Process Book

MAYA GADD

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7. Chaos 39. Interim Show 55. Transhumanism 109. Other 151. Destroy 189. Don’t Panic 194. Bibliography

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All of my projects aim to create a discussion. Each one explores a part of human nature or our social constructs and uses design to ask questions about these topics. I am only interested in people, and alot of my energy goes into working them out and trying to understand the problems we face as a collective. I aim for my work to create a new thought in the viewers mind; I feel this is the only way for people to understand something truly, and that is to work it out themselves.

My aim for this year was to learn skills that I did not have; I had spent much of my time in the first and second years of my degree ignoring Uni, and thus creating projects with no passion. When I started on the first day back in September I decided to come in 5 days a week, every week up in till this very point in time right now. Because of that decision, I have managed to create work and explore ideas with no experience or skill in the materials or processes that I wanted to present my thoughts with. This book outlines these struggles and consequent achievements throughout the process of my final year.

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CHAOS

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Clean and Dirty was my first brief of the third year, and was quite a broad one. I liked that it was so open, as I really had no idea what I wanted to do with anything.

The two opposite words and their meanings was a simple platform in which to think of ideas and concepts. I started to think about pairs, relationships between things, balance and consequences.

Pretty soon I was looking into the affect of humans on the environment, it was a natural move from the clean and dirty vibes, but became more about control and chaos, and the relationship between those two concepts.

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BLADERUNNER

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Miles Aldridge

I ONLY WANT YOU TO LOVE ME

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I went to Somerset House because it was super sunny and wanted a walk, I saw the Miles Aldridge’s exhibition. I didn’t know too much about the fashion photographer before, but his level of aesthetic was interesting to me. The neon colour scheme and framing of all the girls was bold and this aesthetic choice flowed through all the photos and joined them all up in one presentation.

When I went away from the exhibition I realised that the photos had more to them, and I looked it up. The chaos that Aldridge captured in each photo was about women, and the challanges they face in a domestic enviroment, and the perfection of their appeareance. The perfection of a housewife and the control that that entails is huge, and these photos managed to capture that, with the right framing, colour and editing.

The interesting thing was the chaos that was juxtaposed with that in the actual content of the photos. There was something in each photo, whether it was them, or their enviroment, or an act they were doing that was rebellious to the controlled perfection and created chaos. I liked this alot, and I liked the contradiction of each photo but the similiarity between them all as a series. I decided to explore chaos further.

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Stanley Kubrick 2001: A SPACE ODESSEY

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I watched this film late at night in a thunderstorm before Christmas for the first time ever! Once I kicked myself for not watching it sooner, I realised how interesting it was, not only in the aesthetics and crazy camera work, but because there is so much you need to figure out by yourself as a viewer. It is unbelievably ambivilent in it’s meanings and ideas. I like this, it makes the viewer do more for themselves, and in tuen allows them to appreciate their opinions more.

This is what I got from it: That big black monolith thing is a comparison between the apes, and their ability to learn from it, to take ideas and develop them and start to evolve into us; and the men of space that just plonked it there and used their already developed tools to film it. Like a full circle.

Like the dawn of time >>>>>>>>>>curiosity + intelligence = evoloution and tools >>>>>>>>>>>> a peak of evoloution >>>>>>>>>loss of control, a broken chaotic destruction of order, through arrogance >>>>>>>> back to the dawn of time.

I feel like that peak of evolution is where we are at now, and we will crumble with our apathy and arogance, maybe every generation feels this way, but that is just how I feel. From watching this film I really started to think about trying to make something that could say something to people about the affect of chaos and control, and the close relationship between the two. The whole film was also very clean and sterile, with lots of space and similiar colour palettes which was great. “You are free to speculate, as you wish, about the philosophical and alegorical meaning of 2001� Kubrick

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Research highlights (see files for full research)

“mass uprisings of people- along the lines of the abolition movement or Occupy Wall Street - represent the likeliest source of “friction” to slow down an economic machine that is careening out of control”

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“If homosapians survive the next millenniums, it will be survival in a world unrecognizably different from the one we have inhabited�

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After lots of in depth research about the climate and general politics that influence crucial enviromental decisions, I wanted to create something that really reacted to a person, to try and just get people thinking about the literal consequences of their presence.

I started looking into kinetic sculptures, and something called ferrofluid, a magnetic liquid made from very fine bits of metal and ink. I thought that this could be a really interesting way to manipulate the liquid: with magnets.

At this stage, Mattia Bernini decided to get involved in the project after hearing me talk about it in my Crit. I wasn’t really sure how I felt about this, apart from the fact I wanted to collaborate, to experience and learn something new, but I didn’t really know him that well. I thought it would be good anyway, just to share skills. Mattia and I started sketching out ideas together and talking about the kind of vibe that we wanted to get across.

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Ferrofluid Tests - We did some simple test by adding different liquids to the fluid, paint, water, bubbles, fairy liquid. We wanted to find out what different soloutions would do to the ferroflid. Adding a small amount of water was the most effective change we made.

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So we went down to 3D and walked in, stole some wood and started chopping it up. We were terrible, I had never been there before, let alone worked with wood before! I had no idea what I was doing, but basically managed to cut a circle with a jigsaw and make a couple of holes in it, to attach a magnet that we had also stolen from the office. It was completely haphazard and only managed get away with it because of my naturally simple engineering plans.

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Sorting out the aurdino bits was really hard, and was a steep learning curve, as I hadn’t done any of it before. Mattia was much more confident at this part of our project, and tended to get on with it while I was learning what was going on. I wish that I had stopped more to actually ask the questions that were bothering me, I would have learnt alot more than what I actually did.

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THEO JANSEN I looked into Jansen’s work when I was really struggling with the building process of my piece, and realised how simple it was comapred to his!! His kinetic sculptures are amazing, and ours was really basic, this gave me a little kick up the arse. I really enjoy how Jansen gives them a little push and then they are able to use the wind as propultion. They’re are still dependant on their creater.

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We then had the really fidilly task of getting the fluid into the dome, that I had ordered, to make a little home for the stuff. Tobias helped us drill a hole in the perspex, as apparently it’s really fragile when drilled.....sure.

We then stuck a bottom on it and used a straw to dribble in the fluid through the side, the liquid is super stainy, so we had to be so careful not to get it on the inside sides of the dome, bloody hard!

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And then I put LEDs around it, yeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaah!!

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We had to really push ourselves in the last week of building to get everything done in time for the show. I think this was the first time that I really felt pressure for real, and I kinda loved it. Lots of late nights, and ferrofluid disasters later, we managed to get a small motor to power a very large powerful magnet using the proximity of people around it.

We moved it over to the show, and it stopped working.

This was really shit.

We worked on it over and over again, with no real understanding of why it had stopped. In the end we just rebooted it, each time it malfunctioned, which was not exactly ideal.

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We had 6 weeks to do this piece for the interim show, and it flew by. On the last week before the show when I was frantically building I started to realise that the project wasn’t saying exactly what I wanted; the concept of human control hadn’t been brought to life through the piece, and that is the whole point of my work.

I felt really disheartened and like I had failed myself. The feedback from the interim show was good, but for aesthetic reasons rather than conceptual, and I care much more about concept than aesthetics.

I also found it difficult because I was curating the Interim Show, which took me away from my project for much of the run up to the show, causing a huge amount my development to be lost.

Overall, it was an interesting project, I loved the collaboration aspect of it, and I learnt a huge amount about how important it is to me for my end piece to strongly hold the concept that I was trying to explore from the beginning.

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DEVELOPMENT Later in the year I went back to the ferrofluid and built a theremin to be used with the original installation. The feedback from the show was centered around the noise that the motor made when it moved the magnet, which made people feel like the magnetic sculpture was more than just liquid: it gave it another level or aspect I guess. Anyway, I wanted to focus on this, and Mattia was busy with other things, so I set out to make a theremin by myself, which was actually really fun and interesting.

I looked up online how to make one, and just started to make it from the bits and pieces that I found around the studio. It took me a pretty long time, not going to lie, but I did it, and I was pretty proud of myself. I also looked at putting a resistor into the fluid to see what would happen, I found it pretty shitty if I’m going to be honest, so I just experimented with the pitch of my theremin.

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INTERIM SHOW

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So the interim show came around and I was busy working on my project but I really enjoy curating so I decided that I’d do that too. This was a questionable decision in hindsight as it really pulled me away from my time with my project.

I was head curator of all the IMI thrid years, and I needed to assert some kind of control over the whole thing. This was way harder to do than say.

The first thing I did was set a deadline for everyone to get their project proposals in on time. No one did. That was interesting.

One of the main challanges I faced (Apart from IMIers) was the lady in charge of the site in the shopping center; she was a real life prick and made it very hard to do anything productive or interesting in the space. I really learnt how to exert myself in an uncomfortable situation and deal with people that don’t care what you want.

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The poster that I asked Vita to make for the marketing.

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My Foorplan

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I made endless lists I ammended numerous floorplans I filled out health and safety forms I sorted and submitted equipment lists I pep talked people I time managed people I cleaned and scrubbed and painted the space I organised a documentary team I organised marketing poster teams I sent out invites AND ALL OF THIS WAS HARD. That is what I learnt from this show. That it is hard to organise people, and most of the time it is not enjoyable in any way, because you have to make decisions that people do not like. This is not nice.

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The Show happened, and it was brilliant, it had a great atmosphere with lots of different kinds of people coming to see the work. The outside booths, scream and dream, and the screenprinting stand really drew people into the exhibtion. This was ideal, as the whole poin tof the Interim Show for me, was to display our work in a casual enviroment to people that may not know what IMI is all about.

I think that I could have actually curated the exhibtion better, maybe if I had spent less time project managing everyone and worried about the cuation more. Most of the work was on the outside facing in, which was not good in terms of flow and the overall vibe.

I would also insist next time on the work really being designed for the space rather than expecting it to fit your work. This is a reaccuring problem that I have faced whenever I have curated shows, which has really embedded into me the importance of this.

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So we had a cheeky little cheese fondue party before we broke up for crimbo. It was the best cheese feast ever.

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TRANSHUMANISM

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The Science Museum and IMI collaborated in January for a Science Museum late (an after museum ours adult only event, with a different theme on the last Tuesday of every month) our theme was Biomedical.

This was a real ‘live’ brief and meant that we had to pitch to the curators of the Science Museum.

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JENNY SAVILLE

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The first thing I did was go and see the space with the rest of the class, this gave me a good idea on the lighting and area that we had as a group.

I thought I had the room to make something on quite a large scale within the space we had.

We were given three main points in the brief from the team: INTERACTION, EDUCATION, MEDICAL I started brainstorming my initial ideas in the space, and decided on a game, remaking, or redesigning that game, but essentially a game at the heart of it. The Science Museum Late was not an exhibition, it was entertainment, a show, something for the public to take part in, not necessarily just to view.

Another of the main concerns of the Science Museum was the lack of time to set up (45 minutes) and also the lack of electricity, all pieces needed to be free standing and non-electrical if possible. Having been a curator in past exhibitions I took these points as an absolute, and designed my piece to be easily curated into the whole exhibition, this was important to me. I know how it feels when people do not listen and make something that you’ve already specified as difficult to work with: it comes across as arrogance.

I think that is important to understand your audience, and that it is better to design something that will be appreciated in it’s enviroment, there is something coperate and fake about designing for a client, but I would rather design a highly complex conceptual piece for an exhibition that suited that, the context in which you present your work does affect how it is recieved.

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The pitch date for the Science Museum late was the 06/12/2013 This was my first ‘real life’ pitch of any kind and I was extremely nervous about it. We were told before hand that all of us would pitch for around 5 minutes and they would choose who would be part of the show that same day. Shit.

For weeks I had plugged away at researching a lifesize operation game with a twist. I wanted to make something that people already knew how to play, but change the organs, or rules to teach the participant something new. I looked into many topics, such as: Vestigial Organs, Old Medicine, A Profiled Person of today and Transhumanism Each one of these had it’s positive and negative attributions, but transhumanism was more exciting to me personally and something that I would like to know more about within my own practice, so that is what I focused on.

For the pitch I made an extremely simple version of the circuit hooked up to a hole and bucket situation and a powerpoint presentation to go alongside it. When thinking about the powerpoint I thought it best to just have a couple of slides of images rather than text, just to prompt me and I would talk through most of the pitch. This style suited me better than explaining from the screen and allowed me to show my enthuisiasm for the project through my body language and words.

I felt the pitch was average, mostly because they asked me some difficult questions after which provoked me to be quite defensive about my work, so leaving the pitch was slightly disappointed with myself.

However, the feedback from the Science Museum was positive and they seemed to have been testing me with their questions, finding out whether I had the personality to explain my piece and show off the research behind it well enough. In the end they wanted to call back about 12 of us for a 2nd repitch on the 22/ 01/2014. This threw me slightly and I realsed that this project was not my own, but in the hands of an institution, with people that knew what they wanted and didn’t mind making us wait for them.

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This was my first real pitch and I learnt a lot: Be myself, talk more than show, and anwser questions like I normally would A client has much more power than you think, and your work is not completely your own.

Nerves are interesting, they make your brain sharper

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Research highlights (see files for full research)

“The desirability and goodness of augmentation and life extension is always and explicitely located in the individual�

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“A renegotiated definition of productivity should make it easier to reimagine the very nature of what work is, since, among other things, it will mean that technological development will be redirected less towards creating ever more consumer products and ever more disciplined labour, and more toward eliminating those forms of labour entirely.�

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“The infernal Serpent; he it was, whose guile

Stired up with Envy and Revenge, deceived The Mother of Mankind, what time his Pride Had cast him out from Heaven, with all his Host Of Rebel Angels, by whose aid aspiring To set himself in Glory above his Peers, He trusted to have equaled the most High, If he opposed; and with ambitious aim Against the Throne and Monarchy of God Raised impious War in Heaven and Battel proud With vain attempt. Him the Almighty Power Hurled headlong flaming from the Ethereal Sky With hideous ruine and combustion down To bottomless perdition, there to dwell In Adamantine Chains and penal Fire, Who durst defy the Omnipotent to Arms.

Nine times the Space that measures Day and Night To mortal men, he with his horrid crew Lay vanquished, rowling in the fiery Gulf Confounded though immortal: But his doom Reserved him to more wrath; for now the thought Both of lost happiness and lasting pain Torments him; round he throws his baleful eyes That witnessed huge affliction and dismay Mixed with obdurate pride and stedfast hate: At once as far as Angels kenn he views The dismal Situation waste and wilde, A Dungeon horrible, on all sides round As one great Furnace flamed, yet from those flames No light, but rather darkness visible Served only to discover sights of woe, Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace And rest can never dwell, hope never comes That comes to all; but torture without end Still urges, and a fiery Deluge, fed With ever-burning Sulphur unconsumed: Such place Eternal Justice had prepared” For those rebellious, here their Prison ordained In utter darkness, and thir portion set As far remov’d from God and light of Heaven As from the Center thrice to the utmost Pole.

O how unlike the place from whence they fell!

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This is a bit from Paradise Lost, Book 1 (I find religion frustrating at the best of times, but Iike the lilt of this book) it really reminds me of transhumanism; the rebellion against the norm I guess.

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A tiny GPS tracker that they have started implanting in Mexico because of the unbelievably high kidnap rates.

A 3D printed ear that uses living cow cells and a polymer that contains silver nanoparticles which conduct radio frequencies. These ears can transmit sounds through radio waves.

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Already widely used, a tying of the stomach to make it smaller and stop people over eating and thus lose weight.

This bionic leg uses sensors on the sole of the mechanism that feel the movements of the muscles and thus controls the leg. This is perfect for people that are in muscle therapy or learning to walk again.

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Implantable artificial kidney coorporation: a plastic kidney that uses filters and reverse osmosis to seperate water and waste; being tested on pigs this year.

Boston Retinal Implant Project created an eye that can be connected to the brain and allows people with a semi functioning optical nerve to see again.

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Respirocytes are a micromechanical red blood cell that if you swapped 10 % of your original red blood cells with, you could stay under water for 4 hours.

The wifi controlled pacemaker is less advanced than the others, as it’s main function as a pacemaker already exists, it just can be changed through wifi.

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Agi Haines TRANSFIGURATIONS

Haines’ transfigurations was a turning point in this project. I loved her simple changes of the babies into something totally different using her depth of research. I felt inspired and in awe of her.

When I first saw the babies, I wanted to do something similiar with my organs, and make them resemble real life organs.

What interested me most about Haine’s work was the social implication of the changes she was making to the babies. She pinpointed social trends and problems and highlighted them by changing the biology, this is an interesting way to make a point, through changing something else intirely to talk about the research.

The fact that she also used babies is important, they automatically cause an emotional connection with the viewer and also have much simpler faces to create.

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1. I made my first circuit, with tin foil as wire and gaffa tap sticking it all down. Two AA batteries powered an LED to light up when the tin foil covered chopsticks touched the tin foil covered sides of the holes.

2. I then leaped forward to a wooden box hole, with a polystyrene heart and some metal tongs. This started my brain thinking about a hole size, and also the buzzer was a new addition, adding sound into the mix.

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MAKING

3. I designed on illustrator a new version of the original operation man and sent off my man to be lasercut on a CNC router from a nice chunk of maple wood. The design took time as illustrator was not my friend, but eventually it was all sorted and a lasercutting company were happy to have him. The outline was scored while the inner organs cut out, and this is him having a little trim down in 3D in uni. I gave him a varnish so he felt flush.

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4. Metal. I researched many different conductive metals, and decided on Brass as it was cheaper than highly conductive copper, but was more aesthetically pleasing than aluminuim. I had to get it very thin to be able to cut it without any metal working equipment handy, and for some reason very few specialists in the trade that I could get my hands on. NOTE: metal cuts are far worse than paper cuts. After much experimentation with cutting the metal, I just used scissors, as that was really the only thing that worked.

I stuck it all down with Araldite. This was not a good move as I later found out that Araldite is an insultor, and therefore my whole circuit was fucked.

I took everything off and started again, this was highly time consuming and demoralising. But I massively learnt my lesson: if your making a circuit check what componants are insulators first.

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5. Next was to think about the organs, I started to plan them out and cut down the basic shapes with a heated wire cutter. I researched many different forms and textures of polystyrene until I found the blue stuff that worked perfectly. I then had to figure out how to make them smooth, I ended up using a foam coat solution that seemed to soak into the bumps and dry ready to be sanded. After many many coats and sandings of this I soon figured out that the trick was to put it on smooth in the first place.

I created some graphics and decided to get them printed on vinyl to then stick onto the foam organs that I had made. In hindsight I would have preferred to have made the organs into the shapes from scratch, more like the work of Agi Haines, and given them a more realistic feel, but I ran out of time. If I exhibit this piece again, then I will be making them look real for sure.

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6. TWEEZERS. I made four seperate tweezers, with four different bends.

Each one had either strencth or flexibility, but never both. I worked for weeks trying to solve the problem of the last pair of tweezers. I used different kinds of wood, different glueing techniques, different bending techniques and in the end managed to make a combination of all four tweezers.

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The first pair, using very thin wood stuck together in many layers, with wire running inbetween the layers. This was way too weak.

The second pair, I used perspex, that I had hand melted into a curve, and screwed two pieces of wood to either side. These were much stronger, but looked like crap.

Thirdly, I used a harder wood, and cut a triangle out n the bandsaw to fit inbetween the two pieces of wood. These flexed really well but were much to small and weird looking.

Lastly, I put the mistakes from these techniques together, but I had forgotton to include the wire running through the middle.

These were the best yet, and had qualities from all of my previous attempts.

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Here is a little instruction manual that I made for myself to try and not forget any steps on my last attempt at making the tweezers.

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The tweezers were a real turning point in my process, I didn’t think that I could make them, that I had the skill, but I did in the end and it gave me a confidence boost, not in an egotistical way, but in the fact that I could learn with others help how to do something really well. The tweezers made me feel that I could acheive anything.

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Me and Dil went down to Jewsons and I bought myself some wood. This was super fun, because now I understood what kind of wood I needed, it was much less intimidating.Dil kindly chopped it up for me as the planks were about as big as a house

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I spent a lot of time cutting on the bandsaw, planning the wood to the right thickness and then sanding them to the right shape that I needed. This was extremely time consuming.

Once I had cut out the right triangle for the bend on the bandsaw and made grooves for the wire to run through, I stuck it together. I used plain old PVA for this and then some really hard ass looking clamps.

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Once it was stuck together I sanded the whole thing down on the belt sander, tryng to make a nice curve on the sides, and then I sat for hours sanding it down by hand, just to make sure. By this point I had fallen in love with them, and really felt attached.

Then I varnished them.

It was quite difficult tryng to match the colour of the tweezers to the colour of the man, so in the end I just went for it, and it was close enough for me.

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Once varnished, I designed where the metal was going to go with paper templates, and then set about trying to stick the metal on. It was super fidily as I had sanded the points into a curve which is basically impossible to stick anything to!

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7. I suddenly realised that I needed to make a decision whether the man was on a table top or on the floor. I had already made the tweezers, and they were pretty large, too large to be used on a table, so I set about making a base fro the floor. The skills it required came as a nice break from the complicated woodwork that I had learnt with the tweezers, and it was nice to drill and paint without real stress.

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8. I needed something for my organs to sit in... so I made some boxes. I thought this would be really simple, turned out that it wasn’t , so I had to make some more boxes.

9. Once it all slotted together well, I circuited up the metal plating that I had already done, and got some willing participants to test out the guy. At this point there was little that went wrong and I was exhausted!

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Before the second pitch to the Science Museum Joel asked me to pitch my work to some potential students that had come to see what happened on the course. This was a kind of practice run, in terms of showing the actual work, but was very different in terms of audience.

The people that were there were looking at my work from a different perspective, they were judging it in a different way to the science museum people. I really relaxed at this pitch and just chatted to them about it, the problems and pitfalls and the best bits which was really nice. I don’t think it really helped me in terms of confidence, just because I always feel confident about what I am passionate about. But it was fun, and it was a welcome experience to talk to people that mught be inspired by my work, if they joined IMI.

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It was then time for the second round of pitches, this was less nerve racking in certain respects but more in others than my fist pitch to them.

I felt extremely competitive and determined, which was strange as it was aimed at the other IMIers, and I think I felt quite resentful about this afterwards. The reason for the second pitch was so the Science Museum could choose between the final 15 and cut it down to 5. After working for weeks at such a high pace, constantly battling against time limits and mistakes that I had made to get the man drawn up and circuited for the pitch, I felt like if I didnt impress it would be the end of the world.

If I’m totally honest I think I worked well under the competitive nature of this project, I really felt completely determined to win. WIN. That is something I didnt really recognise in myself with my creative work, sure in the rest of my life, but never before in my creative stuff. Anyway, I was almost thriving under the pressure of the tight deadline and I think that the tutors had somekind of pact where they decided to put me down to rise me up. There attitude was to be brutully honest and tell me that what I was making wasn’t good enough, so do it again. This was a new style of teaching from them! Initially I pushed against it, feeling angry at them for making me feel not good enough, but really I’m such a stubborn person, that I just wanted to show them that they were wrong. I think they knew this all along....

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After the second pitch, the Science Museum team were worried about me being able to get my point across with the transhumanist aspect of the piece. Up until this point I had been worrying over all the making details, like the tweezers or circuiting etc. I had almost forgotton that the whole point of my project was to show people into an aspect of the transhumanist world or near medical future. We came up with two ideas, a poster and a postcard.

I started to design the poster, and used the font ROBOTO and a colour palette of a sea green with black, that made me feel sciencey. I wanted to make sure that all the necessary information was included, without dumbing it down too much. This would serve as a guide to the user of which icon of an organ would match each hole. I had some serious difficulty with my pretty basic graphic design skills, and felt quite uncreative with my 2D design inspiration. Biggles stepped in and I rebooted the design. The final outcome was enough to add the element of information that my piece had lost and I was pleased with it.

I presented it on an easel next to the game in the exhibtion and loads of people seemed to read it.

I then made a postcard design, with the same colour palette and type as my poster, with a little less information and an image of Stelarc doing his thang on the front. The only thing I wish I had changed about this was that I forgot to include my marketing bits- twitter handle and related hashtags and my website address.

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RADIO EAR

CYBORG EYE

A 3D printed ear that contains silver particles. The particles detect radio signals and transmit this to a speaker.

An artificially designed eye, that transmits light signals to the brain through a wire thinner than a human hair.

GPS TAGGER

WIFI PACEMAKER

A diamond incased GPS tracker that is inserted beneath the skin, which allows a person to be tracked on a seperate device.

A pacemaker with the abiltiy to adapt medication post sugery over wifi connection, thus creating the problem of hacking.

3D PRINTED KIDNEY

STOMACH BAND

A dialysis machine that can be worn inside or outside of the body, filtering waste material and functioning as a replacement kidney.

Already widely used, a tying of the stomach that stops the patient eating more than the restricted amount of food.

NANOROBOTIC CELLS

BIONIC LEG

Four sensors on the sole of the foot, work with natural muscular instincts, which allows a much more effective rehabilitation process for the patient.

Respirocytes are a micro mechanical red blood cell, that function at a 236 times higher rate than human red blood cells.

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The Science Museum curated the placement of us all in the show. This was actually the first show that I had exhibtied in and not actually curated myself, which was very odd and quite frustrating. I was placed at the end of the exhibtion in a large open plan section, I was really against this, as I felt there was no flow of people and it would be difficult to get them down to dead end. But obviously I had no say.

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At this point in time, I realised, that the main reason that I was working on transhumanism and what really interested me was the social implications of this subject. The questions that had arisen when I spoke to people about my project, or when presenting it to people had all been really interesting, but the ones that I found myself really trying to figure out, were about the culture of transhumanism and it’s possible impact on our society. I had so many questions about these organs that we could be using in a couple of years: What about religions that don’t like the idea of these mechanics moving around in our bodies?

Is this want we want? Is this what I want? One day potentially becoming a machine from many surgeries, abit of a Darth Vader issue.

How much do they cost? Will these highly complex surgeries that have taken extradonary lengths of research be on the NHS? Are they classed as cosmetic? In some cases, surly they will be, I would certainly like to breath under water for 4 hours, but then what will happen in the oylmpics? Will these surgeries be banned? And if so, will there by kids running around on their football pitch faster than the athletes?

I don’t really know whether these questions have been anwsered in my project, I don’t think they have to be honest, but I think I’m OK with that. I don’t know how to anwser them. We are all scared of the future, because it is unknown, and that is also what is so fucking exciting about it. From the beginning of this year I had been inspired by Kubrick’s 2001, and the reason I loved it was it’s full circle melt down of societies expansion and growth and intelligence, to the utter chaos of our fall from grace, and transhumanism reminds me of that somehow, it makes me feel uneasy.

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The marketing from the science museum was great! I had to submit a few blurbs and email a few people anwsering questions, but it was so good having someone deal with it and send it out to everyone. Such a bloody treat.

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The Late was amazing, I was so pleased with the turn out and the general vibe. Before it all kicked off I was so nervous, not because of the late, but more because it was the end of something that had become a really important. It was nice to have all of my friends and family there, but I did feel it was a bit of a shame that I was in quite an isolated area of the show; when they curated the show I raised the idea that there would be little flow around my piece. In the end I didn’t need to worry about this, as people were queueing at points to play, but for me personally it was hard to enjoy the rest of the show in an area that was out of the way. I felt proud about the acheivement of exhibiting at the Science Museum, but it was also an anti climax, just one night only.

