Semester 2, Assignment 3; Design Safari

For our third assignment, we had to go out as a group and study our fellow human beings in an environment such as a coffee shop, shopping centre, bus/train station etc. Here are our findings, copied exactly as I wrote them down.

4th March, 11.05 am, opposite Thomsons, top floor of the Overgate.

20 year old guy, wearing a suit, possibly getting interviewed. 25 - 26 year old female, grey jacket. Interviewing/ survey for Evening Telegraph. If you won the lottery would you spend it all at once? Took names and photographs. Use top floor as thoroughfare - few passers by actually go into the surrounding shops. High ration of singular elderly men. Lots of couples either husband and wife, boyfriend and girlfiend, mother and daughter etc. Odd workman. 2 policemen carrying paper cups in a Morrison's bag. UPS guy carrying an Orange bag. Chinese mother and son waiting for something/one? Sat behind us. Many a buggy/push chair. Mixtures of races but predominantly white. Man - Rupert. 10 x 10 -13 year old boys with tennis rackets. Black lab guide dog in training. Couple both drinking Irn Bru and eating Greggs. 2 men unsuccessfully flogging makeup in black bags outside WHSmith. One woman wearing an UGG boot and a trainer.

Debenhams bag count: 25
M&S bag count: 8
Next bag count: 4
Primark bag count: 18

Will analyse and discuss results in a future post.

Project 3: Catwalk; Evaluation and Results

So with my laptop outta use, I've found it harder to keep up with the blog, but going to post a variety of posts today to catch you up with all everything that's been happening.

Project 3: Catwalk ended a couple of weeks ago, and rather successfully I may add. I've posted pictures of me modelling Natalia's piece, so I'll upload a couple of Suzi modelling mine. I chose Art Nouveau as my inspiration and spent most of my Christmas holidays tearing up vintage Vogues and researching various designers including jewellers, glassmakers, interior designers, furniture designers and illustrators. I focused mainly on the work of Rene Lalique who crafted these beautiful intricate costume pieces, often with a macabre edge to them.




I love how elaborate his pieces are but how they also have a somewhat sinister air to them, and this was something a really wanted to incorporate into my own work.

I also focused on furniture designers of the period, in particular Louis Majorelle, whose Nenuphur bed was a endless source of ideas.




I wanted to manipulate the heavy solidness of the furniture into my headpiece and my first idea was to carve the headpiece out of wood. However, after much debate and deciding that it would be both too heavy for the wearer and too time consuming to construct, I settled on combining brass, reminiscent of the feet from the bed, and branches; the main inspiration for the Art Nouveau artists was nature afterall.

I created a lily out of brass and etched a pair of eyes on two of the petals, giving the viewer the impression of having someone stare back out at them. I wanted it to be subtle and not instantly recognisable.

One of the main components of the brief was to use colour in this piece and for this, I used flocking; namely a textile technique for velvetising surfaces using a static charge and coloured fibres, and used acrylic paint and gold leaf to make the inside of my flower as lavish and decadent as possible.





For the photographs I got Suzi back in touch with nature and dressed her up in a sheet and had her wandering the campus. I think they worked really well, and my only issue with them was the college in the background which if I'd had more time, I would have edited out. Also, it was the middle of February and I think it may have been too much to ask Suzi to travel much further in her toga without catching hypothermia!

Semester 2, Assignment 2: Stories

Ok, so with my trusty laptop outta action, and apparently unfixable (I'm hoping that the bearded man that haunts level 3 of the Matthew building can save it; it's in his capable hands for the time being). However, I lost all the work that was on it, but have got some of it back, so here be the long awaited assignment two.

For this we had to show three photographs (the images just above this) to a mixture of people from different backgrounds and see what stories they could come up with...

A pagan ritual involved the midwinter worship of a giant orb. The barbarians stay up drinking in the moonlight after leaving their dirt cave houses. Every one in the pagan community went out for this ritual, except the muppet normaloid who was kept locked up inside the mud hits, because his rantings and ravings and science talk was dangerous to the moon people! In the full bright ritual night, the moonlight passed through the window into the raving mans room, he changed and morphed and broke free from his chains! ARGHHHHH arf.arf woof he becomes a god, to dance and jump and participate in their crazy moon sacrifice! Josh, English student

In the dark dark forest, there was a dark dark cottage and in the dark dark cottage, there was a dark dark room, and in the dark dark room, there was a dark dark bed and under the dark dark hid a dark dark dog. The bright bright moon shone through the dark dark window revealing a dark red eyes … Julie, Psychology student

A man looked through a telescope at the shining moon. It was still visible despite the low rising sun. He was in the observatory atop his tower, in the middle of a vast desert, in the middle of a dark land! The only noticeable thing in the tower beneath the vast glass dome on the top, was a small window with a cross bar across it, and a disturbing and putrid stench escaping in surges from the dark square hole. The man shuddered as a howl escaped loudly from beneath him! Emma, Shop assistant

