Baltimore Aquarium: Jellies invasion

Artist research

Pipilotti Rist

Anthony gormley : blind light

rAndom international

Marshmellow lasor feast

Kinetic Art Fair

Science Museum

I decided to go to the Science Museum to get some research on our commission for the Manchester school of Arts 'One night only' which is an evening showcasing the new Art and design building space while having a variety of programs, activities and interaction throughout the evening. 

From what I remembered there were a lot of areas with a lot of interaction particularly for children at the Science Museum so though it would be worth investigating how it had changed since I had last been. What areas where interactive and why? Was there information in the sense? Is the interaction predominately children or do people of all ages get involved? Seeing how the technology has developed since I went as a child. The one element I remember was this Plasma Globe ball that made my hair really static... the colours were so hypnotic and it looked like lightening was occurring in a little round ball, I always though it was a sorcerers power.  

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGbvg0P1RqE

From the visit I was not able to find this amazing ball which the technical name is Plasma globe. However there were quite a few different interactive activities which caught my eye. There was a section in the basement called the Web lab which had a serious of interactive chrome experiments you get your own card at the beginning which you insert into each section. The best part was getting your face drawn by a robot in the sand as shown below. I realised quickly that this was the most popular activity on this floor because it was very personal. 

This was similar with other activities in different areas when it actual involved the audience learning or having something personally tailored to them it was far more popular. The other section which was really good with interaction was 'Who am I?' which makes you discover more about what makes you unique looking at your brain and genetics.


They also had a session of did you know facts which was really interesting and could work with what we want to do because it is quite conceptual having an interactive screen or a section with facts on the different sense etc could be really interesting. Here is a taste of some of the did you know. 

I really liked the visual of the white blood cell we could combine visuals from with in the body such as this one (investigate further how you can get a visual like this contact the science department at Manchester) to be projected around the room looks lava lampesq which remind me of the ferrofuild that we are thinking of developing. These projections could then be interactive similarly to a wall that was at the science museum which is shown below in a clip

add clip of interactive wall ems.  

An interactive wall in the Thailand science museum. It is really cool. 

Exhibition

photo Ursula Rae

Photo David Wright

Evalution

The idea of ‘Blue Sky thinking’ was interesting to me, ‘Uninhibited thinking without a structure, beginning or end’. Throughout this course, I have being driving myself to having more structure by executing my work thinking about the concept, process and context. Trying to think more realistically which area my practice will go into; will it sell, who is the audience, why have I done it. Becoming increasingly aware of the fact that I am in second year and only have one more year left to know what my practice is about and where I see it in the art industry. Therefore, the fact that this college was all about spontaneity, the wackier the idea the better was refreshing and really opened my eyes again to what I have always enjoyed in the art; the process of coming up with a concept without any limitations or boundaries. I did not mean that we did not have to consider the concept, process and context we did, however it focused more on the concept and process at it was for a metaphorical festival so the logistics were not key. In effect, what art is like when you are a child. The sky is the limit and because you are so naïve about the world around you, you feel anything is possible. In addition, the fact that this was the second time doing Unit X, really meant that I wanted benefit from what it is trying to do; encourage collaboration between all the different areas of the Arts. Even though my group VOID had four other textiles students, we also had two from interactive art and one from history of art, which was a nice mix. Working in this group was very successful, there was no one who I felt really let down the group or was not involved in some way. This was probably due to us meeting up on a regular basics to develop ideas, designate different areas for everyone to develop individually and then as a group decided what did work and what did not.  What I learnt from working in a group previously on Unit X last year is that in a group environments you need to be almost ‘cut throat’ with deciding what does and doesn’t work. It is not personal it is just developing the idea that works the best for the outcome to be at its best. Luckily, with our group all of us had a very similar idea of the direction we wanted in; an intangible design festival attached to a daytime festival, being concealed in the light and revealed within the dark, focusing on a sensory experience that develops the more interaction there is within the space. Creating a bioluminescent world, VOID that makes people really reflect on their senses.

