1// Name I approached this question by initially researching to see what I could find out about my name which lead me to the idea of braille and I thought it would be an interesting challenge to create my own. Using the laser cutter on mount board allowed me to create loose circles which I could use to construct braille formations for embossing. The embossed piece works best in it’s physical from which is how braille is indented to be, a tactile way to convey information. In my publication therefore, I have included an actual embossed version to allow people to feel it as the physical, the initial intention of braille. Piece on previous page reads; Rachel Ann Connolly.
2// How old are you The first questions were all quite simple but I didn’t want to give just a straightforward answer. Visiting the Damien Hirst exhibition gave me an idea for this question. I saw a piece which was called ‘Twelve Sausages’ and so I decided to count it to see if there really were twelve, in fact, I counted only eleven. Perhaps I miss counted and there was twelve, however this gave me an idea for this piece. I am 21 years of age and I have ten toes and ten fingers. How about adding myself a toe? Initially you would see hands and toes and think twenty, but upon a closer look realise there was an extra toe creating twenty one, my age. Just to confirm, I do actually have the correct amount of toes I do not have an extra one.
3// Place of birth I wanted to use an an interesting fact about being born on my dad’s birthday to help answer this question. I choose my typography to have a hand written effect to make you feel there is a childlike voice coming across.
12 3 dad
51
50
mum
me 21
4// Position in family This question allowed me to explore an idea and to create an infographic using numbers to represent my family members in age order. Adding on the dog hopefully helps create a humorous twist. I enjoyed the open-ended style questions which have allowed me to create work like this infographic piece.
bro the r
34 5 19
woof 8
5// What are your hobbies 30// Make a structure out of paper My hobby is photography and instead of just using photos to show this I decided to use this as a way to challenge myself and take on a few questions in one; Question 5, 30 and 15, learning a new skill. I created a physical origami camera printed with my own photos. It was a challenge to make but one I am proud of. During a critique the student feedback was positive about this piece and they thought it was a cleaver and interesting idea.
6// Where do you live now I chose to answer this question by creating an imprint of my house key to represent where I live. I thought about the key (excuse the pun) components to where I live, for example, address, postcode and house. A key was the thing that stood out to me because to get into the place you live you must have a key which is personal to each house and which only the owners of the house will have.
7// What is the most beautiful thing in the world I enjoy exploring with manipulation of photographs in my spare time. I love the effect of mirroring photos and especially the contrasts between the nature within the photo and the unnatural manipulation. I like to think of it as somewhat magical to combine the natural and the unnatural.
8// What is Graphic Design Implementation into an audience For this question I came up with an idea of Graphic Design being like a message in a bottle (previous page too). I decided that a research based answer would work well for this question and allow me to implement it within an audience in an anonymous answering of the question. I asked people during the Pop Up Show and also asked friends, family, and people at my dad’s work. By collecting answers from a range of participants I have had some diverse answers and it was interesting to see what people had written down. I think the fact that it was anonymous allowed people to write down what they thought without the feeling of being pre-judged. One of my favorite answers was ‘Graphic Design is about innovation, creativity and the general aesthetic of a beautiful mind’. I also had some simple answers such as ‘Cool’.
9// Re-draw a famous logo from memory with eyes closed Closing my eyes and imagining different logos was an interesting task with interesting outcomes. The firefox logo turned out to be the most interesting. I then decided to create a version of repeated layering of it using the different colours of the original logo. The idea was that upon first view you may not exactly see the logo it is supposed to be but as you look closer the association of colours would help the viewer to see the logo.
10// Create an image using thumbprints Originally I cut out a giant thumb print from A3 paper which I then photographed and layered it on top of some of my own photos. It was interesting to see the manipulation the thumbprint created over the top of my photographs through the lines distorting and creating a ripple effect.
