Mean Machine

So onto other sports also, obviously footballers line up (ha see what i did there) in lines, in formation



Tennis courts are rigidly set out



Marching bands



And even santa's sleigh...

The Replacements

A line of scrimmage...

"In American and Canadian football a line of scrimmage is an imaginary transverse line crossing the football field across its narrower dimension, beyond which a team cannot cross until the next play has begun. Its location is based on the spot where the ball is placed after the end of the most recent play and following the assessment of any penalty yards.



A line of scrimmage is parallel to the goal lines and touches one edge of the ball where it sits on the ground prior to the snap. Under NFL and NCAA rules, there are actually two lines of scrimmage at the outset of each play: one that restricts the offense and one that restricts the defense. The area between the two lines (representing the length of the ball as extended to both sidelines) is called the neutral zone. Only the center, the offensive player who snaps the ball, is allowed to have any part of his body in the neutral zone. In order for there to be a legal beginning of a play, a certain number of the players on the offensive team, including certain eligible receivers, must be at, on or within a few inches of their line of scrimmage.



Many fans and commentators refer colloquially to the entire neutral zone as the "line of scrimmage," although this is technically not correct. Others use the general term to refer specifically to the defensive line of scrimmage, since it is the line relevant to the measurement of progress toward the goal. Referees, when explaining a penalty, will refer to "the previous spot" instead of the "line of scrimmage" in order to avoid confusion."



Thats the definition. Basically its the line the teams line up on before the "snap", when the offensive center snaps the ball back to the quaterback. There are lots of lines in American football: obviously the sidelines and goal line, but during play, once the ball has been downed, the offensive team has to get the ball to a line 10 yards past the line where it was downed. They get 4 attempts at this, called "downs". So stating on first down there are 4 lines in play - the line of scrimmage (where the ball was originally downed), the line 10 yards away they have to get the ball past within 4 attempts, then the sidelines and goalline with endzone. Confusing? Now ask yourself why its called football.



As you can see there is a line of scrimmage (the players lined up on the right) and 10 yards towards the opponents end zone there is another "line".

The players themselves are placed in "lines" as well; namely the offensive and defensive lines. The offensive line consists of five players whose job is to protect the passer and clear the way for runners by blocking members of the defense. The lineman in the middle is the Center. Outside the Center are the Guards, and outside them are the Tackles. Except for the center, who snaps the ball to one of the backs, offensive linemen generally do not handle the ball. The defensive line consists of three to six players who line up immediately across from the offensive line. They try to occupy the offensive linemen in order to free up the linebackers, disrupt the backfield(behind the offensive line)of the offense, and tackle the running back if he has the ball before he can gain yardage or the quarterback before he can throw or pass the ball. They are the first line of defense.
Behind the defensive line are the Linebackers, whose job it is to rush the quarterback or cover potential receivers.



The bottom blue line of players are the offensive line, the top line of 4 red players is the defensive line.

Blank Cheque

This advert makes me laugh so much. It is also a from of LINE being a line of food on a counter, and line of people in a queue. And 4 lines of kit kat.

Fargo

Now i dont know whether this is just an ingenious application of unused space, or an actual support structure, but either way its ace. I used to know this nice old lady who stored bottles of water inbetween pallets that had been "planted" around her garden as a fence and topped off with a flower bed. Very clever.




Check this out...an Igloo made from books ha! Although somehow i doubt it would be of any use anywhere, judging by the massive HOLES IN THE FREAKIN WALLS. Gosh. Ah wait... my bad... Its an igloo shaped bookcase. And there was me getting all excited. Filled with books however it would make a fecthing bookcase.

Paranoid Park

This is a compilation video of this guy Daniel Eskills work, with a mixture of all his different vids from 05-07. There's some ace stuff in here, mainly to do with playing on perspectives and things like that but its really inventive and very simple in reality. It is actually a book of sorts, which is why its on here (not just cos i like it). In my oh so humble opinion, a book is a collection of ordered information, recorded for a future point, be it for personal use or for others. So a film cataloguing the films of a film maker during a certain period is in my view, a book. Discuss.



