they appeared. From this I created and index:

I also tried to put the elements I had already together to make a final piece. I used the repetition f the word 'Dexter' here and played on it on the layout

This is where I got stuck. 

Restriction Project - Final Piece

After Clinton's lecture, I decided to strip back the design and lay it out really simply. I used only one image and aligned all the text to the bottom of the right page. The typography is more considered in this piece and although the word shadow is not used specifically, it is the tone of shadows and spooky things that live within them that comes across. I chose the yellow because it adds interest whilst retaining the contrast. Black and yellow is symbolic of hazardous chemicals and poisonous animals so I think it gives the piece a sickly feel. After our hand in and crit, we were asked to write up the feeback we got. Here's what I wrote.

Layout Project Feedback

I found it quite hard to remember what people had said to me during the feedback session on Wednesday. I can’t think of any specific suggestions anyone made. The comments were very nice, with John saying he liked the progression of the images from the beginning to the finished product and Steff said she thought the spacing of the text was good. I find the look of my finished pieces aesthetically pleasing, but I’m not sure they answer the brief brilliantly. They are a bit too simple, therefore not utilising any of my laying out skills - of which I’m seriously lacking! I think I’ve copped out slightly by focusing on the image production and not the final placing of the objects on the page.

A is not for Apple, Z is not for Zebra.

Over the summer holidays, we were given a task to summarise our summer experience within the theme of the alphabet. For me, summer was a bit of a healing process after a traumatic first year at uni. One activity that calmed me down a lot was gardening. I ran with this theme as it also represented growth and change, something I was experiencing. I started by looking for material in the garden to work with and chose to cut the letters of the alphabet into leaves. I tried a few leaves and the strongest and most visually pleasing was an ivy plant.

From there I created a typeface, but it wasn't practical for the purposes of the final layout, so I cut around the letters to make it readable.

After this, I got a bit lost and over complicated my ideas. I thought about taking pictures of 26 objects associated with my summer experience, then taking a letter from each object's text and finally cutting a letter from each object and photographing them.