11/ What annoys you the most in others Implementation into an audience I decided to try to create a discussion and a reaction from people about what they found annoying about others and implemented it into an audience. I screen printed ‘You are annoying because’ and pinned it up outside the studio in university with a pen next to it. It was interesting to see the different things people wrote and my initial idea was to try to get an audience of people to anonymously write about things that annoyed them. This was one contextualisation of the piece using young people perhaps if I had the opportunity to put it up somewhere with an older audience I may of have got a different reaction? Some people put stupid answers like ‘You put your cock on me’ which I guess could annoy some people but others actually wrote down things that generally had annoyed them such as ‘Sophie’s printer broke and Staples wont fix it!’. They even came back later to correct it by saying ‘no they did :)’. It was interesting to see that it was mostly just petty things that people wrote about rather than really annoying massive issues. I wonder if the comments would be different if I was standing there, and if it wasn’t anonymous would people have wrote things about their cock?
12// Print a T-shirt design that promotes something inappropriate I am not exactly the kind of person who wants to promote inappropriateness and it took me a while to think about the best way to answer this question. I came across this quote which made me laugh as I thought it was both inappropriate and humorous at the same time. It made me realise that sometimes to be inappropriate doesn’t always mean that you have to be offensive.
Je ne parle anglais
Ich spreche nur Englisch
Es runaju tikai anglu
I rääkida ainult inglise
puhun vain englanti
Io parlo solo inglese
Aš tik kalbeti angliškai
I tylko po angielsku
Jag talar bara engelska
13// What languages do you speak
I only speak english.
As I only speak English I played on the idea of this by writing ‘I only speak English’ in different languages and then the last one would read ‘I only speak English’ in English.
14// A2 poster for synopsis of a film Using a fun style, hand drawn typography in the shape of an anchor I have created a poster for a film called ‘Anchor Man’. I post all my work on my blog in the hope I may get some feedback and ideas to develop. I did however have a response about this piece from a student asking if the hand draw effect text relates to the actual film. As they hadn’t seen the film themselves they said that from my design it looked as if it would be a funny light hearted film. I was pleased that this feeling came across from my poster design because this is exactly what the film is like. I think this piece has been successful in the representation of the film.
ANCHOR MAN THE LEGEND OF RON BURGUNDY
15// Learn a new skill and record yourself doing it https://vimeo.com/37386448 I unknowingly took part in the most challenging task yet. The new skill I learnt was origami and how to make the dollar bill style camera. For someone who has never done origami, I am now certain, it was one of the hardest origami things to make. I was learning this skill in order to answer Question 5, What are your hobbies. The almost impossible challenge in fact took me about 5 hours to conquer on my first attempt. This is because the youtube video explaining the process was a blurry and homemade with no description or verbal explanation of what was happening. I have made a stop motion video of me creating the camera as I am watching it off youtube for this question.
16// What is psychology When I think of psychology I think of the ink blot tests. I used a red ink to make the ink blot as this was the only colour of ink I had at the time but once I made it in red I loved the organic shape it created and thought that is looked like a heart, lungs or a brain. I kept the organic red feel to it which helps create an abstract image of what psychology is to me.
17// What is semiotics I answered this question when I was doing the communication and media theory contextual studies. To me semiotics is about reading signs and symbols. I saw a chart in the shape of a triangle and so I decided to recreate this over a picture of the back of a triangular sign. I think that this photo of the sign helps to reinforce the idea of signs and symbols representing a message.
18// What is your favourite colour Photography is such a big part of everything I do and I decided to use a photograph I was proud of to answer the question that my favourite colour is pink.
Catch a rainbow pick it up and all day you’ll have good luck...
19// Re-design a rainbow At first this question was a challenge, how do you re-design nature’s rainbow? I was playing around with a prism in the sun when I thought of catching a rainbow in your hand. I used the poem of ‘Find a penny pick it up...’ and applied it to catching a rainbow. I redesigned the poem to fit with my redesign of a rainbow question. Maybe a slight twist on what we were supposed to do but I think the image of catching a rainbow was a strong idea and worked well with catching it for luck as rainbows are quite magical.
