#bcu15

[orbotherworldrb]

The New Project

So our new project is titled ‘The other world’ and I am not going lie, I’m stupendously excited for what it beholds. I have got so many ideas bursting out of my ears so I better get to work

[harrymillsdigbethproject]

Just a couple of quick snaps to show our first project at Birmingham City University. Just want to say a massive well done to Gina, Darren, Shanade and Ashleigh who were my team mates during this project.

[georginamccavanaviscomlectures]

Lecture 4 Production

For this fourth lecture, we are focusing upon production and mass production. Within this lecture I am solely focused upon the creative side of production. Within this lecture I have been greatly, influenced by the original nineteenth Century arts of wooden letterpress type within the print room in the university, which I have access to. Within my project of “People and Places”, I feel that I can communicate ideas via typography, our area of interest is Digbeth is a very industrial area just outside the city centre of Birmingham. I feel that i can reflect this mood through block type printing, which I can then develop further digitally upon Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop, creating graphic work to place upon our 3D sculpture in cardboard of Digbeth. Taking inspiration from the nineteenth century, block printing towards commercial use of posters and advertisements. This was the start of variations created in type, the start of type design (typography), the start of this enabled people to advertise their products using the power of type design. 

In the mid nineteenth century factories were introducing mass production of sellable goods. Robbing craftsmen of their skill set, this was the introduction to the “industrial revolution”. The industrial era influenced the movement of cubism, which I should link in with the artwork of the dutch artist “M.C Escher” printed in March 1960 of “ascending and descending” a lithograph in black ink. Reflection of the treatment of workers, they were treated as objects as a part in the wheel of mass production. This is reflected in “Metropolis” a film created by Fritz Lang in 1927, he focused upon the depressive state of the workers in the mass production industry, themselves given the meaning of being massed produced. 

I am highly influenced by paintwork so when pop art was mentioned with Andy Warhol, I automatically knew I would relate this, with my own work in my project. Warhol created screen prints of famous stars in the sixties and fifties, his most recognised piece being of the actress of the day Marilyn Monroe. My specialised area being Digbeth has many illustrated pieces across the buildings one, imparticullar being a mockery of Andy Warhol’s screen print of monroe’s head piece print. I have never experimented with screen printing, I am very ambitious to investigate many printing techniques, very excited to experiment with different techniques within screen printing also, to develop my ideas and designs towards our final outcome of a three dimensional Digbeth, concentrating upon the street art. 

[bcuvaldez-blog]

Construction of Questionnaire

Although the markets were closed, my group decided to have a meeting regarding our project. This time it was about the questions we were going to ask the people of the market.

Potential Questions;

1.       What’s your nationality?

2.       What is the best thing about this community?

3.       What would you like to change about it?

4.       What influence do you think immigration have in the area?

5.       What would you like to say on behalf of the immigrants in this area?

After we accumulated our questions we went to our campus to have a meeting with our tutor, so he could suggest changes or add to the questions we’ve produced.

Instead of “What’s your nationality?” our tutor suggested for us to change it to “How do you define your nationality”. From my point of view did this is an unconventional approach to asking people their nationality, however I think it’s a positive change, because people would usually answer it in a straight forward manner. With this question, they are “forced” to scrutinize themselves and their nationality to how they would define themselves. Therefore, giving us an impression of who they really are, how they’re feelings are towards their nationality.

In our second question, we only asked about what’s the best thing about the community. To make it more valid we have to show the other side of the question, which is what the worst aspect within the community is.

There were no changes within the third question, as it links to the second. Due to the fact that the individuals who answered the question, will have an opinion on the solutions of what to do to change what’s the worst thing about the community

Instead of using the present tense for our forth question, our tutor decided that it would be more stimulating to look at the causes of immigration from the past, leading up to the present. The question has been reconstructed to “What influence do you think immigration has had on the area? During the last 50 years”.

One of our questions needed to be discarded, and it was the last question. This is because; it’s a question that will exploit an individual’s negative perspective towards immigrants. Although this maybe their true views about immigrants, we don’t want them to look bad to the point where people who have seen are products are going to creating conflict towards them.

The questionnaire that my group produced has been finalized, and we were ready to start interviewing people