Final Major ProjectInes Stuart-Davidson

Researching into the words

Having been given the words to pick one to research into, I generated some concepts within the word to help me get started. I enjoyed this process as it allowed me to think of possible other outcomes than just straightforward ideas. This then allows me to go back to other words and create more projects in my own spare time. I liked many of the outcomes and found it hard to choose, fi-nally deciding to research into the word ‘Spark’ with concepts, such as trace, discovery, existence, catalysts, life, vitality and arising. My next step was looking into each of these concepts, to find connections between them and to generate ideas further.

Researching into the word ‘Spark’

I looked into discovery, whether through human action or hu-man activity and found the act of detecting something new or something ‘old’ was something I found very interesting. Dis-covery can be the observation and the knowledge gathered through the observation from other people through everyday experiences. My discovery could be based on other people’s memory of something that has happened. I can imagine that people would have different thoughts on discovery and memory. I would be interested in finding out a lot more about this subject. Discovery goes hand in hand with existence and being present, which is prominent with exploration of humans in the breakthrough of knowledge. Through existence, I start-ed reading about Ontology, the study of the nature of being, existence or reality in general, along with Epistemology, which

studies the criteria of truth, that identifies standards and rules used to judge the accuracy of statements and claims. An individual must determine what standards distinguish truthfrom falsehood. I looked into different subjects within, and came across the word ‘conciousness’, which refers to the mind and the world that interacts. I liked what this word rep-resented through awareness, the ability to experience or feel, wakefulness and the control system of the mind. Personally, experiencing and exploring is very important, especially to be aware, as I get the feeling that materialistic objects are taking over.

I researched into many more subjects, but I found these dis-played here the most interesting.

Idea Generation through Lessons

In this workshop we looked at creating a poster using a variety of materials that would reflect your word based on our con-tent. I used newspapers to make my poster. After completion, you had to deconstruct, tear apart and rebuild the poster using other peoples cut sections. The merging of unexpected elements together created new content. After swapping images, we hung up all the sections on the wall to cre-ate one big poster.

Idea Generation through Lessons

In this lesson, we were asked to be prepared to bring 10 images and 10 with words and/or sen-tences that would reflect and relate to our word. Throughout the lesson we were to randomly pick a format,context and target audience to generate different ideas based on the material we already had. This way, it allowed random idea generation and helped me choose a direction to research into more.

Idea Generation through Lessons

During this workshop we experimented with different ways to engage with a defined audience and performed to the other groups. Our group set up an ephemeral stall, to test ideas on the audience.

We decided to collect information from the public, having a photographic banner catches ones attention to the stall. Our stall was about collecting peoples memorable posses-sions by using a questionnaire and then photographing the possession that is most memorable to them. We decided to entice people into coming over by also giving away free cookies and set up a Facebook page to record which memorable possession we would use to collect in a maga-zine. This way, people could ‘Like’ the page and also be able to upload their own images and answer the questions.

Project VariablesContent based on new self-discoveries from

people living in the same city as you

Targets people that have an interest in

design, enjoy or collect visual

content

Motivation to gain new discoveries based on peoples memories shows a new point of view

Magazine/Book

Context based on locations from

modern traces- self discovery and

exploration

David Carson on Design and Discovery

David Carson talks about design being a never-ending discovery gathering information from human activities and traces with an emotional response to a story or a message through personal interpretation. I liked the idea on connecting emotionally to your designs. I do believe that an artist must portray something that is relevant both to culture and to people’s emotions to snag their interest and impact them through design.

Art Works: Place by Tacita Dean and Jeremy MillarThis book shows that everyone wants to find their own place in the world. But where is it and what is it? How do we recog-nise place as being significant and not merely just space? And what is it that makes one place special and another not? Some designers find inspiration in crowded streets, while others celebrate the wilds of nature as a counter to urban life. As Tacita Dean says:‘Artists can work in a way that is associative and non-ver-bal. They can use media and techniques that can describe a place tangentially, for example with sound or narrative, through history or invention. The artist can evoke a place that will always only exist as a memory of another place in the mind of the viewer, because I think you need to have visited a place before you can really know it, and then only you will know it in that way. That is why place is so personal and intan-gible, but at the same time universally understood.

Francis Alys

Addressing the idea of international borders and the contem-porary ease/unease of global travel, Alys’ contribution was a journey that started in Tijuana and ended in the nearby border town of San Diego - never, however, crossing the Mexico-U.S. border. The artist instead took the long way, skirting the Pacific rim from Mexico to Panama, Sydney, Bangkok, Vancouver, Los Angeles and finally San Diego. The Loop took Alys one month and five days rather a few minutes - an absurd journey that called attention to Mexico and America’s frought attitudes to their shared border. Combining humour, sensitivity and an ex-tremely personal connection to the people and places where he works, Francis Alys often employs the basic human activ-ity of walking to create performances, photo documentation, videos, slide projections and paintings.

Tacita Dean

Tacita Deans film installations explore how chance and coincidence influence daily life, constructing narratives that connect past and present, fact and fiction, private histories and larger events. In “Dis-appearance at Sea” (1996) a three-part installation and artist’s book, Dean documents the tragic ac-count of Donald Crowhurst and his attempt to fake a solo voyage around the globe, his eventual loss of sanity and his death at sea. The work tells the story through various fragments and landscapes, including a magnificent sea vista from a lighthouse beacon that produces a mysterious ‘missing narra-tive’ (as the artist calls it) reminiscent of 19th cen-tury atmospheric sea- and landscape painters.