20// What in your life is your greatest source of pleasure Using a mixed media of both my hand written typography and my photography I wanted to create my own personal short manifesto/quote about it being the little things in my life that give me the greatest pleasures. I chose this photograph specifically to work with the idea of the little things and then layered the text over the top.
21// My own brief 56// Compleate project I decided I wanted to create a manifesto to promote a way of life/living. I came across this verse from a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins. I wanted to use it to show people that we should look after our wilderness and we shouldn’t try to tame/build on it. I was inspired to do this when I was on the bus and saw some builders ripping out a blossom tree from where they needed to build something. I am not a tree hugger but it was just sad to see nature being ripped down so easily. I have another version of this in my publication which I printed onto fabric but it was suggested to me to do this version as it would work better. I agreed that this would convey a stronger concept and fit in better with what I was trying to say by using a plastic bag as if it had been blown into a tree as rubbish.
22// What is abstraction Implementation into an audience Abstraction is about taking away the detail and being left with the main essential parts of something. This idea made me think about the cries and whispers brief we did last semester. I decided this would be perfect to implement into an audience in a participation style abstraction. The story began to get shorter and shorter, forgetting the main details until it became just a story about an 80 year old women who stole peaches and peas. The detail about why and who said what had been lost and stripped to the bare minimum - abstracted.
23// Infographic self portrait I chose to create a brainstorm style infographic of myself where I have listed facts about me around my name. I have used my own handwriting to make it more personal to me and have done it in a style that I like and that I think represents me as a person. It may not be to everybody’s taste but this is about me, the information is about me and the style is mine.
24// What is Dogma This piece was made using the idea of being dogmatic and being set in your own ways. I used triangles to represent people moving in one direction and a larger triangle representing the dogmatic person moving against other people and thinking they know it all already.
25// Make a large folded areoplane with a slogan on it that will revolutionaise you life and film it flying somewhere Implementation into an audience https://vimeo.com/41350502 This was one of the most fun things I have done yet one of the most challenging. I wanted to do something really out there and crazy to test in a context with an audience so I made a large aeroplane for someone to be able to stand inside, hold and carry around. I used the slogan ‘Smile and the world will smile back’ on the side of each wing. I then filmed my friend running around Richmond Park ‘flying’ past the general public she ran with joggers, people cycling and around people walking I had such positive feedback with people shouting out things at us about how they loved it. ‘Should I ask’, ‘I smile!’, ‘Thats awesome’, ‘It works’, ‘On the way to Heathrow?’, ‘You did make us smile’, ‘Are you hoping to take off?’. An elderly man even took a photo as it went past. I have made a video of this being implemented into an audience to show the reactions. It made people smile and people were interested in what I was doing. I think my quote succesfully worked as it seemed to make people happy.
SACRED GEOMETRY
STARS OFF AT NATURE WITH SOMETHING GROWING AT A CONSTANT RATE WHICH IS
FRACTAL GEOMETRY
IT DIVIDES IN HALF OVER AND OVER AGAIN
26// What is sacred Based on the idea of sacred geometry I created my own tree drawing showing fractal geometry. I saw a program once called ‘The code’ which described sacred geometry in nature and about how trees always stick to this way of growth.
27// What is profane Using the idea of what being profane is I wanted to make swearing and profanity look beautiful as if it were beautiful graffiti. I was going to put it into these locations on giant pieces of paper but then I realised I would probably get arrested for writing ‘Fuck you’ across someone’s wall and to be honest I didn’t want to risk it. Instead I walked around and photographed interesting locations to help contextualise this piece of work to show where it would go and then used photoshop to create these images. I do however realise that I have not implemented or tested the work against an audience, just tried to contextualise it.
28// Altering an iconic image I decided to alter the iconic image of your shadow using photoshop. Everyone has a shadow and they are a representation of what the person is doing and where the sunlight is at the time. I decided to alter the shadow and make it out to be as if it was an alter ego of the person or as if the shadow way trying to escape and be its own rather than attached an confined to the person itself.
29// Who is the most important person in your life I approached this question with the idea in mind of not having a single most important person in my life. To me my family are equally important.
