Creative Futures 2012 - Day 1

Creative Futures 2012 - Opening address and key note speech

Here it is upon us again! Creative futures week. For those of you who don't know, it's a week-long event held yearly where lots of professionals and alumni of the university visit to hold seminars, lectures, networking opportunities and portfolio surgeries. I found from last year that some of the sessions can be truly priceless in terms of what you're looking to do in the future.

To begin day one, we had an introduction by Dr Stuart Cunningham. His introduction was brief and to the point, he told us that 67% of employees in the creative sectors are graduates, and that the number is rising. In a world where technology is changing and improving daily a good education with good core skills, business sense, management skills, experience and industry intelligence are the things that will land us that dream job after we graduate. With 94% of Glyndwr's graduates getting a job within 6 months, it is comforting to know we stand a chance in such a volatile climate.

Dr Cunningham finished with some lyrics from a Pink Floyd song 'and then one day you find ten years have got behind you, no one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun' and encouraged everyone to grab all opportunities that come our way.

We were supposed to be receiving our opening speech by Maurice Cockrill, who couldn't attend. Kindly stepping in last minute was vice chancellor Michael Scott, who has also been a visiting professor at Georgetown university in the US as well as Oxford university. He has sold his books 'text and performance' globally. He came to speak to us about Shakespeare.

I've studied several of Shakespeare's plays at high school. I always imaged him as a bard and a playwright. However, Michael Scott informed us that Shakespeare was little more than a thief and a very good business man. He went into great detail about Shakespeare's life, how his business is one of the oldest in the UK and still makes money to this day.

It was only after James Burbage saw the bear pits of the day that he decided to create the 'theatre' and although only ten years old at the time, the young Shakespeare went on to make his fortune in the theatre. It isn't a tale without its twists and turns however, the Puritans refused to allow theatres in the centre of London, so Shakespeare built on the outskirts, in North London. With a young girlfriend and baby back in Stratford, he needed the money to raise his daughter and so began stealing plays, rewriting them and putting them on the stage for people to watch.

In 1576, James Burbage died, leaving his son Richard in charge. The lease on the theatre is due for renewal, but it is refused. Their number one performer Will Kemp not only leaves, but takes great pleasure in telling all and sundry that he has left Shakespeare's company. Shakespeare and Burbage decide to move the theatre, pulling it down and moving it to south London on barges before rebuilding. It is here that he decides to have two companies, a theatre company and a company of actors who pay rent to the theatre.

For a while he's on top again, that is until Henry Evans realises that he has found a loophole in the Purtians ban on theatres inside the city of London. He makes a deal with St Paul's Cathedral to put on plays, he charges 6pence for the seats, drawing in the elite of the city. So begins the war of the theatres. Eventually however, Evans' luck runs out and Shakespeare ends up buying the properties in London and putting his own plays on. He returns to Stratford, buys the second largest house on the market, becomes a money lender and land owner and goes on to make his fortune.

Despite his start in life, where he saw his father a glove maker, go bankrupt Shakespeare was a shrewd businessman, he saw the uprising of the theatre and grasped at his chance to make his fortune. Michael Scott's message was that crisis was the potential to be your greatest moment of all. Next up was Angus Montgomery, he is a journalist for Design Week (click here for their website) which is a weekly publication that concentrates on design, education, new businesses and developments in the design world.

Angus told us he had spoken to several people from within the design profession about tips they could give graduates trying to break into the industry. Simon Manchipp who works for 'SomeOne' which is a design company in London (SomeOne Website) said that students should pay particular attention to how they brand themselves. Lateral thinkers, showing excitement about the field, and progressive workers are all very attractive traits in designers.
Rhiannon James who works for D and AD talked about the successful graduate academy that the company runs, how they nurture the best talent. And how their graduates get a job within 3 months. Illustrator Lizzie Mary Cullen reiterates Simon Manchipp's message by emphasising the importance of marketing yourself professionally.

Finally, Greg Quinton of The Partners, says it's important to encourage students to find their own influences, not to follow what everyone else is following. To collaborate with other fields, and people and find a space to work in groups. To always love what you do, push yourself and your passion will drive you to better yourself.

