£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.