All his stuff is on his website eskills.com, and my personal favourite is an advert he did for Protest boardwear. Its a film of a film, but with a twist. Ingenius.

See No Evil

Here's one Luke Hallam ffffound (see what i did there luke?) earlier...



the quality's not as good, cos i've just joined them all together (check out lukehallambagd.blogspot.com) but it kind of encapsulates what i was trying to do with my 100 rolls of 100 dice when interpreting them visually. Now i'm moving in a different direction its not as relevant, but still some nice work. It's by a company called Instrument and Grid/plane (weareinstrument.com & gridplane.com)

A Beautiful Mind

So my idea isn't going very far. After rolling over 50 dice 100 times i got brain melt and had some ice cream, then realised my idea was at a bit of a dead end. No one wants to read statistics for a whole book. I had a lovely idea for how the book should look though, but depending on where i take it next i dont know if the form would be appropriate. So yeah. Where next? I haven't a clue. I think maybe something along the lines of The Dice Man book, something to do with chance and choices, but i have a fairly boring life in contrast to a murdering dice-worshipping psycho so it'll probably have to be fictional. I helped organise and am attending a Beetle-drive on friday (a game involving dice and beetles. Intriguing non?) so i'll take a camera and we'll see what happens there. I'll do some surveys of crazy stuff to decide with dice too and see where that takes me but other than that je pas.

Apocalypto

A Brief history of signs, symbols and pictograms

Icons and Pictogram

So first of all we were all given a word, an object to which we were to produce as many thumbnail images as possible in the given time. i got: SOLDIER



They varied from cat to bank (someone else got soldier and copied some of my work damn them!!)






We were asked to record a journey or sequence of events from the past week. This sequence of events then went through various stages of whittling, first picking out the main events, bringing that down to a more manageable 12, then down to 8. These were then iconografied before being simplified as much as possible and thumbnailed. My journey involved keys, poo, creme eggs, ice and apparently a lion. Good times!

Sockets

Sockets

Collection of sockets from around the room



Other peoples collections (red, circles, number 1...)

Book Of 100

Let me tell you a little story. Our story concerns a small boy (lets call him Dan) who is studious and bright and holds a strong sense of order and discipline (its called artistic license folks). One day he happens across a small 2 inch square cube die whom he names Leroy, and he paints it black. For years their friendship grew and 'Dan' would roll leroy around in his hands, marvelling at the magic that is random statistics. One fateful day 'Dan' walks past a beck and loses leroy.

I tell this story simply to illustrate how deeply affecting a strong friendship can be. And that dice are fun to play with.



Title/Focus: Roll Of The Dice

So my focus will be on DICE and the many wondrous variety's of dice that exist. what exactly i don't know, but there are a few ideas i have floating around in my noggin. A lot of dice play involves statistics and numbers, and so any form solution based on these needs to be not just facts and figures but a way of interpreting those in a visually interesting and stimulating way. Whether there would be a way of doing so in a dice-related form i will have to look into. Also i have been thinking about the form of dice, its size, shape and especially material, and how i could manipulate that to give a different perception of what dice are. So maybe using felt or cloth or thin paper in some way. Linked in with that is those make-it-yourself dice kits, with the six sides and tabs for glueing. So maybe integrating the new materials and that method. It would look especially good, i think, due to the fact i have dice of many different shapes and colours, from 4 sided to 20 sided.

Research Information

Hmmm tricky one, simply because there's two very different avenues i could take, and which could be more effective, or more importantly, how could i marry the two. So far i have 100 rolls of 100 dice, so all statistics based, and have collected 100 differently coloured/shaped and size dice also. Photography could play a big part too, there is a lot i could do such as photographing the dice from each side etc, in orders (colour, size, number of sides, size, weight even). i really like the visual ideas and the disection on forms and doing something more off the beaten path, so some fabric work (sewing etc) to see how things might fit together as well.

