VOID - Evaluation

I feel that this project has been extremely productive and helpful to me as a creative/ designer. 
Working in a group has helped me to learn new skills across a variety of areas and opened my eyes to the possibilities within art. It has been an experience that has consisted of highs and lows, but mainly highs! Working closely together every day creates brilliant opportunity and an interesting melting pot of ideas. Whilst working in this unit x group, I have discovered that ideas can be taken so much further in a shorter space of time and feedback from others in the group can help your own work to evolve into art of a higher quality. 
However I think we also feel that working in a group that is possibly too large can stop the ideas in their tracks which we learnt when a couple of people joined our group a week in, when we had already got the ball rolling on our shared ideas. However working through this we found that communication is key, and keeping up to date on each other's work can help to spur your own work along. I also learnt that involvement and compromise   are essential.

There has been many things I have learnt from my fellow students such as delegation skills (Martina), practical skills, such as ways of experimenting with unexpected materials, and I have also learnt that film can be a brilliantly impressive tool to use within a project and for pitching to clients. I learnt this from Tom's research video which got spades of positive feedback. Therefore I will be looking at using this method within future projects. I feel like I have gained a wealth of knowledge from my group for which I am grateful. I think I work well whilst collaborating with other artists and I will be looking to do this again soon.

Working in a group gave me a push to further my own ideas and also to use methods that I don't usually think about using. For example my main practice this year has been print design for fashion however in this project I have used methods such as embroidery, 3D construction and sculpture. I have really enjoyed using these methods and it has made me realise that maybe combining these with print would be a way forward within my own practice. 

We had ideas within our work that sometimes we could not show in their true form, however we found ways of presenting our ideas through more lo-fi methods which I think was a skill we all learned throughout the project. Using this skill of representation can help people to see your ideas on a larger scale and it helps to push other wise small scale ideas a lot further.

Ending this project, I feel that as a group we have worked together tremendously well and I could see us working together again on projects similar to this. We have been asked to work on a project for the new Art and Design building opening in October which is a testament to all of the hard work that everyone in the group has thrown at this project whole heartedly from the very beginning!

On a more personal note I have been approached by a fashion student who would like to collaborate with me on a future project which I am very excited about. I feel that I can use all of the skills I have learnt from this experience to work with her in a productive and exciting way and I will carry on using this knowledge throughout my creative career.

Creating Our Exhibition

Ferrofluid

Ursula and Martina's ferrofluid jars were a massive hit at the exhibition opening! Ferrofluid is a magnetic substance and is made from toner and vegetable oil. We thought that it would be a fun interactive piece to include in the exhibition.

Promotional Gift Bags

We thought it would be a good idea to create some small gift bags as exhibition favours to promote our festival ideas. I offered to make the bags and in them I included:

• Glow in the dark 'VOID' map
• Business card ( designed by Emily Jackson)
• Manifesto (on front of each bag)
• 'VOID' Resin tile (in a 'VOID' envelope)
• Magic Eye flyer
• 'VOID' wristband (made by Martina Billson)

VOID Maps

Design by Ursula Rae, Hannah Sulek

We wanted our map to be concealed within the 'daytime festival' map. Concealed in the light revealed in the dark. Ursula created the simple map as the basis of the design then Hannah cut out the area of the map that we would be using for our festival. The Salford/ Manchester border.

We also played around with blacking out the area and using glow in the dark maps. 

I created a secondary map for our 'Glow Brick Road' using the same design. 

VOID Manifesto

Manifesto layout designed by Ursula Rae

As a group we decided to create a manifesto to summarise what our festival is all about. It gives people a sense of what we hope to create and how we will do it. It took a couple of read throughs and edits to get it right but I think that the final draft is on point and intriguing. The points of our manifesto are:

• An alternative layer to a Manchester Design Festival. (We will create night time design events to run alongside a daytime festival)
• An evolving festival through the interaction of participants. (We would like the events and happenings within the festival to be partly determined by the public by interacting with the installations/ designs)
• Creating individual and collective experience. 
• Changing appearance through manipulated conditions. (Redesigning the city through intangible design)
• Concealed within the light revealed within the dark. (Artwork that goes unnoticed in the day but reveals its self when night time falls)
• Absence can be as stimulating as presence. (Trying to get people to notice and experience design where it is otherwise hidden)
• Facilitating interaction within the space and each other. 
• Using artist networks to generate momentum and encourage organic growth. (Using already established artists to attract the public to design and therefore help the design community to grow in an unforced way)
• Intangible Design (design which does not have a physical presence)
• Generating activity in a non-space. 
•  Not reflecting on the past or concerning the future, but experiencing the now. (We're not giving our energy to Manchester's past or future but we are focusing on the present to encourage people to enjoy the city's spaces as they are now)

The overall aim of our festival is to help the people redesign the city through their experience of the space rather then focusing on commercial, tangible design.

