#studio2

12.05.20

After doing my research on Victoria Villasana, I went back to Photoshop and made another 2 edits based on the incorporation of my yarn and graffiti, I wanted to add natural colour to my images that would compliment my yarn quite well, and so I chose to use some plants that were in my garden. I chosen the plant specifically as I wanted a plant with large leaves so I could rest my yarn over them without it falling off. 

I feel all these colours are very tropical and positive, I felt that I had captured a lot of gloomy streets and graffiti on dim walls from my previous research, and so this brought everything back to life again. The yarn is so bright, I chose a yarn that had a colour gradient, I feel these wouldn't have worked out as good if I had of chosen a Yarn that was one block colour, i.e. red with no highlights within. Blue really matched my way of working when I took my practice outside.

Why did I do these kind of edits? I don’t exactly have an explanation for these edits as they were something that developed as I went on. However, using the white lines that I drew on using the pencil tool, somehow reflect the stitches that Victoria Villasana sewed into her photographs. I distorted the lines to give it a different aesthetic, again I used cut outs of the Graffiti pasted on the streets of Manchester, but this time I went with a colour pallet and based these edits on Blues and Greens. I chose to draw over the leafs and give them more of a Palm Leaf effect as these were tropical and not something you would find everyday in nature, I wanted to also add my own illustrations to the edit, make it more handmade and delicate. I plan to do 2 more of these, hanging them in my tree or another part of my garden.

Showing off the pretty much final artefact. Just touch ups to be done for assignment, and Showcase. Hooray! :)

The UV/glow in the dark aspects closeup.

The boys managed to get the prototype working today. We tested 2 scenarios one with holes in the box and one without. Basically, we drilled holes into the side of the container because we needed the air flow to create the vortex. It worked pretty well both ways, now we need to think about how to contain the smoke properly. Then look at dimensions for the final container. Testing is a bit hard in studio because we don’t have a way to contain the smoke, so all testing has to be done at home.

First Test w/ container, fan and battery.

Second test w/ holes drilled into container.

Compared to the pace we were going at during our last project idea, this one is coming along way faster. The first prototype is done and has been tested. Our message behind the project has been finalised and we are working on how we’re going to be conveying this to the audience without too much explanation. Sangeeta mentioned that the presentation should be related to the idea or we lose the value behind it. The work has been divided between us (what we know needs to be done). We’re on track to having this done pretty soon so that we can develop ideas further.

What is Movement

The word 'movement' has multiple meanings and connotations in todays world. If we think of movement as a change in something's physical or figurative state or position, then besides the obvious, movement as locomotion, there are many other 'somethings' that we can think of as having movement. 

For example, social moods can move, there are political movements, cognition can move and change following accidents or disease. Music occurs in movements, and the sound waves that make up music move in rhythmic ways. So movement can be fast or slow, and movement might be linear, with everything changing at the same rate or at set times, like the waves in a tide. Or movement could be random, with things moving at sometimes, but not other times, with no way to predict when the movement might occur. An example of random movement might be the progress of certain technologies. 

Some technological advances might happen on a regular basis, such as the steady movement of operating system updates or i-phone updates. But movement in medical technologies, or new ways of doing business, might happen far more randomly.

I am personally interested in what it is about the way some things move that generates a shift (a movement) in the psychology and emotions of some human beings. For example, some psychologists theorize that arachnophobes suffer from a fear of spiders because of some direct experience with spiders, where an encounter with an arachnid instilled fear of spiders in them. This type of learning is called 'classical conditioning'. A person gets a fright in the presence of a spider, so further encounters with a spider produce the fear again.

But this doesn't explain why some arachnophobes have never had such an experience yet still have fear reactions and emotions with spiders. 

When these people are asked why they are afraid of spiders, they often say they "Don't like the way they move with all their legs". What is it about the specific way a spider moves that makes people uncomfortable? Does it make a difference if the spider moves faster or slower? What if it had fewer legs to move, or more legs. Are jumping spiders more scary than the ones that can't jump?

Along the same line of thought, if the locomotive movements of some things can make people feel frightened, how can movement be harnessed in the creation of comfort technology to help people or simply for entertainment? By comfort technology, I mean technologies that aren't a necessity, but that bring joy, calm, or happiness. A fun example might be a lava lamp, or a video of a jellyfish moving in the sea. Although a jellyfish is often a lot more dangerous to people compared with a spider, its interesting that the jittering, sharp movements of a spider alarm people whereas the fluid movement of the jellyfish is often attractive to people.

Victoria Villisana, is a textile based artist that incorporates street art, and the back streets of London around her work. She’s been making embroided patters for years as a hobby and decided to paste them on the walls of the streets around her after seeing someone in her local area doing the same.

After reading deep into an interview it says she doesn’t want her art to be pretty she wants it to be based on humanity. She visits places such as Uganda and take images of the women, and then goes in with stitching, hanging the threads from the eyes, hair, or any part of the body she chooses.

With the threads she aims to individualise the person on the photograph, so people can feel more connected on an emotional level. The stitches are never planned out as she wants it to reflect some sort of storytelling. 

I love her work so much as she incorporates a Graffiti in Yarn into the same practice, this is something I’ve been trying to do this week. I also love how she chooses black-and-white images as her base and then goes in with vibrant coloured thread to bring it to life.