Organic Matters..?

For the Intentions unit, in which we have been asked to use visual research from our Summer Project, we have also been asked to write our own briefs, as well and come up with a concept for the project.

Most of my visual research involves natural themes, and fishing towns. I have been thinking of ways I can come up with a concept involving these themes, without it being all about fishing, or woods and trees (it will be difficult to continue research on these themes in Manchester!).

I found another Blogspot site called "Organic Matters" which provides floods of information and work by artists who use natural materials.

http://organicartmatters.blogspot.co.uk/

India Flint, for example, is a textiles artist who uses natural ways of creating colour:

India Flint

This piece has been created with natural dyes, sunlight, rust, mud and leaves. Although Dye isn't one of my disciplines, Flint's work is quite inspiring in terms of colour and experimentation. 

Another artist I have looked at from "Organic Matters" is Joel Ferraris, who uses recycling to create some of his work. 

Joel Ferraris

This piece is called, "Manicured Canyons and the Howling Winds of the Homesickness",  and was made from used phone cards, "depicting a modern but crowded skyline". This is a really smart piece of work- I like it because its conceptual, and can influence recycling in other people's work, and perhaps mine!

FutureEverything at MOSI

I visited the Museum of Science and Industry and came across the current exhibition in the 1830 warehouse, FutureEverything. It brings together artists working with sculpture, video and digital work.

A lot of the work in the exhibition focuses around social media. One of the first pieces I saw within the museum, leading us to the exhibition was "Extra! Extra!" by Jeremy Hutchinson and was a series of newspaper advertising boards, featuring ordinary, everyday quotes from Facebook, which users were invited to write on the event's "wall" on Facebook.

Once inside the exhibition, the same newspaper adverts can be seen in a large pile in a corner, which I felt was perhaps an effort to take away the digital use of Facebook, and show what all of the quotes look like physically.

My favourite piece in the exhibition was "JSUT CODE" by Helen Pritchard and Winnie Soon. It was very coincidental that earlier in the day, as the "Wearingit" group, we had spoke about having QR-codes for each of the group blogs. The idea that anybody can scan in the QR-code and see a website or a quote is quite inspiring.

 

"JSUT CODE" uses social media site Twitter to invite and collect people to write whatever they want. The idea is that the database of digital and social media moves beyond and between languages. As a viewer, one can take part in translating the many codes to find a series of anonymous quotes. This is an example of a de-coded tweet:

Our Final Film

This is our final film exhibiting our final piece.

We collaborated with Tom Valentine, an Interactive Arts student who is also doing the Unit X project.

I'm very happy with the film as I feel it doesn't overwhelm the viewer with lots of miss-matched photos, or too many ideas and unnatural effects, however portrays our idea about the spreading of germs and disease throughout Manchester during the Industrial Revolution, resulting in a destructive outcome. I think the video works as its quite haunting, especially with the movement of the shadows in the background. 

                       

Stop-Motion Film

This is the stop-motion film I had prepared for by creating large-scale maps to apply finger prints to.

I decided on this maps as it has good positioning and shape and uses one of our main colours, red. We applied the finger prints using blue acrylic paint, as blue was another of our main colours we used.

Large scale map #4

This is the final map I drew on to fabric. I used more positioning on this sample rather than pattern:

Working on mannequin #2

I have experimented with my large scale map#2 to see how it would look on the body:

I really like this sample above because I think its a really strong structure, and shows off the maps of old Manchester in a modern way. However, for our final piece I understand it needs to be more old-fashioned style. So I created this one:

I tried to create the old- fashioned style with pleats but made it a little more modern at the back, instead of visible buttons.

Large scale map #3

I think this is the sample that Sonia and I will use to create a stop-motion film of footsteps on to the map: