FACIAL EXPRESSIONS

This project was simply noting the change in facial expressions after some form of "action", be it reading a passage or listening to a piece of music. I gave my victims sour sweets, the "Toxic Waste" ones. It was brilliant!:)

LIVE BRIEF: SMART CARS

We recieved this project from the company Weapon7. It was a Live Brief so an actual on-going project that the company itsself was doing. The main focus was to get people INTO the smart cars, make the test drive more enjoyable but not necessarily to buy them. They currently appeal more to "green" people, or older people and the company asked us to target a younger audiance: younger couples, spontaneous, ready for excitement.

The main idea we pitched was a Smart Art gallery. We would get up-and-coming new artists to design and do the art work on a few cars, do exhibitions at various places around the UK at racing stadiums or empty airhangers and allow the public who had come to view the exhibition to test drive the cars on the land around the exhibition, as fast or as slow as the wanted, experimenting with the steering, breaks etc. We did research into destinations, artists and talked to members of the public.

I came up with an alternative idea again appealing to the same "spontaneous" and "youthful" market, just from a different angle. My idea was a more adrenalin-fueled experience for a test drive. In the same way we have "extream sports" i decided to address the cars as people thinking how you could excite them and push them to the limits:
I thought about: skiing, wind surfing, zorbing, snowboarding, free running, surfing, skate boarding, parachuting and cross-country races. From my drawing above you can see i used the first three ideas. We were told not to think how possible it would actually be, and not to think about the money it would take to make, the concept was the important part.

£1 BRIEF

This project is all about the value of a product -be it a monetary value, sentimental value, quality of the product, potential, or relatively in regards to other products. We were ordered to go on a trip to the 99p Store to find an object of little worth to try transform into something for a greater value. In my pair, we chose big thick marker pens. Coming up with the name tag of P.E.N (Permanently Expressing the Nation). We went down the theme of self expression, by displaying one of your greatest secrets you aren't as bothered about minor things such as: not having the latest trainers, your hair being out of place, having forgot to put your make-up on. Unimportant things. Its a way of breaking barriers down between people, insecurities are lowered making you feel more comfortable.
We went for a colour-coded system, the red ink on the top line is the "life update" for how you are feeling at that moment in time, and the bottom line is the secret. The greater the secret, the better you feel about yourself. I made one with the life update saying "CHIPPER" and the secret "I HAVE AIDS" and wore it for a day before we presented this. Even though it wasn't true, i felt quite liberated for the sheer fact i had done it.

We made this into an underground campaign, telling the story of how we had managed to conquer London and making our way up to country, us being representatives of P.E.N and coming to High Wycombe to recruit more P.E.N'ys.

We made an underground-recruitment video where we put up posters all around Wycombe (as far as i know, Cineworld still is still sporting our sign!).

..THE P.E.N REVOLUTION HAS BEGUN!

CHARACTOR BRIEF

For these 3 weeks, my work revolved around stalking people. Basically. I was given a piece of music to listen to (mine was Beethoven's third symphony in D) and i had to make my own starting point from there about a charactor. I started off by following people into shops, sitting on benches while people had conversations, i started talking to people in town, took long public transport trips, the list is endless! I had to create the essence of a new character, by combining qualities of people i had seen.

What really struck me about people in Wycombe is the lack of eye contact they make, back up North people actually look at you. So i started looking into mental disabilities settling with Asperges Syndrome. From here, i put my character together:

Joseph is a reserved boy who was diagnosed with Asperges Syndrome when he was 6 years old. A social misfit who finds it hard to communicate with peers his own age. His favorite subjects are: Biology, chemistry, physics and maths - pure logic. He has a scientific mind so the answers are either "right" or "wrong". In his own time he collects insects in jars to study them, write up conclusions and start his research again to find anomalies.

People don't always understand him, they call him "wierd" or a "freak" or "sadistic". An extream introvert, he doesnt like to express himself through his clothes, music, hair or speech. His one confidence is his councillor he meets up with weekly - she suggested him listening to classical music (my tie-in with Beethoven) in order to relax. He is not physically fit, fairly overweight, which contributes to making him feel excluded from peer groups. He likes to know what is going on, so constantly looks around and fidgets.