After the show I reflected on the whole process and realised how much I had learnt, not only in technical building skills, but also about myself and how I work best, under pressure and trying to prove myself to win. I also realised how lucky I am that I don’t feel scared to talk to other people, or present my work, I enjoy the chance to explain what I am doing and anwser questions about it, which has a direct correlation with the development of my own understanding of a piece.

When I think about what this piece taught me, besides from the professional working enviroment, and the pressure of a live brief, I learnt that I really can learn a new skill from scratch if I really fucking try, and those tweezers are being framed and looked after forever, I am so proud of them.

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OTHER

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Over the summer I started to think about what I wanted to write my dissertaiton on, and I started to research modern art, and the reception of it within different classes and people. I came back to uni in September and felt bored of my subject already, feeling really down about the whole thing, I spoke to one of my tutors Tobias, who said to me; this is your dissertation, write about whatever you want, whatever you’re interested in.

I thought about this for a while, and the problem was that I already felt like that is what I was doing, writing about something I was interested in, but it wasn’t what I was necessarily passionate about.

So I went away and thought....what am I passionate about? I decided the things I am most passionate about are the things that I endlessly debate when I’m so fucked that I don’t care who’s listening or who’s interested.

Actually, the people that are interested at that early hour, are the ones that I feel closer too and respect a little more the next day for a kinda unknown reason to me.

So I wrote my dissertation about 3 key subjects: Immigration, Feminism, Prejudice.

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STEVE MCCURRY

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DISSERTATON Writing my dissertation was fucking difficult, I really enjoyed researching and reading about my subjects, but really putting it all down into words was much harder. I think that it was difficult to write 10,000 words when I hadn’t written a proper essay for about three years. It felt abit like an impossibly mammoth task. One of the main things I found difficult about the writing was to keep an academic tone, I write exactly how I talk, it was bloody hard to make it sound anything near proffessional.

I did kinda love the whole process though. It really was the best personal experience ever, I learnt so much it’s insane and what’s even better about it, is I learnt it all myself. Being able to construct my own opinion from all my theorists was a major reason behind getting a higher mark, and if you really im- merse yourself into the whole thing, I mean really truly read about these topics every single day, it’s hard not to form your own opinions.

We handed in in January, which was a real issue with the science museum deadline that was around the same time. I think that everyone that was doing the major dissertation and the science museum project deserve some kind of medal, that was pretty much the most stressed I’ve ever been.

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I went over my dissertation and re- read and edited it, just as a follow up from handing it in. This was really helpful in working out what I still wanted to explore possibly in my next project, and really gave me push forward in what kind of questions I wanted to anwser.

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Research highlights: (see files for full research)

“The fact that we are human beings is infinitely more important than all the peculiarities that distinguish human beings from one another; it is never the given that confers superiorities: ‘virtue’, as the ancients called it, is defined on the level of ‘that which depends on us’.”

“The feminist revolution had to be fought because women quite simply were stopped at a state of evolution far short of their human capacity.”

Betty Friedan

Simone De Beauvoir

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“Ideas, cultures, and histories cannot seriously be understood or studied without their force, or more precisely their configurations of power, also being studied”

“The social articulation of difference, from the minority perspective, is a complex, ongoing negotiation that seeks to authorize cultural hybridities that emerge in moments of historical transformation.”

Edward Said

Homi Bhabha

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Once my dissertation was handed in, I still had two projects to complete, and my head was full of the theory that I had just learned. It was a slight anti climax to be honest, posting months of work through a hole in a box; I guess when we are used to exhibiting our work, it’s a different type of finish. Anyway, I still felt quite connected to it, and Joel introduced me to Monica Biagioli to take part in a dissertation response project: working with designers from all over the design department to have critical feedback on ideas and progress.

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So I went to the first workshop, and met everyone else taking part, this was super interesting as I hadn’t really spent anytime with illustrators or graphic designers before. We all spoke to each other about our dissertations, everyone had such different ones, mostly quite specific to their course though, I think mine was the most random. We then collectively wrote out key words on post its within small groups, and then as a whole class started sticking them up in categories. This was kinda weird and abit like a school workshop to begin with as no one wanted to come up to the front and stick their postits up. Monica asked me to take the lead, and I don’t really mind doing that kinda thing, so I went and started it, and then most people joined in. This turned out quite well in the end.

My key words were; culture, otherness, people, film.

One of the key ideas that came out of this workshop, was to make a short film or documentary about my dissertation topic. This was interesting as I’d written and researched about representation as a whole, and specifically film culture. It seemed like a strong step from writing about this to trying to do it myself. I wanted to take the theories I had learned through the dissertation and put them into practice by making my own film.

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DEEPA MEHTA Water This film is all about the tradition of Sati - when a husband dies, the woman no longer exists, she has one of 3 options; to jump on to his burning funeral pyre, to live a life forever begging forgiveness, or to take up the white robe, shave her head and devote herself to prayer and live as a begger.

This tradition is much more relaxed in modern India, but there are still more rural areas that take it seriously, the idea that a woman can have a life of her own if she loses her husband is outragous to them. While I was writing my dissertation I researched this thouroughly and it really inspired my to show how some of the worst traditions of India can affect people.

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I decided to film my Nana and actually get a first hand experience of immigration and otherness, rather than just have the perspective of all the white, male, old, middle class academics. I mean, that is intersting and important, as their pretty clever, but still. So I went back home and stayed with my Nana for a week, just filming everything and chatting to her about things. I wanted to make a film since I started this course, and never really felt confident about it, so this was really exciting, if somewhat disasterous. I kinda realised just how hard it is to film by yourself, while sorting out lighting and sound and of course actually getting some good shots.

Another difficulty that I found was that my Nana would say something amazing, but someone else was in the frame, or I was out of focus, or something, and it was basically impossible to get her to say it again in the same way. This meant that lots of great things got lost, which in hindsight I think is pretty normal, but at the time was frustrating.

I wrote out a few basic questions to get her started on talking about her past which worked pretty well to jog her memory, and her confident nature really came out in the footage.

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Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths, Enwrought with golden and silver light, The blue and the dim and the dark cloths Of night and light and the half-light, I would spread the cloths under your feet: But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

William Blake This poem reminds me of my Nana, and what she was like with me when I was growing up.

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One of the things that I wasn’t really anticipating was the depth in which she was talking about her past, most of which I had never heard before, even though she basically half raised me. I was shocked and upset about some of the things that had happened to her.

I felt really sad about this the whole time, and I was unsure about whether to ask more about this side of her past, or to concentrate on her opinions on things rather than her life. In the end, she kind of decided for me, and would talk about her past much more than what she thought about now, this is pretty unusual for her, and I got the sense that it was kind of cathartic to chat away without really having to anwser questions.

The whole week was really emotionally draining, and I felt quite confused about whether I wanted to make the film when I left her house and came back to London. The most interesting parts of the footage to me, were her life story, and that is what really related to my dissertation and I felt was most important. However, it was sad, and intrusive and difficult to hear about let alone edit.