Methods & Processes

I think i covered most of this already (this is becoming a bit of a mish-mash of ideas ha all under the wrong titles) but only because it applies to both categories. So essentially recording methods such as photography, maybe drawing, and statistical recording, then processing that information on photoshop or illustrator in the form of graphs, charts etc, but also to go the other way and hand craft interpretations of that data such as sewing and crafting which i'll also use to study the more visual aspects of size, colour etc.
I think I'm comfortable enough on the software programs and with a camera to do what i need to, and i've done craft making projects in the past so that should be fairly easy. Bookbinding i'm not so hot on so we'll see if i can look into books and ways of binding a bit more which might affect how i actually end up resolving the brief.

Evaluation

Evaluation will be continuous. The usual processes should suffice, though most often its best to get outsiders opinions on work to get an unbiased view so group crits and even just general conversation with others in the class will help a great deal. I think the visual evaluation will be quite obvious as it progresses.

The Notebook

What is a book, or what can it be? Modern technology allows for a lot of experimentation when creating a book, from cover to size to material etc, but, obviously this wasn't always the case. Nowadays almost all of our books are made from paper, but the widespread use of paper as writing medium didn't come about until the mid 3rd century AD, and as for being available and used around the world not till later. (It was used before this, the earliest recorded in China, being used for for wrapping and padding). Paper was then adopted as the norm, but during the 15th century as the Reformers and others fought for the right to access of holy scripture for the masses, and with the invention of the Guttenberg printing press, paper became a mass medium, until today we use over 300 million metric tons of paper per year worldwide.
However, our ancestors around the world had to find other materials to record on, the most famous of which being papyrus



Papyrus was produced and used as far back as 3000BC, and was made by taking long thin strips from the stem of the papyrus plant, soaking them in water and while still wet making 2 sheets on on top of the other, on vertical, one horizontal, by laying them side by side with the edges overlapping. The strips are then hammered into place and left to dry under pressure. At gun point. Just kidding. Under something heavy. This was, especially in the Egyptian delta where the papyrus plant flourished, the most popular form of writing material until the 1st centuries BC and AD, when it had a new rival in parchment, made from soaked then dried, hair-less and stretched animal skins.



Parchment had been around since the 6th century BC but only became popular in the first century BC as prices for papyrus and overharvesting of the plant lead to many adopting it as a replacement.
Much of the ancient biblical texts of that time were written on parchment, such as the Dead Sea Scrolls, found in the 1950's, which were rolled up and placed in jars and hidden in caves near Qumran, a small plateau near the north western shore of the Dead Sea.



They share a common premise with the Jewish scrolls, like the Sefer Torah scroll, which is opened and read in Jewish meetings. Scrolls consist of lengths or pages of either papyrus, parchment or paper attatched together in a long roll and secured at each end to a stick (albeit a very ornate and attractive stick. But still effectively a stick).

Other earlier methods of recording include the process of carving or etching into a material, such as wood




Or sheets of metal which are then bound and held by metal rings. The Book of Mormon, a religious text for The Church Of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (also known as the Mormon religion) which dates back to 600BC and discovered in 1820, was written on golden plates and talks of plates made of brass. More recently ancient texts have been found on metal plates, such as these found by Monash University's excavation at Ismant el-Kharab Dakhleh Oasis in Egypt




SO....that all being said, today people manipulate all sorts of materials to form 'books' no longer out of necessity as was the case in Ye Olde Times


Brings a whole new meaning to making a book out of wood!


This is just a cover, but the colours of the metal bring a real earthen feel to the subject, and the also quite mystical.

Some by Brian Dettmer




Sam Winston (he did the artwork for Muse's third album Absolution which was brilliant, in both senses. His work is more about playing with type and form, but also with the paper its written on)


Gerorgia Russell





Others