laneoneform

scout . 24 . aus . she/her

[laneoneform]

Beauty in the Nothing (2024)

‘Beauty in the Nothing' is a collection of various objects and routes that I’ve gathered over a typical month  my life. Whether a piece of rubbish from my lunch or a trip home, I used these ‘objects’ as markers of a typical mundane event in my life. We don’t often see the mundane as beautiful or important, but I aim to show that these can play an imperative part to help us appreciate larger milestones in our lives and contribute to us staying grounded in our existence. By embroidering these objects, I highlight their importance as remnants of the past event which might happen again in the future; where these actions and events could turn into a habit.

The lines on the maps and the number of objects indicate how many times I have taken those routes or used the objects. The embroidery on the objects highlight the details of those mundane events. So in turn, the events become a part of the artwork. Showing there is significance in the mundane. There is beauty in the nothing.

Introduction:

The mundane. The everyday. What does it have to do with us? Everything. We as humanity experience the mundane as a collective but also individually, as we all have our own experiences that make us unique people. The mundane is a beautiful part of the human experience. My work expresses this in my life via embroidery and found objects as a repeated medium. This is what I have explored in my work, both on a deeper level as well as only touching on the surface of this topic. I want to explore what it means to enjoy the everyday, how I have been able to delight in the mundane in my own life, and why we as humans must enjoy the mundane. Through the medium of embroidery, I have expressed this topic using stitches, repetition, found objects and vignette display.

Context:

‘Beauty in the Nothing’ is my reaction to my anxiety about the future and thinking existentially. Rather than trying to make large statements in art that say something about the world today and trying to be culturally significant, I wanted to focus on what was in front of me and create art that resonated with me.

In semester 1, I explored many areas of things that I was interested in and thought a lot about existential themes that might make the audience think about their mortality. After creating this work, I found myself to be exhausted by the topic and to be quite scared of the themes that I had been exploring. For semester 2, I wanted to go in the opposite direction, to investigate and research themes in art that were not existential at all. So in response to my assessment last semester, I started to think through themes of the everyday, the mundane and surface-level details that would take my mind off of existential crises that I had been having. This work is a direct response to my previous work and is seen as a conversation with myself to combat my anxiety.

Objectives:

My objective for this project has steadily changed throughout the semester. After semester 1, my objective at first for this project became to directly respond to how I felt personally about my previous work. I wanted to make the audience question their mortality, but it ended up affecting me the most. I think I was so exhausted from trying to be profound that it depleted my creativity. In the first couple of weeks, I realised that that was not what I wanted to focus on. I began by exploring the opposite of profound- the mundane and boring. This is what inspired me for my project for the rest of the semester. Although, the ideas that I came up with at the start of the semester- to embroider words and pictures- were very different from what I eventually landed on creating in the end.

Some questions that I asked during the thought process stage of this work were, does it need to be scaled up? To be more ambitious? Does the quality of the method being used need to change? Are there more formats to work across, looking into other mediums and exploration? Is there more of an expanded field - mediums that you want to take further and stretch the limits of?

I eventually came up with:

How would you like to be more ambitious with methods, format and meaning in your independent project?

I would like to make more work more refined

Know more about the materials that I am using and use a more refined technique

To use more materials

To do more research into something simple and a deep topic that affects the work

Like to focus on having more of an impact and more gravity to the work

Timeline: what needs to happen to achieve ambitions and when the project needs to happen

I didn’t take the route of refining my work, I eventually did a 180 to think about different themes, but I did become more ambitious, with a better quality method, used different materials and looked into a simple topic that affected the previous work.

Gradually, my objective became to investigate the mundane and to express it in my own life through embroidery.

Rationale:

I create art that directly affects me and that comes from my subconscious. My works are usually incredibly personal, very intrinsic and what often seems like is a unique experience to myself. I think this project is interesting and relevant because even though the details of my day are a unique experience to me, the fact is that everyone goes through mundane experiences. They actually ground us and remind us that we are living our regular lives. It also makes the moments that are significant more important, because if everyday were full of important moments, then we would become tired and bigger momentous occasions become insignificant. So to highlight those mundane events, I wanted to explore my world in the little details of my day-to-day that string together to become my life. I found that exploring these smaller events and thinking through ways to display them made me more excited about my artwork than my previous work in semester 1. 

I found the mundane to actually become quite interesting to me and once I began to notice small details in my life, I began to appreciate it even more. This is what I wanted to reflect in my final work. 

Through this artwork, I want the audience to see how the small things in my day can be communicated through the visual communication of maps, as well as communicating through objects and allowing the audience to create and infer their own thoughts about my days, as well as reflecting on their own mundane events. While I see my work to be very personal, I want the art to be a window into my life and to let the audience see small snippets of what my life is like. I would like the audience to see my work and be able to read the maps, make connections between the objects and the canvases, see the similarities and differences as well as create an opinion of me from the objects. “She eats too many noodles.” “Why does she drink so much coffee?” “I think she got her period that day.” “Is she sick all the time? She takes a lot of Panadol.” Though that might seem critical, I think it is interesting to me because it shows what the work is communicating to the audience.