Angus then went on to talk about how student fees is a topic that often comes up within Design Week. He asked lots of professionals in the industry that if they were faced with paying up to £9000 a year in tuition fees if they would do it. Apparently every single on answered yes without a doubt. That if you have to pay for your education you will make the most of it and value it. I feel this is very much true for myself!

Moving on to work Angus has reported on, or that struck out to him and starting with a campaign called '300 million' a petition to stop sex trafficking in children. Thanks to this colourful and engaging campaign, 17 countries have had law changes regarding sex trafficking. It was also in conjunction with the Body Shop, who created a hand cream called 'soft hands kind hearts'.

Next was the 'one laptop per child' campaign. This started off as people donating old, somewhat outdated laptops to developing third world countries. Also known as the fuse project. Yves Behar is responsible for designing a laptop that is durable, rugged, hard wearing, cheap to make and efficient to run. There have been 2.5 million laptops shipped over the last four years alone.

The Plumen energy saving light bulb was next. To be honest came across as quite stupid and pointless. Apparently the designers (Hulger) thought that the existing light bulb design needed updating and came up with the world's first 'designer' light bulb. Although I'll agree that the design itself is clearly unique and stylish I can't imagine why anyone would want to own one. Maybe I'm getting old? Anyway, the point being that designers aught to be able to look at existing technology and thinking about ways to change or improve it. I however honestly believe that this is a case of useless design at its very best!

After the disaster that was the Plumen light bulb came something quite unique. As we all know, there is little to no money in the NHS and a lot of A&E staff are quite concerned with the level of anger and violence towards staff and so asked designers to come up with a way in order to reduce the risk. It was furniture designers PearsonLloyd that came up with the idea of redesigning a person's experience with A&E, by removing the mystery with a flow chart that maps the route through the different departments and a screen that displays the current state in terms of busyness people seem to be calmer and much less violent. At the moment it is being piloted in seven to eight hospitals with plans to introduce it to more in future.

I found the next piece to be quite an eye opener, which was the intent really as it was an annual report for a charity called St George's Crypt, which deals with the homeless. It was done in A2 size to illustrate the size of a blanket of newspaper a homeless person might sleep under. The photographs were incredibly sharp and shocking, revealing the true nature of the homeless people along with their personal cases. A great design, with hard hitting photographs, clear font and very difficult stories. This is design that really helps to highlight a very real and serious issue.

I've already mentioned the company SomeOne in London, and this next piece was from them. Basically, they spent a thousand pounds on flowers, froze them in liquid nitrogen and then blew them up, using a high speed camera to capture the footage. I think that this really was a bit of a waste to some nice flowers, and the images really weren't great in my opinion. It was for a company called Resonate.

Next up was a company called The Milton Agency which commissioned Magpie Studio to create a brand logo for them. The Milton Agency is a company that works alongside the stars of Hollywood providing make up and costumes. The simple star design shows that while the stars of Hollywood are in the foreground, the M, cleverly placed in the negative space of the stars shows the Milton Agency are always in the background. A very clever and simple, and fun design
The company Harrison & Co were the final to be shown. They had been commissioned by the Orchestra of age and enlightenment to highlight what the orchestra was about, and specifically the characters that made up the orchestra itself. By using a simple, but engaging design and some colorful tape you can really pick out the music and the individual personalities.

Finally, Angus showed us two examples of work he enjoyed by students. The first was by a man called Sam Grey who studied at Plymouth University. His bright posters were designed to highlight the issues of vertigo, and how a sufferer feels like the earth is spinning. The second was by Alan Clarke who studied at Falmouth university and used the concept of movement to design a series of posters surrounding the Olympics. He promoted them through his blog and had a surprising and positive response, I think both are very good, solid pieces of work.

So that was the end of day one. Considering neither of these lectures really stood out to me, I have said a lot! I learned that you have to market yourself professionally if you want people in the industry to take you seriously, and that Shakespeare was a fraud and a thief but made himself a fortune. I'm not sure if that's the right message to portray really, but I understand it from the angle that he was also a man who made the most of what he could in a time when he really had no other choice and stole in order to escape bankruptcy.

