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MEMAG

Jack Beakhust

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Contents

Page 4-5 Introduction

Page 5-6 Graphic Design

Page 7-9Surrealism

Page10-11 Architecture, 3D Animation

Page12-13 Digital Death

Page 16-17 Bio Technology

Page 18-19 Recap

Page 20-21Manifesto

Page 22-23 Animated Robots

Page 24-25Drawing

Page 6-27Surrealism

Page 28 Reference

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Lecture 1Introducing the Project

On the 11th of January we had the introductory lesson to the series of lectures delivered by Mark Ingham. Mark Ingham is visual artist and has been making work and researching into ideas of autobiographical mem-ory and photographs for the last 10 years. He has an AHRB funded practice-led PhD from Goldsmiths College, University of London. He studied BA Sculpture at Chelsea School of Art and Design and went to the Slade School of Fine Art for his postgraduate studies.The purpose of this lesson was to show us what work was expected by the end of April. Mark then explained to us that these lectures would have to be recorded somehow, either taking notes on paper, on smartphone which I did as was always to hand and didn’t have my notebook on me at the time or getting a camcorder to get the whole lecture on tape, which a few pupils done and told us that they would put on YouTube for

Mark Ingham

‘ how do we learn?’

everyone in case they missed the lecture or just wanted reminding what it was about. Mark also suggested we create a twitter account to use for self-promotion and told us about someone who used this to advertise themselves and got work out of it, so during lesson I used Marks advice and created an account and showed this by following gamswen and tweeting to him. I could have used another form of social network to help with this but thought twitter would be the best to use as more people use this and can follow my fellow class mates. However an incident occurred when were supposed to tweet in a greeting message to gamswen when a mindless pupil decided it would be funny to tweet a rude and vile message, Mark then re-alliterated how important it is to keep your account strictly profes-sional as people from all over the world can log in to their accounts

and see what you have tweeted and does not look good for the whole of the University of Greenwich.Mark also spoke about something that really got the group talking when he gave what we thought was a simple question in ‘ how do we learn’ which gave us something to really think about, as there are many ways of us learning if it’s in seeing things, hearing, and doing things ourselves.

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The second lecture was delivered by Vaughan Oliver (born 1957) Oliver is a graphic designer based in Epsom, south London and has work in two graphic design studios 23 Envelope and v23 who both maintained a close relationship with record label 4AD between 1982 and 1998 and were to give distinct identities for the 4AD release by many bands.Over the years, Vaughan has created classic album covers for the Cocteau Twins, Ultra Vivid Scene, His Name Is Alive, Pixies, Throwing Muses, the Breeders, Lush, This Mortal Coil, Scott Walker, and Bush. He mentioned that ‘connecting the record sleeve with the music makes it powerful’Most of Vaughan’s inspiration comes from random objects, such as drink labels, baked bean cans, jam jars and he showed us how he had gotten inspiration from a random Japanese postcard he’d found. His work is really bold and

Vaughan OliverLecture 2Graphic Design

“Vaughan Oliver is probably the most

influential designer in the past 20 years as he

merged both graphic design and fine art into a new

graphic language. Forget one trick ponies such

as David Carson, the Designer’s Republic and

Tomato, Vaughan is THE true pioneer”.

eye catching and was very impressed with the imagery I have seen of his, this is because he uses strong images which are really interesting some being sensual. He then went on to show us a picture of alcohol bottle labels put on to record covers. He explained how he intended to change the meaning of the design and what look he was trying to give. Overall I found his work very interesting and was great to have a lecture by a professional graphic design to get an insight of what it’s like to work in the industry and what it takes to get to the top, at the end of the lecture he showed us a five-minute video showing us his best work and then gave students a chance to ask any questions. From what he answered we found out that he designed his own logo in 1988

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This lecture was by Neil Spiller who is the dean of the school of architecture, design and construction at Greenwich University who gave us a lecture on surrealism, in the lecture he focused on his project named communicating vessels he named his project this as the name sums up the reflexive nature of architecture space. He started off by informing us that a lecture on surrealism he then went on tell us about an exciting about his project “Communicating Vessels”, he has been working on this project for 12 years which includes 250 drawings and thousands of words of poetry and text, he has dedicated so much time in this project because he is interested in long architectural projects like his heroes Mike Web and Ben Nicolson. He told us that he intended to write a book about this project communicating Vessels, I found his work and projects quite strange and difficult to keep up with what he was trying to communicate especially when he started to tell as

Lecture 3Surrealism

Neil Spiller

‘‘Surrealism is destructive, but it destroys only what considers to be shackles limiting

our vision’’

about an objects names ‘Little soft machinery’ which is a testicle attached to a bladder,, The object is about the ethics of bio technology. We watched an illustration from a very long time ago by Ernest Bosh who talks about the perils of bio technology. Ernest Bosh was trying to show is a contemporary piece that talks about ethical issues because as time goes on there will be more and more ethical issues that we have to deal with.I found this lecture very interesting and strange but at the same time it was very confusing to keep up and understand everything he was trying to explain, I was very fond of his drawings and the amount of detail that was put in using just black ink, when he was talking in the lecture you can tell he was very passionate and excited about his work and gave us great advice in return for our time which was ‘learn to use technology badly’.

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This lecture was delivered by Nick Clear who taught at the Bartlett’s School of Architecture for 20 years, as well as running his own practice. His main interests from what he told us are film and animation, the development and the representation of architectural ideas. Nick showed us two images, one was a drawing of two people where one of them was using the light of a candle to draw around the others persons shadow on the wall this was to relate of how drawings began. In a traditional drawing, space is always implied. Even when we draw perspectives we’re still talking about the representation onto a flat plain. Space isn’t flat, and it takes training and knowledge to understand a certain protocolLater in the lecture Nic Clear showed us videos from a film festival onedotzero. That was at the BFI called Future Cities and it was made digitally where After Effects played a big part of it, and how it mixed between virtual and actual realities. Afterwards Nic Clear went on to show some videos that his previous architecture students had made using 3D animation, the videos show the difference of space, perspective and light. The one that stuck in my mind the most was the “Robots of Brixton”. It’s futuristic and

Nick ClearLecture 4Architecture, 3D Animation

very interesting to look at, I also like the way they’ve used quotes in the film to make people aware of what is going on and when the film would be in slow motion and zoom in really fast to capture what was going on, there were some really cool effects taking place in the short film. This was maybe my favourite lecture show far as I really found it interesting when he was talking about the drawings and how it implied to today and the 3D movies at the end where you could see a lot of time and hard work has been put into them as were really cool and interesting to say the least.

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Stacey Pitsillides was given today’s lectures and it was about ‘Uncovering the Archive ‘the lecture started with Stacey asking us some questions which was to get us thinking about identity and how it changes, how we think about not just ourselves but about everything in our world and how we thought about how technology has changed us, how in the future will it continue to change us. How information is power and how technology is our lives and how we live through it and not just with it.Stacey then went on to talk about social networks like ‘MySpace, Facebook and Twitter’ and how they becomes such a big thing in our lives and the ‘Iceberg’ beneath us and asked us ‘“if you take a photograph from your camera of other people, you own it because you took it and it is from your camera, even though the subject is of other people in the photo. Then you go and upload it onto Facebook, do you own it anymore, or is it a part of Facebook’s ownership? However when you die, the photo still stays on the system and then it becomes the ownership of the remainder of people on Facebook and your children’s

and loved ones property as they inherit it. Then it moves onto becoming your ancestor’s photo, and they remember you as somebody who was part of their family. Then if you move further down, where you are not even recognized or known anymore, it becomes a photo of the past. Then this photo becomes one of three things, lost, rubbish or history”. The lecture went on into more depth of information which was very interesting; she gave us a definition about digital death and said it can be seen as either the death of living being or the death of a digital object.A very interesting point Stacey made was about how we respect the dead nowadays. The example she gave was very simple and easy to understand, therefore strong and significant. After Princess Diana’s death, people gathered and mourned together, brought flowers and showed their respect and sorrow for the Princess. Now with the death of the late Michael Jackson every site going and newsfeed was spilled out with RIP messages and messages of condolence. Is it the sign of the times that we use Facebook and other