All the jars contained different insects and 'experiments'.

House spiders
Woodlice
Garden snails

WORD BRIEF: TETE A TETE

Ok, so this was my first proper brief i have done whilst at Bucks New university. I was given the word "tete a tete" which is a french word literally meaning "head to head", referring to a private conversation or argument. The main aim of this was to see how far i could push the word to get it away from the original meaning. It was all about how i interpreted the word, regardless of whether it makes sense to other people. All planning was done on wallpaper, so it was easier to write and write and write without having to use lots of different pieces of paper to lose.One of my ideas was to make a piece of music. The word "tete" has a beat to it, making it very steady. As i play guitar i wrote a piece of music incorporating this beat, combining the strings and the hitting the base like a drum -but iv got no idea how to upload it to Blogger!

I looked at animal greetings and how they differ from human greetings. What really stuck out to me, is how they use there sense of smell so sniff each others bottom to pick up information. If a human was to walk around smelling someones bottom it would probably get reported to the police and you would be reported for GBH!

Next i moved onto different ways of saying the word. Depending on how you pronounce the word "tete" it comes out like "teat", and as i have "tete a tete" (2x tete) i automatically thought of a double uddered-cow. Going on to think about: what would happen if the body was then split into two (as they have 4 stomachs anyway, that would be 8), and two sides of things (good/evil. Black/white. Up/down), twins, triplets, doubles, mythical beasts etc.
Now we have the introduction on mobile phones we dont talk head to head, its "head to phone", but with the introduction of texting we no longer even speak to people. it is as though we have taken our own voice away from ourselfs -a form or self-dehumanisation. This reminded me of world war2 where Hitler singled out the Jews with the yellow star of David, and gay people with a pink triangle, taking away there rights and gradually there lives. I came up with my own symbol for people with mobile phones, a red O on a badge to pin on yourself. I chose the shape "O" because it symbolised the persons mouth being taken away from them, and the colour red connotes lots of things: danger, anger, stop.
This final idea is a spin-off of the previous idea (mobile phones). The idea that we communicate with our hands now we have mobile phones. I drew up lots of different ways of showing this, including the alphabet on each section of a finger, "smiley's"/"emotions" on each finger, send/receive buttons on your thumb. I finally came to the conclusion of: by texting with both hands we feel comfortable, so taking away one of our hands we don't feel right, but texting is something that isnt natural and isnt initially comfortable. My final outcome was a single hand with half a smiley face on it to show how we are unable to communicate properly. I played with fake blood to show the physical damage we are doing to ourselves.

STICKERS

I made stickers! They were meant to go with my "zombie project", but i got a bit happy with them and stuck them everywhere:) It was a fairly long process, i had to make the stamp to start with. Make sure the words are backwards to come out forwads:
OFFICIAL ZOMBIE TRACKER

I made A4 sheets of them

Then got a bit too happy with them:)

ZOMBIES ARE MY HOME BOYS

ZOMBIE AID logo

I LOVE ZOMBIES

ZOMBIE AID SURVIVAL KIT

Basically, this work iv been doing is a spoof survival kit. Its a kit full of total rubbish, for a situation that will never occur, so giving pointlessness a point (in a way). I came up with the brand "Zombie Aid", which implies it helps the Zombie rather than you just to add a bit of confusion to that already confused mind:)
This is the logo i came up with: This is the survival kit its-self. It is made of wood, its massive, and really heavy -3 things you DONT want a survival kit to be. Inside, you can see some of the contents... Helpful much? NOPE!

This is looking down inside the box to see some of the contents, as you can see most things are wrapped in plastic (for sheer annoyance), and other things, you just think to yourself "why the hell is that there?!!"

