Posts Tagged ‘Typography’
Chickens
Tuesday, August 4th, 2009Cook for a day
Tuesday, August 4th, 2009Concept
As part of the degree show we met every week to discuss what had been done and what tasks needed to be carried out. However, half way through the year this process had become rather tedious. We felt we needed a break from the meetings. Rathna, our tutor, suggested we should run a workshop colleagues of hers had set up on the Ma at Central Saint Martins. Annagrete Molhave & Paulus Dreibholz had conceived a workshop that involved a day of cooking for creatives.
The day
We announced that, that weeks meeting would hold a mysterious workshop and collected the names of the people who were interested in taking part. On the day they showed up people were split into five groups and asked to pick out a piece of folded paper. On the sheet of paper was a nationality. If a member of their group was of that nationality they had to re-pick until it was not the case.
We then briefed them that they were not to do any form of design that day, and that their purpose was to cook. Teams were asked to venture off and research their given nationality, the aim was to find out its national-cuisines and to learn how to cook them. However, all of this information had to be obtained through social interactions, whether that meant going to Brick Lane to an Indian restaurant and speaking to the cook, or going to a Turkish supermarket in Haringey and speaking to the staff there. There was certainly no internet, no phones and i-phones used in the process.
The end of the day
By the end of the day each group was to bring back their prepared food to the studio and group by group present their dishes and share their experiences of the day.
While all made amazing food, including the famous French snails, some went further and made their own menus and unifroms to wow the crowd.
It was a fantastic evening. A humble candle lit table laid with newspaper transformed the studio into something magical. The aromas of the eclectic dishes fused into a delightful aroma and the food was brilliant. It was a day well spent!
Publication
As a part of the workshop we wanted to produce a publication for everyone who took part and contributed. We focussed the publication on what dishes were cooked and how each group obtained the recipe for each dish, as it was clear from the evening that the stories from each group were not only highly fascinating but their individual experiences varied greatly. The publication was letterpress printed and is available from YCN online shop for £3.
Lisa Williams
Tuesday, August 4th, 2009A collaborative project between Felix Ackermann, Ken Kirton and myself. The project entailed developing a fictional character and proving its existence to a given audience. Our character was Lisa Williams, who was the result of Enzo Mari’s game ‘Living’.
Enzo Mari’s Living game
Enzo Mari’s Living consists of a deck of 80 cards, broken up in sets of 10. Each individual deck represents a particular piece of information from a persons life, and is dealt out to the participating group. Collectively the cards are the foundation of a fictional character.
I live in…
I am a…
I live with…
I own a…
My neighbour is…
My wife/husband is…
My house is near…
Enzo Mari first used the cards during a course of workshops and lectures at the Urban Planning Laboratory of the Architecture faculty of the University of Milan. Each student was asked to not only create a fictional character but also build his or hers life, understand his/hers history, friendships, daily routines etc. From understanding their fictional character each student was then asked to design their fictional characters ideal home.
From the cards Mari distributed he defined the identity of each student and began to build real life stories. He outlined the personalities, the relationships and the hierarchies of the characters, as well as the value and the meaning of places and objects: he created complex scenarios that became the foundation of the residential projects he developed afterwards.
Character development
We were given the following cards: I live in the rocky mountains ‘I am a Mayor’, ‘Ilive with three female friends’, ‘I own a big tree’, ‘My wife is a nurse’, ‘My neighbour is a General’, ‘My house is near a swimming pool’, ‘I live in…’
We began by developing our character through a rough A4 sketch, keeping in mind the ten cards we were presented with. Having built an image of our fictional character we still felt that we needed to understand more about her life and therefore further developed Lisa’s life through a game of consequence between the three of us. We first developed our character through drawing.
During this development, a love story became apparent between our main character Lisa Williams and her neighbour Archibald Mooney. However, Lisa was unaware of Archibald’s strong feelings towards her and the story ended with him spying on her.
In order to prove the existence of our character we arranged for a bouquet of flowers to be delivered to our critique, addressed to Lisa Williams, to establish her existence within the subconscious of the group before we presented. For the presentation we read the story out loud, only revealing the name Lisa Williams untill the very end and watched the class realise the truth behind the undelivered flowers.
Recording the process
We chose to letterpress the story, which not only continued our collaborative process but also became a juxtaposition to Lisa Williams digital creation. The spelling mistakes in the story have not been corrected to stay true to the process.
Curiosity
Tuesday, August 4th, 2009We were invited to design an item to sell at the School of Life sermon. The sermon was based on the subject of curiosity, and was delivered by the scientist Robert Winston. Robert believes that the more we see the mysteries of our universe the less certain we ought to become. We focused our research in the realm of science, for curiosity is the driving force behind creativity.
Through researching and examining various scientific experiments, we were reminded of a famous experiment thought up by the Austrian Physicist Schrodinger. The experiment symbolises the endless possibility of an ‘unopened box’. We wrote a poem as a tribute to Mr. Schrodinger and his famous cat.
We letterpressed the poem into greeting cards to be sold as a permanent reminder of the power of curiosity.