Coming up...day two!

Inspiration Boards

Recently we were given a project designed to make us think about the direction we'd like to move in towards the end of our time at Glyndwr. Apart from choosing what we'd like to specialise in, film, photography or a combination of both, we're being given projects that are meant to help us find our 'voice'.

I never thought I really had a voice in terms of what I create, however, this project combined with the others we've been set recently have given me a much more solid idea. It also has a lot to do with trying to come up with ideas for a film project. It turns out that most of my ideas have a very 'dark' feeling to them, and as vague as 'dark' might sound, it's the only word I know that comes close enough to describing it. I guess it's just that I've always read horror stories, and ghost stories and things that are a little grim, and morbid. Just give me some black nail varnish, and some eye-liner and call me a goth!

Anyway, back to the project, it was very hard to think of what inspires me, because I honestly felt to begin with that I endeavour to be original and unique instead of trying to copy things I've already seen, or worse, steal other people's ideas. I chose to Power Point to present my project, and considering I can count on one hand the number of times I've used it, I was quite happy with the result. I added in animations and a soundtrack, and a slide that explained the images I chose, and why I chose that particular item as an inspiration to me.

So overall, I felt it was a helpful project which shed light on which direction I'd like to move in. Unfortunately, I ultimately felt it to be a bit of a waste of my time, as I've never been asked to show it to any of our tutors. We were told we had two weeks to complete it, so I worked hard to ensure it was finished and ready to show on the day we returned. But then that's a whole other story...

Coming soon....creative futures week...

Level 5 First Semester Work

Level 5 Semester 1 Overview

The work we've been handed since the beginning of the year has been challenging, and I've found myself pressed for time, even though I started straight after being given the briefs. So going in order of what appears in each module pack (apart from critical studies, which has its own blog) here's a few words on how I found level 5 to be for work, the ideas I had and the problems I encountered.

The Message.

This module presented the most work for this semester. Between the various film and photography assignments we had to deliver a persuasive message through our chosen mediums. Doing the work was easy enough, but at times I find inspiration quite hard to find. I've also found that unlike last year, I've had an idea, run with it, changed and added to it only to find myself doing a U-turn and doing something completely different. This has been down to discussions with Stuart, and after finding that my ideas on paper didn't match those in my mind.

Although I'm happy with the general outcome of my work so far this year, my happiness varies greatly between each project. I find I am happier with my film efforts than my photography efforts.

Percussive rhythm. We were asked to make a short video using clips of films with sounds to create a visual soundtrack. I was lucky enough to be given permission from Llandudno pier to film in their arcades. The filming was the easy part! It was the editing that turned out to be quite fiddly and time consuming, but ultimately, it was a lesson in sound, and its importance in a video.

Time lapse/compression. The thing I struggled with more than anything this semester was inspiration. When I first heard about this project nothing immediately came to mind. After considering lots of ideas I thought to be quite cliche and unoriginal my inspiration came in the window of a local charity shop. I bought 'Woody' the wooden drawing doll and he became the star of the show. Using a combination of film footage that I sped up and stop motion photography I created a sequence I am quite happy with.

This was one of the frames in part of the beach scene towards the end of the video. It turns out that trying to keep him upright in the sand was quite tricky. I am glad that in the end I managed to stay away from making something I would always have considered dull, or already done.

Greenscreen. This was one of the larger projects in the module. I had a pretty clear idea of what I wanted to do, and after speaking to Simon Hall and getting the go-ahead, it was just a case of implementing my idea. I've never worked with greenscreen before, and if it wasn't for the lesson we had with Dave Robinson last year I wouldn't have had the first idea about where to start.

Luckily Dave and I were able to collaborate on this project and we chose to work with the charity we did out documentary on. The North Clwyd Animal Rescue. I've already written a blog about the documentary so I won't be going into it during this entry. Anyway, back to the green screen. I've learned so much just from this one project, it has been the hardest, and most time consuming but it has been a lot of fun to film and edit. Dave and I have spent many hours in Regent street and the new creative industries centre with Simon's help trying to edit the film.