Inspirations:

My research and inspirations for this work included the likes of artist Owen Rival, who went through a similar thought process about his art, that the mundane was more helpful to think about than exhausting, poignant existential themes. He paints artworks of himself and his fiancée engaging in mundane activities. 

Artist Alicja Kozlowska also inspired my embroidering into trash by using iconographic brands that we use everyday. I also took a similar approach as Andy Warhol, to these items, who also brought everyday items into high art galleries. 

Another artist who inspired me was an artist who would ‘draw’ art using his bike rides across England. He gave me the inspiration to use Strava, which I will explain in my Methods. The last artist who inspired me was Yoko Ono, who created the work ‘Grapefruit’, which was a book of short paragraphs that instructed people to engage in everyday activities and turn everyday activities into art. This artwork has always fascinated me and challenged about what art can be, which led me to stretch my horizons into a different medium!

Methods:

I started this semester by working with the materials that I had collected last semester and attempting to use what I already had, thinking that I wanted to expand on what I had already been working on. After thinking about what I wanted to work on properly and realising that I was exhausted by the topic, I decided that I wanted to go in a different direction. I began by embroidering onto the fabric that I had and stitching the words ‘KINDA TIRED’ into the fabric. This is what made me realise how I felt, that I enjoyed embroidery and that it was something that I wanted to pursue. So I began creating other squares just like it. I was told about Kate Just, who made similar statements about knitted blankets, it was something that I felt I could be passionate about. I thought about other statements that I felt related to me and how I could put them into practice in embroidery. After a week of doing this, I began to realise that the statements that I had been making were existential in themselves. I had written things like ‘FEAR OF DEATH’ and ‘INATTENTIVE’, relating to my existential anxiety and ADHD. I felt like these had become what I was trying not to do and wanted to think more about how I could make something that genuinely focused on the everyday mundane and that didn’t permeate into thinking existentially. I needed to decide between what makes me comfortable and what makes me anxious.

After the presentation in week 4, I began to think more in the direction of mapping and embroidering maps. I thought this idea was more concrete and more easily visualised in my head than what I had wanted to create beforehand. I hadn’t come up with what I wanted it to look like in the end because I didn’t want to get in my head one idea and stick with it, I wanted to be open to new ideas that I could pursue with and open mind. So in week 5, having my consultation for the week, it was helpful to get feedback on knowing where to go next in the project. One concern that I felt with the work was that it was not fleshed out enough and would have felt unfinished the way that I was going - I felt that I didn’t have enough substance to the work. That was resolved by talking through how I might make the work more nuanced. Rather than mapping out in pieces, and then sewing them together, I think I want to draw on full pieces and then map out the walks in full. Then I would map out more walks over the top of the others in different colours. Then as the walks begin to fill up the pieces of fabric, the pieces become more colourful and then it is more obvious that the maps are of walks that happen throughout the day/week.

After a while, I started to use more intuition with how I moved around on the daily and began to embroider either freehanded onto the fabric or to draw it out first and then embroider. It became more of a second-nature to be able to map where I was going.

During the break, I reflected on my progress and thought thoroughly about what I wanted to achieve and whether or not my work was conveying what I wanted.

This led to embroidering on canvas and starting to pursue the mapping route. I had a conversation with my mum about my ideas and what would work and what wouldn’t. She suggested instead of just having maps, also presents objects that highlight the daily life aspect of the work. As well as having different canvases for different routes. I took this into account and started to collect objects from my day-to-day that I could embroider and began to work on the canvases.

As I embroidered, I came up with a method that would eventually become my practice and be a part of the work itself. I began with taking apart canvases that I had bought and taking out the staples. I then stretched the white fabric over the frame and secured it in place. I quickly found out that the frame of the canvas would become a nuisance, and that the edge of the frame is difficult to secure the thread to, especially at the end. When embroidering, I usually split my thread into halves to double my amount of embroidery thread and to make my stitches more precise. As I worked with the thread, I increasingly found it difficult to keep the strands together, which posed a problem to the speed and quality of my work, due to the amount of knots that I would frequently run into. I solved this by holding the thread as I pulled it through, so the motions would happen smoothly and it wouldn’t get tangled. 

At the week 7 mark, the first critique, I was able to pinpoint the important thing about my work, that the audience was reading my artwork as maps and that I was conveying what I wanted. My reflections on this week were that I had to make my work bigger and start thinking about curating the objects that I had collected.

My current evolved process:

Take apart canvases and stretch fabric on them, two layers for white and one for black

Choose a route to draw and embroider. All drawings will be done at the same time and embroidery will continue after the drawing is finished.

