UNIT X | RESEARCH | INITIAL DEVELOPMENT

INITIAL RESEARCH...

Throughout the beginnings of Unit X, my research has stemmed mainly from a desire to explore and expand my own strengths. Due to feeling relitevly uninspired by the organised activities provided, I began exploring and revisiting themes that had inspired me throughout previous units. I found myself drawing inspiration from architecture and obscured spaces around the city, spending time in Manchester and Leeds gathering first hand research regarding the theme 'pop up', particularly in retail.

          Selfridges, Manchester | A gender collection  Imagery from Manchester & Blackpool

When we were first required to share our ideas as a group, my main discussion encountered themes such as; perception, linear form, light and sound. By discussing openly as a group, I was able to discover who's ideas enhanced and balanced my own and eventually my Unit X group evolved, comprised of myself, Katie, Dominika and Bethany (THE SHINY SHOW!). Our individual research, although of different contextual starting points, all encountered a similiarty in the overlal theme, with a main intention of using light & sound to portray a message to the audience. My place in the group quickly formed with Katie, as the structural memebers of the team. The key points for us during the start of unit x where based heavily around the idea of creating a ‘walk in’ structure, a large scale build that the audience could engange with through light, sound and projection. 

Initial concept board

 First drawing demonstrating the dome like 'walk in' structure.

Gathering a broad variety of contextual inspirations strongly influenced the direction of my development at this point. I spent much of week one with a very open mind, extracting ideas from media and entertainment companies such as Moment Factory, as well as looking into the work of Fine artists such as Pipilotti Rist, who use film and projection as a means to create. My strongest source of reference at this point came from Giles Milers commission for Stella McCartney, which encountered many of the ideas we as a group had discussed and gave us a strong visual reference regarding our 'walk in' concept.  However, very quickly within the first weeks of Unit X, our development made a drastic change. As we discussed the aspects of our initially planned design, in terms of scale, health and safety and the accessibility to materials, we quickly realised that the excitement of Unit X had obscured our realistic expectations. 

So as a group, we decided that in order to involve ourselves in a project that would enhance our abilities, we needed to re develop a conecept that was realistic for our skill set, but that also allowed us to keep our original themes. Our project then evolved into a pop up structure, designed for a fashion based context. For myself as a structural team member, this opened up a whole new world of refrences and inspiration, I immediately felt more comfortable with the work and ideas I was producing, as I now had a more solid purpose to design for. 

Mood board to show the shift into a fashion based context

(Link to my pinterest board which displays further initial research)

https://www.pinterest.com/ginariddiough/unitx-fashion-visual-merchendising/

UNIT X | STRUCTURAL DEVELOPMENT

Since starting university, I have developed a new skill set within the world of 3D design/mixed media. By Being part of the structural team within our group, I have been able to explore and expand these new found abilities, as well as taking on new challenges that have enhanced my knowledge and enjoyment for this specialism.

Contextual refrencing has been the key to my development process. 
At first, I stayed very closely to the profession of visual merchandising, ensuring that I had a strong knowledge basis towards what as a group we were planning to achieve.  Artists such as Sarah Parker, Cos & Nendo, Sam Hofman & Alexander Wang, all provided me with an exciting insight into the ways in which fashion can be displayed and began sparking ideas in which my original interest in architectural formations could come into play.
I began to realise at this point how important the connection between the garment and structure really is, so I made sure to converse with the fashion side of our team to share ideas. By doing so we were able to intertwine our references, resulting in the structure evolving from the charectistics of the garment and vice versa. 

Moodboard demonstrating ideas & colour palette 

Influential image regarding line and space |Bureau Betak.

Once we had developed a strong theme within our group , which revolved around the concepts of linear form, transparency and neon light, I decided to branch out with my research, with hopes to expand my ideas into new directions. It was at this point where I found my key image, that finalising the direction of my ideas. looking to various professions for inspiration, I was drawn towards furniture design and came across a particular so named ‘art furniture’ piece, created by Christan Hallerod & Johannes Svartholm.

Key image that directed progression | Furniture Design

What i extracted from this, was the concept of designing a structure that would be built from individual compartments, separate blocks and frame work that when brought together would create a structure devised of line, shape and space. 

(Link to my pinterest board that shows how my research progressed)

https://www.pinterest.com/ginariddiough/unitx-developed-research-lineargridshape/

With this new design concept in mind, I spent a number of days sketching up ideas and spent as much time as possible during the Easter break conversing with my team members, to keep them up to date with the new directions I was taking. In the final week of Easter myself and katie were able to meet up, which was such a plus for us as we were able to bring all our individual ideas and reference points together, to create our final structural design. This was the first time I have used photoshop to create a 3D based drawing, but will definitely be a process I will be using in the future. Creating digitally allowed us to achieve a three dimensional vision, something we were finding hard to achieve on paper.