31// What makes you happy To me I just generally want to be happy it doesn’t really matter to me how or where, I just want happiness in my life. As a photography based piece I decided to upload it to my Instagram account as another form of implementing my work into a context. This was one of the most liked and commented on pictures I had uploaded, people said that it was ‘beautiful’ or ‘me too’. It was interesting to get responses back from people all over the world.
32// Make a film of youself being an animal https://vimeo.com/41560321 I had an idea to film myself in relation to what my dog was doing. Using a head camera allowed me to capture the viewpoint from myself and my dog. I wanted this is represent the idea of the two different perspectives, merging my way of seeing the world and my dogs way of seeing the world, becoming one.
Australopithecus afarensis 3.25 million years ago brain size 400-500ml
Homo habilis 2.5 million years ago brain size 500-800ml
Homo erectus 1.8 million years ago brain size 740-1250 ml
Homo heidelbergensis 600,000 years ago brain size 1100-1400 ml
Homo sapiens 200,000 years ago brain size 1053-1880 ml
33// Why are you here I watched a program called ‘Origins of us’ which was what inspired me to create this piece.The program went through the evolution of brain sizes. Obviously as our brains got bigger the more intelligent we became until we are what we are today and why we are here. I represented it in blocks of ice to show the mass size of the brain in a bar chart style info graphic piece showing the size changing through evolution.
34// What happens after death I found a dead fox lying in the road where it remained for a few days so I decided that this would be great to use for this question. I liked how this was already set in its own context, the scene of the death and I wanted to capture this. What happens after death is different in all cases, in this fox’s case it was just left there for days after it died. As I was photographing an elderly man came out of his house and was talking to me about the animal and how it was sad to see it being left there and that no one had come to take it away. A photograph of it lying there, I feel, makes for a good representation of what happened after this particular foxes death.
35// Make a contemporary memento-mori http://rachelsblog.gdnm.org/2012/03/28/35-make-a-contemporary-mementomori-vanitas-image/ I created a creepy GIFF image that flitches and ticks like a clock to represent time. I have turned my face into a skull and used a white dress to represent the idea we are innocent and unaware of our eventual death and how and where it will happen. A reaction on my blog was that ‘it is damn scary’. I used typical pieces such as fruit and flowers to keep in the theme of a memento-mori but used an up to date idea of an animated GIFF on the internet ticking to represent the time ticking away.
36// What is greed The definition of greedy is probably my dog. If he could I’m sure he would eat himself to death. One time he ate a whole tin of spam in literally one bite that my brother had dropped on the floor. I thought it was hilarious and have used this story to answer this question. I used this photograph because he has a cheeky look on his face which works well with the story. On my blog a student also agreed with me and said that ‘this made me laugh’.
37// What is waste Waste could be many things but this was something left in my house when we moved in. It is a coat hanger with old receipts on it. We think of receipts mostly as waste and pieces of paper which we collect for a while and find lying in the bottom of our bags, stuffed in our purse which we later throw away. This however makes the receipts appear less like waste and look more interesting and quiet a beautiful sculptural piece questioning the idea of what waste really is when used in different ways to the norm.
38// Make a pinhole camera out of something disposable I made a giant camera obscura / pinhole camera out of my back room using foil and black sheets of paper which covered the ‘something disposable’ part and used a long exposure to capture my garden being projected onto the wall. I also then noticed that it was printing onto the white curtains next to where I had made the hole. It distorted the picture and created an interesting effect.
