Crossroads ii

The Foundation course has certainly changed my perspective of art and design. However, I think personally the most successful of the rotations has been Vis Com; being our first rotation the first two weeks highlighted how an idea can be made into a final outcome which, instead of being verbally expressed is uniquely portrayed in a creative and visual way. This really fascinated me as I'd never encountered this form/style of art prior to Foundation; this was further enhanced by the fact the rotation posed a challenge and questioned what I thought art and design meant. In our initial brief I encountered my first hurdle; everyone was assigned their own word, the task was to then identify as many associations that the word had. Trying to communicate the properties of a single word was certainly difficult but I think this is what interests me most about the subject area - stretching the imagination.
I suppose that another reaon for my interest in this specific area is the fact that my work was praised by David Batchelor, he identified in my work the quality of compostion and how the overall layout and presenation of my work was well expressed, which gave me a massive confidence boost.
Despite this being a rather likely area for my specialism the other rotations have also further illustrated the diversity of art and design. In 3D Spatial getting to grips with perspective took quite a while trying to locate the vanishing point was sometimes difficult. I enjoyed 3D as many aspects involved accuracy and taking your time both of which I like to do when drawing. The construction of the instillation pieces was really interesting especially since I'd never undertaken such a project previously.
Dominic Wilcox's area talk proved that certain subjects can overlap and that in fact there are many grey areas in which two or more subjects have a lot in common. In this respect he highlighted that design and art can be one in the same thing and so in many ways this set in stone the way I now percieve art. I now know that in the long term what I specialise in at Foundation may be completely different to what I go on to do at degree or even as a career.

Week 1/2 (Vis Com)

I think its safe to say that my first experience of Foundation has certainly been interesting. In a similar way to when I started Art at A-level the course really opens your eyes to the sheer vastness that is 'Art and Design'. No more so than in week 1, Vis Com.

To start with we were all assigned a word most of which were nouns such as cup, twig, moon and mine... dump. The aim was to conjure as many ideas that that specific word evoked, so immediately I thought of the most common - land fill, waste, smell (the senses which are triggered by being around a dump). Then I moved onto less literal aspects, dumping/ abandoning children or pets, word that rhymed with dump (pump, slump etc); then finally the affects dumps have on peoples lives - disease, visual pollution and so on.

This was a side of art which I'd never encountered before, one which focused more on the process and production of ideas as opposed to the 'hands on' approach typically associated with art and design.

FRESHERS FESTIVAL! (08/09/10)

Wow! This being the first year of the FE Freshers Festival I was looking forward to meeting new people and finding out what subject areas people were most interested in. The purpose of the day was to buy your partner, someone you didn't know a gift for £1, quiet a challenging brief baring in mind that there we're 'prizes'up for grabs!

My partner or blind date as it was said, for the day was Lin (pictured below & right). Whilst we walked and talked along the streets of Chelsea we struggled to think of many unique ideas, until... we stumbled across 'Retromania'. Jokingly I walked over to a rack which advertised items for £1 (just off picture to the right) and placed a rather colourful dress up against my body, 'How do I look?' and shortly after Lin put on a navy blazer and thus our idea had been created! 'Gender Swap'. This of course being a very unique idea got us 2nd place and a £15 voucher.                                                                                                

               

  

 AUDIENCE

...the title of week two's project for me pretty much summed up what Visual Communication was dependant upon and many other areas of design and that is a consumer/viewer. Using the method of message / receiver we had to portray an idea which was both understandable yet enticed the viewer or audience. Dominic Wilcox's work was really helpful in this respect, illustrating that graphics and product design can be merged and have certain things in common.

I thought I'd go for a clear cut, simple message but focus more on the presentation and delivery as against an intricate message and simpler presentation.

Message ideas -

• time management, reminders
• routines
• keeping tidy... keeping on top of the WASHING UP.

I tried to think of things which were relevant to me (similar to Wilcox) and that i could easily relate to, and in doing so came up with washing up. Identifying the receivers was simple, who else than my flat mates. So I went about collecting various pieces of dirty crockery and dishes and placed them in areas which were either regularly used or easily seen by my flat mates in an attempt to visually send my message and ultimately prompt them to do there washing up. I thought maybe seen as one of my flatmates is rather obsessed with personal hygiene that I'd start in the bathroom. In this sense I tried to highlight that if you don't get on top of your washing or 'pull your weight' (a possible text message or slogan I could of used to further develop my project) eventually even the places used to clean the body would become overrun with unwashed dishes. I continued this method by finding other locations which had the greatest exposure to my flatmates and thus would be most effective in illustrating my message. These are shown below.

      And my final piece...