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

If....(2)

So here's the update.

Quick recap: we were asked to collect 100 photos of anything, which we did, and we were then tasked with organising and categorising the photos of others, which we did. It was then left to the remainder of the class to assess our body of photographs and write a word that best describes our collection as a whole. Mine included words such as travel, journey, dark, trains, bananas. Not bananas. I just wanted to say it.
We were then put into small groups with those like minded individuals who had photographed themes of a similar nature, and to come up with, as a group, a more focused group identity and research that we could take forward. We all had themes of journeys and maps and plotting, so we brain stormed ideas such as mapping items and things that wouldn't normally be mapped, in unexpected places and the such. All was going well. Then i got the flu.
Not man-flu, proper bed from dusk till dawn dying in my sleep if i got any flu. Don't believe me? Neither did The Wife. Then she got it too.

The next time i appeared was the final day of the year, and the group had moved the project forward and was on the final day of working.
This is what i can gather happened in the interim period...

Through mass discussion in the group, a question was identfied as to why people can't get into college on time. Through research involving questionaires, looking at registers and surveys posed the question of motivation - why don't people come into college on time, and what would encourage them to do so? What incentive would motivate someone to come in half an hour early to college. Among the "public humiliation" and "severe beatings" for latecomers were incentives to be early as opposed to punishments for being late. Much of the questionaires filled showed a distinct lack of care for promptness to class and an almost willingness to receive some form of forfeit if late. Will Asken (from my group) noted that he a more thorough questionaire across a larger audience would provide more acurate and specific research if we were to do this over.

The one issue that was raise numerous times in surveys was that of food and specifically breakfast, so the idea came, would people make it in if breakfast was on the table? (literally and metaphorically) So the plan was to put on a spread of breakfast at a small cost to us to see how many people would turn up earlier. So fliers went up and people were told in the hope of bringing pogs through the door...




And this, actually, is where i came in. Ahh! Surprise! My group have organised a free breakfast, how nice of them!




From my point of view, as i came into the room that day, there was a flurry of activity around the breakfast spread. In my opinion there were only a few more than usual who turned up, but the atmosphere was great and those who turned up seemed to appreciate the efforts.
We later worked out that it would cost approximately £1 a week per student to run a basic breakfast at little/no profit and could feasibly work in bringing others in earlier. So the final question was "Would you be willing to pay £1 a week for breakfast at college?". Most were very positive about this and it could actually work.



David Gasi was the winner

Man On Fire

The Dice Man. Its a cool title. But its an odd book to read. To be fair its not my kind of thing simply because I'm not into reading anything that has certain explicit material in it (considering the book was banned in several countries due to its subversive nature and chapters dealing with issues of rape, murder and sexual experimentation) and right from the offset it obvious this book is aimed at adults. However i gave it a try. I got bored after 50 pages. The premise of the book though is an interesting one, a man who lives his life by the roll of a dice. it has been "noted for its subversivity, anti-psychiatry sentiments and for reflecting moods of the early 1970s'. I might test the whole live life by a dice thing, but I'm obviously not going to try rape or murder and considering i dont do much interesting nowadays the results will be far from number 1 bestseller material.


Luke Rhinehart. Apparently.

There is actually a cult in America (where else) where people live there lives by rolling dice, and they worship the dice and such ideologies as chance.

If....

What if....
well i don't really know cos i was ill. And not in. But i'll get the update from my team and let you know. Deal?

Shine A Light

100 Photos