Books for Research

This anthology of memory introduced me to a wide range of arguments on the subject of memory, the thread that holds our lives and our history, together. The book is arranged in themed sections, which in-cludes essays written with expertise in different fields- from ‘Memory and Evolution’ to ‘Memory and Forget-ting’. There are also extracts from writers, such as Plato and Aristotle, Shakespeare and Wordsworth. This book helped me shape questions I wanted to ask people.

The Art of Forgetting explains the process through which monuments represent collective memories. It has generally been taken for granted that memories, formed in the mind, can be transferred to solid mate-rial objects, which can come to stand for memories, which can prolong or preserve them beyond their purely mental existence.

Processes and Materials- Film

This is a video of myself answering the questions I would like to know about Memory and Place, they can be interpreted by people differently (which shows different perceptions). Not many people will want their identities to be known for filming, so I can use this as a personal journey. View the film, click here.

Processes and Materials- Film

These are stills from the film I took of my memory for a re-discovery, the video is viewable online at id-london.co.uk/memoria, where I have uploaded a few videos.

Processes and Materials- Voice Recording

These four recordings of the people that were present at my memory remember entirely different things to what happened on that day. Each is different in detail in its own way, using a variety of ages (mine at the time, my brother the same age as the girl and 3 adults compared to now)

This shows that everyone has a different perception of the memory and shows notion that the experience as remembered is not, affectively, of the same quality as the experience itself; or as one almost needs to say, the experience as remembered is not the same as the experienced remembered. Memory invents a past.

Click each recording image to be directed to the audio file.

Processes and Materials- Photography

Processes and Materials- Questionnaires

Processes and Materials- Questionnaires

Using a questionnaire for people to fill in allows them time to think. If I’m recording the person for a ‘natural’ conversation there will be too many gaps. With these set of questions I know exactly what to ask people and what I want to find out. Using paper allows the individual to take their time and allow them to think (the questions aren’t that easy) and lets the person per-ceive what Im asking, how they want.

Collection of Content- Places

Starting with my place of memory, I then continued by ask-ing my association of the memory, who led me on a jour-ney of discovery. I would like to put all this content into a magazine and regularly update a blog with information,

Collection of Content- Places

Every place I went to, I met someone new and explained what I was doing. Everyone I asked was happy to fill in the questionnaire and lead me to a new place. To see the per-sons memory, click on each image to be directed.

Magazine Ideas and Layout

The first layout idea is what I was intending on making, but af-ter thinking about the practicality of it, it would get frustrating to have to constantly open two magazines to the same page, to see all the information for each chapter. The second idea is similar, except all the information is in one book, which you could flip over and view the discovery content starting from the back. The problem with this would be the constant need to flip the book over, as I would like something that is easy and

simple to follow. The third idea was to have all the content next to each other, using the left side of the page to display the discoveries, whilst using the right to introduce the memo-ries. Using the right side for memories allows the eye to start on the right, and I would like to dedicate the same number of pages for each chapter of memories. On each spread there would be the contrast of my discovery to the persons memory, which allows the magazine to flow nicely.

Magazine Inspiration

I really like the layout of this magazine as it sits really nicely and the size is com-fortable to hold. The magazine is really photographic with content, which is how I would like mine to look. The use of type works really well with the images and all in all is very interactive to the viewer. The content of the magazine is very engaging, showing the different homes of people and the questions being asked are interest-ing to read.

Magazine Inspiration

This magazine is a lot bigger in size and is also very photographic being very pleasing to the eye. The front cover is covered by an image, using a dustjacket for the title. This magazine also uses two different types of fonts that work really well together.

Layouts in InDesign

I started experimenting with layouts in InDesign for the magazine, trying out different positions and experimenting with type, making it larger or smaller depending on the print outs I got from it. I generally enjoyed putting all the content together as this allowed me to tie in images and text together based on peoples memories.

Layouts in InDesign

Having the discoveries on the left and the memories on the right makes the layout easy to understand and it’s clear as I have positioned text on the side indicating the contrasting sides. I have dedicated four double pages to each chapter as this allows me enough space to put in all the content.

Binding Process

When I was a child, I remember my mother and I used to always stitch books together using black thread. I tried using this technique on a prototype magazine to see if it would work. At first I just bound the pages together, which made the magazine flimsy, but then remembered that we always bound the spine also from hole to hole, which allowed the magazine pages to stay in place and was easily readable. This technique enables me to bind future Memoria publications from home so I can produce monthly magazines.

Final Piece- Magazine

I am pleased with the outcome of this project, as I felt I learnt a lot throughout. whilst collecting content and going places to the layout of the book. I’ve felt there wasn’t huge amounts of experimentation as the collection of content took time and putting together the magazine was put into InDesign there and then. The layout was the only thing I had to experiment with due to the binding hav-ing an impact on how everything would be positioned. As this project was all about memory, I tried to keep a consistent theme throughout, especially with the bindng as this was a process I used when I was younger. I set myself quite a lot of work by doing this project, yet I managed my time properly by going to two places a day and organising the content consistently.

Final Piece- Web

As well as a magazine, I have been putting updates on my blog about my journey, where I will continue to collect memories and discover over the summer and produce a monthly publication of each journey.