Wednesday, 2 March 2011

Ecobuild lectures, 1.03.11

1.  THE AGE OF UNREASON: THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CLIMATE CHANGE.
SUSAN GREENFIELD.

Susan Greenfield was talking mainly about neurology and i found some of the points she made could be really prevalent if applied to design, even although she was specking in a different area. Some particularly interesting points;

- Human greatest strength over other animals is their ability to learn.

- Growth of the brain (through cell connections) is driven by experience, this means that the world will have a personalised significance to you. This is something interesting to consider in many ways when related to design, for instance even if you are trying through design to represent something specific other people may not view it in that way - there are different levels at which people identify with design. It sort of raises the question of weather or not design should (in some cases) lead you to view things in a particular way. For instance if this is applied to my work - I have in many cases worked with the idea of trying to manipulate how people view things. I think this idea of people taking a different experience from something is a theme that is quite prevalent in my work, but I haven't before made the strong link to the brains' function here.

- Real Visions are what appeal to people - she used Martin Luther Kings speech "I have a dream...' to represent this point. She suggested that If you want to appeal to people and really capture their interest that you should encourage them to imagine real life through painting a positive picture rather than just telling them whats good and bad (she likened this approach to modern british politics). This is also something which obviously I will be trying to do with y portfolio, but on a deeper level I never really though of painting a clear picture as 'jumping into reality', I always imagined that if something was clear you could just understand it. I didn't really think about the process of understanding, this just proves why it is vital for a piece of work to paint a picture (of your proposal). Susan Greenfield wen ton to say that when you can imagine something clearly like a dream it allows deep reflection - which in turn means that the audience is more likely to engage with your work i guess.

I found this talk fascinating, I have never really been all that interested in psychology but I think this is now something that i'm going to follow up.


2. WHOSE COMMUNITY IS IT ANYWAY?
CHRIS BROWN, ANNA MINTON, IAN SINCLAIR, INDY JOHAR.


Indy Johar has the view that citizens should be allowed to invest in Local Areas.


Ian Sinclair was talking about he problems coming from root, in that when communities were built they were hermatic and didn't engage with the current residents or areas. 

Working on site at Ecobuild

I have found this project thoroughly rewarding it's been great to see a design move into something real in a matter of weeks. Working with the willow has been interesting and is a technique I may wish to persue - it's so easy and it's clean.

Being on site at Ecobuild has not only been a great experience in terms of building our own structure, but also in seeing how there types of shows operate from behind the scenes. Although this has made me slightly sceptical about the eco - part. The majority of these firms have come in using brand new, materials without thinking about their eco - friendliness - which is slightly ironic seeing as they are marketing themselves as eco firms.

The last few days when the whole structure began to come together were really good - a lot less panic - although by then most of us were too exhausted to panic I think. This build has by far been one of the best things I've had the chance to do at Chelsea - it's a shame there haven't been more projects like this - it was great to get the whole platform involved and you could tell everyone enjoyed it as a really good rapor developed amongst us. There are many photos of the process on our other blog (I sort of abandoned this for that the past few weeks)

Here are some photos taken by some of my friends, that relate more to me and my experience rather than publicity shoots which is sort of what i feel the other blog i'm doing shows.

Me plaiting the willow with Anton.

First test; outside on the parade ground - we realised the arches definitely needed twisting to gain strength. It was a good end to the week. 

Moving the structure - we did a lot of this, a least we know it's portable. 




Saturday Lunchtime!

I seem to have spent a lot of time on ladders in the past few weeks  - here I'm trying to weave the speedo into the arches. 

The knitting appears!!!!

It looks really beautiful from inside under the canopy. 

The graphics appeared on monday morning - started to look professional. 

Saturday, 26 February 2011

Peckham news and ecobuild.

It's been an incredibly busy week, but lots of exciting things have happened. I had the meeting with the council in Peckham, they really liked the design, but there is still loads to do. They explained the outline of the process we need to follow and said t would be great to get this up in time for the sumer art gallery in the car park and I totally agree. 

First we need to gather a focus group, they suggested approaching a variety of groups within Peckham; from young people through charities and Peckham space to the police streets, Peckham vision team and the council. Peckham Space is supposed to have links to UAL so I am trying to investigate this through Chelsea. The focus group is the first step, as they said it will give our project more power if it has backing from the local community and authorities which totally makes sense.\

I found the whole meeting experience great to find people within the council who were actually excited about public art ( I wasn't sure they existed). There are so many groups and links out there that they made us aware of which is great, hopefully some of them will help to support us through this project. 

Our enormous lorry and its measly contents at ecobuild. 

Second development is the ecobuild structure - see blog - http://platform-5.tumblr.com/- it's confusing writing 2 blogs at the moment. Yesterday was a huge development for this project as the components were delivered to site and we got to see the real site. It's really exciting to see an exhibition hall pretty much empty - I've only ever been into these places when they are packed with trade-stands and people. It looks quite daunting at the moment and there was not much action on site yesterday so I expect today will be much more busy. Currently there are builders, cranes and power tolls on site - I think it's great that we ( a bunch of students) are working alongside them creating a structure without the use of tools, thats the amazing thing about this whole project the low technology design that looks really beautiful. 

The view from our pavilion on Friday. 

The second tunnel goes up!

Sunday, 20 February 2011

echarrison.co.uk

I've built myself a website so now I have an online portfolio, it's not perfect yet but i'll get there.

Ecobuild 2011

Platform 5 are building a pavilion for Ecobuild 2011 from willow and speedo. This has been hard work and not even half way yet but it's really exciting to finally be able to build something 1:1 scale. I think everyone is really enjoying the building aspect of it - something we rarely get a chance to do at Chelsea unfortunately.

Friday afternoon we all braved the cold to assemble the initial structure  - we soon found where the weaknesses are!

I am actually in charge of publicising the build, and we have another blog running specifically for platform 5, which is http://platform-5.tumblr.com/. Here you can follow our daily activity as the show draws closer. 

Wednesday, 16 February 2011

Peckham news

We finally have a meeting with the council about Peckham and it sounds exciting, the cultural manager, planning advisor and streets solutions people will all be there. This also means I only have a few days to work out the budget and weather or not this is even possible. Now i'm starting to realise how easy everything is at uni , when you don't have to spend half the day calling suppliers. I need someone with inside knowledge!

I'm excited though it's taken an awfully long time to get to this point so I really hope it goes well.

Also my Ecobuild pass arrived today.

Thursday, 10 February 2011

2b proposal


Proposal: walk-through motion gallery space. Levels create suggested paths which lead you through views. Catching glimpses of 'live art' from obscured viewpoints. The vertical strips would be movable like the speedo tests. 


Pen and Ink  3D Figure and Ground drawing of proposed elements.