Kim Jong-Il looking at things

Kim Jong-Il Looking at Things hilarious blog that is purely about Kim Jong-Il looking at things.

My particular favourite: Kim Jong-Il looking at corn

Have you been swapping?

Here's what me and Amy have been up to recently, lots and lots and lots of work for our community project.
Made interactive posters, gift tag leaflets, regular leaflets, small viral presents and screen printed giftbags for people who have swapped to take away!
Been crazy busy, stay tuned for the final video edit of all of this.

Screenprinting!

Last Monday we had a screen printing introduction, crazy as I’m a 3rd year. Such a shame we’ve not had access to this before, or been aware we have because we had great fun making some simple prints using simple paper stencils and luminous green paint! Now myself and Amy want to frame this baby, lovely a2 print goodness.

Recorders by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer

Photos from an interactive exhibition called Recorders at the Manchester Art Gallery by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer.

Amazing works which used heartbeats , sound, scanners, communication and projection to create an immersive experience.

Community

Sneak peak of mine and Amy's community project!

GIF

AM/PM

Just finished this brief for uni, we were asked to take the title AM/PM and either create a title sequence for BBC4 or as I chose to create an interactive kiosk design.

I took this and adapted it to an installation based on the idea of space and time. I then decided to create the installation for the science museum as a way for kids to learn about the solar system, called "Solus". The installation puts you in the position of the planet, the interaction involves you walking on the floor interface and when you stand on the name of a planet it triggers the sun, represented by a wall of light, to be brighter or dimmer depending on which planet you have stepped on. Then at the same time the temperature of the room changes in accordance to the planet you are stood on

Then this is a video animation of how the floor interface changes when you step on a planet and trigger the interaction.

CV: self promotion

CV time.
Here's my design for our recent CV project, I decided to go big but simple in the design... and by big I mean 2 meters.
Printed on the plotter double sided, which was a nightmare but I got it to work with a lot of help from the technician, so all in all worth it.
The design is on the front, my CV: about me, qualifications, experience, contact etc etc. Then on the back is a kind of wallpaper design, as the size of it reminded me of wallpaper and could then be something that the recipient could put up, the design became a play with typography saying "employme" repeated in an op art pattern down the length of the paper.

Click through for more photos:

Studio View Work Experience

I recently spent a week at the design agency Studio View based in Lincoln. While I was there I was given a project to produce illustrations for songwriting.
I decided to use a collage approach and choose famous songwriters as the basis for them. I chose Ian Curtis and Joy Division, Patti Smith and Robert Smith of The Cure, the collages then became inspired by a song of theirs I felt showcased their songwriting skills best. For Ian Curtis I chose Transmission and the collage shows the industrial style and the idea of telephone wires all connecting together. For Patti Smith I chose Land and the collage shows the imagery of the song, which the horse and the flames and the boy with a butterfly coming from his mouth. For Robert Smith I chose Pictures of You and the collage shows an underwater style, with aqua colours, it consists of an image of a woman floating underwater and then behind it is green card and a piece of scourer, then over this I placed a grey film to give a more murky effect.

Mail Art: Presentation

We presented all of the mail art together on a line of tables, it was really cool getting to see everyone's work in an informal way and actually letting the students open the letters all round the table created a great atmosphere of discussion.

Click through for more...

Mail Art: University

This was in response to the question "should university education be free?" I chose the idea of sending a statement of the debt that they will have after 3 years of university and I then expanding this further by thinking of the packaging and making it so it was first wrapped in loads of brown paper and then wrapped in string and then wrapped in sellotape and finally more string. It shows the idea of working so hard to get through university and what you finally get from them is a huge debt.

Mail Art: World Population

 This was in response to the question "how many people should there be?" I chose to go down a more symbolic route and started thinking about the idea of something that is ever expanding and then the idea of this expansion being restricted, like the earth is restricting the limit of population expansion. From this I came up with the idea of placing an elastic band around a balloon which when blown up restricts the user and makes blowing up the balloon near impossible.

Mail Art: Aliens

This was in response to the question "does it matter if there is life on other planets?" I chose to write a letter from the government as if aliens were invading Earth in the format of a telegram. I also included a piece of foil saying to use it to make a hat in order to combat alien mind control, this came from the idea of cliches involved with aliens. I then wrote on the back of the envelope "the truth is out there" which is again a cliche term that everyone would recognise as being about aliens.

Mail Art: World's Economy.

Here is my response to the question "Who is to blame for the economic crisis, bankers or politicians?" I chose the idea of representing the ecomony as a piece of moldy bread, which also works to symbolise bad money. The idea came from a project I did in my 1st year called Excess where I again used the imagery of moldy bread to convey my message.
I then stuck a sticker on the front of it saying "contains world's economy" to further communicate the idea.
The last photo shows how moldy the bread got in the 4 days it was in the mail system.

M.I.A

Amazing new set of music videos from M.I.A with Hype Williams. I love the use of old internet imagery and the effect of 'it's so bad it's good' XXXO is definitely the better one, I like how they've used the style of teenage girls myspace pages etc. plus the use of cool little gifs, maybe thats just because I love gifs.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show

Surreal.

Plus interesting titles. *stores away for future inspiration*

Mail Art

Hello 3rd year of uni!
Our first project is called Mail Art where we got posed 12 questions and were asked to produce 4 responses to them and then mail them to our tutor. Here's my 4 responses, all packaged and now posted, I tried to include some kind of interactive element into each to make them work on a more advanced level.
I'll reveal more after we've presented them all on Wednesday.

Fernando

My first ever record! Purely for the song Fernando as I have named my record player Fernando as a homage.

I will be soon have many more to add to this awesome collection.

Summer Reading

My summer reading list; The Rules of Attraction, re-read American Psycho, The Day of the Triffids, re-read Lolita, Orlando, In Cold Blood, Naked Lunch, Slaughterhouse 5 and Thank You for Smoking.

So far.

Birthday

Hello 21st birthday present.

Interactive Design Sync Show

And here's a small video of the making of filmed by Jamie Gregson:


Went to the Interactive Design final year show on the 4th June, it was really amazing! They had an interactive turntable piece were you moved small circle shaped markers to change how a music piece sounded, as well as everyones work on an interactive website and another piece called 'Circuit Breakers'. It was a really great night and definately something to attempt to match next year!

D.I.Y Screen Printing

This is mine and Amy's first attempt at screen printing. We made the screen using a cheap photo frame and a mesh fabric stapled over it and then covered each side with the emulsion and exposed the image onto it using the sun (which took several attempts to get the timing right)
For a first attempt I think it was a great success, needs more work to get the timing just right, also the material we used was a little too thin so it let ink through even with the emulsion on it.

Stay tuned for the 2nd attempt!

Bank of One Hundred

Final Prints.
Heres my final note designs for my 100 project based around the idea of how the value of £100 has changed from 1910 to now and how it will change again in 2110. I printed as wad of 50 notes for each and printed 3 cover notes using gold silver and bronze foil transfer.