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So this was the first time working with premiere pro, and it was a steep learning curve! I had no idea what any button meant, let alone having any love for it. I went to a workshop by a lovely man called Marco, which helped loads; it took me about a week for it to flow.

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CUTAWAYS

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While editing together the piece, I realised that alot of my original footage wasn’t really good enough- it was out of focus, or moving, or not held for long enough or just abit crap.I knew this was down to the fact that I had never filmed before and I needed to learn these mistakes, but I couldn’t help feeling shit about it. I didn’t have time to go back and re shoot, so I went back to some research that I had done on Adam Curtis, and thought that if I could edit together the narrative without the shit footage, I could re edit with archive footage and archive photos from her life. This turned out to be super fun, and I love Adam Curtis anyway, so it turned out to be a little homage to him. I kind of had to just solve the problem and not freak out. I spent alot of time experimenting with archive footage, and making short clips of lots of archive together to tell a little story.

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I looked through all her old photo albums, my Mum’s and all my uncle’s and family to find these photos of her and her kids.

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Joel, Biggles and Tobias trying to make the TV work for me......it took them a while

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I went to the 2nd workshop meeting, and met another guy that was helping Monica curate the show. At this workshop we all went round and showed each other our work and feedback, much like a crit, but with people that I had never really seen work from before. This was super fun.

The only problem was, I kinda felt like I was the only one giving actual feedback, as in really listening to them talk and thinking about it. This got pretty annoying by the end, as when I showed the rough cut of my film, no one had anything to say. I was also the only person from IMI that stayed for the whole session, this was irritating too, as I was really busy, but I thought it was rude to leave a crit halfway through.

Anyway, we talked about the space alot, and how the show was actually going to be curated. Only a handful of people were being chosen, and it’s much more of a cutting the group in half to fill the space, as it’s pretty small. We needed to submit our proposals and work, and hope for the best.

This is their selection criteria: • good translation between dissertation and work produced • ability of work to have an effect on the audience • does the work communicate the aims of the exhibition: to highlight links between critical thinking and studio practice?

• work can be curated within the space and in relation to other works selected

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I put together some music from old punjabi prayer songs, my Nana prays eveyda include that in the film in a more subtle way than just showing the clip; so the mu chronologically, this worked really well in drawing to seperate parts of her life tog

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ay for 2 hours, chanting specific songs to her Gods, I really wanted to usic seemed perfect. I experimented by using the music to cut through film gether.

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ADAM CURTIS Adam Curtis makes documentaries using BBC archive footage. I started reading his blog earlier in the year and was familiar with his opinions and thoughts. When I realised that my footage wasn’t good enough I started thinking about working in the style of Curtis, using collage and archive footage to go over jump cuts. I already had old photographs from the albums that I had searched, so it seemed ideal. I watched hours of his work and took away key ideas that I found appealing, his use of juxtaposing music with footage is great, really confuses you and makes you think. I still wanted to keep the film about my Nana quite nostalgic and in the past, not hard hitting land opinionated ike his, so I was careful to keep in mind what I wanted my film to feel like to the viewer.

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I spent so much time on this computer, I felt like it was wielded to my fingertips. I think I spent about 3 weeks editing the piece together, just the narrative. I don’t know how long the music and colour correction took in little bits of my time. I never knew how much effort goes into the tiniest part of a moving image piece. Now I do.

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This project was pretty bloody hard. But not for the reasons I thought they would be. It was difficult because finding out the parts of my Nana’s life that she had never spoken to me about before wasn’t interesting, it was horrible. I knew much of what had happened to her in her life and I had written about it throughout my dissertation, but it was the tiny details and scraps of context that were heartbreaking, and watching her speak about it over and over and over again while editing was awful.

So far this year when I have done a project, all the techniques and materials have been totally new to me, and I’ve made so many mistakes getting to the end, I love all those mistake, because I can feel all the new things I am learning seeping in; but for this project I wished that I was a wizz with editing. One of the most challanging things I found was trying to cut down the narrative, and actually keep a flowing story. The amount of footage that I had to cover up because of my jumpy camera work really fucked this up. In a way, the problems of bad cutaways and jump cuts, meant that I had to figure out a solution, and if I hadn’t have done that, then it would be a totally different film.

I am super proud of my final film; maybe because I am super proud of her, and everything that she acheived in her life and I just love her even more from this whole experience. But, maybe because I had always wanted to make a short film, and coming into this project with no skills or experience meant that I just had to figure out each problem as I went along, and take quite alot of risks. This made me alot stronger in my abilites, and I am glad about that.

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DESTRUCTION

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This project came about through an amalgamation of three briefs; Borders, Destroy and Hopeful Monsters. I first became interested in border conflicts and manmade walls between people eg. North Korea and South Korea. This was a simple link from my earlier project about immigration and otherness. I started to look into the ways in which institutions held control over areas of land, and read a brilliant book called Why Nations Fail, by Darren Acemoglu and James Robinson. In my previous projects I had learnt woodwork, film and aurdino skills, and I wanted to learn something new. So I started looking into critical design, and diagetic prototypes. My aim: to make something that creates a debate or raises a question within the mind of the viewer. This was completely new territory for me, so I was pretty excited.

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GERHARD RICHTER

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So I went down to the tate to see Ruin Lust, I was talking to Ben Stopher about it, and he seems quite on the ball with exhibtions, just that kinda guy. So anyway, went to see that, was great! Really enjoyed it, apart from the Tacita Dean bumming, she got a whole secton to herself, which was crazy and also took away from the whole point of it being curated in chronological sections, this really irritated me. Nothing against Tacita Dean, I really like her work, but it took away from the curation of chronology, their were no other artists focused on with as much importance, so it seemed quite political.

Anyway, I learnt all about how ruins are really important because people view ruins, but also subconsciensly think about their future, because they can see the destructon of other civilisations or places right in front of them; almost like a warning. It makes destruction tangible, and loads of artists have been obsessed with them for periods of time, especially in Europe. I was especially interested in the fact that Brian Dillon curated it, as I have read alot of his work and think he is intelligent and interesting.

The whole thing was engaging and inspiring, while I was their I started thinking about making some kind of artfact from the future, or the past and changing it slightly to change the way people would think about it. A bit like a ruin, but more of an object.

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I went to a workshop run by Tobias Revell and Justin Pickard about reversing archiology, basically creating new objects using existing ones, much like the Indian theory ofJugaad. I guess by understanding the functions and individual elements of an object you’re equiped with the knowledge to create a new one with more diverse outcomes. This workshop was seriously helpful to my last project. It really got me thinking about context, and the importance of this. The first task of the workshop was to take old pbjects and make something new, but the the second was to create a world using specific problems that you had been given. Tobias had to keep reminding me that the world I made was not total fantasy, but actually positioned within the problems he gave me e.g. globalisation, carbon rations, intense flooding etc.

This workshop really got me thinking about trying to make something that could talk about these things.

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Alfonso Cuaron CHILDREN OF MEN

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I bloody love this film, it made me question violence and the world in which we live right now. I watched it when I was abit drunk and suddenly had hundreds of ideas about weapons and people, and the future. I owe Alfonso some serious mindmapping debt.

