Following feedback from my tutorial group I decided to pursue a line of enquiry that examines notions of situatedness and personhood as they arise in an ‘objective’ tech-orientated world.
Positions Through Iterating 2.1
Positions Through Iterating 1.2
My choice of snippet from Unit 1 was a 3D pot that I had rendered in Cinema 4D as part of U1: Methods of Contextualising. I went on to experiment further with texture maps in C4D, using this feature in combination with my illustrative practice to explore questions of materiality in digital 3D spaces.
Positions Through Iterating 1.1
Early Experiments (Searching for Content). Using Cinema 4D I created objects with a mirrored texture. I placed these objects in an environment that featured a HDRI map creating using on a photograph of a location in Hackney. It was interesting to see how each shape distorted the image. Ultimately I found this route of enquiry to be lacking in sufficient depth for 100 iterations and abandoned it.
Methods of Translating / Iterating Continued…
Worried About Kim (2022)
44 pages, 215mm x 276mm / Perfect Bound with Debossed Mirror Card Cover / Laser Printed on 120gsm High -Gloss Paper / Edition of 10.
“One’s image is often regarded in terms of uniqueness, a representation of ourselves that is a combination of our singular biology and personal sartorial choices. In contrast, online spaces, as described by Oliver Laric in his ongoing series Versions, have become more and more defined by a creativity of iteration.
In this world of endless remixing, where a person’s personhood can be infinitely modified and meme-ified by a vast faceless public, what happens to one’s image when it is released into the wild?”
Methods of Investigating 4.3
Further Responses.
Methods of Investigating 4.2
More Responses to the Brief
Reflections of Tutorial 22/02
The feedback from our tutorial was mostly positive. The other group felt we had engaged with the project in an open-ended manner, exploring many avenues before settling on one direction. They said we have done a good job at highlighting the underlying issue that the spikes were designed to solve, and how they do not really do so at all. They suggested that we could perhaps look at ways in which we could further the project to talk directly to people without housing directly in the future.
Methods of Contextualising 2.1
Our developed project is based around concepts of interactivity and engagement. The public is invited to use an online calculator which places the spikes in a monetary context (understandable by all). By counting the number of spikes at a given location, users can customise the posters to show how much a business has spent on spikes compared to what said money could have done to help the homeless community. A downloadable origami guide shows how to create paper cones which can be used to cover the spikes and reveal their presence to passers-by.
Methods of Contextualising 1.2
Our initial iterations…
Methods of Contextualising 1.1
From our visit to the V&A we chose three objects, before narrowing our choice down to :
Architectural Spikes, Cast Electropolished Steel, Manufactured by Kent Stainless Ltd, Wexford, Ireland, 2014.
My Position:
David
1. Discuss how each group member understands this object based on their individual positions (refer again to the definition to the right). How do your positions differ from each others’? From the curators’? From the maker’s?
Coming from a country with a serious housing crisis, one that has made a predatory for-profit market from homelessness, my position relative to this object is defined by a certain level of disgust. Having had loved-ones experience homelessness (and let us be clear, that is what these spikes are designed to prevent), I find it hard to divorce the object from its context in the world outside of the museum.
I feel the curators at he V&A did a good job at presenting the object in a factual manner which gave context without casting judgement. Seeing the object presented in such an isolated manner let me consider its design more carefully. This was helpful for thinking of ways to recontextualize it.
I found Chinhwa’s position to be interesting and I liked the way she pulled back the lens on the object, casting it in terms of public and private space. I agree with a lot of what she said, and also find the increasing regulation of public spaces to be something worth examining. I feel such a trend underlines the object, its design, and its deployment, which can be conveyed in terms of market value over public need. This can be see in the position of the maker (‘if they don’t do it, someone else will), and the people the item affects who have no comparable value to the market.
2. What questions about this object and its contexts could you explore further as a group?
I would like to think of ways to subvert the object, both to parody it and to reverse its purpose. As a simple object, I feel it can easily be re-made and recontextualised into something more positive. I propose…
- Making a foam cushion replica of the spikes and block, that can be placed over the original spikes allowing people to sit comfortably.
- Public intervention by putting lots of spikes over a large area (basically reversing the way it works in real life).