Unit X- Development

Development

After in depth research I have started to develop my ideas into samples. One of the first things we did as a group was get together and create strange objects out of materials that we could later draw from. I found this helpful as an idea generator and how we can work with materials to our advantage. Working in a group has been nice so far, I enjoy the rawness of ideas bouncing off everyone and gaining new knowledge from people. Although sometimes it has been hard to get everyone to engage and stay on the same page I think group work has been a good challenge and something I’d like to do more of.

We have met up regularly and have picked a rough colour theme based on pictures I had taken at Whitby of lobster pots to get some visual stimulation that I can relate back to waste in the industry. My group have discussed ideas of only using plastic (mainly found hopefully) to create samples as plastic is the most destructive and wasteful material on the planet and is made in mass in factories.

From the images I took at Whitby I have begun exploring the net making craft. The fluidity and repetitiveness of nets are so nice and I feel like it will work well to convey feeling trapped by consumerism and waste. I have lots of ideas now mainly to do with creating stuff that can be manipulated to spread a message. At first, I wanted to go quite visual and focus on the quilt making craft but realised my work will come together a lot better with net and manipulating being my focus.

In the beginning I attended the shibori and pfaff machine works shops, it was nice to learn new techniques but I realised that they weren’t beneficial for me to use for this project. I therefore have begun to teach myself techniques that could become beneficial for outcomes. Teaching myself net making and various knot exercises has been fun and I can see them developing well. I am thinking about creating things that layer up, I think it will be visually stimulating and busy creating a hopefully suffocating and confusing effect. 

So far, I have experimented with manipulation of plastic, cutting up, tying, stitching and embroidery it. From the experiments I realised that it will look good to combine some of the samples I have created so have begun to do so and it has creating some intriguing pieces. I am happy with the way I’m working; my work is going to plan and is looking playful- something I wanted to do ironically in an attempt to show how people consume unnecessary amounts due just liking the way it looks. I have realised how much I value research and a concept when idea generating and creating. This project has been perfect so far in helping to push myself creatively and make work with a more intense meaning behind. Moving on from developing my work I want to look more in to different joining techniques I can use to possibly bring samples together. I’m also going to create more visual stimuli to aid inspiration throughout the creative process.

Collectively as a group we have discussed how we might display our work and link them together at the end. Three people in my group including me have decided we are going to do a photoshoot of our samples on the body creating distortion and a metaphor about the consumption of plastic. I am really excited for this I think the outcomes will be very engaging with our concept. I think it will tie our work together collaboratively and help to summarise the project.