live theory : critical selfie : stage one

After going over the readings for this course, I was still quite unsure about what my design perspective was. Because of this, I decided to set off on to the streets with my camera and just capture whatever caught my eye. Here's my initial shoot:

Surprisingly, I gravitated largely towards buildings and the spaces and shapes of them rather than people which I thought was my main area of interest. These are my eight favourite images that I captured from this shoot.

 I like this image in the way that the upper level of the building seems so detached from the lower half.

I find this space interesting as there is this random natural growth in the middle of a predominantly man-made environment.

 I find the odd spaces in between different buildings such as this quite interesting. I would like to further explore spaces like this.

The negative space in this image is what I find the most interesting about it - how the buildings create different shapes.

I'm not extremely happy with my initial shoot as I didn't have a really clear idea about where I was going with this project. However, now that I have done some exploring and research, I feel as though I have a lot stronger idea about what I want to do and how I can communicate these ideas through a photo essay.

The perspective I am taking on for this project is how although designers create the spaces and objects surrounding individuals everyday, it is actually the user who decides how these things will exist in their lives. While designers do create with the user in mind, the role of the user needs to adapt in order to facilitate them as designers themselves, allowing for adaptable and personalized design.

This perspective was influenced from the Urban Future Manifestos reading and the Significance of Theory, where the ideas that how environments are utilized are different for individuals.

Haiku Attempts:

We design spaces

for people to exist in.

Really, they make them.

This haiku is questioning the role of designers and users, and how design can actually facilitate a role switch where users become designers, questioning the need for adaptability and personalization in design.

Design shapes the world.
So who is the designer?
Is it them or you?

This again questions the role of the designer and user and the relationship they have.

live theory : RAP 2

This week I found the lecture quite interesting and feel as though it related quite well to my own perspective on life and on design. While I have always been very aware of my surroundings, studying design has really prompted me to examine my environment in lots of detail and encourages me to find the unusual in the known and the known in the unusual. To me, this is what the Flaneur. While the concept of a Flaneur is quite radical, I think if people were to take on this role even in the smaller way, they would be able to see the world in a new and more interesting way. This is something that I hope that my own design ideas will achieve.

live theory : RAP 1

I always question if I actually am a designer - I don't physically design much and I concentrate on more of the critical and creative thinking of it. This first lecture has shown me that this sort of thinking is design and that I do design by applying these thoughts to other aspects of my life; that design isn't just about making but a lot to do about thinking too.

lomographics : evaluation

This project was really interesting and really made me appreciate how film photography allows you to develop a relationship with your images. However, in this I am not entirely happy with how my final images turned out.

Some of the techniques I used to re-introduce elements of the initial photographs didn’t work as well as others and didn’t make such interesting images. Also I believe my physical object could have been designed better to recreate the feeling of selecting images to view which is a part of instagram. I am not really sure if I communicated the idea of technology degrading photography through my project. I think I could have achieved this by managing my time better to be able to really have a clear direction of how I was going to do this.

In the end, although my project does not quite successfully portray my idea, I feel that I myself have a better appreciation for film photography after working with the images for so long. I also think some of my images are quite interesting to look at.

lomographics : final images

lomographics : second remediation

After reshooting my negatives and running them through photoshop to get the positive images, I reshot the images through the computer screen in order to get the pixilated look that you get from shooting through a screen. I feel like this step was important to my project as it ties the images back to technology.

lomographics : remediation

For my remediation, I wanted to take an element of the photograph and apply it to the negative in a way which replicated its presence in the original image. I feel like some of them turned out better than others, but these were my favourites.

Rubbing the negative on pavement - image was from the crocodile bikes where we rode on pavement. I think this one is the least successful of the ones that worked out alright. I like how the action is pretty direct from the image but the markings it made aren't very good looking. I think it would have been better if I could have actually attached the negative to the wheel of the bike and see how it scratched it that way.

With these images I placed ice-cream over them and let it melt a bit. This relates well to the original photograph as the ice-cream actually was melting and going everywhere. I love the fluid look of the melting ice-cream, it looks like the work created by Chadwick which I am pretty pleased about. I found the marks which the ice cream left on the negative pretty interesting too, especially which bits remained unaffected because this bit was in ice-cream too (seen in the first image)

For these images I submerged the negative under water to replicate the girls having their feet underwater too. This didn't really do too much to the negative afterwards however.

I like the fact that with this image, the sand is laid across the negative and in the negative I was laying across the sand. I feel like it gives a good connection to the subject matter and remediation technique. However, again it didn't change the image too much.

This is probably my favourite remediation of the series because I did use colour in it. I placed water over this image as we were standing looking at the waterfront and unlike the other water image, we were over it not in it. In this, my niece also commented on how the water was "so blue" so I used colouring to portray this. The way that the colouring moved through the water on the negative was beautiful and again made motions like Chadwick achieved. I also like the way that it dyed the negative in a way that almost resembles ripples in water.

Overall, I am reaosnably happy with my remediations. Although they didn't all go how I had planned, I feel as though I have a few really strong images and am interested as to how they turn out once they are inverted.