I also feel that unlike some of our previous group efforts, that the greenscreen has not been rushed and that the quality is improving vastly. I think this is down to fewer voices within the group. Although I do miss being able to sit and bounce ideas around a group dynamic.

Photography

During the summer we were sent our work, and part of that was to create three images in the categories of locked-off camera (slow shutter speed and tripod) and panning shots (where you follow a moving subject, ensuring it is in focus and the background blurred). Unfortunately, they didn't mention the fact that upon returning we'd have to take one of each category and turn it into a poster campaign for a product.

I didn't think that any of my pictures could be easily turned into an advert, and the fact that no-one asked to even see our summer work when we came back means that I (and many others no doubt) could have gone back out to re-shoot the images. Had we been told that the images would need to be shot from a commercial point of view, I feel that the images might have been better suited to their real purpose. Regardless, the panning shots took me out of my comfort zone, having never done them before I think I could have benefitted from some guidance as to the technique.

We were also asked to choose between food and fashion for a magazine-style editorial set of photographs. This was where I started out with one idea before making a complete u-turn and choosing food instead.

While photographing fashion, I felt I had quite a strong set of ideas, I had clear concepts for each section and managed to photograph three out of the four requirements.

For the Earth Colours section I wanted to go for a high-fashion shot, lots of bright but earthy colours and a very casually dressed model. I was quite happy with the outcome of the shots, but ultimately they won't make it into my folder.

For the 'Jewellery Rules' I wanted to concentrate on a two-page spread of watches and bracelets, my ideas book has some examples of the style of picture I wanted to take. In the end I only completed the watch side, and thanks to my brother and Dave who supplied the watches I eventually had something I was happy with. I did try to photograph the watches on Dave's arm, but it didn't quite come out the way I wanted, so I used a rolled up piece of card which turned out much better.

The final set of shots I took before moving onto food, was 'Dressed to Thrill'. When I first thought about the category, images of evening gowns and elegantly dressed women popped into my mind. However, I didn't dwell on that idea for long. My intentions were to take photographs to illustrate the idea of dressing to thrill-in the bedroom. I found a model willing to dress in pvc and latex outfits and although I enjoyed the shoot and liked the pictures it didn't give off a message I wanted to convey. In reality, it was a little too risque! And so it was after this shoot I decided to concentrate on food.

Food Photography.

I went out to buy some fashion magazines when I was working on those pictures, so I thought it might be a good idea to do the same for the food shots. I stuck any pictures that stood out to me in my ideas book (sketch book I use for when inspiration strikes). For 'Fantastic Fruit' my first ideas were to work with poached pears but I quickly changed my mind for two reasons, firstly, I don't like pears and secondly I don't like wine, so although the idea was good, it would have been a waste of food.

Instead I thought about the title 'Fantastic Fruit' quite literally, and thought about the main problems with trying to encourage people to eat more fruit. So I went and bought a selection of fruits (a banana, pear, melon and pineapple) and made them up to look like superheros using craft paper masks and emblems.

Vegetable visions was perhaps the hardest category for me, my initial ideas included sculpting junk food out of vegetables (burgers, hot dogs etc) building on that I decided to create some art out of food. At first I had planned on taking several images and pasting them all onto one double page spread. But again, costing was what stopped me, and so I settled with one piece of art by creating a car from a carrot and featuring Celt the gerbil to make it into a pet magazine piece. I'm still not 100% happy with the final outcome, but after fiddling and tinkering with it so much I think I'd have to start over with this category to be happy.

Pass the pasta, was the most complex, and time consuming of all the food images. I had the idea of working with movement and trying to jazz the idea of simple pasta up. A while ago I watched a film called 'Cloudy with a chance of meatballs' which is a film where a crazy professor creates a machine that will turn ordinary rain into food. That was where the idea of the spaghetti tornado came from. Luckily there was a packet of spaghetti lurking at the back of the cupboard and with Chris' help and a LOT of spilled and sticky pasta we managed to make the main 'stalk' of the tornado.

