Studio Practice 1 - Part 2.

Long time no blogging.

I have been quite busy the past few weeks which unfortunately meant that there has been a severe dip in the blog posts. I have my 21st birthday coming up so I have been spending alot of time organising it. At the same time there has also been a new brief issued, that compromises of three different options to choose from.

1. Punctuation Mark
2. The Internal Ephemeral 
3. Newspeak 

These new briefs have involved a lot of thinking and very little doing, which is frustrating as there has been little if no progress in the first few weeks which panics me.

Thankfully after a few days just thinking and not even looking at my sketchbook I thought of a few ideas for each of the options for the brief. I also spent a lot of time reading some books that helped my get a 'theme' or more an 'idealology' for each of the options.


Along with all of this research for the practical part of the course, I have also spent a lot of time refining what I am doing my independent contextual research project on. For that element I have decided to focus on taste and tastelessness in advertising with references to 'lad culture' and feminism. I thought this would be interesting as it is something that we talk about a lot with adverts going viral for all the wrong reasons.

Moving back to the current brief in question, I have finally decided (AFTER THREE WEEKS) that I will be doing the Newspeak option as I read Nineteen Eighty-Four which was a very interesting book full of themes, topics and ideas. I will begin by focusing on the Big Brother is watching you aspect of the book as in our current climate it is apparent that we are being watched involuntarily... or is it completely voluntary?
But this isn't the only question this book has conjured, I also wonder about the aspect of Newspeak in terms of today's languages, with text talk abbreviations and emoji. And then finally the book has encouraged me to think about the meaning of the Newspeak terms that are used such as 'facecrime' which involves your face involuntarily making same movements that could see you arrested for 'thoughtcrime'.

'Mystery Mugshots' 2011

On another note, as part of Pauls PDP class we have been encouraged to look into self publication. I have been focusing on creating a brand logo as you can see on the left. I feel my current design is quite elegant but I will work on it some more as to define a final brand image.

DONE AND DUSTED.

So as you can gather from the title of this particular blog post I have finished my second project for third year. It was a streneous project that tested my patience, skills and confidence but overall I am happy with my outcome (well it is too bloody late to not be happy).

 final piece of work on wall.

 Artist Statement accompanying wall display.

Unseen

Rebecca Young

Photography Installation

As the title suggests my finished work relates to what the human eye does not normally see especially when it comes to a non-place. I began with research into the general idea of a non-place then I looked into my personal understanding of a non-place. I think of a non-place as the opportunity to catch someone’s attention, to make them smile and ultimately make their transition to a ‘place’ more interesting.

I developed the idea of a Facebook Page, ‘The Smile Project’ in which I logged pictures and captions of what I was doing in order to inform people and amass interest. I generated interaction as people liked and shared my posts and you can have a look at the page using the QR code on the right.

Ultimately from the onset, this project was going to test my confidence as I was determined to do a publicly interactive piece of work. I finalised the idea of making areas of the street we don’t normally see into huge photographic pieces of work. I displayed the work in the street I had taken the photos on to see people’s immediate reactions as well as online reaction through my Facebook page, hoping I had made their day somewhat more interesting.

  

Statistics accompanying wall display.

 

So, as you can see I scrapped the idea of display my work the way it was displayed outside although the prints are damaged from their time outside which I wanted to keep therefore I didnt attempt to re-order prints.

I am so pleased with what I have achieve and I believe big is definately better and hope my future projects are even BIGGER.


CHIN CHIN,

Bex