Promotional Resin Bricks

I thought that it would be nice if we had an alternative promotional tool to hand out for the festival. These are resin cubes with embedded images within them. The images include:

• Logo
• Visuals
• Void Map

These are cubes that we would give out to the public as promotional tools however when they came to the festival they could all be put together as one big structural art piece that they could be involved with. This may give an extra incentive to come along to our events. They could also be collected, the more different cubes you collect, the more information you will have about the festival. 
I think they're a fun way of involving people in the festival and people, especially children love to collect objects that they can keep as memories. 

The Logo

This logo, in the first instance, represents a 'void'. Secondly it represents the organic growth of our festival, spreading and flowing from one point in the city outwards. 
I created this logo by dropping ink onto a dampened piece of paper and letting it spread. I used black ink as it is a simple, uniform colour and it's also bold. When i think of a void I think of a black hole, hence the denseness of the logo. I then scanned the image in and intensified the colour by altering the contrast settings. Finally I added the title of our festival using our chosen font; Helvetica Neue, for a uniform look. 
We thought it was important to have an overall logo for promotion purposes so we do not confuse the public and in doing so put them off attending the events. It also brings all of the separate elements of our work and events together.

Final Magic Eye Promo Flyers

I used the name of our festival 'VOID' and the date to create the final promotional magic eye flyers. They give snippets of information without giving too much away about the content. These would be one of our main promotional outlets and we have received brilliant feedback about them so far.

Glow in the Dark Tiles

'Follow the glow brick road'

These are the glow in the dark resin tiles that Hannah and I have been creating. We thought these would be great inside the sensory spaces alongside the pouches. They would be great as tactile and visual sensory tools. 

We have also been speaking as a group about using them as 'way-markers'. They would be laid out as a sort of 'road' for festival goers to follow from the main, well-known parts of the city to our event areas. They could be seen in the dark and we think that children would love the idea of following a 'glow brick road'!

Interim Pitch

Today we had our 1 week interim pitch at Bench. We got some amazing feedback that has spurred us on to experiment further and keep going with our non-commercial ideas! 

Some good feedback points were:

• Lo-fi experiments
• Audience participation
• Linking Salford to Manchester
• Working together in an interesting and productive way
• Regeneration ideas
• Non-commercial
• Exciting and engaging concept

The experiments within the pitch really excited the audience and they will be something that we will be furthering and possibly using in our final pitch.

Some points of creative criticism/pointers were:

• Decide on a specific name
• Make it clear in the next pitch that our festival is an alternative layer
• Make sure that the final pitch is clear and concise.
• Create a list of possible collaborators (artists/ designers etc)
• Create a clear manifesto

Sensory Pods

We started to think about areas in the festival where people could rest, gather their thoughts, cleanse their senses and socialise with other festival goers.

I wanted to use large textiles spaces to involve my practice within the festival. I chose cotton as there are strong connections with the old textile industry in Manchester. I played around with sewing the cotton into different shapes and eventually decided on a hanging pod like structure. These pods would be scattered throughout the chosen festival area with different, gentle sensory experiences inside. Some may be completely dark. Some may have other tactile installations within them. Hannah.S and I have been experimenting with glow in the dark resin tiles, and Hannah (Sulek) has being creating glow in the dark pouches which could possibly be hung inside the sensory pods. We realise that there is a need for relaxation spaces within festivals but we did not want our spaces to be too far removed from the experiences of our events.

Promo Video

Tom has made a promotional video for our festival using the imagery we collected in our lo-fi ink experiments. This is a way in which the lo-fi experiments that we have been using can develop into actual festival content. It also gives a suggestion towards the more complex techniques we may be using within the festival (3D mapping, Moving Floor etc). Here is a link to the video.