Stacey PitsillidesLecture 5Digital Death

networking sites to express ourselves and communicate? And a more important question: are Facebook other networking sites and there academic view the place where we want to store our memories?Stacey then went on to tell us the definition of digital and said that digital death can be seen as either the death of a living being and the way it affects the digital world of the death of a object and the way it affects a living being, a good example of this would be if your computer broke and you lost all of your data and memories which would affect you a lot as they would contain special photos and content which you will never get back, Stacey also talked about how to find someone in an archive, it may be someone that has left you or someone who has moved to another country or even passed away. A photograph is a tool of memory and it captures moments for you, where you can actually find someone.This subject was really interesting to me and am a great fan like pretty much everyone else is on digital information, technology and social network site as it’s paved the way for some many people to progress, create and communicate with the world but when it comes to how would I feel if I was to die and my digital self still carrying on with all my information that I have put in and the photos and memories attached with them I would be quite happy for it to stay on the system and for my digital archives to carry on so that it would preserve all my information and photos. I have done some research to find out the policies of

what some networking site have on your account when you die and they are as follows.Death policies Facebook and TwitterMost of your social media and online accounts will have a policy which dictates what happens to your account when you die:By contacting Twitter, family or friends can download a copy of your public tweets and close your account. Your digital executor will need to provide their name and contact details, their relationship to you, your Twitter username and a link to or copy of your obituary.

In December 2009, changes to their privacy policy meant that the people behind Facebook began deciding on your behalf exactly how comfortable you were about sharing your information, and with whom, while you’re still

alive and quite capable of deciding for yourself. Upon your death you’ll not only have to worry about Facebook setting up public default settings, you’ll also have your family deciding whether to deactivate, delete, download or memori-alise your profile. To do any of this your family will still need your username and password.So going back to what I was saying before, when I die I would like my account just to stay put with everything staying the same as this is the way I have set up my account to be portrayed in the way that I want and would definitely not want my Facebook account or any other social networking account to be put into some sort of memorial page, as I think

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this would be a little creepy for me and just be purely depressing to look at rather than it staying the same with the same information and pictures so you can look at it and remember exactly how was I was on networking sites and my friends and family to look at the pictures and remember the good memories that would be tied with them, I would also not want any messages or email to be sent to my family to look at as to be honest this would be a complete disaster as not like I have anything major to hide but I think we all have stuff and messages that we have sent that we would be horrified for our parents and other family members and even friends to see, and could easily ruin the reputation you have built up over the time you have known everyone so think it would be best for that stuff to stay private and be seen by your eyes only. The digital revolution is far more significant than the invention of writing or even of printing.” Douglas Engelbart.

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Wednesday 15th February, we had a lecture with (Rachel Armstrong) a biologic scientist at the University of Cambridge. She designs sustainable solution for the built and natural environment using advanced new technologies such as “Synthetic Biology”. She was talking to us about her life as a biologist and what she’s done throughout her life. Rachel then started to tell us that she has worked in a Leprosy hospital in India when she was a medical doctor and discovered that this chronic disease was profound, people who suffer have a great loss of engagement with their environment, It causes the body to be eaten away by the nervous cells eventually to break down; in some severe conditions, the patients may become permanently disabled or lead to death and don’t work as they should. She witnessed new processes which used mechanical processes to restore their dignity with things including giving them the ability to walk.

