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https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/564554357/customize - video.

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Semiotics Task. November 2020.

Exploring Interpellation.

After reading up on Louis Althusser’s theory of interpellation I started looking for the shoe I wanted to work with. I decided to go with a shoe or brand of shoe that I owned myself, and looked through the Dr Martens website where I came across these:

I absolutely loved this shoe, and came up with a list of words that came to my mind upon first glance at the boots;

Bold

Intimidating

Alternative

When I think of Dr Martens I automatically think back to the 1960s, as my Grandad wore them religiously throughout, and was still buying new pairs while I was growing up. This then dragged me away from the words I had originally thought of and I found myself thinking they were dated but vintage. 

Dr. Martens are an English shoe brand founded in 1947. They were worn by Skinheads in the 1960s and became popular among punks and goths in the 1980s, and then became a stamp of the grunge fashion culture in the 90s til present. 

I have my own pairs of Docs, and it's crazy to think that a shoe worn by my grandad 60 years ago is still as popular today as it was back then. My grandad was your typical lad in the 60s, very into rock music and motorbikes and that sort of thing, which is where the inspiration for this collage came from.

I then wanted to think about what Doc Martens ‘mean’ to the youth of today. Kids at school used to pick apart my ‘emo shoes’ and a few girls used to say they were scary, but over the last couple of years boots like these have come back into fashion. A shoe that used to symbolise alternative fashion has now become extremely mainstream - but I believe that this is because of the rise in popularity of other massive chunky shoes (Filas, Buffalos, etc.). 

I wear the boots because they are bold, and they make me feel powerful. There’s just something about a big pair of black boots that make you feel like you can take on anything. So I decided to create a sort of modern advertisement for the shoes since they're growing in popularity, keeping the word ‘powerful’ in mind.

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New Utopias: Final Product. November 2020.

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New Utopias: Research and Planning. November 2020.

Utopias

According to Google, the definition of a utopia is ‘an imagined community or society that possesses highly desirable or nearly perfect qualities for its citizens’. I wanted to think of my own utopia, what my ideal world would be. 

I created a mind map to explore what my personal utopia would be. One of the first things I thought about was connecting with people again. I miss being able to see my friends, I miss being able to see my family, and I think that the social restrictions of the coronavirus pandemic have been the hardest for me to get my head around (because being a 20 year old student I’m pretty happy with being paid to stay at home and not go to work). 

I typically thought about The Creation of Adam, a piece of art that I have always been a massive fan of despite its popularity. I have multiple pieces of clothing and other things that have this painting printed onto them, or parts of it.

However after exploring the hands and the idea of connection, I realised I was stuck and couldn’t think of where I could go with it because I rushed in and instantly went to the first thing that came into my mind. I stopped after drawing out the hands and had to think a bit more specifically. 

Event Poster

I searched type and image online and tried to find something to inspire me with this brief and came across this:

http://www.typetoken.net/publication/type-plus-unit-editions/

As I scrolled down I came across what appeared to be a club event poster.

Obviously I massively miss nights out, so decided to create my own event poster as if I could count down the days to another party or rave then I would be.

I noticed the inverted image, the simple yet bold colour scheme and the way the text takes up nearly the whole page in just a few words. I decided to have a look at some event posters for clubs/rave nights and find similarities between them. These are three that caught my eye.

I kept the image from typetoken in mind and looked at the similarities between all the images I had collected. They all:

have an image, usually of a person/people.

club name

time of event

ticket price

event name

simple colours

large, bold font

portrait

After scouring instagram for a while to find someone I could use as the ‘model’ in my poster, I found a picture of my friend Xenia which I wanted to work with.

I started, on procreate, with a black background and split the image of Xen in half horizontally and edited it with a recolouring effect available on procreate.

I then airbrushed the edge of Xenia’s shirt so it blended into the black and stated to work on the text. 

I used a drawing grid to make sire that all of my type was level and altered the kerning, tracking and leading of my text to bring the letters a bit closer together.

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Seeing beneath the surface - to amplify the invisible: Result and Evaluation. October 2020.