VOID promo video

Research

Carsten Nicolai

Carsten Nicolai is a German artist who works in the field of sound and vision. He plays on sensory perception of sound and light through installation, performance, drawing and film. The intersection of visual and audio materials is a key, reoccurring feature in his work. His work 'Anti-Reflex' (above) consists of two differently constructed spaces. One is 'Anti', the other 'Reflex'. Within 'Reflex', a white dodecagon, white noise is through speakers mounted on each side of the structure which creates an auditory illusion of being in a completely different space. This may suggest that we may be able to see something that isn't there through the use of sound modification. 

This may be an interesting point to develop upon for our festival, giving people a totally different experience of a space or Manchester that they could not experience without the use of sound. Playing on the senses to create an unexpected experience.

Secret Promotion

We wanted the promotional elements of our 'night time festival' to have an element of secrecy and mystery to juxtapose against the inevitable obviousness of the day time design festival. We wanted the promotional tools to reflect the underground, growing nature of the events.

We talked about a few different ideas such as:

Hidden Writing (Steganography)

Magic eye (Stereograms)

Glow in the dark messages.

These promotional tools would be handed out or shown within the daytime festival to give people snippets of information about the forthcoming events such as dates, times, locations, without making the exact details too obvious as to expel mystery. We realise that people need details and encouragement to attend events such as this, and so we are relying on daytime promoting to make it obvious that these events are linked to the design festival. We also think that although secret messages are the main tool we would like to use, they cannot be too difficult to figure out as it may put people off attending events and just giving up. Word of mouth will also be important as the idea of growth is key. Hopefully as the nights progress, more and more people will learn about the events and artists that are collaborating within them, and check it out themselves.

I decided to look further into the Stereograms and came up with some possible flyer/poster ideas...

'Magic Eye'

I have used some of my photographs from the 'Speed of Light' event that I attended in March to create these stereograms as the imagery fits in perfectly with our ideas for the festival. They are also bright, eye catching and fun which I think will help to play on the public's interest. I will carry on looking into this area and refine the images for the final exhibition!

Experimenting

Ink in Water

On our third day as a group we have started to experiment with ink in water. We wanted to create visuals that refer to the fluidity that we have talked about in our festival. We also wanted to experiment with creating visuals for sound through the use of ink and speakers. Tom showed us how to do this and it created some amazing imagery! We filmed the results and Tom is now going to use his brilliant film making skills to create a promo video. It is such a useful experience watching people use their skills and learning from them!

Photo by Martina Billson

Experimenting together as a group has shown us that we work together well and could potentially learn so many skills from one another. 

Manchester Night Wander

After a successful meeting we decided to go on a night walk around Manchester to look for spaces that we could use in our festival. We decided to go on the walk in the evening as we're focusing on night time events and spaces can become completely different in the dark. We needed to experience the city at night to truly understand the spaces that we would possibly be using. 

We walked through the city towards Salford and came across the regeneration of the area around Manchester Cathedral. It is an area along the river which is just on the border of Manchester and Salford. It has been rejuvenated with lights, sculpture and fountains however we noticed that it is not really being used as much as it should be by the public yet. We would love to facilitate the use of these kinds of areas around the borders of the two cities through our festival and get people to experience these new but unfound spaces. We also think it would be a brilliant opportunity to bridge the gap between the two cities alongside the regeneration plans for Salford and the outskirts of Manchester.

Whilst we were there we decided to play with bubbles and light (glow sticks) to experiment within the spaces. It was interesting to see how these things would work visually within the space and spark of further ideas for experimentation.

Photo by Lara Rhodes

We were searching for the darkest spaces we could possibly find around this area which was difficult as the light pollution levels in the city are huge, however this lead us to think about ways of creating dark spaces (could we get the shop lights and street lights turned of in the area for our festival?). The most interesting spaces we found were arches just across from the regenerated area and the desolate car parks further behind the arches. 

A Productive Day In Our New Group

My notes from our first group meeting.

After an unproductive start to the new group yesterday, we decided to meet up again to run over a few ideas with fresh eyes and minds. Surprisingly it worked! We found that we had some common themes and came up with the ideas in the image above. The main subject that sparked of more ideas was experiencing design in the dark. Therefore we decided to focus on a night time festival with projections and 3D mapping being a possible main theme. 

We also decided to come up with some possible manifesto points:

• Intangibility 
• Senses
• Organic
• Spontaneity
• The appeal of the unknown
• Interaction
• Creativity
• Growth and momentum
• Temporary
• Counter intuition

Inspirational Quotes...

On Manchester...

