Exhibition time!

After Newspaper club was out of the way, it was time to focus on what we were going to exhibit.

The thing I had enjoyed most in the project was making the mechanical stag beetle so I began to research into other endangered insects and how they might be modified. I settled on the following:

The Shrill Carder Bee- the bumble bee is an essential part of our eco-systems and cannot be allowed to become extinct... I've also upgraded it to function as a spy drone

The Blue Ground Beetle- Similarly to the Stag Beetle, the ground beetle will be updated to feed on scrap-plastic and reform them into recyclable pellets

Grey Dagger Moth- AS these insects are a great indicator of pure air and low pollution, I modified it to become a flying air filtration system

The bee is my favourite of all four bugs

I wanted to pin the insects onto a board as I had seen them displayed at the Manchester Museum, but as I only had four I thought they might look a bit sparse. I went back to my idea of pinning them onto a scientific style diagram of the insects. I considered using an etching over foam board but instead I chose water-colour. Although I love working in water-colour and I do like the painted background, in retrospect I think a more simple design would have been better... the painting takes the emphasis away from the sculptures.

I also made an etching of the bison for the exhibition but I don't think it looks as good as the original bison collages I made. Overall though I think all our groups images worked really well as one exhibit and while not having a graphic designer in our group did make things difficult, it meant our exhibit stood out as being extremely illustrative. Goodbye until next year Unit X!

 

Newspaper Club

I was really looking forward to making a newspaper to combine all of our work together but unfortunately, due to two missing group members and problems over the holidays, there was not a lot of imagery to use besides the info graphics... this meant that although we did have drawings of animals, they weren't particularly relevant to the project without the mechanical modifications.

In order to collate as much imagery as possible we left assembling the newspaper and doing the layout until the last day before the deadline which was incredibly stressful! (Never again) Eventually we managed to complete the layout and send the newspaper for printing in plenty of time, however I REALLY WISH WE HAD A GRAPHIC DESIGNER to help with the layout. That's what they're for...

I think the newspaper turned out okay in the end but I'd rather it had had more pages and we had spent a few days organizing the layout rather than making it in 12 hours straight!

Progression pt.2

One of the best things that I learnt in this project is that the Bison's Latin name is "Bison Bison Bison".

As Bison are endangered due to habitat loss caused by encroaching cities, I decided they should be modified so that they could reclaim some of their lost land... The updated bison achieves this by scooping up earth using a fork/ scoop on the top of their head, they then tip the earth into a sort of bunker on their back. The Bison carry this dirt until they reach concrete and lay the earth over the top, taking back part of their habitat.

This is only a comical idea, and would in no way be beneficial to humans and would never work, however I did enjoy creating the imagery to represent this upgraded animal.

Although I really like the aesthetic of these illustrations I think they are lacking some kind of explanatory text.. I wish we'd had a mixed group of Illustrators and Graphic Designers, I feel like we missed out on the use of a different skill set. 

I felt similarly about the drawings I made for the Weedy Sea Dragon so I tried a more graphic-style illustration with some text and information about how the illustration is relevant to the projects.

It's the first time, or the first time in a long time that I've made anything like this but I really enjoyed the process. I cut the Sea Dragon shape out using black tape to get texture and tried to hold onto my own aesthetic a bit with the patterns and colours. I think this image ended up looking a little bit like an advert.

Progression

Once I had made my info-graphics, it was much easier to begin producing imagery. I think if this had been done a week or two into Unit X we would have progressed the idea much further and our project would have been more successful overall as we struggled to make big group decisions.

I progressed my ideas for the Weedy Sea Dragon, Stag Beetle and Bison as these were the most threatened of my four chosen animals had the best potential for mechanical upgrades- The Arctic Fox was difficult to modify as it is only endangered due to habitat loss and scarcity of food.

I tried to vary my approaches to creating imagery for each animal and was determined to make a life-like, mechanically altered Stag Beetle after visiting the displays of insects at the Manchester Museum (as seen below).

My first attempt to make the Beetle was atrocious... I had constructed it four times bigger than a real Stag Beetle and it was not carefully crafted. However, my next, smaller attempt was much more successful. 

