27 Website

For the ongoing Harper Road project each group had to design a website, being somewhat of a freeway fanatic I volunteered to do ours. Because of the projects central themes around cameras I decided to use a camera as the interface for the navigation.

Here's a snapshot of the gallery section, the links at the bottom pull up the larger image on the viewfinder:

After a rather blowing criticism, I realized that although the camera interface added certain things to the originality of the website, it was overall detracting from the true essence of the project - the photographs. Much better to design something simplistic that was centered around the photographs and the stories behind the peoples lives rather than something flashy and unnecessary.

Here are some snapshots of the final website, it should be up and running by tomorrow (fingers crossed) so will post a link when it's all uploaded.

Harper Road

I've been terrible at updating this recently, so my sincere apologies. I've been hard at work with a group project for our second year show. There has been an empty estate left for us on Haprer Road to destroy; paint, and pretty much anything else you can think of.

Our group has decided to hand out disposable cameras on the road to the residents. We want to see what they see, it will be a small insight to their lives and maybe piece together a puzzle of how the road's dynamics fit together.

The photographs are then being displayed in frames, now, due to the sheer number of photographs we have, it eliminates the prospect of buying them (we didn't have the odd hundred quid just floating around). So we've had to make them, here are photographs from our woodwork sessions:

First we drew out the template for the pieces of wood:

Then we cut them using a band saw (for speed and efficiency):

Next we painstakingly checked each piece was the right size and smoothed the edges:

Next we used a powerful sander at a 45 degree angle to form the corners:

Here are some of the finished pieces of wood (pre spraying obviously):

We then cut out pieces of cardboard for the back of the frames:

Finally we sprayed everything in a nice coat of matt black spray paint:

Smiles

Realized that I never uploaded my final images from a project I did last term called curious collections. the brief stated that we had to build up a collection of something unusual and represent these in an appropriate documented fashion. I chose to collect smiles and made a book for my final piece. I wanted to investigate into how something so simple as a smile can have many underlying other emotions. The eyes have it:

My Box

Here it is, finished in all its glory. However due to being 10 minutes late I successfully missed my crit. Oops

A nice day in the park

While I was at work the other day I had a minor brainwave to create a small installation for my new project. Made off with some huge cardboard boxes and after a very interesting journey on the bus planned my creation.

So, the general idea is to recreate this photo in 3D:

Several problems, one being that the original image is incredibly blurry. I have no idea who the man is, so can't ask him to repose for me. Slight technical difficulty there, so borrowed my old man:

Secondly, the bird is also blurry. Due to the deadline being in a couple of days I don't really have time to sit around outside and wait for an obliging pigeon to wait for his photograph to be taken, so I've cut corners and drawn one instead. I liked the idea of things coming out of the frame and only partially visible so I've just draw part of the bird to add a bit of mystery:

Painted one of the boxes with several coats of cheap white paint. It didn't cover the writing on them so resorted to white label stickers instead. Looking... awful. Decided to fold of the edges to create a frame, I can then put some acetate behind this to protect the inside.

The man in the photograph is a business man, so it seemed fitting to have the background made of newspaper clippings, here's my box so far:

Now i've just got to arrange everything inside, maybe add some hanging type and hey presto. My very own blue peter style box.

Jonah and the whale

New Brief on framing, looking at what people chose to put in the frame. Had a look at some stuff by Joseph Cornell, really inspiring, you can check out his stuff at:

http://www.josephcornellbox.com/

I've wanted to try doing some more collage recently so here's what I've done today.