This is the image that inspired me

Vine and dine was the final picture I took in this series. I had quite strong ideas to begin with but had to change them as they were no longer original. Some of the ideas written my my ideas book was to use sushi on a clean white plate with a glass of white wine, photographed from above for a clean symmetric shape. To use bite-sized morsels displayed on forks next to a bottle of wine being poured into a glass. A luxurious pudding with a goblet of wine slightly out of focus in the background. All of these ideas were valid but in the end I turned the idea on its head by photographing a plate of junk food to look very expensive along with a glass of wine with the write up asking if this is what the reader's Friday night looked like and how to make delicious, quick and healthy 'take-out' style recipes.

Design for Society

This module was designed to develop communication skills by using film and photography to convey an ethical or moral viewpoint. We had to choose three from six possible assignments.

I chose to create two posters out of a possible four, with the aim of creating awareness using striking or subtle images along with a tag line. My first was the environment agency, I looked at some disturbing images on the internet, including an albatross that had swallowed lots of plastic and other pieces of rubbish thrown away by us humans and a rusty shopping trolley in a river. Once again I had to change my ideas as they had been used by someone else, so I chose to photograph a rather graphic image of a dirty sanitary towel washed up on the beach. This time another pet of ours, the dog Indy was involved. I am happy with the outcome of this image as the message comes across loud and clear!

The second of the images I chose to do was for the Samaritans. The idea was to make the poster appeal to young adults, urging them to contact the Samaritans before considering more drastic action. I toyed with lots of ideas of subtly suggesting suicide had already occurred or was imminent. In the end I opted for a multi-story carpark and my partner Chris stood near to the edge. We did also take a shot where he had one leg up on the fence, but I felt it to be too graphic and obvious.

Empathy

The second of the three projects I chose was to create a film with the intention of promoting or eradicating an issue. Since the majority of my projects this year have centered around animals and animal welfare, the idea of animal cruelty seemed a good idea. I must admit though it was one of the hardest projects I've had to complete and it had nothing to do with editing. All of the footage I found on youtube along with the stills I collected were very graphic, and even after creating the slideshow I find it very hard to watch! I put a clear warning at the start of the film so no one's shocked. Perhaps this detracts from the film itself, but considering how I felt when I watched Sue's film which is about endangered animals I think a warning is not enough to detract entirely from the message.

Documentary

I've already made a brief blog about the documentary so I won't go into too much detail here. Unfortunately I missed being able to edit it to begin with due to personal circumstances. However, I did complete a couple of days of editing towards the end along with the narration and adding in some music. On top of filming I now feel like I've contributed as much as I'd have usually. This documentary was for animals too, in the North Clwyd Animal Rescue, I feel so strongly about this charity's goals that I'm going to be climbing Snowdon in March this year to raise money for them. My partner and I even went on to adopt a dog from there at the end of 2011.

So, in summary this has been a very hectic module with a lot more work than the first year. I'm happy with the work I've produced and despite a few setbacks I really think I've given it my all. I've learned a lot about editing in a short space of time and I've found Simon's lessons to be informative and the activities we've been doing with Colin to be a dream come true (having always wanted to develop my own photographs). There still seems to be a lack of communications within the uni but it's not sufficient to cause too much hassle. I'm very much looking forward to the next module.

A sudden change of direction

Hello, it has been a while.

So I'm well and truly stuck into my projects now. Having completed the percussive rhythm and the filming for the time lapse I turned my attention to the photography side of the assignment.

At first I had decided to work on the fashion aspect for the magazine shots. I went out and picked up a couple of fashion magazines to get some inspiration. It seems that high contrasty, shots with lens flare, and late summer/early autumn colours are in fashion. So Chris and I set out to a nearby Beech forest to take some earth colour shots. Although I'm happy with the shots they just weren't working for me.

A while before, Dave had kindly offered to help me with the jewellery section of the brief, and my brother had kindly lent me a few of his watches and I was happy with the outcome.

In the end, I just wasn't happy with the direction the shots were going. The photos didn't really give off the right image, and despite photographing my 'dressed to thrill' (I had a friend dress up in some tasteful PVC and latex) I felt they were a little too risqué and again not the ideal image I wanted to portray.

Even so, I don't want my work to go to waste, so I decided to blog about them, and show a couple of the pictures I took.

So, I've changed my mind, from fashion to food. I have a few solid ideas so far, and I look forward to implementing them.