Rachel later went on to tell us about her time in Venice in which she see’s to a landscape of “mechanic deserts” in a biological way where the soil is degraded and it turns the resources into something that biology cannot use. Rachel then showed us some video clips which looks like is some cells and discuss about it of what do we think is it; she roughly talked about the Western philosophy of how we view the material world start from the ancient Greeks. Later on she shows us a photo of a famous building in Barcelona, Spain. This building is built by a famous architect Antonio Gaudi. He is first architect to think of how to design organically, I was hugely impressed with Gaudi’s worked and have been a fan of his for several years so it was great that she included a picture of his work in here lecture.

Racehl ArmstrongLecture 6Bio Technology

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This Lecture was all about what we have learned so far by attending these series of lectures, he quickly went through the things he told us in the first lecture which was basically the introduction of this project. Mark then went on to give some reviews of the lectures we have had so far.The second lecture from Vaughan Oliver, I quite like his works and from his lecture, I can feel that he enjoyed working with the bands, which I would love to do and get involved in any way of making something to do with music, I would love to create an album sleeve that would be around and something I could be proud of.Neil Spillers lecture was quite confusing and didn’t understand everything he was trying to communicate about surrealism so this wasn’t one of my favourite lectures.The most interesting lecture I’ve had was the one with (Stacey Pitsillides – Digital Death) the lecture was about thinking about identity and how it changes, how we think about not just

ourselves but about everything in our world and how we thought about how technology has changed us, how in the future will it continue to change us. How information is power and how technology is our lives and how we live through it and not just with it. This subject was really interesting to me and I’m great fan technology and social network site as it’s paved the way for some many people to progress create and communicate with the world. The Lecture got me thinking about what I would like doing with my digital self when I pass away if I would like to preserve all the date and information on myself of just discard it all.

Mark InghamLecture 7Re-Cap

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Today lecturer is Mark Inghan and today he talks about Manifesto. Before Mark started with his lecture the screen was showing an image written with “Be the type of person you want to meet”. Manifesto means a written statement declaring publicly the intentions, motives, or views of its issuer. He gives us few minutes to write up the first sentence of our manifesto and have to start with “I”. He shows us part of the secret structure of great talks by Nancy Duarte. At the end of the lesson, he shows a video clip of part of his manifesto. It was 9 minutes and 14 seconds long. The whole video clip shows with a computerised voice that tells us the memories of each slide.

I want to live my life by living to the fullest and that means having a good time, When I finish my course at the University of Greenwich I would like to go travelling around the world to see all the different sites and cultures,

I’d definitely choose having fun and a laugh over money but in the future I would really like to get a successful job to be able to have my own place and maybe settle down and have a family. I always try to be polite and friendly to people and would like to think people have a good opinion of me but obviously that’s not going to be the case all the time. In all honesty, I have no idea where I am going to be in a few years. My track record shows that my passions and interest changed all the time and I’m quite indecisive.

‘‘In all honesty, I have no idea where I am going to be in

a few years’’

Lecture 8Manifesto

Mark Ingham

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This Lecture was another by Mark Ingham and was on Animated Robots This lecture’s subject was animation, more specifically animated robotics. The lecture started out by discussing the idea of what animation is, why animation is it called animation. Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions to create an illusion of movement. The effect is an optical illusion of motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can be created and demonstrated in several ways. The most common method of presenting animation is as a motion picture or video program, although there are other methods. Animation is dated way back to flip books, moving forward to 1895 where the first film was shown. We were then asked to think about what it was like to see a film fort the first time. Seeing a moving film for the first time I can only imagine being unbelievable to witness but nowadays this is just a

normal thing and we don’t think twice about it and have even come to the point now where I’m not happy with film if it’s not even in HD we have become so use to progressing and seeing old films and stepping back is a hard thing to do.Mark then showed us the short animated film ‘ Robots of Brixton’ that we had previously been shown a few weeks back. I was really impressed watching it the first time round and was equally blown away by the animation this time round and could tell with the level of detail there had been so much hard work and time been put in to this short film animation. This was a great lecture for me as im a great fan of animation and some of my favourite films are animations like ‘Ice Age’ which has great motion picture animation and you can see the progress and technology improvements through the ‘Ice Age’ saga.

