Some things I have found..

While looking over my old laptop, I cam across a few nice photos from my travels this summer

starting from the bottom up...

1. a clock in berlin, we arrived at 5.15 am!

2. The best library in Amsterdam, with pianos, a cafe and all free internet!

3.The amazing reichstag

4. A section of the Berlin wall, and a man who placed himself there

5. just because, i don't understand what or why this exists

6. truth

7. waiting for a train to Vienna

8, 9 and 10 Spying in Vienna in a park

11. Leaving the Park

12 Budapest, St Steven's Day and 25 mins fireworks!

14. stairs

15. more stairs

16. Because Spa gave an old lady a ballon!

17. tram stop

18. hours later we reached the top!

The end has no end....

We presented our final pieces on Friday, in what i thought was a really good way of getting valuable feedback from both the tutor and our peers. It was also a really good way of getting other people, who maybe don't usually speak up, get involved! I now know that I need to keep working with my idea, but it just needs to be presented in a different 'vehicle', and perhaps a new order. Anyway here it is, done and by no means dusted!

Final stage....but it's not what's going in the portfolio!

I decided to use the idea of language within communication, as a starting point. I focused on how we tend to abbreviate our text messages, and wanted to explore if the same type of language could be used and be understood if it were spoken or reiterated through another medium.

I took a text that I had that was written in abbreviations and played it through the speaking feature of my computer. The result, incomprehensible! It sounded like a totally different language. This made me start to think about other ways of translating the same information, but using a different format.

Experimenting with the abbreviated words to translate into braille, morse code, the written sound of morse code and the actual sounds recored. I find out if abbreviated words can only be understood if they are written visually. While braille and morse code are both 'visual' languages, they are interpreted using touch and hearing.

Crit and Development

After possibly the most unhelpful feedback session, where the general advice was, "yeah, let's see ehat happens on friday", I went home feeling like the whole day had been a waste of time and i was destined to fail! However, I wasn't about to give up! So the next day I went to the library, took out sooo many books , that i gained the nickname, "booky" and spent Tues evening reading about semiotics., which I'm now really interested in learning more about!

From all this research, I learnt that to think about Mapping, in a totally different way and I was able to expand on my idea of communication, but push it further towards looking at how we communicate and the language we use. Above are some bits and pieces from my research....Again, if anyone knows why some of my images are not going the right way, can you let me know!

Mapping....so far

So far I've been doing bits of research and have settled on the idea of communication, and the ways that we talk to each other. Phone calls, emails, social networking and text messages, all allow us to communicate with one another, but I want to show which we use more of and how often. Also....the image wont turn round the right way, sorry

The Fruits of my Level 2 GDC...

TED talks are amazing, and were a starting point for a short project we were recently given. Looking back, I feel that is was more about how you present, not what you present. Anyway, I watched this video with Stefan Sagmeister which made me think about Happiness and the small things that keep us smiling. I asked a load of people what kept them happy and made it into a video. I was received reasonably well, but i think in order for it to have been more successful, I would have liked it to be filmed in a different way, perhaps involving the people that gave me the info. I had a fair amount of research, which wasn't fully present in the final video.

High Definition at the British Institute..

I got to Film A lecture at The British Institute as part of the crew, It was really good to be able to be given the freedom to be left alone with the camera for the whole thing! It was for Christopher Lloyd, who's book, 'What An Earth Evolved' explores the 100 species that changed the world. A great lecture and a lovely guy! For more info see ....http://whatonearthevolved.com/

Summer Time and the livings easy

So Summer happened and I got distracted for a while. A few things of productivity that happened were...

1. I helped the lovely guys at www.itsnicethat.com pack up and ship out their second

magazine

2. I did alot of Work experience...mostly at Newspapers (The Mail on Sunday and The Sunday Times, Style Magazine). Not only did I learn that Newspaper Layout is possibly the most mundane line of work known to man, I know also know that this is a not a future career option that i will be taking up! But on the plus side, at least I found this out sooner rather than later!

Printed

A few of the photo's that i had previously posted from a collaborative photo shoot, made their way into our university magazine, Less Common More Sense. The full online issue can be found at http://issuu.com/wearelesscommon/docs/lcms16