Figure out how long the real-life route takes, whether through Google Maps or on Strava.

Draw out the route onto paper through the computer screen, sizing it to the length and width of the paper to get the correct dimensions for the canvas.

Draw over that route in pen to darken the line so it reads through the canvas.

Stick the paper to the inside of the canvas to get the route to show up on the other side. Hold the canvas to the light to see the route and draw the route onto the fabric, carefully, so as to not draw a pencil onto the fabric as it is very hard to get out. Avoid placing the canvas face-down on the table or the floor. They will get dirty.

Draw the scale, the number scale as well as the title of the canvas. The black and white scale is 2 cm increments, but the scales that are on the canvases are not always exactly a zero. To get the route to fit inside the canvas and the scale to be accurate for the length of the route, the scale needed to be not rounded up.

Embroider in order of ease; the route, then the title, the numbers and then the scale. Tie off all ends and try not to get thread stuck between the two layers of fabric.

In this process, I found that the difference in the scales was really important, considering that the larger-scale canvases would have more detail than the small-scale ones. People often get scale confused and will get them mixed up. As a lover of maps, I have found myself to have always known this, but will also often get them confused.

Large Scale: small numbers, 1:50, 1:77, but with more details and more movement visible on the map

Small Scale: Large numbers, 1:1 000 000, 1:50 000, less detail and less gradation on the map

This was important to me to get right for the wording of this assignment, I fear that audiences could get this language mixed up, so I have avoided using this language in my Artist’s Statement.

With my talk with Sarah in week 9, it was helpful to think about what the display might look like, some ideas that we had was to hang the items in a salon hang wall-style, which was something that I liked the idea of. I also had the idea to paint the wall grey to help the black and white canvases to stand out in the same area. When I talked with Lucy a few weeks later, I realised that I wanted the works to be separate and that they can work as their own works. I then started to workshop some hanging styles for the objects that I had acquired and thinking about what might be some effective ways to get my point across with the objects. The canvases were becoming more of a pressing need, with the deadline edging closer and I had still not finished all of the embroidery. Thankfully, I had embroidered all that I wanted to in the end and I managed to get myself over the line with all of my stitching in the canvases and the objects. Some of the objects I had collected and intended to embroider were actually harder than I thought, especially the popcorn packet that I had, it fell apart as soon as I poked a needle through it because it was so light and easily ripped.

I had also run into problems with embroidering the canvases, which was that the white fabric was too see-through and would not be adequate for display. As the frame could be seen through the fabric, even when hung on the wall. To solve this problem, I took apart the canvases I had stretched (which also became a problem later), painted the canvases white and then re-stretched them with two layers of fabric; one broadcloth layer underneath and the poplin layer on top. I had been using poplin the whole time, mainly because it was the cheapest kind of fabric that was available, but it was too thin to stretch on its own. The black poplin, however, was fine on its own, so I left it with one layer. The embroidery that I had done previously was now unusable because the fabric I had used was cut at the edge of the frame and I couldn’t reattach it, so I started all of my white canvases over again.

While I was figuring this all out, I had abandoned the large-scale 1m x 1m map that I had been making and began to focus solely on my objects and my canvases.

Reflection:

I started this semester by working with the materials that I had collected last semester and attempting to use what I already had, thinking that I wanted to expand on what I had already been working on. After thinking about what I wanted to work on properly and realising that I was exhausted by the topic, I decided that I wanted to go in a different direction. I began by embroidering onto the fabric that I had and stitching the words ‘KINDA TIRED’ into the fabric. This is what made me realise how I felt, that I enjoyed embroidery and that it was something that I wanted to pursue. So I began creating other squares just like it. I was told about Kate Just, who made similar statements about knitted blankets, it was something that I felt I could be passionate about. I thought about other statements that I felt related to me and how I could put them into practice in embroidery. After a week of doing this, I began to realise that the statements that I had been making were existential in themselves. I had written things like ‘FEAR OF DEATH’ and ‘INATTENTIVE’, relating to my existential anxiety and ADHD. I felt like these had become what I was trying not to do and wanted to think more about how I could make something that genuinely focused on the everyday mundane and that didn’t permeate into thinking existentially. I needed to decide between what makes me comfortable and what makes me anxious.

After the presentation in week 4, I began to think more in the direction of mapping and embroidering maps. I thought this idea was more concrete and more easily visualised in my head than what I had wanted to create beforehand. I hadn’t come up with what I wanted it to look like in the end because I didn’t want to get in my head one idea and stick with it, I wanted to be open to new ideas that I could pursue with and open mind. So in week 5, having my consultation for the week, it was helpful to get feedback on knowing where to go next in the project. One concern that I felt with the work was that it was not fleshed out enough and would have felt unfinished the way that I was going - I felt that I didn’t have enough substance to the work. That was resolved by talking through how I might make the work more nuanced. Rather than mapping out in pieces, and then sewing them together, I think I want to draw on full pieces and then map out the walks in full. Then I would map out more walks over the top of the others in different colours. Then as the walks begin to fill up the pieces of fabric, the pieces become more colourful and then it is more obvious that the maps are of walks that happen throughout the day/week.