39// What is success 40// What is failure http://rachelsblog.gdnm.org/2012/05/21/39-success-40-failure/ To portray what success and failure are I wanted to use the game Jenga to demonstrate the success of piling it up high and the failure of picking the wrong piece and it all falling down. I created an animated GIFF image to show the failure of it falling over (First link above). I also created a short video of two people playing the game Jenga (Second link right).
https://vimeo.com/42551429 Press picture for video
Success
Failure
41// Explain Zen Doctrine in 20 words or less Implementation into an audience https://vimeo.com/41560321 I used a quote I discovered in a book about Zen mediation and the idea that they would focus on a sentence that didn’t make sense and try to make sense of it. I used the quote ‘Imagine the sound of one hand clapping’. This is another piece of work I have implemented into a context with an audience. The thought of Zen and Zen meditation made me think of something calm a quiet. I wanted a calm and quiet environment to contextualise this work in and so I went into Nonsuch Park and type set it on a fence. The atmosphere was calm and you could hear the sound of birds which related to the idea of meditation. I filmed from a distance to see if people noticed the quote and how long they looked at it for. Some walked past it whereas others stopped to read it. Although I don’t know their reactions or thoughts or what was said I was hoping that they would look at it and think about it in their own way in the calm environment as they went for their walk. I have made a short video showing people walking past.
Feeling the touch of warm su Smelling the scent of fresh Tasting sweet chocolate meltin Seeing everything happen Hearing music through my But most of all I am grat I am blessed with all fiv
sun on my skin hly cut grass ing on my tongue n around me headphones teful that ve senses 42// Qualities of a life fully lived Having your five senses is something that to me would allow someone to have a life fully lived. I don’t mean to say that for example someone blind, wont have a good life but they will never experience the visual world and their life will be different to someone who can see. This piece began as text from written on a typewriter on plain paper but I wanted to contexualise the text further rather than just being on a plain piece of paper. I originally typed this on a typewriter because I thought it used a lot of your senses. You had to feel to press the keys, smell the old smell of it, hear it hitting the paper and see it happen in front of you. I decided to develop the contextualisation of the typography onto a macro shot of the palm of a hand. I felt the palm of a hand worked better and represented the touching and feeling of something, which is one of your senses.
43// Make a piece of work using a book I decided to play on the idea of an audio book I used papier-mache on some headphones using pages from an old encyclopedia. Books are becoming less used and you can now listen to books on your music players. So this is the idea I developed and played with, I turned a book into headphones of knowledge to listen to rather than read.
44// What is the purpose of design I had an old birds nest I had collected as a child and I thought that this was a perfect example of design in nature. Design in this case is to make a place of safety for the bird. I wanted a simple photograph to stand on its own as it looks so beautiful as an object in it’s own right.
45// Design and make something to sell Implementation into an audience For this question I decided to make bags and screen printed a design onto them. This is another one that I have implemented into a context with an audience. One context was putting them into the Pop Up Show at university where I sold a few and another context was to put them into my friend’s cake shop. I sold each printed bag for £1.50 having bought the plane bags for 75p each. I thought about the time it took me to come up with the design, the time it took to screen print and thought that £1.50 would leave t with 75p profit from each bag sold.
FREEDOM FREEDO 46// What is leisure To me leisure is this. It is about being free to do what you want to do, time to yourself, freedom to do something and freedom from things. I have used a photograph of the sky to portray the idea of freedom like being ‘free as a bird’ combined with some bold typography to answer the question quite simply.
M FROM OM TO
47// Make a looped animation of a mundane activity https://vimeo.com/40396371 During the day I went filming Question 32, Film yourself being an animal, I realised that from a dog’s point of view it was quite interesting. I originally did the mundane activity of me walking up the street but then after further thought I decided to change it to my dog walking as it isn’t a perspective you would normally see from, a much more interesting way to answer this.
48// What is reapropriation https://vimeo.com/42038610
We had an old clothes ringer in our garden which I thought would make a great fruit squasher and smoothie maker for this question. I reappropriated the original meaning of removing water from clothes to squashing and fruit to make a smoothie. I tested out oranges, tomatoes and strawberries which worked really well and produced interesting results. I have also made a video of me doing this.