I used an assortment of found items to create the beetle and filled its insides (revealed by open wings) with tiny cogs and clock parts to represent the mechanical alterations. I decided that to survive endangerment and be useful to the environment, the modified stag beetle must be able to consume and process scrap metal and turn it into small, recyclable pellets. This was based on the way these beetles consume dead plant matter and return the minerals they contained to the soil.

After making this sculpture I considered how I might display it if I used it in the exhibition. I thought about  doing a scientific-style exploded drawing of how the modified beetle might work and photograph the beetle crawling on, or pinned, to the diagram.

Helpful info-graphics

It was around this time when one of our tutors told us we needed to be more focused within our theme. (I agree, I had no idea where my work was leading). We decided to make a list of endangered animals, birds and insects, and allocate four to each group member and make an info-graphic to pinpoint why each animal was threatened, the conservation work being done to help them and why it is important to save them.
It was important for the progression of the project that we all completed these info-graphics quickly and share the information so we could move on to experimenting with upgrades and preparing for the exhibition.

Unfortunately, after this meeting we immediately broke up for the three week Easter holiday, throughout which, communication was not as good within the group as it should have been.  So I had to continue developing work from my info-graphics without really knowing what the rest of the group was working on.




Below are my Info-graphic pages on my chosen animals: the Weedy Sea Dragon, the Arctic Fox, the Plains Bison, and the Stag Beetle

 

Animal Adaptations

After experimenting with mechanical insects but not really considering how their adaptations would be useful, I moved onto making a few functional alterations to mammals and birds. These "upgrades" are in no way scientifically correct or feasible... they are more comical.

After discussing with my group how the magpie has already adapted to urban environments, I began to think of ways that its adaptations could be taken to extremes. These included adding a handy "chest of draws" and a magnetic foot to aid the magpie in collecting shiny trinkets.
My adaptation for roadkill animals, rabbits in particular, was the addition of a headlight which prevents the "frozen in headlights" reaction that causes the deaths of so many bunnies...
These adaptations are quite ridiculous and were well fitting with the project as the animals are not really endangered and the drawings are only rough, however it did help me to grasp the concept of our theme a little better and enable me to move on to more appropriate animals.

Bio-Mechanical

After considering the possibility of combining animals to help them adapt, I began to think of ways humans could use technology to interfere with nature. The images I found combining the organic and the mechanical were pages from Fritz Kahns's book on the human body. I had never seen these pictures before but apparently they are considered to be some of the first info-graphics. Fritz Kahn was a scientist who worked in 1920's Berlin. He used mechanical metaphors for his insightful theories of how the human body worked and commissioned artists to visualise his ideas. I loved all the examples I could find, I think the ones that look like mechanical cross-sections of glamour posters are the most interesting.

Although I didn't experiment applying mechanical parts to humans, I did try with a few insects- as insects, especially bees are crucial to our survival as they pollinate plants. Insects cannot be allowed to die out... but if they did could they be replaced with machines?

  

I really like the aesthetic of these images, the combinations between photographs, paintings and real mechanisms but I think I need to start considering how and why these mechanical parts are being applied, and not get carried away with appearance.

Bad Taxidermy and Victorian Monsters

After searching for examples of "bad taxidermy" and expecting to find images of moth-eaten, utterly unbelievable Victorian inventions I came across a modern artist who works along the same lines. However, the work of Enrique Gomez de Molina is much more beautiful, shocking and believable (to an extent) than I was expecting. Unfortunately, Molina as recently been arrested for using the skins of endangered animals which goes against the entire principle of our themes. However, his images are still useful for our research and I began to consider how we could combine different animals to either bring back extinct animals or aid existing ones. What are the endangered animals lacking that could be provided by another animal? How could animals be altered to exist in a new urban habitat?    

After finding Enrique Gomez I continued to look for examples of bad Victorian taxidermy. Instead I found only the name of an avid collector of these artifacts from the same era and the book he wrote about them. Ulisse Aldrovandi wrote "The Monstrorum Historica", "A compendium of all known human and animal monstrocities", the illustrations from which are hilarious... and a little scary. Supposedly this man had in his vast taxidermy collection several dragons and even a mermaid but sadly I couldn't find any photographs. 