Dangerously cute dogs and purrfectly sweet cats

Yesterday, the gang and I headed over to a place somewhere between Holywell and Trelogan to NCAR (the North Clywd Animal Rescue) it's a privately owned charity that takes on strays and signed-over cats, dogs and rabbits in order to try and re-home them. We had kind permission from Nicky Owen, the media relations officer at NCAR to film the day to day goings on. We all had a great time and hopefully managed to capture some great footage of the work that goes on there.

This is Adam Hobbs, he works alongside NCAR as a behaviourist, training and working with difficult dogs so that they can be re-homed. Here he is working with Marmaduke, who is a tri-colour English bull terrier. He was a little excited when another dog came by, but on the whole he seemed to enjoy being in front of the camera and posed a lot!

We filmed a family spending time with a small terrier (I forget his name) that they were thinking of adopting. This area is called the Paddock, and it's where they take animals to let them off the lead to run freely and tire themselves out playing with balls, Frisbees and running around the agility course.

As part of the filming, we decided to get a bunch of 'filler shots', shots the sit between more important ones as a way of both padding out the film and moving seamlessly between unconnected shots. This sign was one of many we filmed over the course of the day.

The gang and I discuss the days filming.

Sue turns 'dog whisperer' for the day. Del was another dog being trained by Adam, and seemed to take a bit of a shine to her.

Rabbit. Very difficult to film of photograph due to them moving around so much and the crossed bars on the hutches, none the less cute though!

Here, Owain talks to us about the trailer that travels around shows and pet shops educating people on the value of donating time and money to NCAR. We heard lots of stories of the generosity of the public at shows who disappear and return laden with blankets, food, donations and anything else that helps the staff at NCAR keep the rescue centre running. And at a running cost of approximately £850 per DAY they need everything people can spare.

If you would like to adopt, foster, sponsor a kennel or cat pod, volunteer, donate money, blankets, food, toys or time or would like more information please visit their website.

I just want to say another huge thank you to the staff (and the animals!) at NCAR for their warm welcome and openness to talk to us yesterday. Keep up the great work guys, and we hope you like our documentary, watch this space for more soon!!

3 weeks in, 8 assignments and a food festival.

Hello!

Well like the title suggests, we're now 3 weeks into the new year, when we were first given our assignments I felt a little daunted, like there was way too much to do in the time we've been given. I'm sure I wasn't alone in thinking that, but I feel more confident as I take each step towards completing the work.

I'm happy to have already completed one of the film projects and have taken steps in most of the other assignments.

For the past few nights, Conwy castle has been lit up in purple and green and it turns out it was all part of Blinc, a festival of the digital arts that was running alongside the Conwy food festival. I've never had the chance to visit one of these festivals but I've been told on good authority that it's well worth a visit.

It was a little rainy yesterday (Sunday) but I headed down into the medieval town and arrived at the festival just as the final stalls were setting up and only a handful of people were milling around.

I photographed the main street while it was quiet, the bunting looked a little sad with no one around to enjoy it, but it did make a good picture.

There were lots of smells in the air as the day wore on, everything from stonebaked pizza, to champagne and oysters were on sale. Chocolate fountains, ice cream, Welsh oggies, chilli, crepes and caviare were just some of the treats on offer at the various stalls and chefs were doing live demonstrations and answering cooking questions in numerous tents across the town.

Not all the smells were pleasant though, there was a barrell outside one of the tents, a Victorian butter churn, and even though the day was overcast it looked and smelled rather gross as the day wore on, not to mention thai curry, ew.

Surprisingly, I ate very little at the festival. A crepe and some icecream was about the whole of it, there was just too much choice and after trying to decide what to eat for a good hour I gave up and headed home.
I brought some brownies home for Chris, he loves them, but even though I am also a chocolate lover, I'm not a huge fan of them. I find them too heavy, and these smelled amazing but were just too sickly!

I brought home a couple of toffee yoghurts, toffee ones from Llaeth Y Llan (village dairy).

Apart from food, the festival had music and poetry on different stages across the town, a beer tent, actors dressed in medieval costume acting at random, birds of prey and giant bubbles!