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JOB VAN DER MOLEN .

This artist has used the fusion of biology and design to make these taxidermy weapons. I think it’s amazing, so simple, yet so effective, and presented so realistically makes it even stronger.

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NOAM TORAN

Heavy Breather

Cold Feet

Cigerette Sharer

Hair Alarm Clock

Noam Toran is a designer that I already knew about and followed, when I started looking into this brief his work immediately popped up as critical design that uses humour to get it’s point across. HIs series of objects for lonely men is hilarious, the sheet stealer my personal fave, while his MacGuffin library is less humourous but more aesthetically pleasing, and I think more famous. I think they make a statement about different things, one being human emotion, and the other being more of a collection, the context somewhat different.

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GUNS. Why? They are a well known object, everyone knows exactly what they do without question. They have become a symbol of violence and power. They are everywhere in films, games, photos of other worlds and societies. They have become more than just an object.

I can use all of this as prop for what I want to say. They have their own message, if I can take that message and distort it, then I can ask people to think something new without asking telling them what todo.

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A collection of the most iconic film guns from a designer called Federico Mauro

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The design choices and dfferences of these guns was really interesting to me when thinking about my own, obviously they are for films and more obvious in character than mine will be, but still, good to think about.

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Kathryn Bigelow BLUE STEEL

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In the opening credits of Blue Steel, Bigelow uses up close macro shots of a gun, with an erotic feel. At first you cannot tell it’s a gun, and then slowly you see more of it, the more distinguishing features. The sexualisation of the gun is made even more apparant with the direct cut to the main female protaganist doing up her shirt. Gun fetishism, and the erotic objectifiication of the woman following from the gun is very clear, and an interesting edit. It kind of disturbs me though, and is exactly the kind of concept that I’m pushing against.

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ANTHONY DUNNE & FIONA RABY, CRITICAL DESIGN FAQ 1. What is Critical Design?

Critical Design uses speculative design proposals to challenge narrow assumptions, preconceptions and givens about the role products play in everyday life. It is more of an attitude than anything else, a position rather than a method. There are many people doing this who have never heard of the term critical design and who have their own way of describing what they do. Naming it Critical Design is simply a useful way of making this activity more visible and subject to discussion and debate. Its opposite is affirmative design: design that reinforces the status quo.

2. Where did it come from?

Design as critique has existed before under several guises. Italian Radical Design of the 1970s was highly critical of prevailing social values and design ideologies, critical design builds on this attitude and extends it into today’s world.

During the 1990s there was a general move towards conceptual design which made it easier for noncommercial forms of design like critical design to exist, this happened mainly in the furniture world, product design is still conservative and closely linked to the mass market.

3. Who does it?

Dunne & Raby and their graduate students from the Royal College of Art (RCA) such as James Auger, Elio Caccavale and Noam Toran, are probably the most well known, but there are other designers working in a similar way who would not describe what they do as critical design: Krzysztof Wodiczko, Natalie Jeremijenko, Jurgen Bey, Marti Guixe ...

4. What is it for?

Mainly to make us think. But also raising awareness, exposing assumptions, provoking action, sparking debate, even entertaining in an intellectual sort of way, like literature or film.

5. Why is it happening now?

The world we live in today is incredibly complex, our social relations, desires, fantasies, hopes and fears are very different from those at the beginning of the 20c. Yet many key ideas informing mainstream design stem form the early 20c.

Society has moved on but design has not, Critical Design is one of many mutations design is undergoing in an effort to remain relevant to the complex technological, political, economic and social changes we are experiencing at the beginning of the 21c.

6. What role does humour play?

Humour is important but often misused. Satire is the goal. But often only parody and pastiche are achieved. These reduce the effectiveness in a number of ways. They are lazy and borrow existing formats, and they signal too clearly that it is ironic and so relieve some burden from the viewer.

The viewer should experience a dilemma, is it serious or not? Real or not? For Critical design to be successful they need to make up their own mind.

Also, it would be very easy to preach, a skilful use of satire and irony can engage the audience in a more constructive away by appealing to its imagination as well as engaging the intellect. Good political comedians achieve this well. Deadpan and black humour work best.

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7. Is it a movement?

No. It’s not really a field that can be neatly defined. It’s more about values and an attitude, a way of looking at design and imagining its possibilities beyond the narrow definitions of what is presented through media and in the shops.

8. What are its main relatives?

Activism Cautionary Tales Conceptual Design Contestable Futures Design Fiction Interrogative Design Radical Design Satire Social Fiction Speculative Design 9. What are the biggest misconceptions?

That it is negative and anti-everything.

That it is only commentary and cannot change anything That it is jokey That it is not concerned with aesthetics That it is against mass-production That it is pessimistic That it is not real That it is art 10. But isn’t it art?

It is definitely not art. It might borrow heavily from art in terms of methods and approaches but that’s it. We expect art to be shocking and extreme. Critical Design needs to be closer to the everyday, that’s where its power to disturb comes from. Too weird and it will be dismissed as art, too normal and it will be effortlessly assimilated. If it is regarded as art it is easier to deal with, but if it remains as design it is more disturbing, it suggests that the everyday as we know it could be different, that things could change.

11. Isn’t it a bit dark?

Yes, but not for the sake of it. Dark, complex emotions are ignored in design, nearly every other area of culture accepts people are complex, contradictory and even neurotic, but not design, we view people as obedient and predictable users and consumers.

One of critical Design’s roles is to question the limited range of emotional and psychological experiences offered through designed products. Design is assumed to only make things nice, it’s as though all designers have taken an unspoken Hippocratic oath, this limits and prevents us from fully engaging with and designing for the complexities of human nature which of course is not always nice. It is more about the positive use of negativity, not negativity for its own sake, but to draw attention to a scary possibility in the form of a cautionary tale.

12. And its future?

A danger for critical design is that it ends up as a form of sophisticated design entertainment: 90% humour 10% critique. It needs to avoid this situation by identifying and engaging with complex and challenging issues. Areas like Future Forecasting would benefit from its more gritty view of human nature and ability to make abstract issues tangible. It could also play a role in public debates about the social, cultural and ethical impact on everyday life of emerging and future technologies.

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I was reading this FAQ from Dunne and Raby and it really started to open my brain into thinking about critical design and whether you can really do something with design that is more than making money. At the same time I started to feel quite negative about making final pieces that would just be used once in a show and then be left for scrap. I wanted to make something that creates more of a point, which means the piece lasts forever in the experience of the viewer. Narrative is a really useful way to bring up a point, or show the meaning of the piece, it can create a context to something, and context is very important. Telling stories is something that has been used for thousands of years to teach poeple things. I felt quite stuck at this point in my project, so I started writing stories about the world in which each of the guns existed, and how they were used, by what kind of people and therefore gave them a world in whch to live, hence a context. This allows the audience to be able to imagine them somewhere, and place them within a time and world. I want the guns to create a question, or dialogue with the spectator, a wondering of the purpose and moral implications of the guns changes. They have all been designed in mind of the present or near future social/ ethical problems of our world, but by placing them in a different world, where they have already been invented and used, maybe it will be easier for the viewer to understand the ramifications of the guns without spelling it out for them. I think that there has to be an element of figuring out the point by the viewer for design to make an impact on them. An experience is the only thing that humans hold onto, that really shapes their decisions and perception forever, in a minute level or a larger one. To create an experience, there must be a confusion or thinking process by the viewer.

