Reflections 26.01.16

Initial ideas and group selections.

I was so nervous today, not about talking about my pracitce, so much, but being transparent with other students to find the most interesting potential collaboration. I knew that some of the ideas that I wanted to explore were focused around these themes:

Structure:
What happens when 2D is forced into something 3 dimensional? How can I use paintings in a 3 dimensional way? Potential areas to look at could include 3D printing, sculpting and scanning, building, modeling and making.

Artists Book:
Social media as a digital artist book? Deconstructing the classic connotations of what an artists book is. What can we do with a book?

Animation: 
Stop-motion, model making, moving image with painted elements.

Discovery, Engagement and Interaction:
I want you to find my work. How do people interact with illustration? Where is it? How can I see it, touch it, hold it? Haptic qualities of paper and paint.

The most important thing I wanted to get out of this collaborative module was to do something totally different. Listening to peoples initial ideas, I felt that they were firstly focusing too heavily on the outcome, but also a bit sedintary in terms of concepts. I wanted to make a point that I wanted to move totally away from my own practice in order to get the most out of the potential of collaboration. I want to do something outrageous. I know that I don't want to produce a static exhibition, or a standard 'zine'. I feel like people were throwing around the term zine without fully understanding or realising the potential it offers as a platform. I know that there needs to be another level to the outcome that gets produced. For me, it needs to be multi-platform, multi-disciplinary, and multi-functional. 
 
After a group discussion in a number of small groups, I realised that my role, inadvertantly, was one of developing other peoples ideas. I always find the initial ideas stage the most rewarding and interesting when starting a new project. Its not surprising that I occupied the role of facilitator with a number of other groups.