49// Make a video using the content from youtube homepage https://vimeo.com/42121941
I played on the idea of knowing that making a video from the contents of the youtube homepage would produce a stupid video. I knew it was going to be rubbish and I had seen videos that were quite funny such as a dog spinning around. I used a video of a cat from the homepage and the music from one of the videos from the homepage to create my own version. I have tested this out on people I know and they have all said how annoying it was. My brother even claimed that he had wasted his life watching it and I owed him it back. When I re-edited the video to make it shorter everyone left the room because they found the music so annoying. So yes I suppose I was going for the effect of a stupid video but it also turned out to be annoying.
50// What is theology 51// What is secular These two questions faced me with a lot of problems, more than any other Question. Firstly l I had no idea at first look what they meant and secondly I didn’t no what they meant within a context. I couldn’t think of a clever way to answer them other than by a definition. With other things, such as what is profane, I had pre-associations built up around this with what I could produce whereas with this nothing sprang to mind. Therefore I decided to go for a simple answering of the question in a definition format. By answering them at the same time I decided to make them appear as opposites. I chose to do them as cutouts which I placed on a window with an out of focussed background perhaps reflecting the blurriness of how I felt when answering these questions.
52// What is a shaman I decided to create a collage using mixed media. I merged the image from google of an Indian Shaman, a photo I took of the sunset and text from an indian poem. I didn’t want to directly explain what a Shaman was, but instead I wanted the quote and visual images to give the viewer a feel for what a Shaman represented so they could build their own interpretation of a Shaman.
53// Design a gravestone for a famous designer So hands down this was one of the most scary things I have done during this brief. The 56 questions have pushed me to try new things like this. I went into a graveyard in the dark at about 11pm, something I wouldn’t recommend doing but I believe it was worth it. I chose to design a gravestone for Michael Bosanko a light artist and did a long exposure of light art to make this gravestone design. There was only really one context to do this in and it wouldn’t have worked in any other setting. I felt it needed the correct contextualisation for it to make sense. It would have been less powerful to place it anywhere else.
54// Re-stage a specific cultural event https://vimeo.com/42329992
This question was challenging to do as I originally wanted to re-stage the Indian Holi Festival but couldn’t find any willing participants to have bright paint powder thrown at their faces. I managed to persuade my brother and his girlfriend to do it in the end. We all really enjoyed re-staging the event it was fun and I can imagine on a large scale would be amazing. I used coloured powder paint to represent the spices and fast shutter speeds to capture movement as it hits people in the face. I have made a stop motion video of my recreation of this event.
55// What does this college need Something I feel this university would benefit from, especially in the Graphic Design corridor is a display of students work. I think it is very poor that officials at the uni see this as a problem. The corridor would look so much more interesting and inspiring if examples of students work were displayed across the three different year groups. This would also enable up and coming students to see and get a feel of our university.
The publication I created my publication from 150gsm Cannaford paper using a French Fold style. I decided upon the French Fold style which you can see an example of in the image above, because I wanted my publication to feel like a physical piece to hold. I didn’t want it to feel too flat and as I was only choosing 20 pieces of work to put into it I really wanted it to feel like you were holding something substantial. I chose the 150gsm Cannaford paper because it was slightly thicker than standard printing paper and had a smooth sleek finish. I also included a few sheets of tracing paper to help break it up and add a different element and texture. I also included a piece of embossing from my name question which was braille. I felt it was important to add this element to it and thought it would be entirely pointless to have an image of it rather than the physical piece. I decided to hand bind my publication using the Japanese Stab Binding technique where you can see the binding down the left side. I wanted my publication to have a real one off hand-made feel to it and I think that the combination of the paper stock, French Fold and Stab Binding give you that feeling.