                                   Final Design | Created on Photoshop

UNIT X | GROUP WORK | LINES OF ENQUIRY

Group collaboration is something I was quite sceptical about at the beginning of Unit X, even though I do enjoy working with others, I was unsure how such a project would allow each member too develop and explore their skill set. Luckily I have loved working with the people in my group, as individuals I feel we have strongly understood the important abilities that make a well functioning team. Although initially we all had a variety of different ideas, we as a group were able to decipher those ideas, knowing when to push something forward or when to leave it behind, which is a task I feel some of the other groups struggled with. My strongest connection within the team has been with Katie, who has worked along side me as the structural members of our group. Due to the fact that myself and Katie have become good friends since starting university, this has allowed us to feel immediatly comfortable with each others working styles, an important factor that has allowed us to extract the most from each others strengths.

The key developments within our practice almost always arose from the group critique/tutorial sessions we had. By openly discussing our development and plans with our peers and tutors, this allowed us to view our project from a external prospective, which helped to decipher flaws or complications we hadn't yet noticed. The crits that have taken place haven't always been so positive, there have been many that have left me deflated and de motivated. However, looking back now, taking on board the opinions and criticisms' only allowed us to expand the ideas that were our strongest. This constant input allowed me to develop one of the most important skills I have learnt within Unit x... to REFINE.

By breaking down our ideas and simplifying them, this allowed us as a group to get the most out of the process' we were undertaking, teaching us that it is more about the quality and specifics of the ideas you choose to pursue. Initially it was not so easy to come to terms with refining ideas, as a group we have encountered various struggles and at times we were brought to question ideas that had played a big part in our development.

The use of light has been a concept that has played a leading role within the development of both the structure and the garment and has also been a driving point for many of our ideas throughout the project. During a challenging tutorial in week 7, we were required to ask the question, What will our project be without light?? At first we were all very adamant about the idea of removing light from our project and it became very hard to envision how our project would evolve without it. However, I feel this once again demonstrates how well we worked as a team, we were able to take the negative and turn it into a positive, all by striping back our ideas and thinking of ways to overcome the issues. We firstly began by looking back at our original colour scheme, bright fluorescent colours that we had extracted from the illuminations and casinos of Blackpood and combined this with gathering new research and inspirations. Broadening our contextual references at this point became a really helpful tool,  gathering information from fashion, fine art and photography.It was at this point where we disovered we could still achieve the overall neon look that we had hoped for, just by going a different way about it. We began looking into the combination of neon paints to create contrasting colours both within the structure and garment prints and have been Inspired by the Spring/Summer 13' collection by Simone Roche, leading us to look into the effects of using laser cut fluorescent acrylic within our structure. 

SERENDIPITY | Laser cut acrylic to be included structure

UNIT X | THE BUILD

During Week 7 of Unit X, myself and Katie took a few days out of uni to get started on building our structure. Luckily, we both have family members in the joinery profession, so being able to take advantage of the materials and process' available to us has been a massive help. My boyfriend allowed us to use his workshop to construct our frame and with his guidance we were able to take a front seat in the making process, allowing us to both gain some really valuable experience in larger scale construction and design. The day went really smoothly and it was great to see our design translate so well into its 3D state. The most challenging bit, apart from getting to grips with using power tools! was adapting to the structure as it developed. Although we had calculated original measurements, it was important that we continued to view the structure from a free standing perspective, which ended up being a really vital exercise. The measurements of the structure soon began to alter, as we were now starting to see how our separate frames would look when placed together; in terms of size, space and stability. 

Painting Process | Colour Palette | Achieving a neon look with fluorescent paints.

Being in charge of the structure within our team has been a hard task at times, as we have been working on such a large scale, there hasn't been too many opportunitys to sample or test. Our work has simply had to develop and evolve from the tasks we have undertaken. I think this is why we enjoyed the painting process so much, as we were able to experiment more with different combinations and colours. I am really happy at what we have managed to achieve with our structure, I do feel we took on a big task but I believe this was always our intention from the start, to push ourselves and our abilities!  

UNIT X | FINAL REFLECTION

Looking back on my progress and development throughout Unit X, I do believe that this has been my most successful project since starting university, however, there are still areas that I feel could of been improved upon. The lighting for us as mentioned before was a massive element within our work. I feel that as a group, if we had spent more time experimenting with the use of light, or exploring ways we could of adapted the structure to cater for its properties, i believe that collectedly we could of discovered ways to overcome the issues. Unit X has massively helped me to broaden my practice, I have been able to explore my strengths and undergo new experiences, that I feel have allowed me to understand my ways of working, a positive I expect will be really helpful as I enter my second year. One personal strength I believe has improved within this project is my abilities and engagement with research. Usually once my ideas were set and my development on track my research would usually take a back seat. Unit X has encouraged me to be continual involved with my research, which has resulted in the work I produce to be constantly changing and evolving, due to new sources of  inspiration.