As I mentioned before, the digital arts festival Blinc was also on around Conwy, one of the strangest was two screens set up in the courtyard of Plas Mawr, they were displaying still images with loud sound effects of the sounds that might go along with the still. It was eerie, but designed to bring Plas Mawr back to life, as it would have been in the past.

Another display was in one of the towers of the castle walls, a projector was showing microscopic images taken of the unseen places of the castle. It was strange, and looked otherworldly.

Blinc had lots on offer over the weekend, the main event being an actual lights show displayed on the side of the castle walls using several projectors. This was on Saturday night, which I unfortunately missed but have been told it was spectacular. It also meant the bridge out of Conwy was closed for a while, and getting back into town was quite difficult that night!
I had a great day wandering around the stalls, listening to music and generally found Conwy had a lively and excited atmosphere. It was a little expensive to get in (£7 for access to all the tent areas) but it was still a really enjoyable day.

Today's blog is brought to you by the letter C and the number 3

Hello!

Welcome back!!!! So year two is upon us, and I'm at the end of my first week back enjoying a moment of piece, a cup of coffee and Scuzz on the TV in the background. It is possibly the first time I've stopped save for sleeping since Monday. I'm not complaining, don't get me wrong, I'm at my happiest when I've got plenty to do, I just didn't realise we'd have so much and so little time to prepare for it!

Are you wondering about the title? Well today's buzz word is commutation, or rather, lack there of. I've felt that despite having our briefs explained, that different tutors interpret them differently, and this has caused me a fair bit of confusion. I'm not alone in thinking this either. Then there's confusion about where are lectures etc are being held this year.

It would've been nice to have been informed about the layout of this term's critical studies lectures (contextualising design) turning up at 9am (to get a parking space) only to be told at 10am that the first half is geared towards fine art and the second towards the design students. It's great that the uni took into consideration what we agreed on last year that the subject matter was too broad to appeal to all types of art students and that it was mainly aimed at the fine art students. However, communication was lacking here too when one tutor told us we only needed to attend the hour intended for us, and another said both were important and relevant.

Perhaps what I'm saying seems petty or whatever, but this is a space meant for me to review and reflect on my lectures and university life. They're not massive issues, and I probably won't dwell on most of them outside of this blog, but it's important to draw attention to them as I'm sure I'm not the only student who has felt a little lost this week.

So, getting back to contextualising design, we were shown roughly half of a video called 'Beautiful Losers' about a group of artists (in a wide range of artistic disciplines) and their trials and tribulations whilst trying to 'make it' in their chosen field. It was quite a visually stunning, and impacting and sometimes brutally honest including one film maker who was stood in a children's park with a big ceramic dragon who told children nearby 'in 1986 we found Samuel's head right there' while pointing to the centre of the dragon. It got a laugh out of the audience, but I'm not sure about it's relevance. Another artist who was speaking about never really wanting to be an artist when he was younger and how he wanted to be a rubbish collector and that for his birthday one year he asked his folks to not only take him to a landfill sight but to also collect a bag of rubbish so they could all throw it on the pile. Amusing.

The general feeling I got from the film, so far, is that art comes from a part of you. Be it angst, wanting to be part of a sub culture, anger, or a need to save your own life through making something all these people shared a very visual way of thinking. I enjoyed the film, but looking at my scribbled notes from the day I don't think it had much of an impact on me. I guess we'll see once the second half is over....

On Thursday, I finally set foot over the threshold of the Centre for Creative Industries. A £5m structure designed to give students a taste of the industry, from sound booths, to a full size TV studio with lighting rig, green screen and removable seating for a studio audience, and an upstairs gallery it really has everything. Of course I cannot fail to mention the 3 amazing Panasonic £5000 cameras on tripods that have handlebars to move it around, needless to say my eyes nearly popped out of my head! The idea of being able to get in there and learn how to set up the studio, film, edit and work the gallery is exciting to say the least!

I feel a little more confident with the majority of my ideas for the upcoming projects, so we'll see how they go. Sorry that there's been no pictures to look at in this blog, but it was really to bring it up to date.

I hope you all have a great year two!