57// Implementing my work into an audience I have implemented my work into a range of difference contexts with different audiences to hopefully see a diverse range of reactions. I have used places such as my blog, Facebook, Instagram, Nonsuch Park, Richmond park, my friend’s shop and the university. I have also chosen some audience participation tasks to answer some of my questions. My blog During this semester I have tried to upload as much work as I could onto my blog as either half or finished pieces in order to gain any feedback from other students. The blog is a great place to start because it allows me to publish my work as I go and gives people the chance to give me feedback. I found that during this semester by commenting and giving feedback to others they in return would take the time to look at my work. I had feedback on quite a lot of my work with responses which evoked questions for me to answer and think about. I had lots of positive feedback about some of my work which gave me reassurance that what I was doing was ok. The blog also helped me to feel that I wasn’t doing this alone providing a constructive support system and that people could view what I was doing and I could in return see what others were producing. Other sites I have also used Facebook to post up videos to gain responses and as so many people use Facebook I was sure to get a response. It was helpful to see positive feedback that people enjoyed my video. I also have used Instagram, a photography based app, for Question 31, What makes me happy? I decided to upload it onto this app because it was quite a simple design that would work well on my stream of photos. This allowed me to get responses and for people to view this piece across the world. It was one of the most liked and commented on pictures I have uploaded. People said that it was ‘beautiful’ or ‘me too’ and I found it interesting to see that people also just wanted to be happy from all across the world. Audience participation I decided that for answering some of the questions it would be interesting to use an audience participation style. I could answer the question and implement my work using an audience at the same time. I used it for the Question 22, What is Abstraction? and decided that the cries and whispers brief from last semester would be a perfect example of what abstraction was. This gave me the opportunity to not only show an example of abstraction happening but also allowed me to use an audience to test the theory. I also used audience participation to help me answer Question 8, What is Graphic Design? I used the idea of Graphic Design being like a message in a bottle and created a form of audience based research, allowing me to not only implement it within an audience but get an anonymous style answering of the question. I didn’t want people to feel pressured about what they were writing as I thought this may effect their answer. I collected answers at the Pop Up Show, from friends, family, and people at my dad’s work. I collected a diverse range of answers. Some ranged from just ‘Cool’ while others wrote more detailed answers such as ‘Graphic Design is about innovation, creativity and the general aesthetic of a beautiful mind’.
In University For Question 11, What annoys you the most in others? I screen printed ‘You are annoying because’ and pinned it up outside the studio in university with a pen next to it. My idea was to try to get an audience of people to anonymously write about things that annoyed them. This was one contextualisation of the piece, using a younger audience, perhaps if I had the opportunity to put it up somewhere with an older audience I may have got a different reaction? It was interesting to see the types of things that annoyed people. It was mostly just petty things that people wrote about rather than really annoying massive issues. People wrote some quite rude things like ‘you put your cock on me’. It made me consider if they would have written this comment if I was standing there and knew who each answer was from? Selling my items I sold my items in two different locations, one being the Pop Up Shop we did at uni and the other in my friend’s cake shop. I was quite lucky to be able to have a second location to sell my items in as I was not able to sell them all at the Pop Up Shop. Nonsuch Park I decided to answer Question, 41 explain Zen Doctrine in 20 words or less and typeset it, in Nonsuch Park. I went with the idea of Zen meditation and how they would focus on a sentence that didn’t make sense and try to make sense of it. I used the quote ‘Imagine the sound of one hand clapping’. I wanted a calm and quiet environment to contextualise this work in to reflect on the idea of meditation and somewhere that would emphasize the focus on the sentence and so I went into Nonsuch Park. I positioned the text on a fence where the atmosphere was calm and you could hear the sound of birds. It was placed quiet discreetly at the side of a path. When people did notice the sentence they stared at it, looked back and paused but quite a few people were oblivious to what was there. I filmed reactions from a distance and although I don’t know their thoughts about it I hoped they would look at it and think about it in their own way in the calm environment as they went for their walk in the park. Richmond Park For Question 25 Make a large folded airplane with a slogan on it which will revolutionise your life and film it flying somewhere, I decided to go into a public park and film my friend running around. My plane was a large outfit with the slogan ‘Smile and the world will smile back’ on each wing. I filmed it ‘flying’ around people who were walking, running and cycling. I had such positive feedback with people shouting out things at us about how they loved it. ‘Should I ask?’, ‘I smile!’, ‘That’s awesome’, ‘It works’, ‘On the way to Heathrow?’, ‘You did make us smile’, ‘Are you hoping to take off?’. An elderly man even took a photo as it ‘flew’ past. I have made a video of this being implemented into an audience to show the reactions. It made people smile and people were interesting in what I was doing. I think my quote successfully worked as it made people happy but not only my quote I think people loved the idea of someone running around in a giant plane outfit.
