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.

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.

13th March Trends and Forecasting: Talk notes

A trend is the direction in which something moves and has a consequential impact on the culture, society, amd business. This doen't have to be just clothes, it can be banking, textiles, artist movements. It happens over all areas of the media on websites, magazines, books and catalogues; however the best ones to look at are the websites and the magazines because they change the fastest and are the most up to date.
There needs to be in our work a focus on creating a concept towards the new and the next. The ways inwhich forecasters go about this is through mindmaps (making links between what is going on all round the world), skethbooks, moodboards (adding detail to an idea through different meduim visuals), titles/words, or a visualisation (the desired shape or form of something).
The best way to come with fresh and new ideas is to look at photography and art, not other textiles artists for your inspiraton as it will alsways be in some way linked to them. There should also always be a large emphasis on colour and pushing of the boundaries of what you enjoy and are comfortable with.
Moodboards are an amazing way of communicating ideas of colour, texture, technique and even fastenings. It is good to have your own images be it photographs or drawings, found visualisation and even real material so as to fully put foreward how you want something to feel/look.
The way we should percieve artist inspiration is to see it as something which has already been done, and therefore something which you do not want to do. We should always be pushing on from the inspiration we find, because once we have done something, and people have seen it, it's old.
How will this be affected in the future? The idea of something being old as soon as it has been done. Will that be possible in the future? Or will it just slow down so each decision and new idea is worked on for and longer period of time to have been fully considered.

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 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?

5th March 3-4 pm Wearing It!: Talk Notes

The project won't come to you, you gave to make it happen for yourself and the group. It's a comfort to know that it os not just about making 'clothes' it's a concept, so we can still work in the ways we work.
This is a GROUP PROJECT, it is not about the individual; wirking as 'help agents' in the process of design as problem solving. The problem we are being asked to address is: population increase...how will that affect the way we travel, our storage, our future clothes and technology. We need to create new solutions.
What about the issue of cities merging together through urban growth? Will our cultures merge, or will they stay very seperate and cause tensions?
We are asked to look at function (how we need less things now than before because one bit of technology like an iphone does the same job as an ipod and a phone).
Julie said something really interesting which has stick with me that if things were precious to us, we wouldn't be so quich to throw things away. I've been thinking about classic shapes and timeless garments which are hard wearing and are able to last for generations without being damaged. How amazing would that be?!
The possible outcomes of the project are making me slightly wary because of the amount of digital expected when I really have no interest in it. Also hoe we present it in that context is still extremely up to suggeston. It could even be completely digital through the whole project without any making what so ever. It was mentioned earlier though that we are still encouraged to work in the way that we work so I am going to stick with that idea and try not to get overfaced with the idea of digital.

5th March 1-2 pm Unit X: Talk Notes

This project is about Evolution, Opportunity, New directions, Careers, Portfolio futures, Opportunities to share, External opportunities and New estate. The title has been intentionally left blank so that we can make it exactly what we want it to be. This just seems too wide for me. It's a highly daunting concept feeling like you could do anything, but only one thing at the end.
The project is loosely called 'Interrogationg Manchester' - The city, future living, the role of the creative practitioner and community. We are asked to think: what is a city? How does it work? How do they grow and change? Indeed cities and scary, busy and hostile places, but there are small 'villages' of people creating tight communities.
I feel more peaceful with the statement: digital will never fully take over because of the 'happy accident' which works only in a community. I am not very digitally minded so this was a scary concept for me. But I believe that are and design will always need people; and maybe I need to prove this.