Mind Mapping & Notes

 

I recently found that when I use water colours, it always results in me having a couple of pages filled with a variety of different colours and textures from when I’ve my notepad for swatches. After observing this, I’ve decided to use these pages for my notes rather than deposing of them when I can. I feel this not only prevents waste, but it also gives me an insight into my own work style. From these random swatches I can gather an idea on my mind process at the time, my reasoning’s and even what mood I was in at the time.

It also opens opportunities for me to go back and see any ideas that I ‘had’ to leave behind as I was preoccupied working on another project. Here are the notes and mind maps for this weeks task.

As I knew I wanted to work primarily with visual aspects, I created a mind map for each word to help me picture what objects, thought and feeling I associated with each word. This would later help me understand the kind of photographs I would want to use.

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The Creation Process

 

“Create a single visual expression that conveys you”

In all honesty I was quite taken aback with this task. How will I create one single visual expression that portrays me? Is it even possible?

Martin Hosken spoke about the sub conscious and how we can make decisions heavily influenced on this alone. This made me question whether or not we truly know who we are at our cores and how much environmental factors play into our decisions and personality traits. It’s pretty common knowledge that we can act differently in different situations or social groups  – but if this is the case how many alternate personalities are we creating and then projecting onto others and how do we know which the the most authentic version of ourselves?

“[The Japanese people] are so crafty in their hearts that nobody can understand them. Whence it is said that they have three hearts: a false one in their mouths for all the world to see, another within their breasts only for their friends, and the third in the depths of their hearts, reserved for themselves alone and never manifested to anybody.”

This is an observation of the Japanese people taken from História da Igreja do Japão vol I, written by Father João Rodrigues. This passage makes a lot of sense to me and I believe that this can be taken and applied to humanity as a whole rather than just the Japanese. This led me to discovering a poem written by T. S. Eliot – The Naming Of Cats

Although they’ve both gone about it in entirely different ways, I believe they are both telling a similar message. That each being cannot be portrayed as one singular thing. We are ineffable.

So, in order to portray myself in a singular visual expression, I decided I would try and embody each ‘layer’ of myself using a variety of different tools. Using objects to show the core, projections of photographs to show the secondary layer (friends and family) and text to signify the third layer (an acquaintances).

However I felt like something was missing, so I added a fourth layer, sound. This was to symbolise the first interaction between myself and another, such as eye contact or a smile exchanged between myself and a stranger. I felt that sound was the best way to show this as it’s automatic, you hear without realising. Just like you engage without intention.

Using these methods, I was going to create a series of still images to portray the 5 words I had previously selected that describe myself and my practice best.

To begin my process I went out and took photographs of my surroundings. I feel best when I’m in nature so I felt it was only right that I included images of outside to represent myself. Here’s a few;

 

After I had created a collection of photographs to use, I began figuring out which objects I could use to portray each word.Alongside this I had been experimenting with what sound I could use alongside each image. I decided to only use two of the sound effect I had created as I couldn’t recreate what I had in mind in house with the resources I had. To overcome this I’ll be investing in a micro phone in the near future. However this was still an extremely exciting part of the process and I cannot wait to be able to take this element further in future projects.

I chose the piano for curiosity,  simply because I desperately want to learn it (yes, I really have a piano in my living room that I cannot play). I find that the piano produces such a pure sound whilst also has the ability to throw it’s energy into anyone that interacts with it, whether that be the person playing is or hearing it- in fact it’s presence alone is so strong that you simply have to see it to feel it. When using the higher notes, I feel that this can represent quite a child like nature and this, to me, is what curiosity is.

Now, boiling noodles may seem quite a random choice. However as I was watching my lunch cook, I thought how this was a process which could seemingly go on forever, but as we all know, it would soon stop when the water had eventually evaporated entirely – leading to damage and potentially fire. In my opinion, this can easily be related to humanity. We can quite easily put all of our physical and/or mental energy into a project, a person or our jobs but unless we remember to top up our own water and refuel, we’ll burn out.

 

I used my mood boards to select the photographs and my mind maps to select the words I would use for each slide. After editing the photographs in Photoshop, I added the words using Illustrator. Once this was complete I imported the photographs onto my projector to use and began creating the final images.

When working with the projector, I tried out a variety of ranges and focus points. I wasn’t sure whether I wanted the projected image to come into focus on the backing wall or the object itself or what range I’d like my photos to be from. I tested a few different styles of display which resulted in me choosing to go with a variety of both range and focus points as felt that each piece had different needs.

Once I had the final images, I used Photoshop to edit my photographs then took them to Premier to create a sequence and add the sound effect I had gathered previously.

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Mood Boards

To create the mood boards, I based them on existing paintings and drawings that I had done rather than creating new ones. I thought this way any of the elements I found from these drawings would be more genuine than if I had created something new to reflect each word. I then added in photographs I had taken from that week and surrounding objects that I also associated with each word.

 

Curious

Engaging 

Energetic

Narrative

Movement

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Outcome

 

 

Taking design into the a physical space has been a worth while experience and it’s truly opened my eyes to what is possible with projection and sound. I’m happy with the outcome of this project – however looking back there are a few things I would of changed. For example I wish I had experimented more with angles the objects rather than just working distance as I would of liked to of used the shadows created from the objects a little more.

Stuart had also suggested in Padlet how he would of liked to see some macro shots of the compositions – this led me to think of the possibilities of using multiple macro shots to create a one final image. Something I’ll certainly have to try in the future!

I was thrilled with the amount of response my video generated from both Susanna & Stuart on Padlet.

Susanna pointed me in the direction of Anna Lomax, a designer who really brings a sense of fun and life into each of her designs through movement and colour. I love this playful nature and I’m certainly going to aspire to allow my inner child come to light through my design as she does in hers.

This was the first time that I took the leap and broke out into using elements of craft to create a final project. Working using physical elements rather than digital really allowed me to experiment with that is possible and gave me the opportunities to use tool and objects in a completely different context.
Although admittedly I wasn’t entirely happy with the final outcome, I was ecstatic with materials gained through gathering photo’s to use for this project.

If I was to try and re-do this project, I would like to experiment with how I could use the projector differently, I relied to heavily on it’s primary use and didn’t push what was possible by shifting it’s focus, perspective or range. The use of typography could of benefited from paying closer attention to the detailing of it too.

Overall this project was a huge learning curve and I’m happy with the knowledge and experience gained from it.