Nose close to the ground, he ran snuffling through the forest, lightly pattering against fallen leaves, the luminous moon his only source of light. He wasn’t sure what had driven him from the warmth of the cottage. He stopped, paused, and sniffed the air. A mile on, he reached his destination and growling, pulled at the trouser leg protruding from beneath the leaves … David, Lecturer

Once upon a time, there was a boy, his face yellow and bright. He was a sad boy; he got very lazy in summer and would only wake up for a couple of hours in the middle of the night when it was nice and cool. What he longed for most was to up in the day hovering above everyone watching the world pass by. He only gets to see the sinful stop outs and drink addled fools stumbling home to their cottages and homes, in his bright light. On occasion when he was wearing his heels and had eaten too much and was highest and fullest in the sky, some odd hairy folk came out and yelled at him. This boy felt this was very unfair. He was only doing his job. Ruth, Vet

The main themes that my er, subjects picked up on were mainly that of er, werewolfism and murder. Cheery stuff. So, with these somewhat sinister thoughts in mind, I chose an image of a werewolf silhouetted against the moon to put across the concepts of darkness and terror.

Modelling For Project 3. Catwalk

These are a couple of the shots I posed for for Natalia wearing her piece. They're the raw, unedited, unphotoshopped and unfixed images in all their original glory. I'd not realised how pale I look against the black of the background and considering the photo studio is down in the depths of the Matthew building in the basement, it was mighty cold, so I don't think they've turned out too bad. Not sure what Natalia's intending on doing to them, but I imagine (or hope) that she'll find a way through the magic of Photoshop to edit out the unwanted bra lines!

Prepare for lift off ... (Or should that be top off?)

Ok, so when Natalia asked me to model her piece for the catwalk project, that was fine by me. Her piece is gorgeous and despite us telling her throughout its production that it somewhat resembles a steak, ears, mini eggs etc, I was still flattered to be asked to model it. However, our Natalia is somewhat Hitleresque when it comes to getting that right image, and has requested not only a multitude of vest tops in varying colours, and my permission to double sided sticky tape merino wool balls to my face, she has also rather specificly asked I pose topless to show her piece. Intriging, but I'm up for anything, so we shall see how the results turn out. I only hope it's not too chilly in the photography studio ...

Photographs; The Results

I was amazed at how much Gemma picked up on my personality in her analysis of of my photographs.

"Now, Colette wears glasses. Some people wear contact lenses or alternate between the two but the fact she wears hers all the time shows maybe she isn't completely image conscious and is confident in her appearence ..."

Ok, scratch the last part at the risk of sounding like blowing one's own trumpet, and it's very true. I have always worn my glasses as a statement piece as a result of being bullied for wearing them when I was at high school.

"Her taste in music can be judged, to a certain extent, by the playful photo of her and friends in Dundee's Fat Sam's nightclub. This may suggest she listens to chart and current music but the fact she's on the third might mean she tends to op for the older more classic style music ..."

Anyone who knows me knows that Bruce Springsteen is my homeboy, and I'd not realised just how much I gave things away in my photographs when it came to fac ts about me that are no secret but are evidently more obvious than I thought.

Semester 2, Assignment 1; Photographs

For our first assignment of the semester, we had to swap photographs of ourselves in various stages of embarrassment growing up with someone else in our lecture group, and had to write about the photographs and what kind of an impression we could gauge from them, what they made us think, what the photographs could tell us.

I found it incredibly bizarre to write about someone I've never exchanged two words with, and felt very put on edge, as you're making massive assuptions about a person's life, without knowing their background or history. I found I could only say 'nice' things as it were, as I felt it wasn't my place to say anything that may have been conceived as nasty in any way, as I didn't know anything about the person in question.

There's at least a couple featuring what I assume to be family holidays judging by what Gemma's wearing and by how tanned she is, so would assume she's obviously quite close to her family; more so with her mum and possibly with a sister or cousin because there's a couple in which a younger girl appears who looks similar. There's one of her wearing a pale pink long sleeve top around about Christmas time, and I assume the woman on the right of the photo is Gemma's mum because she's the spitting image of her. The majority of photographs are of Gemma with friends suggesting she's pretty sociable and outgoing. The only thing I can't gauge is how old Gemma is because in what look to be the most most recent ones, she doesn't look as she's gone through any major image changes, as often happen when you grow up trying to find an exterior you feel comfortable in. This would suggest to me that Gemma is someone who's quite comfortable in her own skin. She's aways got long hair, even when she was little. There's one that looks like she's taking in part in some form of acting, so again, this would suggest confidence. She's got a really cheeky smiley face, which looks to me like she'd be pretty approachable and easy to chat to.