Lauren Bowker

Bowker was a student at MMU and just shows what you can achieve if making it big in this industry is your dream. She has set up her own company since graduating from London called PHNX - see the unseen. This like Brendan Dawes to me sounds like she wants to create something magical and something which creates a statement which people will talk about afterwards.

It was interesting how she spoke about rejection being a big spur in life, and that if you have a dream of what you want to achieve, then you should just do it and not let others stifle you.

She also does a lot of work for the commercial work, and it is about taking your ideas of the work you've being doing for yourself, and seeing how you can make them work in a more commercial, high street idea.

Brendan Dawes, Fillings for Rectangles.

Brendan Dawes referrs to his practice as creating 'stuff' that people either love or hate.

This image was a project where Dawes created an interface out of play-doh and the more or less of the play-doh the camera could see, the faster or slower the film would play. I don't really understand anything about computer technologies, but I understand the concept of playing around with your art to generate more interesting and innovative ideas. Dawes referrs to this project as something analog being able to control something digital.

The work Dawes creates is supposed to replicate magic. The audience is supposed to look on at it with a sense of wonderment and something they'll talk about afterwards. it's about putting your work out on the internet and seeing what people think about it, someone important may just spot it.

Inspirationa videos from Group Meeting

 The main interest in this film is the first part with the fabric growing over the two women, however watching on, the colours used later on are beautiful, and the sand scenes would be amazing to have a go at.

Vaughn Bell

Vaughn Bell: dust masks which replace the smell of urban pollution with oak leaves and moss.

Creating a mini biosphere which people can breathe in.

Sime Mould Stop Motion

Slime mould solving a maze to get food. So clever!

Stop motion would be a really good way to film if we are going to use mould.

Slime Mould Powered Robot

This robot is powered by slime mould! Shows how technology could be more environmentally friendly in the future.

Ideas For Growth and Mould

One of the ideas from the group meeting was to look at the future of communication and whether there will be any face to face conversations or whether it will end up being digital. I remembered I'd seen an article on a slime mould which could communicate through bio-chemicals, and this could be an amazing way of linking the future of technology with the idea of nature and mould. There have also been studies of it being used in technology such as robots and can even solve puzzles.
The texture is really interesting too because the slime effect is translucent and reminds me of skin. This could be the way in which fashion moves and changes because it is like a second skin, growing over the body. A natural technology which won't hurt the environment or react with human skin.

Latex would work really well to create this texture. Also the trapping of things inside to create pattern.
Communication could easily be transmitted through the slimy surface of the slime mould to other people. It could be the future of what powers computers and how trends are spread.

13th March Ian Whadcock - Illustration: Talk notes

Rather than his actual work, what really inspired me about Whadcock was the way inwhich he described how he worked and the thinking behind creating. Our visual research is what makes us different to our peers. To be able to make ourselves as different as possible from those people is the amount of risks we take and the amount of failure and rethinking we encounter - as long as we take each thing as a positive.
We as designers need to push ourselves and push the boundaries of our art and this needs to be done in university because after, to develop yourself, the different directions tried in athe safety of uni have to be contracted to a marketable style.
It is so important to keep yourself learning constantly, in an art sense we can be commissioned to think not just make so keep yourself moving and don't be happy repeating the same ideas over and over again. A way inwhink Whadcock pushed himself was to move digital. This would be an important step for me too as I always try to resist it.
He recommended we tackle with the things we don't want to do (in his case portraiture) and this allows us to come with ideas and processes we had never imagined before. It can feel odd and difficult, and the work produced can feel like a step backwards, but just the action of stepping out and trying something different is always a step forward.
It's about disrupting the certainty, and moving ideas on from the literal begining (and that is always a valid way to start a project). It is also so important to referance, resource and underpin your ideas the whole way through a project to maintain the knowledge and new inspiration fueling the work.


ian Whadcock often works for banking publications because he is able to take a business idea or model and translate that from the literal, to something much easier to visualise and understand. he has also started pushing himself more by doing free collaborations with smaller businesses like a dance school in Macclesfield just for the experience and opportunity to do something he had never thought of doing before.- especially with the idea of film.

Alexander McQueen

The focus on this 2012 collection was heritage and creating classics with beautiful detail. I believe this could be a vital and really beautiful view of the future. Where clothes are exquisitely tailored and embellished to express the person, not just the trend. Where people keep their clothes for thier whole lives and appreciate and look after tham fully.

Lucy McRae

Lucy McRae has developed the idea of a pill which allows the body to secreate a scent fully expressing that person. This creates tiny golden patches on the skin which emit this scent which becomes more potent in different situations such as temperature.

Erdem Kiziltoprak

Erdem Kiziltoprak comines, like Iris Van Herpen, the future of digital technology witht eh traditional and beautiful handcrafting. Images are taken of single celled organisms and translated into a wearable which expresses something about the individual wearer. I love this idea of taking something invisible and turining it into something visible so as to allow it to be fully appreciated.

Iris Van Herpen

I looked before at Iris Van Herpen for the 3D workshop and loved her. Thankfully the work is relevant im this project too. It is all forward thinking but with a kind of space age feeing. It is about the combination of beautiful hand techniques and digital technology. Perfect for us! It is the idea of form before function.
 

Much Needed Artist Research

Laerke Hooge Anderson looks at the future of textiles and materials, not so much in a practicle way, but as a 'conceptual expression'. There is specific interest into low tech ideas of biological techniques and an idea of how they could be used in the future. The image above comes from the idea of Folk law, and the resurgance of an old way of life having a kind of 'rebirth' in the 20th centuary.
It's the idea of combining the natural with the synthetic to create a new natural or 'ancient designs for the future'.

