Progression work

I am currently looking into possible options I would like to take after completing my course. I have four possible routes in which I could take; do a foundation year (+18) course, university, an apprenticeship or employment. I have considered all areas and am now looking into each possible one. Ideally, I would like to do another year before branching off, so I have more of an in site to what I would like to do. This would either be an arts and design course, foundation interactive media or photography at a different college.

The first thing I have done in my research is looking into possible companies that I would realistically like to work for. I looked into companies in surrounding areas, closest to home, to start off with, these included the likes of; Team Cooper, Sumo Digital, Distinctive, Kuju and Game Faction, all situated in Sheffield. I have taken note of there contact details, and will contact them at a later date to ask about having a look around the company and see what the staff do there (individual roles).

Something else I have done, is looked on the UCAS website and at different courses and universities. I am still undecided in which course would best suit me, so I will look more into courses and what each one entails. Once I have decided upon that, I will look at the cost of travel and courses and if it's somewhere I would need to stay, look at accommodation. I still need to put all this in my progression folder.
Currently I am looking at examples of personal statements to help me with my own.

Frieke Janssens

Frieke Janssens is a Belgian photographer. I have a strong interest in one of her collections, entitled ‘The Beauty of an Ugly Addiction’. It is made up of 15 unsettling images of children puffing on cigarettes, cigars or pipes. These images are repulsive and some people may find them deeply disturbing.

Janssens did not use real cigarettes during the shoot, and instead replaced them with sticks of chalk or cheese, and used candles and incense to create smoke. Her models wore old- fashioned clothes – with touches of British missionaries, Victorian schoolmistresses and 1920 mobsters – showing the habit as archaic.

What inspired her for this collection is after she watched a video of an Indonesian toddler smoking cigarettes that made worldwide headlines in 2010.

“I felt that seeing children smoke would have a surreal impact on the viewer and compel them to truly see the acts of smoking rather than making assumptions about the person doing it.”

Yosuke Goda

Yosuke Goda is a Japanese artist who creates organisms with a body similar to the roots and vines of trees, using only black markers, covering surrounding white walls, floor and ceiling.

What I really find appealing about this artist is the intricate detail and imagination that goes into his work. Every piece is made up of thousands of hand drawn swirls and spirals, making the images look they are coming to live with movement. 

Below are just a few of his pieces:

This close-up image just shows how much detail and thought goes into each individual section of all of Goda's creations. 

And this photograph captures and demonstrates the vastness and size of each piece.

On the 19^th of June, we went to Sheffield Hallam University to the Creative Spark exhibition, to view  the work of different designers. We went to the Sheaf Building, Arundel Gate Court and Cantor Building – where they showcase; D & T education, Engineering, Fashion, Furniture and product design, Graphic Design, Interior Design and Product Design, Animation, Computing, Digital Media Production, Film and Visual Effects, Games Design and Photography.

This was a good experience because it gives us an insight to all the different types of area of work. It has broaden my horizons in the design field and in university.

Here are a few designers whos work I particually liked:

Sophie Lauren Hill – Photographer

Sophie Lauren Hill is a photography student. I love the photography by this student because she really shows depth in her pieces and some are absolutely gorgeous. I would say her work is my favourite I’ve seen all day. She takes photographs of aspects of her life, surrounding her, creating an optical story through expressions, desires and fears. She edits these photographs digitally afterwards.

She looks for the shadow within the light, infusing her images with fantasy, romanticism and darkness. Her aim is to make the audience question reality, and slip into another using fashion to twist their mind and feelings.

This body of work is an exploriation of Victorian Supernaturalism, that life after death exists and we can contact those beyond the grave.

She has taken makeup, fashion, setting and images, and combined them together to create unique, individual and captivating images, which create characters and stories which the audience can delve into.

What drew me to her work was the presentation and position of her photographs. She has a variety of different sized canvas’, which displays her work, and used a mixture of monochrome and coloured images, either of full body photographs or close up photographs. Your focus immediately gets drawn to the coloured centre image of the three girls holding the black skull.