After a while, I started to use more intuition with how I moved around on the daily and began to embroider either freehanded onto the fabric or to draw it out first and then embroider. It became more of a second-nature to be able to map where I was going.

During the break, I reflected on my progress and thought thoroughly about what I wanted to achieve and whether or not my work was conveying what I wanted.

This led to embroidering on canvas and starting to pursue the mapping route. I had a conversation with my mum about my ideas and what would work and what wouldn’t. She suggested instead of just having maps, also presents objects that highlight the daily life aspect of the work. As well as having different canvases for different routes. I took this into account and started to collect objects from my day-to-day that I could embroider and began to work on the canvases.

As I embroidered, I came up with a method that would eventually become my practice and be a part of the work itself. I began with taking apart canvases that I had bought and taking out the staples. I then stretched the white fabric over the frame and secured it in place. I quickly found out that the frame of the canvas would become a nuisance, and that the edge of the frame is difficult to secure the thread to, especially at the end. When embroidering, I usually split my thread into halves to double my amount of embroidery thread and to make my stitches more precise. As I worked with the thread, I increasingly found it difficult to keep the strands together, which posed a problem to the speed and quality of my work, due to the amount of knots that I would frequently run into. I solved this by holding the thread as I pulled it through, so the motions would happen smoothly and it wouldn’t get tangled. 

At the week 7 mark, the first critique, I was able to pinpoint the important thing about my work, that the audience was reading my artwork as maps and that I was conveying what I wanted. My reflections on this week were that I had to make my work bigger and start thinking about curating the objects that I had collected.

My current evolved process:

Take apart canvases and stretch fabric on them, two layers for white and one for black

Choose a route to draw and embroider. All drawings will be done at the same time and embroidery will continue after the drawing is finished.

Figure out how long the real-life route takes, whether through Google Maps or on Strava.

Draw out the route onto paper through the computer screen, sizing it to the length and width of the paper to get the correct dimensions for the canvas.

Draw over that route in pen to darken the line so it reads through the canvas.

Stick the paper to the inside of the canvas to get the route to show up on the other side. Hold the canvas to the light to see the route and draw the route onto the fabric, carefully, so as to not draw a pencil onto the fabric as it is very hard to get out. Avoid placing the canvas face-down on the table or the floor. They will get dirty.

Draw the scale, the number scale as well as the title of the canvas. The black and white scale is 2 cm increments, but the scales that are on the canvases are not always exactly a zero. To get the route to fit inside the canvas and the scale to be accurate for the length of the route, the scale needed to be not rounded up.

Embroider in order of ease; the route, then the title, the numbers and then the scale. Tie off all ends and try not to get thread stuck between the two layers of fabric.

In this process, I found that the difference in the scales was really important, considering that the larger-scale canvases would have more detail than the small-scale ones. People often get scale confused and will get them mixed up. As a lover of maps, I have found myself to have always known this, but will also often get them confused.

Large Scale: small numbers, 1:50, 1:77, but with more details and more movement visible on the map

Small Scale: Large numbers, 1:1 000 000, 1:50 000, less detail and less gradation on the map

This was important to me to get right for the wording of this assignment, I fear that audiences could get this language mixed up, so I have avoided using this language in my Artist’s Statement.

With my talk with Sarah in week 9, it was helpful to think about what the display might look like, some ideas that we had was to hang the items in a salon hang wall-style, which was something that I liked the idea of. I also had the idea to paint the wall grey to help the black and white canvases to stand out in the same area. When I talked with Lucy a few weeks later, I realised that I wanted the works to be separate and that they can work as their own works. I then started to workshop some hanging styles for the objects that I had acquired and thinking about what might be some effective ways to get my point across with the objects. The canvases were becoming more of a pressing need, with the deadline edging closer and I had still not finished all of the embroidery. Thankfully, I had embroidered all that I wanted to in the end and I managed to get myself over the line with all of my stitching in the canvases and the objects. Some of the objects I had collected and intended to embroider were actually harder than I thought, especially the popcorn packet that I had, it fell apart as soon as I poked a needle through it because it was so light and easily ripped.

I had also run into problems with embroidering the canvases, which was that the white fabric was too see-through and would not be adequate for display. As the frame could be seen through the fabric, even when hung on the wall. To solve this problem, I took apart the canvases I had stretched (which also became a problem later), painted the canvases white and then re-stretched them with two layers of fabric; one broadcloth layer underneath and the poplin layer on top. I had been using poplin the whole time, mainly because it was the cheapest kind of fabric that was available, but it was too thin to stretch on its own. The black poplin, however, was fine on its own, so I left it with one layer. The embroidery that I had done previously was now unusable because the fabric I had used was cut at the edge of the frame and I couldn’t reattach it, so I started all of my white canvases over again.