March 12th Alan Holmes: Talk notes

The art school as a whole is going in a different direction. Usually as designers we would have a process of working which is a linear movement from observation to translation to production. But this as a textiles student is often disrupted because we constantly need to feed ourselves with more visual information. In this project it is particularly different because we are being told to think of the end before we've begun. This is unsettling for me because I've never experienced being encouraged to work in this way before. Everything about the project is backwards to what I've been taught before which is a scary situation to be in.
This project is giving us the opportunity to look beyond our small university worlds into the greater world and what is happening there. How should we respond to these things when we are given the time and the resources? We are told to conect human experience with human skill.
It is a daunting project beacuse in a lot of ways we are dealing woth fiction. How will we know what will actually happen in the future. In a lot of ways, us as designers are able to decide for ourselves are able to decide for ourselves what the future will be like. Will the ideas of high street shopping be different? They are becoming more like museums with souvenires bought rather than necessities such as Collect in Paris. There is also an added idea of brand loyalty and being able to convince people of your idea.
Past students work of interest was also mentioned. The work of Stephanie Cooper was based on upcycling and the fear of the apocalyose/ and of the world. It was about adding value to something by recycling rather than losing money from it. It was a 'designer intervantion' exploring the theory that waste is an asset becasue it can be reused and resold. The garments were also reversible which was increasing the longevity and appearance of each one.
Lauren Bowker focused more on the dyeing of fabric (unfortunately I can't find any images to show these two artists) using photocramatic and thermocramatic materials. It made me think why we wear clothes and why we might wear them in the future. Right now, main function of clothes are to keep warm and to keep modest, but what if they could be more than this? The photocramatic materials Bowker used were found in carbon monoxide detectors which changed colour on such contact. But placing these outside in public places they were found to still change colour showing a high level of the poisonous gas. In this way could our clothes begin to have a more practicle use and communicate the world around us, not just what we add to the world around.
The most interesting designer mentioned in this talk for me was Amy Trigger Holroyd with the company 'Keep and Share'. Her ethos is making things which will last a long time, even be passed down the generatons.

So essentially she is creating family heirlooms. They are in a way 'fashionless' because they can mould to any trend. This idea of shopping will in the future lead us to limited but beautiful wardrobes. We will have a personal relationshop between the designer and ourselves being able to try garments on and send them back for free. This would be the new era of brand loyalty. 

9th March MOSI trip: archive rooms

Being a museum of science and industry, the objects in the archives tend to be industrial science objects. These can range from large scale machinery to small scale swatches of fabric. There are also such things as marketing and trade literature which show the way that art movements changed even the most mundane advertising, and shipping tickets. I don't know how useful this is going to be in the project, but it is still interesting. I like the idea of taking inspiration from the past. What I did learn form the advertising material was that it was always intrinsically linked to the time it was produced, the colours that were fashionable and the ethos and culture that was surrounding them.

9th March Whole group discussion

The idea of a group sketchbook.
Looking at the slow processes in Manchester: getting dark, congestion, nature/mould/deterioation/dust/population - climate change will create more refugees coming to the city. How will they affect and change our culture in the future?
Going back to slow production.
Multi-use/ reversible. Creating a longer life out of a garment.
The idea of growing a fabric, natural, mould.
Designing something yourself using pens and a whiteboard effect garment.
Heat changing like mood rings to communicate with everyone what your mood is?

6th March Dave Haslam: Talk notes

Dave Haslam talks a lot about the secret public and the importance of small scale events in Manchester. His other major theme running through the talk is 'marginal activity' and being different from the main stream. The idea of mass appeal is against all the small scale things that happen in Manchster, especially the hard to find tiny club nights which happen in many unassuming buildings.
A club night of particular interest was 'Drunk at Vogue'. This gay friendly, but shunting of the overtness of canal street event is only publcised by word of mouth and fanzines. This sparked of the idea of 'What is cultural significance?' It is about how much of a difference something makes to our world. But that that be energy, creativity or potential not just the mainstream.
The end of Dave Halsam's talk was what spoke to me the most. The world is capitalised and large scale, but why not rebel? Make small scale, handmade and local. Make bespoke and independant. Why not self publish like the fanzines such as 'Shrieking violet'. These people who created those thing just got on with it. They didnt wait for the world to dictate which way to go, they did what they wanted.
If your spirit is opposite to the times, then change the times! Ths idea will be encouraging for the 'Slow is beautiful' video on Moodle. I have many ideas which don't fit into our world now, but that gives us an opportunity to change things.

5th March 4-5pm Adam Dant - Illustrator: Talk Notes

He creates a routine in the studio space. This is what I thrive on, when I have a fixed routine, even if I've made the routine myself. It is also something I think is important for me in this project. Dant creates characters through drawing which appear in the Sunday papers and other commisioned work. There is work done completely in the studio, and others which are on the street.
There is the idea in Dant's work each time of a concept before beginning. It's a fixed starting point before beginig any of his work. This is something really important for us to do in the group because it will allow us to have a starting point we can all work on but maybe from different perspectives depending on our textile specialism.
This artist is focused on depicting things literally, which in some cases adds humour because it could be taken to literally.
 The people who live on the plank, Adam Dant
Here he created a miniture world in each cirlce, linking them altogether. This piece is massive and you'd have to get pretty close up to see all the detail.