Final Submission
NOTE TO PETER:
The images seem to be blocking this upload, Iāll just have to host them separately somehow. Which is weird but totally believable considering my previous tumblr experiences. For my final project submission, I reused the 3 survey questions that I had performed for assessment 1, however, inspired by the work of Mitchell Whitelaw decided to work in an analog medium. While the foundation of the work relied on the research of collaboration, the idea of collaboration has actually become secondary to that of data representation. The idea of taking studies and information with a grain of salt transitioned into taking it with a grain of such, Which leads me to the interesting conclusion of working with M&Mās.
I would first need to sort these into their colours, Ā so it would be faster later on with counting and assembling them into their respective representations.
Irrelevant inclusion, just wanted to see if anyone found it annoying.
After looking through glass bottle bins for a branded vessel to use for my second, I found an empty corona bottle. The trouble was, however, getting it dry internally after cleaning it. I made the mistake of adding M&Mās too early which caused the colours to run and the M&Ms to stick together. I needed to start again from the beginning.
While the first two had M&M numbers accurate to that of the data collected, I had fewer responses for the final question than I anticipated. I, therefore, decided that I would instead fill the vessel in the ratio of the data that had already been collected. This allowed me to prioritise visual aesthetics of the vessel over its capacity hence the choice of a more elegant form. Plus I liked the contrast it made with the dog food.
The first piece is a simple glass tube, filled with M&Mās whose colour corresponds to a particular response to a corresponding survey. This was made to show a way in which data can be represented aesthetically and uniquely while still appearing impartial and accurate to the original findings. I organised the original M&Mās of which there are 212 into the order of the visible light spectrum, believing that this would increase its visual appeal, the main issues with this component were finding a tube that would accommodate 212 M&Mās without leaving too much excess space, and also being thin enough to show clear colour boundaries and therefore make the data easier to interpret.
For the second, which used the data from the second question, on dislikes of collaboration I wanted to raise attention to the notion that when reading or looking at information, the source of the information is important. A credible source without a bias to the issue else an incorrect conclusion may be made. I represented this by filling a Corona beer bottle with M&Mās as, being a company rather than an independent third party they may have a bias to work in their favour. In order to represent this, I used larger crunchy and peanut M&Mās in the blue section of the bottle, by doing this and also using blue for the neck of the bottle it appears that blue is the dominant or preferred survey response. However, it wasnāt even the most popular, coming second to brown. While this will not be relevant to the installation of the work, it was also possible to bias the data more significantly through camera angling.
Finally, I wanted to show another way in which data could be biased, by manufacturing questions in order to channel more responses toward the desired outcome. I used my third data collection to represent this. For the answer I agreed with I used orange M&Mās as they were vibrant and would, therefore, attract attention, and for the answer I disagreed with I chose to use dry dog food biscuits. I hoped the dog food biscuits would be associated more readily as a negative despite the data technically being accurate. I also had the additional benefit of the dog biscuits being smaller than the M&Mās, skewing data further to suit my personal opinion.
While I came into this assessment with the intention of building a 3D model, after performing practice lead research and looking into other creative practitioners I developed more of a message I wanted to convey that I could not do as easily being restricted to the medium of 3D modeling especially given my limited experience. I chose instead to work with M&Mās, I find the final product to be aesthetically pleasing and intuitive while also capturing the message I hoped to communicate.