This is what I could take into consideration when presenting my own final outcomes, and consider how I would want to layout my pieces. I should catch people’s attention by using more eye-catching and colourful images. And like what this student has done, put the larger pieces in the centre and the smaller pieces on the outside around the edges. Finally, having all the images close together gives a bigger impact and makes it easier for the audience to absorb, and shows the contrast of all the pieces.

There was no sketchbook to go with this students work, so I could not see what her research and development work was like, for her to come up with her final outcomes.

What makes this piece stand out to me the most is the use of lighting and shadow, and the depth the photograph gives off to the audience. It’s a rather dark piece and she is relating this piece to death, maybe the fear of death. It gives me the opinion that she is trying to tell the audience that death could happen to anyone at any age.

The close-up and angle of this piece works really well, and gives it a dramatic feel. The use of monochrome colour gives it more character to work with this effect.

Also the angel of her head, and how her hair covers half her face, shows that she is cowering away, and is in fear.

This piece gives the same feel as the piece before, but more than the fear of death, this piece shows the sadness after a death. It makes me feel this because of the types of clothing the model is wearing and the composition and angle the image is taken in. It shows empty space besides the model, which could symbolise loneliness. 

What also gives’ the impression of loneliness is the half body shot, and the body language expressed by the model, using hand position and the tilt of her head. 

Overall, I think this student has achieved what she wanted the audience to see and explore, using image layout, composition, expression, fashion and makeup. I could take away some of these aspects in my own work, such as, lighting and composition and how it helps build a story/expression to the audience, letting them use their own thoughts and imagination. 

Carrie-Anne Owen – Photographer

What drew me to this students work is how she has combined both photography and textiles to create the butterflies. The body of the butterfly is made of materials sewn together and the wings are made up of photography.

 

The butterflies are displayed in the same way you would see them in a museum. She had created names for each one of her creations, like Metallia Petram, for the butterfly with the Metalica wings, and put there description and latin/English name uderneathe. She has also put a description of each butterfly group under the displays, informing the audience to what species they are and what group they belongto.  This is quite effective and has real meaning in it, and it’s clear that thought has gone into how this student wanted to present her work.

These pieces appeal to me because they are very different from things I have seen before, and it’s very clever how she has got a message over to her audience. It really makes the viewer think about what her pieces portray and gives an insight to realality in her own creative way.

It is clever how she has done this, and it works well, and it’s interesting and unique.She has done these to represents that the clothes we wear shows social groups and peoples personalities. To me the butterflies nailed and enclosed in a box shows that there is no freedom and the butterflies don’t mix with other types. For example, this image to me shows only butterfly designs to represent goths and people who listen to rock/metal music, then there is another box that to me would represent chavs, with sport wear brands. These social groups would not usually mix in reality and they have different personalities. I think this because butterflies symblise freedom.

The butterflies are displayed in the same way you would see them in a museum. She had created names for each one of her creations, like Metallia Petram, for the butterfly with the Metalica wings, and put there description and latin/English name uderneathe. She has also put a description of each butterfly group under the displays, informing the audience to what species they are and what group they belongto.  This is quite effective and has real meaning in it, and it’s clear that thought has gone into how this student wanted to present her work.

These pieces appeal to me because they are very different from things I have seen before, and it’s very clever how she has got a message over to her audience. It really makes the viewer think about what her pieces portray and gives an insight to realality in her own creative way.

I like this group of butterflies, and to me they seem to represent goths, with the lace, fishnet patterns and the corset. I find the corset wings really clever, interesting and unique because of how she has positioned them behind the butterfly body, combining the two medias together.

What makes this photography student different from the student I looked at before, is she has created something from a combination of photographs and expressed feeling and messages through objects instead of taking images of people’s emotions and body language. Her presentation for her final piece has been concidered a lot, to portray everything she wanted the audience to see. This is difficult to do, but she has done this successfully.