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I went and bought a couple of water pistols and dismantled them, adding things, taking things away and generally just experimenting. This was super fun but more importantly a really useful exercise in understanding the bits and pieces that make up a gun.

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So I drew up some intial ideas of my guns on illustrator (again, I would be a happier person if I never needed to use this program again) . I showed these drawings to Tobias and Biggles, and they had totally different opinions on the matter. At first this was really frustrating and I was generally quite pissed off about the whole thing, but then I realised I could just take the ideas I liked from each of them and add them to mine, and come up with something different. It’s a weird feeling when you realise you don’t need to listen to your teachers. Maybe this project would have turned out totally different, for better or worse, but I just went with what I wanted to do in the end. I tried to mix all the theories of satire and diagetics to create some guns that were similiar to their original but also totally different, not too sci fi, but not to boring either. I then had the brains to realise that I needed to somehow show their context in a way that wasn’t to obvious, (because as Biggles put it: if you have to explain it, it’s bad design) so I made a gun catalogue.

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I made the gun book with some real bad time management going on.

Firstly, I am really quite bad at graphic design, and to be creative with something that you don’t have much skill in, is really bloody hard. I chose the grey background and the yellow strip, just because I like those colours together. I also played around alot with all the spacing and lines, but in the end I just stopped and concentrated on the gun blurbs, which was the fun bit really. I looked at lots of US gun mags and UK posh gun makers to figure out the phrasing of the blurbs just for it to flow naturally. When writing the blurbs I just tried to be abit funny really, as satire is how to make a point ( Dunne and Raby).

After making the book of guns, I thought that I needed to experiment further with the visuals, and try to make them more exciting as they were very 2D. I was looking into isometric grids, and how they can help schematics loads! So I got some images of schematics off the internet and drew some stuff up myself, and then scanned them in. I played around alot with the vectors and got my drawings to look alot straighter and more profesh, I’m pretty pleased with the result, I quite like the posters really.

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I took some photos of Lily holding up the posters in the photography studio. I’m not totally sure why I did this, as I don’t really like the trend of people holding up posters in picutres. I think I might have just been panicking.

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If I could go back, I would have made these guns 3D from the very beginning, probably 3D model and print them. All the same aesthetic and just pretty swish looking. I think that sometimes it’s hard to know how to present an idea that is not real in an appropriate way, not just in a design way, but making sure that it suits the whole point. I feel like this project was a speculative way of design, that holds alot of narrative, something that I haven’t really done before. The context of the guns is highly important, and that is something hard to get across.

I enjoyed the research and process of this project more than the actual making of the piece, which was a shame as this was my last project of the year. I want to make them better, and make them real, I really believe in them, in the idea that I might be able to make something that could change the way people think.

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DON’T PANIC

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Some things I have learnt this year : When I really hate my project more than anything in the entire world, A) I must go for a walk, and B) it’s going to be a really great project.

Tobias, Joel and Biggles are brilliant and are most of what IMI is about, they share their brains with us, which is very nice of them.

My hair expands when I’m stressed.

I secretly enjoy some real life pressure, it really pushes me forward and makes me slightly competitive.

Not to forget to do the things I enjoy, like reading books, cinemas, pubs etc. when I’m deep into a project, because those things may be just as interesting, and may spark an idea in me.

I am grumpy in the morning, and I should try not to talk to people, incase I offend them.­ Araldite is an insulator.

What it feels like to try my very best.

If I’m unsure, I need to just make it and see. This is sometimes easier said then done.

It’s fine if I fuck it up, I just can’t fuck it up the same way again.

How to make some giant wooden tweezers­.

That good education is something that seeps into you without you even knowing.

Design is important to me because I want it to be more than something that I will just make money from; for me personally I want to see a future in my career that is much more than wealth. For that reason I am drawn to concepts and threories that promote that, that have the possibilty to change the way we think about the world.

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The last three years have been a massive mind bending crazy time. I feel like IMI has been a beautiful cuddly pool of experiences and playtime, full of interesting people that are naturally all synced into variants of the same personality type. Collaborating with other courses highlighted to me straight away that courses naturally draw in similar kinds of people.

To choose IMI you need to be brave. This course is an amalgamation of moving image and design, it’s so broad that it’s very difficult to describe to anyone that hasn’t spent time in the creative fields. It incapsulates the mechanism of learning through mistakes, which is perfect for me, as that is all I do.

For me though IMI has been more than that, it has taught me how to try and show everyone else who I am, how to creatively articulate myself.

It has also opened up my mind so much that I don’t even know where it ends.

If you think about it, Joel, Biggles and Tobias are my people, that have raised me from little adulthood to big adulthood, sometimes purely through sarcasm, and sometimes through intuitive, sincere and intelligent teaching; not only design practice and theory, but through personal and intellectual support of their brain to mine.

This year in particular has drastically changed me. I feel like I now know what I am passionate about and I’m so glad, because one of the trickiest things is to figure out what makes you really fucking happy, and the third year of IMI made me happy.

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EXHIBITIONS: Hayward Gallery, (January/ 2014) Light Show Horniman Museum (November/ 2013) Royal Academy of Arts (January/ 2014) Sensing Spaces Somerset House (September/ 2013) I Only Want You To Love Me Tate Britain, (March/ 2014) Ruin Lust Tate Modern (February/ 2014) Klee V&A (October/ 2013) Memory Palace Wellcome Collection (January/ 2014) Foreign Bosies, Common Ground White Chapel Gallery, (August/ 2013) The Spirit of Utopia

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FILM: Attenborough, R. (1982) Gandhi Besson, L. (1994) Leon Besson, L. (1997) The Fifth Element Bigelow, K. (1982) Blue Steel Damien O’ Donnell, D. (1999) East is East Hathaway, H. (1969) True Grit Hill, G. (1969) Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid Joffe’, R. (1984) The Killing Fields Khan, M (1957) Mother India Korine, H. (2012) Springbreakers Kubrick, S. (1962) Lolita Kubrick, S. (1968) 2001: A Space Odessey Leone, S. (1966) The Good, the Bad and the Ugly Mehta, D. (2005) Water Meadows, S. (2006) This is England Oliver Stone, O. (1994) Natural Born Killers Scorsese, M. (1976) Taxi Driver Scott, R. (1982) Blade Runner Singer, B (1995) The Usual Suspects Suri, S (2005) I for India Tarantino, Q. (1994) Pulp Fiction Tarantino, Q. (2012) Django Unchained Wood, M. (2007) The Story of India

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“The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty�

Ursula K Le Guin

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