While I was figuring this all out, I had abandoned the large-scale 1m x 1m map that I had been making and began to focus solely on my objects and my canvases.

Outcomes:

The result of my hard work throughout the semester became the artwork that I will be exhibiting, Beauty in the Nothing. It reflects my need to focus on the here and now, as well as solidify my desire to portray the mundane as something beautiful, and something to be enjoyed. I have displayed it consistently with the canvases in a timeline and the objects in ‘windows’, because I think that this is how they are best conveyed as an artwork of time. I exhibited my works at ANU Grad Show 2024 and won 3 awards from the EASS, from Craft and Design Canberra, Alliance Francaise and from Canberra Spinners and Weavers. To be honest, I wasn’t even planning on going to view the awards, as I was sure I wasn’t going to win anything. But I managed to pull through and now have exhibited my work in three places across Canberra.

photos by Claire Fletcher @badrego on instagram

[foone]

The thing neurotypicals tend not to understand about the ADHD brain is that it really only has two gears

I turn to the chalkboard and carefully write out

WORKIN' HARD

HARDLY WORKIN'

[laneoneform]

all the mundane things

I love mundane things. I think the notion that the little things we do in life can really actually matter. 

In the past, I have found it hard to do even the smallest of tasks and often still find it hard to achieve small things in my day, such as showering, eating, brushing my teeth, etc. I think it stems from my adhd and also my past experiences with depression and anxiety. While I am doing better these days, it can still be hard to achieve those small tasks that I know I need to do to take care of myself. These small tasks are things that I know I need to do for myself before I can also take care of other people as well. 

So, I have found solace recently in celebrating small things, mundane things that happen during my day that might make it better, or things that will help me keep up my health. Maybe it’s because it makes me feel like I’m in a movie, (which I’m starting to think might not be the most helpful thing, but I can talk about that another time) or it could be because I want to be able to reward myself for doing those small things so that I can train myself to do them more often in the future. 

So, all the mundane things, is my celebration of small things that we do. Sometimes those things can be quite momentous, finishing an assignment, eating a full healthy meal, or getting a new job. Sometimes they can be the smallest things, like how I made a tea and then 30 minutes later, had to reheat it in the microwave because I had forgotten about it. That’s something that can be kind of funny to me, but really it’s just something that I do all too much, because of my adhd. 

In art, recording things is an important part of practice, especially when you are building up a portfolio, or developing a project, even if no one else is going to see that recording of progress, it’s helpful to see how far you’ve come in your development of the work, or to write about and research what you’d like that work to become. I find it really hard to record the things that I do in my art practice, mostly because I am just so forgetful. So this project is something that I’d like to demonstrate what it means to record even the slightest of things. And to be honest, even if I am the only one who actually ends up recording anything, I’ll still have a log of activities that I’ve done in my day that make it just a regular day. And I think it can be helpful in reminding me that days are allowed to be mundane and flat. It’s ok to not be on a high every single day. 

This artwork I’m hoping will be an extensive example and form of performance art that records some normal, but sometimes weird things that happen, no matter how small. 

I’d like to post more about this project in the future and will research more on artists who have done similar projects. If you have any artists who you know have done a similar form of recording every day activities, please let me know! One of my first thoughts about this sort of thing was Grapefruit, by Yoko Ono, which was a book written with instructions and drawings for mundane everyday things while living in NYC. Some of the things written are pretty weird, but also very thought-provoking. Below is an excerpt of the book, an instruction that is interesting.

TUNAFISH SANDWICH PIECE

Imagine one thousand suns in the 

sky at the same time.

Let them shine for one hour.

Then, let them gradually melt 

in to the sky.

Make one tunafish sandwich and eat.

1964 spring

This sort of thing really fascinates me because it compares and contrasts the infinite view of thinking of how many suns exist in our universe and to imagine them entering our atmosphere and then as they disappear in your thoughts, you make a tunafish sandwich. The poetry in the visualisation of the suns is so vivid in asking the viewer to visualise something so momentous, but then the viewer is taken out of this visualisation and then dumped back into reality. In this work, the reader becomes the artist. 

This is what I wanted to reflect in my own works, where the everyday person can also become the artist and that they don’t have to do huge things to create art that can inspire them. Art doesn’t have to be a part of the spectacular, it can be simply mundane. And this is something that I often have to remind myself and to help myself to be more careful with myself and take each day as it is. Oh, and to remember to breathe. There’s that too.  <3 l.o.f.

.