I would really like to incorpriate some of this students style into my own work, contrasting photography and textile together, to come up with a combination that works. This could be anything though, and not just used to make butterflies like this designer has done.

Deforestation

Deforestation is trees being cut down on a massive scale to supply us with our everyday needs, by logging, fires, and land-clearing for agriculture and cattle grazing. They are cut down for many reasons, but it mostly relates back to money or people needing to provide for families.

The biggest factor of deforestation is agriculture. Farmers are cutting down forests to make more room for planting crops and grazing livestock. Often, they will cut small acres by cutting down trees and then burning them, this process is known as ‘slash and burn’ agriculture. Another reason is logging operations, which provide the world’s wood and paper products. This means countless trees have to be cut each year (12 million hectares).

Loggers, some of which act illegally, build roads to access more and more remote forests. Also, growing urban sprawl is a result for forests being cut down to make more room.

There are many negative affects fromdeforestation to the environment, such as the impact it has on loss habitat for many species – many of which are becoming endangered or worst, extinct, also the effect it has on climate change.

It is a problem for animal’s habitats because species (thousands of which are still to be discovered) are becoming endangered or are being completely wiped out (it is believed that each year 3,000 – 30,000 animal species become extinct). They are unable to adapt to new surroundings and the biological cycle will be affected.

Deforestation also has a huge effect on the climate. Trees help perpetuate the water cycle by returning the water vapour back to the atmosphere. Also, they consume carbon dioxide, which is a greenhouse gas that fuels global warming, but burning the trees also releases more carbon dioxide, along with methane, which is another harmful greenhouse gas. That means, the fewer trees there are, the larger the amount of greenhouse gases entering the atmosphere, thus speeding up global warming.

There are campaigners however, trying to find solutions to these problems. A well known one is Greenpeace, another is REDD “Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation”. REDD is paying poor countries, such as New Guinea, to protect their forests. They would allow countries that can reduce emissions from deforestation to be paid for doing so.

A workable solution would be to balance the amount of trees cut by planting enough young trees to replace them that had fallen.

References:

http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/global-warming/deforestation-overview/

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/eye/deforestation/effect.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/sep/24/redd-reducing-emissions-from-deforestation

http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/

Greenwash

Greenwash is, to sum up, an environmental claim made by advertising, which is a lie, or a distraction, made about people, organisations and products. Industries send out false advertisements, to make consumers believe their products are eco-friendly, which is 'fluffy language'. This is annoying and can also be very dangerous because consumers are purchasing these products without confidence in the claims, as they no longer know who, or what to believe. None of the UK's biggest advertising agencies claim to have any training or guidelines to justify what a green claim is, also there are no evidence to back up their claims.

Thankfully, we, the consumers, can identify the use of these false claims. There are 10 greenwash signs that can be easily identified, these include:

. 'Fluffy language' - these are words or terms that have no clear or real meaning. An example of this is 'eco-friendly'.

. 'Green' Products vs the dirty contender eg. efficient light bulbs, which are made in factories that pollute rivers.

. Suggestive pictures - these are green images that indicate a green impact eg. car adverts that show flowers blooming from the exhaust pipes.

. Irrelevant claims, which emphasise a green product to a non-green product.

. 'Best in class', stating you are greener than the rest.

. Not credible - like 'eco-friendly' cigarettes.

. Jargon and information that is difficult to understand.

. Labels that looks like a third party endorsement, but its all made up, of lies and false claims.

. Out-right lying - totally fabricated data or claims.

UCAS

At the moment I am currently not interested in going to university, but from going on this trip, if I was ever interested in going, the places that appealed the most to me were Nottingham Trent and Plymouth doing either the games design course or photography course (at Plymouth they had more areas of photography to choose from).
In our group discussion, we all agreed that on some stands, people were not approachable and did not want to talk or give enough information.
My overall opinion of this trip is that it is still too early to talk about university because we have only had a couple of months on our current course, and it is unclear in which we want our career path to be. I think it will be more useful next year when we all have a clearer idea.