What If... Part 1

For the next part of the brief we had to develop some boards that would clearly state our intention and where our ideas had come from to help tackle the problem. Once the boards were done we then had t present them to other groups in order to get some feedback on what other people thought of our idea.

What we learned from these crits was very useful, we realised that instead of focusing on the problem and the best way to tackle it we had all become a little too focused on what they final resolution and were becoming to ambitious with it. We needed to reign it in a little bit and focus more on tackling the problem in the most effective way and if we were going to hold an event in a hypothetical situation we had to make sure that it could really happen so therefore we had to make sure the audience would receive it well and that the point of the event was very clear and not just some graffiti event. It needed to have a purpose.

Another problem was that in a way we seemed to be promoting the idea of graffiti and that it is acceptable, which to a certain extent we were but it was coming across that we wanted it in a controlled manner, this was a problem we were seriously going to have to tackle, because as we later realised youths may find graffiti 'fun' and 'cool' but adults might not, we needed to research this further.

We needed to make it clear that the event was more of a sideline to getting the youths that are interested in graffiti, just generally more interested in art. We wanted it to be a stepping stone into channeling their creativity into some more successful, and would later possibly help them build a career for themselves.

What If... Brief

With this brief we had to take 100 photographs that we broke down into different catagories across a studio session.

Below shows examples of my photographs.

We then had to come up with a theme that related to our photographs. I cam up with urban movement for mine. We were then split into groups with other peoples themes that related to our own. In my group we had:

Urban Movement

Urban Culture

Relationships

Middle East

British

Animal, Mineral or Vegetable.

From this we then had to decipher a running theme - after some discussion we settles on ‘Urban decay’ this encompassed everything we wanted to look are. We then went off and started researching - looking at crime statistics, vandalism and criminal date for Leeds. While researching this I came across the worst affected areas in Leeds suffering from vandalism, graffiti and crime.

We had a group discussion about what we wanted to tackle and established we wanted whatever our solution would be to be aimed at 12-16 year olds and tackling graffiti and vandalism, we also decided to focus on one o the worst affected areas because Leeds is such a big city that it would be too hard to come up with something to cure each area - instead if we focused on one and established something that would work there then maybe me it transferrable to different areas so that we take on each area one at a time. This would give it a more personal appeal and we could cater each event to the local communities needs. We decided that the area we would look at was Little London, this was in easy walking distance for us to collect research and establish an event theoretically.

Below shows some of my early research:

Once we worked out the area we wanted to base our project on we went to the Little London and took pictures of the place too see how bad it actually is. When we were looking around there was nobody there, it just seemed desolate and everyone had just decided to stay inside. I felt constantly on edge while walking around and the general surroundings made you feel so depressed. the only of splashes of colour round the place was the random graffiti dotted on walls, doors and lamps. Below show a few photographs taken from around the area.

After we looked at the area we decided to design a questionnaire to ask people in Little London and around it to establish what they though about vandalism and what they thought about graffiti. This meant that we could see what the key problems were and work around them to generate a solution. I also rang the people at Little Londons’ Action Community Center to see what their thoughts on the idea of holding a graffiti workshop event would be and whether they thought the area/community would benefit from it and whether people would actually show up. Below show examples of the questionnaire and what happened in the phone conversation.

Once we had done this and reconvened. We had established our Problem, evidence and what we intended to do for our crit on friday.

The Problem:

Vandalism in Leeds - Specifically Little London

The Evidence:

Research related to statistics, and crimes.

What we intend to do:

An event. graffiti workshops.

Visual Language - Photography

With this weeks visual language we were looking at taking photographs to establish the relation of format and frame. We were split into two's and had to wander around college and look for anything circular. We had to set some rules so that the photographs would have some consistency, we decided to have the circle set in the bottom left hand corner. Below are a set of 25 images that i chose to be the best.

Visual Language

Today we were looking at physically making the contrasting colour. We had to collect 1 sheet of coloured paper for each colour and cut out a 10x10 square for each. We then had to cut out more squares and then cut them into 5x5, We then placed these on a white piece of paper so as to not distract from the other colours as we layered them up. We were then told to place specific squares on each square and see the reaction. Within this session we took a lot of photographs so what i have done is take 10 examples from each part of the session and discuss them briefly.
Original stack of paper. Just showing what we had to do.
the blue and red show contrast while the green and red show complimentary - this shows a secondary with a primary, primary colour will always stand out and if you get two primarys (red and blue) then they will fight.
Nothing happens with these colours they are completely flat as there is no contraast.
With this you'd expect to see the colours fight which they do a bit but the black controls them so it stops the colours fighting and bouncing.
With the yellow on black the yellow holds down and makes it flatter. Wherteas with black on yellow makes the yellow look brighter.
This image shows neutrality, the squares aren't bouncing. Colours look flat.
With this the red looks darker and the orange warms up.
The orange begins to look lighter because of the yellow sqaure.
Shows neutrality, white doesn't bring or take anything away.

The black makes it looks like its being sucked down with the green just surrounding it.

After this we then cut out arrows and did a similar exercise but this time looking more at associations. I have chosen 5 of the images that i think were best.

These are the set of arrows that i cut out in different sizes and shapes to help with variation.
the red on black makes the red appear darker and gives a sense of danger.
The red on yellow shows neautrality and doesn't look too dark. gives a sort of pleasing image.
This looks like a warning sign with the association of red and white.
Here we were trying out what a lot of colour on another would do to one another, here it shows that the colours rally fight against one another because of the fact they are two primaries.