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If you'd like to add anything, please feel free to here

please don't edit other people's entries! ty xx

Research + other readings:

Dazed. “Why Yoko Ono’s Strange Art Book Grapefruit Is a Welcome Remedy for Crisis.” Dazed, March 31, 2020. https://www.dazeddigital.com/art-photography/article/48550/1/yoko-ono-john-lennon-conceptual-art-book-grapefruit-art-remedy-coronavirus. 

O’brien, John. “Why I Love Yoko Ono’s ‘Grapefruit.’” YouTube, December 1, 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAfsjhkPuK0&ab_channel=JohnO%27Brien%27sArtHistoryChannel. 

Ono, Yoko. “Grapefruit: A Book of Instructions and Drawings (Excerpts).” Grapefruit. Accessed May 2, 2024. https://monoskop.org/images/archive/6/64/20190320203953!Ono_Yoko_Grapefruit_A_Book_of_Instructions_and_Drawings_2000.pdf.

[mbti-enemies]

no one:

absolutely no one:

enfp: I’ve never smoked anything. I ate a brownie once at a party. It was intense. It was kind of indescribable. I felt like I was floating. Turns out there was no pot in the brownie. It was just an insanely good brownie

[laneoneform]

In Semester 2!!

Helloooo I am back for another semester! I had so much fun creating this blog that I thought I might continue to keep up updating it with what I'm doing at the moment!

So, I am doing three courses again. I am doing Art History, Design and Textiles. For this blog, I think my design work is most suited to be updated here so I will keep logging in what I've done each week.

My design course this sem is typography! This is super exciting because I know a lot more about typography than Arduino and I have felt very competent in class for the past two weeks, something I am very excited about. For assessment tasks, one is about type crimes! and the other is a presentation of a typeface we are interested in.

I am looking at trying to find a typeface that interests me. There is a few that are quite intriguing, although I am not sure if I should go with one that is more aesthetic and pretty, or something like Times New Roman, which has a lot more information on it than the other. It is hard to find information about typefaces that aren't widely known.

Not sure what to go with! they're both very versatile typefaces. Although, the pitch typeface has more families within it and has a sans serif version, which I also love. I'm not sure what I'm going to use it for, though, since we have to use our chosen typeface for another assignment later in the year. If you have any suggestions, please let me know! If you also have a different typeface suggestion, let me know too! I'd love to do more research into different typefaces!

Super keen for typography this semester! Also keen to develop maybe a bit more of an aesthetic for my practice as I start to do more work outside uni, since I've been doing a lot of external graphic things that are not for homework or assignments. It's very exciting for me, especially since I feel like this is something I want to work in after uni! very keen to find jobs in this area!

see you soon with a new update (hopefully) xx jemma

[laneoneform]

hows your project you were working on going? (or is it finished?)

Omg thanks for asking!! it went well :) we just submitted our report today!!

[laneoneform]

Independent Reflections Assessment 2

I can’t believe it’s the end of the semester!! Crazy how I was writing about how I didn’t know much about coding and computers and then now I am here and I have put together a circuit with a flame sensor and made a plant band!! it’s been a crazy journey and I have surprisingly enjoyed it, even though I don’t really like coding.

For the end of this project, I did the rationale and the referencing for the project documentation. (Although I thought Harrison and Gus knew more about the inner-workings of the code and circuit, so Harrison wrote a small paragraph in the rationale about the shortfalls and challenges of the project.)

As for research of this project, I found a project from 2 years ago called the PlantWave which was created by Data Garden after they did a project at the Philadelphia Museum in 2014 with musical plants. The creators then decided they wanted to make a commercialised version, so they created the PlantWave. It is an expensive little device that we made for a lot cheaper with our own materials!

The PlantWave cr: PlantWave https://www.plantwave.com/

I also found another artist who works in a similar vein to us, called Mileece. She is a British artist working in America making electronic music with plants and connecting people to nature via plant sounds. I thought she was very cool and more spiritual and artistic than the PlantWave. I also appreciated her thoughts on what she believed she was doing with her art. She also went on America’s Got Talent in 2014 and didn’t get through the auditions, which I thought was weird because her art is so beautiful and would have been a great act for the show!

Mileece. cr: NY Times https://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/29/garden/a-haven-for-making-music-with-plants.html

My main reflections for this assignment, I really surprisingly enjoyed it. I thought I wouldn’t like the course altogether because I’m not a skilled coder, but it helped that there was no assumed knowledge and I was able to work my way up gradually and understand what was going on with making circuits and everything.

Our project started out being about music and water? But we got into researching about plants and then decided to create this performance. I think the reason why we did it is very different to what artist Mileece thinks about her art, who doesn’t see it as irony or as a paradox, but as a symbiotic relationship between humans and nature. We as a group saw the irony in making music with plants and forcing a sound out of them, I almost felt sorry for the plant when we poked holes into them each week :/

Our Performance and Presentation cr: (filmed by classmate)

All together, this was enjoyable and I hope future projects in the sphere of music and plants go further than what we did this semester and I would be very interested in doing more physical computing after this! Despite what I thought about this course in the very start, I have learnt so much and am very excited to see where this course could take me in the future.