Hayley Flynn (writer Skyliner.org) - "I've seen some remarkable things, and some things that we assume to be      unremarkable... I've sadly discovered how our heritage can mean so little to those who matter, with new developments being put before restoration even when locations are protected, or poor decisions leading to important buildings being left to rot. MANCHESTER ISN'T A COCKSURE CITY LIKE THE MADCHESTER SCENE LED PEOPLE TO BELIEVE; IT'S ALSO A CHALLENGING CITY TO LOVE BECAUSE YOU HAVE TO WORK AT IT." (interview in 'The Skinny')

Jon Hannan (OWT Creative Collective) - "...There has been a shift in expectation from an acceptance that the more ambitious designers would have to move to London to fulfil their potential, to a genuine belief that they can now fulfil these ambitions here...Today I think Manchester is an optimistic, modern city of collaboration." (interview in 'The Skinny')

On Design...

Kevin Hunt (Sculptor) - "I'm really interested in the point where an object stops being just an object and becomes sculpture... I like to think in becoming sculpture, this inherent sophistication is revealed and the objects are now free to exist as the things that they really are." (interview in 'The Skinny')

On Design Festivals...

Public Design Festival (Milan) - 'How is it possible to make the environment surrounding us more comfortable,   
                                              beautiful and functional?'
                                              'Experience the city.'
                                              'Imagining how the city could be and trying to awarely redesign it.'

1st Meeting at 'Bench'

Yesterday the whole design festival group met at the Bench studio/ gallery space in the Northern Quarter for an afternoon of discussion, sharing of ideas and think-tanking. It was a brilliant chance to see how everyone was approaching the brief in their different ways and to shine a light on any reoccurring themes that we could work on further. 

The 3 main themes we all agreed on were:

MADE 

Process rather than Product.

Stories and meaning behind design. 

Handmade design and the benefits of this.

Slow process making.

Sustainability and Upcycling.

Engagement and interaction within making.

MOBILE

The movement of Events around the city.

Accessibility/Ability to reach communities on the fringes of the city.

Modular/Portable spaces/architecture to house events/exhibitions/workshops.

Pop-up spaces/markets to promote experience rather than selling.

Sustainability/ Reuse of moveable modular spaces. 

WASTE TIME

Using 'waste' as a design material.

'Wasting time' through making/doing with no purpose (focus on experience).

Questioning the idea of wasting time. Who decides what is a waste of time?

Link to slowness of making- Does this make the end product more beautiful/ valuable?

Creating a story.      

The 3 areas that we agreed to work on within these themes are:

PROMOTION/BRANDING

Focus on communication with the audience.

Audience participation and involvement within the festival.

A growing and evolving brand that is shaped by engagement/events/reactions.

Documentation through various medias.

Making and designing to promote creativeness/experience not necessarily a 'brand'/product.

Reaching a wider audience.

Create excitement and connections within the community.

MAKING

  Using Handmade techniques to engage the community in process and materials.

Shared experinces and bringing the community together.

Learning through workshops and short courses.

The sharing of ideas and knowledge through making/discussion.

The use of materials that will connect/merge with the surroundings to add to Manchester's scenery/history. 

Leaving a making and designing mark on the city.

SPACES

Venues- Disused? abandoned? badly designed? well designed? historical buildings?

Regeneration? Doesn't necessarily mean economic. Link to age? To make something new again. Growth.

Urban landscape?

Industrial heritage?

Green space?

Lost spaces? eg. River Medlock/ Old Warehouses etc. Draw attention to these spaces.

Community regeneration.

'Manchester Zen?'-  The empty space in Manchester can be richer than filled space? Empty space can be a get away from the hustle and bustle of the city.

Suprise and the unknown within space.

Reacting to space through art/design.

We have decided to work as one big collective to pitch ideas for a festival as we feel we will gain more ideas and the variety of skills will make our ideas/ work more interesting. However as everyone is interested in different aspects of the festival, we will all pick one of the three areas to work towards then come together every week to share ideas and work to start to form an overall view/feel of the festival we are creating. We feel this will provide a much more organic process to the design of the festival. 

I have decided to work in the area of promotion and branding through making as I am interested in the ways in which making can provoke interest and creativeness in people who are not in contact with it everyday. I am also hoping to explore ways in which unfamiliar forms of 'promotion' can attract more people to the festival. I'm looking forward to discussing these ideas with like minded individuals within the group and making unconventional and creative promotional material using our varying skills.