It struck me that it might be interesting to attempt to make a modern "Monstrorum Historica" using animals which have become monstrous by adapting to the urban world. Although it might be more fun to make a less serious version using slightly comedic adaptations. 

Initial group research

During our first group meeting we mind-mapped a collection of ideas for us to research individually over the weekend. It quickly became apparent that we were mostly interested in the reclamation of nature, or nature reclaiming its place in the modern world. Here are some of our initial ideas:

On the theme of nature reclaiming it's place...

• Trees and plants overgrowing cities or man made structures
• Animals adapting to urban environments
• Ways to stop endangered animals becoming extinct

And reclaiming nature...

• Bad taxidermy- how the Victorians took to stitching exotic animal skins together to create new or mythological animals
• Mythology- how myths began, for example, elephant skulls resembling a cyclops
• Spontaneous Generation- a reclamation of the old belief that life grows from nothing and animals appear from the substances they are found near. E.g, mice are produced by dirty clothes and old cheese. 

We also agreed that we were interested in the Wunderkammer or "Cabinet of Curiosity" style museum presentation so I researched this too. 

The MOSI

I had imagined the Museum of Science and Industry to be a lot more inspirational than it was. I was hoping to find some evidence of lost theories or science that had been proven wrong to link to the theme "Reclamation" but the things I found most interesting were the old machines and Victorian style illustrations and old photographs on the signs.

The old-fashioned illustrations reminded me of an artist I found in Juxtapoz called Dan Hillier who collages together victorian drawings, often combining humans animals and machines. I wasn't really sure about how I could link this to "reclamation" other than it reclaiming old drawing methods... I did think about modifying old household objects within the drawings or photos to demonstrate how old technology could be reclaimed by modern people but didn't push the idea much further.

Above: Dan Hillier's collage work 

"Time to choose"

This post is a little delayed but i'm going to try and catch up with what has happened in Unit X over the last couple of weeks.

On the 13th March the name of the main project was revealed as "The Museum of Lost Science". This was then separated into different themes for us to choose from and focus on until the exhibition in May. I was torn between the themes "Biographical" and "Reclamation", but as I thought it would be far too easy for me to settle on a character-based narrative if I chose "Biographical" (which I always do!) I decided to step out of my comfort zone a little and chose "Reclamation".
We were instructed to spend the next week attending lectures and talks from visiting artists and scientists and beginning to conduct our own research into our theme before being divided into groups at the end of the week.    

Some of the visiting Artist lectures were brilliant and were very helpful towards my own research and ideas, especially as they incorporated aspects of science into their own work. They seemed particularly influenced by machines and engineering which I think has encouraged me to do the same. Here are some examples of the Artists' work, I love the contrast between Brendan Dawes and Jim Bonds sculptures/ objects . While Dawes visualises happiness and naivety, I find Bond's is often quite sinister. I like sinister.

                                         Jim Bond's Kinetic eye, below is Dawes's happiness machine.

                                Dawes's happiness machine.

It happened in a frame...

This is the outcome for the first collaborative project of Unit X.  The task was to produce a 90 second to 2 minute film following the life of a real or fictional character. The footage had to conform to the Dogme 95 Manifesto: using only real occurrences (no violence or murder), using only real sound, no props, no filters or lighting, and only simplistic editing. 
I was in one of the smaller teams, as I worked with Alex Davies to devise the narrative, settings and shooting, our friend Sam Whitham acting as"Edward". 

We considered several characters to film including the "homeless hipster" who searches the Northern Quarter for a higher class of rubbish to survive and a "Wild man" who decides to leave his life in normal society and run away to the woods. Eventually we decided to tell the story of Edward, an ex-student who sleeps rough and returns to his halls of residence each night to satisfy his strange fascination with the people who have replaced him. 

The story is quite bizarre and some of the scenes within the film are a little disturbing but it was incredibly fun and rewarding to make. It was the first time I have created a film like this and the project has inspired me to try it again. I think the Dogme 95 Manifesto, whilst restrictive, was a really useful method of making us carefully consider the use of sound and light in a true-to-life environment and resulted in a more interesting aesthetic. After watching the other groups videos I am unsure whether our film was what our tutors expected, but I for one am very pleased with the result.