[laneoneform]

Week 10 Project Meeting and Zoom Class

This week, our tutor had covid symptoms :( So we had an online class with optional consultations with our tutor and met as a team to discuss our direction and work together in class. When I arrived at the classroom, no one was there. It ended up being just my group meeting in the one classroom, which in the end, proved to be very helpful for us, and we were rather productive! While Harrison and Gus worked on the circuit, Winson worked on a narrative introduction for the project. I put together some project slides and did some referencing and bibliography.

Around just over halfway through the class time slot, Harrison managed to get the plant to give out a sound!! It was amazing, and we celebrated.

I made an appointment with Pia for feedback and questions. I was put on referencing and presentation slides (which Winson and I ended up switching that day). I asked questions about how to write a rationale because I wasn’t sure I knew how to.

Anyway, so we managed to get the sound working, we continued to go further and work on it a little more. So Gus started working on getting pure data to put the sound into Logic Pro so we could edit it into more of a synth-like sound from the plants. This week was super exciting because we made a huge breakthrough, and it looks like this project is on track to finish well! I am super excited to see how the plants will sound in the end and whether or not we will be all editing the sound ourselves. Not sure if I am really up to that challenge! Especially since my computer is old and probably won’t be able to take on another large app like logic pro. I might need another one for that.

That's all for now, can't wait to see what it's like when it's done!!

<3 Jemma

[laneoneform]

Week 7 & 8 Reflections and Project 3

After holidays, I was feeling a little stressed about what I was going to do about all my unfinished projects, and then we got yet ANOTHER project for design as well! I am going to have a crazy term…

Anyway, week 7, we got put into groups for the next project, which we must create an interactive system that engages with the surrounding environment. I am in a group with Harrison, Gus and Winson. We started out brainstorming about what we were going to do for the project, Harrison said he was interested in music and Gus said he was interested in water. I was just happy to go with whatever, I didn’t necessarily have any direction that I wanted to go in for this project.

We started looking at projects based on music and water and I came across a project where the Arduino connected to plants and converted the plants’ reactions to touch into sound. I thought it was cool, so I suggested to my group that we could do something similar.

During our week 7 class, we had some divides within the group as to what kind of plant/music project we were going to go ahead with, but we eventually settled on the idea of a ‘plant band’, where we get multiple plants connected and they all make noise at once.

In week 8, we went ahead and created our project slides and researching how we were going to go about putting the circuit together and what would be the best code to use. Since our week 8 class, Harrison was able to put together the circuit and get the code working, but hasn’t been able to get the speaker connected in. I have had a couple of cracks at it, but it has mostly been ineffective, as I am not sure what the code needs for it to work with a speaker.

I also don’t have any plants in my house. (AHH!)

I am not sure how to continue and have been mostly busy putting the slides together for our presentation.

So far, this course has been difficult and I have almost given up many times, but I have also learnt a lot over the course of a term and have been more interested in physical computing than before. I also have realised how satisfying it is when the code finally works! (it’s pretty cool) I have celebrated a few times when the code does what I want it to do! :)

I am keen to finally get the code working for this next project! It’ll be really interesting to see how this project develops.

<3 Jemma

[laneoneform]

Week 6 Reflections and Transduction Template Assignment

This week, I felt really stressed because I didn’t have any idea of what I wanted to do for the assignment, so I unfortunately had to get an extension for this assignment, as I have been very stressed about the work for this course so far and I have been on and off sick for the past 5 weeks!

It’s been a hell of a ride, that’s for sure.

Thankfully, in our Design class, we have this thing called the class repository. A list of modules that we can use for projects during class. Unfortunately, I cannot take these out of the class, but it helped me find my project idea.

A flame sensor.

“A flame sensor?!?!” – My mum, 2022

I was so stoked about this flame sensor, so I hopped off to Jaycar again to grab myself a flame sensor. On my way to Jaycar, I realised I also had to get female wires, as well as a speaker. The piezo speaker, is easy to use, but it’s not very loud and doesn’t stay connected like I want it to when I move it around.

I came back home with these three things and got to work. Very quickly, I realised that the flame sensor that Jaycar stocked was not the same as the ones in the articles I had been reading. And that it was analog and not digital. No problem, I can work with this. Now I had to find a code that would work with this.

I had 5 different versions of the flame sensor code until it worked. And you know which one was the one that worked? Version 2!! One of the ones I opened when I first started with this project. It felt a little like backtracking. I had to alter the code a little bit for the speaker to work with it, but it’s basically the same as what I had started with.

