Don't Hug Me I'm Scared

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Further thoughts on the Sci-Fi BOOK project

Over the summer you were sent various pieces of information about the Book project - Tansy provided a template for ways of thinking about the content of your chosen Sci-Fi book, here is it:

I hope this project will also appeal to others for whom the genre is also slightly alien/unfamiliar and not just the more nerdy escapists amongst you.. Although it is billed as a book project, on reflection I thought the headings of the exhibition might provide an equally stimulating basis for a well researched series of images and they are:

Future Worlds (including predictions made by writers of the past)

Virtual Worlds (of dreams, the imagination and cyberspace)

End of the World (apocalyptic tales)

Parallel Worlds (eg via time machines)

Alien Worlds ('moon men' were described as far back as 1638..)

Perfect World?(Utopias)

We will be posting over the coming weeks about this - with references to material that may be of interest and have some relevance -  

Adam Dant

Adam Dant has produced many drawings depicting and interacting with large public space and utopian models. This includes Canary Warf and St Paul's.

Bill Fontana>

A project from earlier in the year which used the sounds of the river Thames to lead you around the unused spaces in the bowels of Somerset House where you come across 17th century grave stones among other things.

The London Nobody Knows

Great documentary about london with James Mason wandering. You can find the whole film here.

Map Repository

Great list of London maps from the last 600 years, including links to The Crace Collection and the Guildhall Library if you scroll down the page.

Mapback

Produced by dell books in the 40's mapbacks had a back cover illustrating the places the action within the book takes place. An interesting way of blending narrative and related imagery.

Four Corners Books - 'Familiars' series

Many of you are interested in books - so I thought I'd draw attention to the publisher 'Four Corners' and their 'Familiars' series - where classic texts are re-interpreted by contemporary artists and illustrators. For example in 'The Picture of Dorian Gray' (Oscar Wilde) - a story about male vanity - the text is published in its original magazine format - alongside ads featuring über-cool looking 70ies men smoking Gitanes. In 'Dracula' the artist James Pyman returns to the original text to find lots of quiet moments in between the clichéed blood and gore.

A refreshing reminder that as illustrators you don't have to illustrate plot or characters - the text is already busy dealing with this - you could reinvent, reimagine - look sideways at what is happening just outside of the scene, think about prequel or sequel, focus on secondary characters, displace or rearrange......

http://www.fourcornersbooks.co.uk/

Tim Hunkin tells us about the car, nice combinations of live footage and animation to explain processes, ways of making and thinking and the technological 'leaps' that make the car what it is today. There is something reassuring about an engineer in a corduroy jacket, no?

part 2:



part 3:

JIGGLING ATOMS

The fantastic Richard Feynman describes energy transfer and jiggling atoms.

Gerrit Van Bakel

The remarkable Gerrit Van Bakel, sculptor, designer, maker of play spaces and furniture. The image above shows a rainbow machine, as the room gets warmer the long rod rises up and the rainbow appears, as the room cools the rainbow gradually disappears. Simple, analogue beauty. See below for more of Van Bakel's substantial output and look here for the complete works. Thank you to an ambitiousprojectcollapsing for introducing Gerrit to me.

Alma Seedhoff Buscher

Some simple play objects originally designed in the 20's by Bauhaus student Alma Seedhoff Buscher and re-released by Kurt Naef [Naef Toys]. Courtesy of here.

Johny Kelly's title sequence for Het Klokhuis, a science programme for children. Its here.

Earthworms have feelings too.

Green Porno from Isabella Rosillini. From here.

SCI-FI

Some simple but very elegant Sci-Fi posters produced by Dean Walton courtesy of here.

furniture tip

more simple modular excitement this time from Verner Panton working for Ikea. Courtesy of here - thank you anambitiousprojectcollapsing.

modularity

a modular chair designed by Andries van Onck based on Rietveld's proportional construction grid courtesy of here.

RO-LU.2

shelving idea from WAKA WAKA at IKO IKO





more from ROLU - simple solutions - ways to think about showing books and objects.