I have always liked working in a group as I feel the concept part of the project is very effective when in a group environment as you can work off each other and one person can trigger another person to come up with a great idea. We spent a long time discussing the concept and thinking of ways to develop it. Which at the time felt as if we were not actually doing much practical work just thinking. However, with this project the thinking was a huge part, even shown in the name, ‘blue sky thinking’ and worked out as being very beneficial, as we developed majority of our concepts at the beginning giving us a great start. However the fact that there was a lot of thinking involved and not necessarily having a final piece to strive towards did throw me a bit and put me out of my comfort zone. I am a visual person so need to visuals how things are going to look. However, with one of our key themes being intangible design it was hard to visualise something that has no physical presence. We came up with many low fi ways in which to portray what we effectively wanted to happen in our festival. This was hugely successful as we did this through experiments in our group and combined our different research and knowledge to produce very intriguing visuals and clips via sound and light. My area was investigation the visual side of our festival. I struggled with it at the beginning, as we wanted majority of our visuals to be interactive and able to be manipulated and changed by the festivalgoers, the more people that come the more the visuals would change, encouraging interaction. This was hard to create through a 2-D image as I wanted to create the illusion of movement and the image being distorted. I ended up doing it in a very low fi way but filming my images on Photoshop and smudging the images slowly, symbolising movement. Being in a group that worked really well together meant everyone’s work informed my work and my visuals. Some of my visuals interacted with an idea that someone was developing such as Martina’s magnetic wristbands. Coming up with a theoretical festival and having no limits on what we could pitch with our ideas was really eye opening sometimes you just have to take a step back and go back to basics to have a clear perception of everything and you will surprise yourself with how it turns out.

I had my own Strengths and Weaknesses in this project. I found that my strength were mainly in coming up with the concepts for the festival and researching the idea behind it to do with our sense and how you can manipulate them through; colour, sound and touch. How the MRI to a blind person highlights different sense to that of a sighted person. I found all of this research interesting and would like to continue it further by getting into contact with people such as Dr Victoria Henshaw who Tom interview on this project, she is the ‘UK’s leading expert on the interplay of odours and the environment’. Expand my own personal knowledge of the sense and see how we could detach the festivalgoers form everyday distractions, heighten their senses so they would be very aware of which one they were using; an internal experience in an empty space… VOID. One of my weaknesses is I often come up with ideas but do not execute and develop them efficiently which was not always a bad thing as one-persons idea can trigger some else to use elements of it and develop it further themselves. However, I feel I need to work on this so I want to give myself a personal target of not only coming up with loads of ideas and following through with some, put come up with a concise set of ideas and follow through with all of them and see which one is the most successful. The ideas that I did follow through were effective. However, I learnt that you do not always have to change things and edit them a huge amount, often keeping it simple can look the most effective and work the best.

This project has been the best group project I have been a part of because not only did we work well as a group but also I personally found the outcomes, (the pitch and exhibition) visually pleasing and a hugely successful. We got the reaction we wanted, which was to create intrigue and to encourage interaction with one another and our intangible designs, which was particularly shown in our exhibition. We have had such a positive response and been encouraged to develop our ideas further, which I am very keen to do as I feel our project has no real conclusion we can develop it some much further.

Pitch

Book: printing, binding

I really enjoyed doing the layout for the Book/Catalogue, taking everyones images from the different areas of our project; Research, Area, Promotion and Visuals and creating a book of tasters of what our festival would be like. Not giving to much away but almost 'wetting the viewers appetite' of what is to come.

Choosing the images was hard as we had such a strong variety but I wanted the whole book to flow so I was very objective in my decisions. 

This all went very smoothly until it came to printing the book out from InDesign. It wasn't printing the way I intented it to so Tom being the tech master in the group had to re order the whole book and we had to print it off one side at a time. But eventually we managed to print out the book in the right order and the right size. It took a long time but was worth it in the end and I was very pleased with the final result. It is a visual summary of our project.