This is on one of the sides of my box, a sheet that tells you exactly whats inside:

~Headphones and a disk, which give you "universal directions", so where ever you are you can escape to safety -instructions like first right, second left, on the roundabout second exit. I played around with the audio, slowed parts down, speeded others up, repeated parts, and included conversations i had had throughout the day to confuse the listner so they wernt sure what exactly to listen to.

~2 pans (why not?)

~shouldv been energy tablets but there wernt any to put in, so i came up with replacement objects (i did this for a few of the items in the box, so you are left with compleat crap). This one went from Energy Tablets, to a Mars bar, Snickers, the settled on Gumballs (which i individually wrapped, because i can).

~Records, like in Shaun of the Dead when they are trying to get zombies away by frizbying records at them. I used broken and scratched records in my box -yet again, wrapped in plastic!

~Shouldv been a cricket bat, but again had to be replaced. So the list reads cricket bat, baseball bat, hockey stick, tennis racket, and settles on a badminton racket.

~"Zombie-Ade" power drink. I had a go at making my own-branded products, instead of calling it ZOMBIE-AID POWER DRINK, i called it ZOMBIE-ADE, like lemonade. A play on words.

~Keys, just a jumble of old keys that i found. Might somehow help?.. Somehow

~Rigid soled boots, ran out of them, so replaced by Walking boots, then Doc Martens, then pumps, and finally red flip flops. I scuffed them a bit, and put a bit of dirt on them to look a bit more worn.

~Yellow rave-straws. You never know when your next party will be!

~An Instruction/survival book

~Pens. I replaced this with broken leaded pencils (and yet again covered in plastic)

~Travellers cheques is simply crossed out so you have no money at all:)

~A map. I was going to use a cartoon one, or an old one, then i found one from when i went to the Yorkshire sculpture Park (which im sure will be no help at all), and wrote on the front "ZOMBIE TRACKING MAP" with a big thick pen.

~Stickers, which are meant to be used on the "tracking map", but have also been stuck all over the box.

~A paint roller -never know when youl need to do more decorating!

~Cutlrey, knifes/forks/spoons

~An Air Rifle, but replaced by a Pistol, a BB gun, and finally a plastic toy Gun.

~And a cactus.. Theres no place like home!

These are my own-branded cans i did, you can see the logo on the left can

I had to screw them up to look used:( also added scratches down the sides ect

My "survival book" that i put together:

All 600 pages inside are glued together, and on the first page i just wrote "RUN"

EVER WONDERED WHAT 251 INDIVIDUALLY WRAPPED GUM BALLS LOOK LIKE?

I wasnt compleatly bored of life when doing this:) iv been looking into really annoying packaging, and really shit adverts, so i individually wrapped sweets because:
~There small
~They dont last long
~There not valuble
~Its pretty much pointless

... so i thought id do it:)

POSTERS OF SCANNED IMAGES

These 2 posters are what i compiled with all the images i scanned into the computer, from the projects of "Blending into your surroundings":

And "Overcoming Boundaries, and prejudice (towards Zombies) in society"

HOW TO OVERCOME THE BOUNDARIES, AND RE-INTRODUCE ZOMBIES INTO OUR EVERYDAY SOCIETY

I scanned theses images imto the computer as well, also to put together as a poster. The idea behind this, is if we were to introduce zombies into our human-riddled society, we would need to teach them our shit human-riddled values, and the ways of society. So this is a basic lesson of how to be a human!



Number one, smiling. Everyone likes to smile. Yes, even you mr. Zombie!

And if you dont want to smile, ill find some pegs...

And MAKE you smile!

Lesson number 2, food. Its is well known, how alllllll people eat McDonalds.. Which means brains are a nono!

I said NONO!

And eat that burger while your at it!

Lesson 3, smoking. Everyone knows, that everyone smokes..

Which now means you do too!

REGARDLESS of the consequences

Lesson 4. We are sheltered creatures, at the first sign of sun, we wap out our shades and soak it up!

So either you come outside, or ill make you:)

..Erm, shit. Moving on!

Lesson number 5. There is absolutly no unemployment at all in society, so you cannot be excused

My, you look like a dashing fellow in that uniform!

Ok, maybe that was a step too far?