studio practice: methods and madness

STUDIO PRACTICE:METHODS AND MADNESS

PAULA MOCKUTE

SHOOTING STARS

Approach 1

From the beginning of the London riots, I saw it as a “kids’ fight” which I wanted to present in this, “Approach 1”. I am showing the situation from the globe’s perspective. All countries “hear” noise coming from Western Europe and awaken. Everyones attention is now pointed towards England. In the end it is presented as a live show running each day. I used a stop motion video to visualise the concept called “Noise from London”.

The link for video, “Noise from London“

Approach 2

I FIGHT FOR TRUTH

After creating the first video, I realised that it had not communicated as I wanted and decided to change the concept. This time I recreated a fight between a policemen and a looter. They both fight for their own truth and the battle is without end. I used stop motion technique to present my idea. The video is called “I Fight For Truth”

The link for video, “I Fight For Truth“

chinese whispers

On the right hand side is my project’s starting point. I decided to use a song’s lyrics which were then illus-trated by many people. I was interested in how people interpreted random phrases without a bigger context. The mediums were up to the participants to decide. After I collected the material, I ended up with an info graphic piece, and two illustrated versions of the song.

An info graphic piece presenting different mediums people decided to use. The most common medium appeared to be a pen and only one person decided to use a computer to illustrate their phrase

An illustrated song. It has images that follow the song lyrics.

Illustrated song continued.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Michel Foucault, born Paul-Michel Foucault (15 October 1926 – 25 June 1984), was a French philosopher, social theorist and historian of ideas.

For the Bibliography brief I had to find out information about Michel Foucault. I used three unsusual methods: physiognomy, obituaries and his portrait photographs.

?Michel Foucault, born Paul-Michel Foucault (15 October 1926 – 25 June 1984), was a French philosopher, social theorist and historian of ideas.

High skull: clever, intelligent;Tight and thin cheeks: serious, a person who is content with what he has;Fixed looking eyes: stubborn and jealous;Big nose: hypochondriac, fearful;Thin upper lip: reveals an inability of individual to reciprocate feelings in a relationship;High and swollen forehead: high intelligence and understanding;Top of the nose is big and round: good character;Big eyes: beauty, frivilous and liver disease;

Bended ears: high intelligence

1

Approach 1- Physiognomy. Trying to “judge book by its cover“ and to find out what personality Michel Foucault might have had.

2

Approach 2 - Obituaries. I thought it was very intriguing what you can find out about a person from obituaries. It revealed the different and sometimes personal relationships people felt to Michel Foucault.

3

Approach 3- Black and white photography. Three pages of his photographs on the Google page and only two were in colour. Colour photography be-gan to be used from 1840. Was there a person-al reason why Michel chose to be immortalised in a monochrome palette rather than in colour?

PaperCo

My partner Luis and I chose to fulfil the Virgin brief. We had to create a product presenting the company and its brands. We decided to make a pop-up book.

We were researching in different fields to find the best solution. Here are bits from our research and the first product mock-ups we made.

Here are the book’s final spreads. It contains information about Virgin as a brand, it covers Eng-land and the rest of the world, it presents Virgin Atlantic’s 20 year celebration, and concludes with a timeline of Virgin’s various services.

Here are two of the pop-up spreads: UK Brands and Global Companies. It shows the process and first mock-ups I made before making the final piece.

Bibliography

Friend, T., 2003, Jumpers, The New Yorker, [online]. Available at: <http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2003/10/13/031013fa_fact>

24DesignManchester, 2008, Pup-up basic technics, [online video]. Available at:< http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-FFeBAV9Y0&feature=player_embedded>

Sabuda, R. , 2010, Pop-ups you can make, [online]. Available at: < http://www.robert-sabuda.com/popmakesimple.asp>

Foucault, M. 1961. Madness and Civilization. France:Librairie Plon

Foucault, M. 1972. The Archaelogy of Knowledge. Great Britain: Tavistock Publications Limited

Delouze, G. 1988. Foucault. London: The Athlone Press

Virgin, 2011. Virgin.com, [online]. Available at: <http://www.virgin.com>

Youtube, 2011. Youtube.com, [online]. Available at: <http://www.youtube.com>

TED, 2011. Ted.com, [online]. Available at: <http://www.ted.com>

Google, 2001. Google.com, [online]. Available at <http://www.google.com>

Evaluation

The different briefs helped me to try out new working methods and look into relative social contexts. Most importantly it gave me new experiences and more confidence in my practice. The semester started with an easy “Lookalikey” brief, then quickly changed pace when we were given four challenging briefs. A great deal of social and political observation was made while working on the “Shooting Stars” brief. Moreover, the challenge was to visualise it in a moving im-age format which was a great experience. I chose the London riots theme and spent a while thinking and having discussions about how the work could be presented and visualised. After a few crits with other students and the tutors I worked on one concept, but then changed it completely in the end! I think it was both brave and risky to do that but the group meeting helped me to understand what mistakes I was making and to choose a different approach. I’ve created an abstract stop motion video representing the fight for personal beliefs and law between policemen and looters. The PaperCo brief was a valuable experience for the opportunity to create and present a product to a real client. I was happy I already participated in a live brief last year which gave me more confidence. My partner and I spent a while read-ing about Virgin (the company of our choice), to familiarise ourselves with its main features and values. We wanted to create a product which itself would represent the company and to make it suitable for use in the contemporary market. For the final piece we decided to create a pop-up book, which was a new challenge and a learn-ing curve for both of us. I enjoyed the “Chinese Whispers” brief for its openness and playfulness. It was a completely new way of researching. I am interested in the process of inter-pretation and I also found it very interesting to work with many different people. In the end it became a two-level interpretation. First of all, people were interpreting a phrase using illustration. Then the drawing created an interpretation of the lyrics of a song which I chose. The last “Bibliography” brief was intriguing. Unfortunately, because of the amount of work I had already, I found it hard to spend as much time on it as I want-ed. I have tried a few different methods to research the brief. I chose to make con-clusions about Michel Foucault from his appearance, his obituaries and the fact that 99 per cent of his photos online are black and white. I questioned: can someone’s face reveal their personality? I tried to show how death can explain what influence a person has had on other people? And I explored whether there was a reason for choosing black and white photography. To conclude, I feel I had a good chance to find new methods and to better understand the secrets of contextualisation. I will definitely be working on it in my futher studying. Like someone once said, only “practice makes perfect“.