RO-LU

chair designs from here, thanks To Rosie E for the tip - another possible thought for the construction of a display system.

Form, palette, display systems

considering how form tone and palette can be harmonised - these drawings in space by Kjell Varvin courtesy of here show an intuitive use of found and constructed surface and form - perhaps is worth considering when thinking about a hanging/display system.

show thoughts.6

show thoughts.5

A show that you may remember from the South London Gallery - thinking about possible 'themed' rooms - could have a space that is a Salon?

Show thoughts.4

Hero - Enzo Mari.

Show thoughts.3

Some images from the Stockholm Furniture Fair [thank you to ItsNiceThat]. Some interesting use of raw ply wood - structure within structures and 'accent colour'. Again could be thought of as part of a labelling or navigation system.

Show thoughts.2

cronky and a bit weird.



More Jurgen Bey - but with a sense of how to bring together disparate elements - may just need a single colour? Lots of different bits of second hand furniture / pallettes / found-made furniture that can be used for showing 3D work / books / zines etc?

Show thoughts.1

Nice, modular, multi layered 'desk' space by the Boroullec brothers.
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Show Thoughts

Jurgen Bey's 'slow car' see here.
It would be useful to start thinking constructively about showing systems - and to start thinking about how a 'look' to the show may help to unite the work.
It may also be good to think about the purpose of rooms - 2D/3D, a room for a shop? for instance.

Unit 10 3.6

For anyone unfamiliar or glazing over at the prospect of 'organising' material remember that systems are your friends. Muller Brockman, god of the grid, will light the way. Essentially very simple, break your page up in to squares/oblongs/regular shapes and put your information inside them whether its text or image. It works.

Unit 10 3.5

for any last minute presentation problems i.e sourcing a good archive box and acetone sleeves try silverprint Photographic suppliers here.

Unit 10 3.4

One possibility for the presentation of artwork and research material are these archive boxes - this is an image from the stock at Silverprint which is a photographic suppliers - but the college shop also sell them.

Unit 10_3.3

There is a slight overlap here in the image - apologies again. However staying with the idea of a 'context' for the process. What is being described over the next few images is the direction and content of the secondary research that helped with the development of the project. It goes some towards describing the breadth, range and most importantly the synthesis of the information. See here for a definition. The idea with the processes of research being that you are helping to identify ideas/objects/images/textures/abstract concepts that relate to the subject and bring them together in a coherent body of work - that is the process of synthesis that we are describing here and is being described through this example document. You need to show that your research is being considered/combined/developed and where necessary edited out.


A quick tip; if you are making use of the internet and finding material that is relevant you can get a quick screen grab of it - it helps describe the journey that you have taken. Again the processes of synthesis apply - you need to show [visually/literally] how these things are significant and have helped shape your ideas and processes.

Unit 10_3.2

It may be worth spending a little time explaining the progress and rationale for your projects and their development - this need be no longer than 2-300 words [this could be the same as your contextual statement] just to outline what has happened, what the thinking was and why you have made certain decisions. HOWEVER PLEASE REMEMBER that your portfolio submission should be ostensibly VISUAL we need to see what you have made
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Unit 10_3.1

You can see here that the document has been formatted - again it is very 'quiet' design that allows for the information to accessed readily. This is not necessarily the only way to present - the principles of presentation that are being applied here can translate in to material that has more 'personality'. See below:


A newsletter produced by Sara de Bondt for the British Council courtesy of here. Superficially looks like a piece of typeset design but if you look more closely you will see that it is all hand rendered.



However the principles of design are being used to give the pages consistency and to allow for legibility - so the page is ranged in to two columns of text with spot illustrations dropped in to the grid. During the 'publish' project in the second year you have been introduced to these core principles of layout - now may be a time to employ them again?



So the formalities of Graphic Design are being maintained here but approached using a more hand-made/idiosyncratic method.



More from the prodigious output of Sara de Bondt [from here] further describes how you can isolate key moments from say a sketch book, and format to show with real clarity the direction and development of ideas and work.