Evaluation My first thoughts for this brief of 56 Questions were of excitement because I was looking forward to the freedom of exploring each question. I decided upon a strategy to go from Question 1 to Question 56 at first and write down any initial ideas that came into my head so I had starting points for each question. This also allowed me to have time to think about them and to come up with more ideas. I wanted to be experimental and produce a unique piece of work for each question and in the process hopefully be able to try many new techniques allowing me to create a diverse range of work. I enjoyed the way I could create an answer and then several weeks later be able to change it because I had thought of a better solution. At first I was anxious if I had approached this brief in the right way and the whole amalgamation of brief work and independent practice was hard for me to get my head around. I was also thrown at first by the idea that literally just answering a question felt like a cop out, however I soon realised that I needed to have to make systematic judgements about which questions were important and needed time spent on and which I could just answer. I found this brief was a challenge because it was so big and I felt lost at times especially with questions asking me what certain things meant when I didn’t even know myself. It was a good learning curve to be forced to create an answer for something I didn’t quiet understand myself initially as I am sure these are problems which will arise in the workplace. Further down the line I was thrown again by Question 57. The fact that we had to implement our work into an audience hadn’t really crossed my mind as much as it should have and so I found this quite a challenge but I challenge I enjoyed. I pushed myself to try outrageous and crazy things which I have never done before, for example, flying a massive plane through people in a public area. I had to get over the idea of people judging my work and embrace it. I enjoyed answering some of the questions using found objects and thought it was a great opportunity to help create interesting answers. For example using a birds nest to answer What is design? and using a stack of old receipts for What is waste? I didn’t feel like a cop out and with the right photograph I was proud of my results. I valued and embraced feedback along the way from both my peers and my tutors to help me improve my work and I tried to take on feedback where I could to develop the idea and make it a stronger concept in the hope to have a better final outcome. What I enjoyed most about this brief was the fact it allowed you to try and test new skills. I have learnt how to use the laser cutter, how to emboss, how to spend nearly 5 hours of my life making an origami camera and not give up, improving my video editing skills and how to make animated GIFFS. Sometimes I found the freedom overwhelming and felt lost but overall I enjoyed being able to experiment. Looking back over this brief I am happy overall with my outcomes I have enjoyed the freedom of being able to try and test out new ideas and choosing appropriate skills to use for answering questions. I hope that my enjoyment and commitment to the brief is reflected in the work I have produced.
Bibliography http://www.babynames.co.uk/popular-baby-names#name1=Rachel http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b013gmh1 http://www.callingallrachels.co.uk/ http://charlotterivers.blogspot.co.uk/ http://www.creativereview.co.uk/cr-blog/2009/april/alison-carmichael-exquisite-handjobs http://creativetechs.com/tipsblog/build-animated-gifs-in-photoshop/ http://genealogy.about.com/cs/surname/a/irish_surnames.htm http://www.mathcats.com/explore/age/calculator.html http://www.michaelbosanko.com/ http://www.pokemyname.com/firstname_888_rachel.htm http://smallrooms.tumblr.com/post/10166449471/creative-ways-to-display-your-photos http://www.surnamedb.com/Surname/connolly http://www.themeaningofnames.org/ http://www.whatdoesmynamemean.co.uk/ http://www.youtube.com/ Breuilly Elizabeth and Palmer Martin. (1993). Religions of the World. Suffolk:HarperCollins Publishers. Page 9 CGP. (2004) AQA Anthology The Study Guid. Coordination Group Publications Ltd. Page 32 Fiske John. (1990). Introduction to communication studies. Great Britan:Guernsey Press Exhibitions visited Damien Hirst exhibition at Tate Modern Yayoi Kusama exhibition at Tate Modern