Mark InghamLecture 9Animated Robots ‘‘Seeing a moving

film for the first time I can only imagine

being unbelievable’’

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Simon Herron gave us this lecture on the 14th March and was on the subject of ‘Drawing’. Simon started off the lecture by talking about art historians and the fact that whenever they want to see his work they always seem to want to see the origins of the drawings and how he started off with them.Drawing is a form of visual art that makes use of any number of drawing instruments to mark a two-dimensional medium. Common instruments include graphite pencils, pen and ink, inked brushes, wax color pencils, crayons, charcoal, chalk, pastels, various kinds of erasers, markers, styluses, and vari-ous metals.Heron then went on to speak about certain techniques used for collage making 1964. All of the production was photographic, they started off with the drawing and then went on to photograph it and then produced, originally normally on A4 size. They would use an old fashioned technique to print their work which is called ‘ true

Simon Herron

to scale printing’ which leave an embedded ink on the surface so you can get it printed with any pantone colour. Simon Herron went on to tell us more about how they done drawings years ago and obviously there was no help from computers or software like Photoshop which people rely on so much nowadays and was good to hear how they were back to basics and creating precious drawings which were truly works of art and studies from scratch using collage and materials to re contextualise and develop. It was great to hear about all of the old techniques and you get to appreciate the amount of time and hard work put in to edit and enhance there drawings not like most of the people now who use all of this software to do their work, I think drawing is a fantastic way to figure stuff out and communicate with and is a great past time. Drawing is . . . not an exercise of particular dexterity, but above all a means of expressing intimate feelings and moods.

Lecture 10Drawing

‘‘Drawing is . . . not an exercise of par-

ticular dexterity, but above all a means of expressing intimate feelings and moods’’

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On Wednesday 21st March we had another lecture with Neil Spiller and once again he talked about Surrealism but in slightly more depth.Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for its visual artworks and writings.Surrealist works feature the element of surprise, unexpected juxtapositions and non sequitur; however, many Surrealist artists and writers regard their work as an expression of the philosophical movement first and foremost, with the works being an artifact. Leader André Breton was explicit in his assertion that Surrealism was above all a revolutionary movement.Surrealism developed out of the Dada activities during World War I and the most important center of the movement was Paris. From the 1920s onward, the movement spread around the globe, eventually affecting the visual arts, literature, film, and music of many countries

and languages, as well as political thought and practice, philosophy, and social theory.Salvador Dalí has been cited as major inspiration from many modern artists, such as Damien Hirst, Noel Fielding, Jeff Koons and most other modern surrealists. Salvador Dalí’s manic expression and famous moustache have made him something of a cultural icon for the bizarre & surreal. He has been portrayed on film by Robert Pattinson in Little Ashes, and Adrien Brody in Midnight in Paris. He was also parodied in a series of painting skits on Captain Kangaroo as “Salvador Silly” (played by Cosmo Allegretti) and in a Sesame Street muppet skit as “Salvador Dada” (an orange gold AM performed by Jim Henson). Surrealism was a type of abstract art by thats only half of what it is. So I believe that Surrealism is more about the unconscious mind then the art but even then abstract art doesn’t have any sort of real feel to it.

Neil SpillerLecture 11Surrealism

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References

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drawing

http://quotes.prolix.nu/Art/Drawing/

http://www.lifeinsurancefinder.com.au/infographics/what-happens-online-when-you-die/

http://thinkexist.com/quotes/with/keyword/digital/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaughan_Oliver

http://blobprofessionalstudies.blogspot.co.uk/2007/01/vaughan-oliver.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrealism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvador_Dal%C3%AD#Legacy

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