What I had started with was not very functional and wasn’t working. I didn’t know how to connect this flame sensor at all and I obviously didn’t understand what the pins meant. So again, I did a bit of researching and had to go right back to the basics. I eventually figured it out with the simple code, where I didn’t even connect the breadboard. I just plugged the flame sensor right into the Arduino. Fortunately, it worked! Finally, after about 3-4 days of working on this, I finally managed to get the flame sensor to react when I lit a candle.

Now I had to connect the speaker. I turned to the Tone Pitch Follower example code provided by Arduino to help me out. It was very simple, and the circuit had worked in the past.

Although, when I connected my new speaker to the circuit, nothing happened. I un-did the circuit and put it back together again. Still nothing!! Why wouldn’t it work? Upon close-up inspection, I realised that maaaybe, the little “V” pin was important after all?? So, I connected it up to the “V in” pin on the left side of the Arduino.

And what do you know? It worked! Finally, another breakthrough.

How would I connect these two up though?

Using the tone pitch follower circuit, I took out the sensor and replaced it with the same circuit I used for the flame sensor. And again! It worked. But I wanted the speaker to only respond when it sensed fire – at this point, it was just constantly making noise.

So I edited the analog input range to zero, hoping that it might be lower, and thankfully, it worked. So now, when you light a match, or a candle, and hold the flame sensor up to the candle, the speaker produces a loud wailing sound. I was hoping to change the sound into more of a siren-like sound, but I felt I should stick to what I have and not to complicate what I already had done.

It worked! And I barely had to type much (apart from this post, ahahaha)

Despite getting really frustrated with the sensor, speaker, myself, this course and probably the people around me, when the code worked, I was so happy. I probably woke my housemate up at 12am (whoops) I was just so excited. All this labour and trial and error and research I had done had paid off, and I had made something that I thought was cool and that I was proud of!!

I was thinking for the application of my prototype, it reminds me of the function of a smoke alarm or something. I’m not entirely sure what else it could be used for, but it might be a handy tool in a household for the kitchen, or for blind people?? Not sure...

I am really happy with what I’ve done, although I wish I had been able to do it sooner and not have to deal with an assignment in my uni break. That all being said, I am keen to see where I could go next!

<3 jemma

[laneoneform]

Week 4 Assignment Proposal

Aim: Using a flame sensor module, to detect fire and turn it into sound where a speaker produces a siren.

How I will construct the prototype:

- I was thinking I could take the code for working a flame sensor and put it together with the code for the melody function that plays a song when the upload button is pressed.

- Maybe this could allow me to have a song played when the flame sensor senses a fire, so it is like an actual siren.

Components needed:

- Flame Sensor

- Arduino UNO

- USB cable

- Male and Female wires

- Speaker (piezo??)

- Resistors

- Breadboard

- Matches + Candle

About Infrared sensors:

Infrared (IR) sensors, work within the IR spectral band and are a type of radar technology. It both emits and receives IR radiation, so that the radiation hits objects nearby and bounces back onto itself. This way, the receiver can detect movement and detect how far away the object is from the sensor.

How I may be able to apply this prototype to everyday life:

I think that smoke alarms are very helpful in everyday life and maybe it having the added ability to detect a fire rather than just smoke could prevent the fire from spreading even further. It is one thing to sense smoke, which is risky and may be dangerous, but if smoke alarms could also detect flames, it could alert the people in the surrounding area to either evacuate or to fight the fire. Smoke alarms are already quite effective, so I don’t want to replace them with this prototype, especially considering that the detection of smoke happens a lot earlier than fire, but it may be able to minimise danger if there is an addition of a flame sensor.

Examples of a Flame Sensor circuit:

📷 source: circuitdigest.com

📷 source: electronicshub.org

I was thinking of using the tone pitch follower circuit to help me out with the speaker, especially considering the circuit contains a sensor already, I could just replace it with the flame sensor.

📷 source: arduino.cc

More updates later on!

<3 jemma

[laneoneform]

hello there! | (week 0 introduction)

Hi! My name is Jemma and I am a student studying Visual Arts at the Australian National University in Canberra. I am in my second year of studying and this semester, I am doing a course in Design (DESN2010), a course in textiles and a course in art history. I currently work at the Van Gogh Alive exhibition at the merchandise stall, so come say hello!

I have a little bit of experience with coding, I did an IT class when I was in year 9 in highschool and I didn’t enjoy it very much. Apart from being able to create a website which was very basic and involved no coding whatsoever, that class was not very interesting to me. I chose this course because it was one of the only ones that sounded interesting, even though it involved coding!! I am not good at it at all, but I am so so keen to learn and become good at it and use my experience gained in this course in my future artworks and courses at Uni.

I come armed with Arduino boards and breadboards that I bought from Jaycar on the spur of the moment, there is no going back now! I am starting from a place where I know very little about coding, but I am very eager to learn. I hope this is a good starting point to show how much I know now, in order to see what progress I will make this semester.

Allonsy!