With a lack of resources and time available to me after realising I had to change my entire plan - I had to try and be as inventive as I could. 

During the phone call with my mum I told her all about the party me and my housemates had and we laughed at the stories I had to tell her about our drunken antics. I was extremely hungover, as I rarely drink and am an absolute baby the morning after a night out, hence the coffee, calling mammy and needing to sit somewhere that I could access fresh air.

I went with black and white to try and draw as much attention to the shadowed parts of the image as possible and so the strange colours of my kitchen weren't too distracting. The beer cans can clearly be seen, my coffee mug, the phone against my ear. The image is dark but I think the shadows bring attention to the main focus of the photo, which is me (without sounding like a TOTAL princess). This was not intentional, but I noticed that my phone was also almost dead central in the picture which I was very happy with as hopefully that draws more attention to the fact that I am in fact talking to someone.

I am not satisfied with the quality of the photo, but the best camera I had access to was my iPhone camera. If the quality wasn't awful before, it was after editing - no matter how hard I tried to keep it as clean and professional looking as possible. This was another setback when planning what I was going to do - my lake of equipment. I would have liked to use a more professional camera to capture something with better quality, I could have worked with the focus and depth, but there is not much you can do on an iPhone XR when it comes to photography tricks.

But to me this photo has captured a really important part of my day. It has been really difficult being away from my family since I moved into my house. My mum cares for my grandpa who is high risk of contracting covid so I have to be very careful with my visits back home to be sure I am not passing anything on. I’m also the oldest of 7 - and I miss my little brothers and sisters a lot. But having a call with my mum every morning is always something I look forward to, and I get to speak to my siblings, and catch up, and ask for advice, just like I would do every day if I was at home. It has also been scary moving away, I’m not far at all - but going out and being a proper adult who does her OWN dirty laundry for the first time in my life has been a bit terrifying, especially under the current circumstances.

Sometimes you just need a call with your mama.

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Seeing beneath the surface - to amplify the invisible: Planning and Experimentation. October 2020.

After thinking about the different relationships I have I decided to work with my relationship with my mum, as if I were to put any person with the word ‘security’ it would definitely be her.

I decided to text her and see how she thought our relationship was.

From what my mum said, it is evident that we have a very secure relationship. I decided I wanted to try and capture that bond in some kind of image, but due to suddenly having to isolate at home I wasn't able to go and see her. I was restricted with what I could do. I was talking to her on the phone about it while I was trying to figure out how I could communicate what I had originally planned.

I then looked down at myself and realised I was sat cross legged on my bedroom floor, fiddling with my shoelaces, chatting away to my mum and I felt like a child being soothed. That’s when I had the idea of recording a conversation, or screenshotting a FaceTime. She didn’t answer the first time, which was pretty annoying since I was in a rush to finish my planning and was already going to be late for work.

But even after she answered and I took a few screenshots (without telling her what I was up to or she would have been 100% posing thinking she looked ‘candid’) I thought they just didn't seem personal enough and I didn't see what I could do with something so boring? 

Having to isolate really threw a spanner into my plan. My original idea was to record how many times me and my mum physically touched during a visit to her house, and how that touch was given (hug, kiss, even a hand on her back while I’m trying to move behind her in her tiny kitchen) and incorporate them into a collage by either recreating them in my own photos using models or by drawing them all up and piecing them together. But before I had the chance to go over and conduct my little experiment I was told I couldn’t leave my house.

After lots of panic and asking my housemate (who is currently studying BA Fine Art) for ideas, I decided to ask her to take photos of me while I was on the phone to my mum the next morning. Me and my mum speak every morning without fail and have a chat before we get on with whatever we have planned for the day. I told her I wouldn't pose, I was just going to call her and act as I normally would and she could just follow me round and watch me as I talked. 

These are 3 of my favourites.

While I was on the phone we decided to move our recycling box into view - as it is currently full of beer cans and bottles from the kitchen party me and my housemates had for Halloween the night before. We realised it really looked like a ‘uni house’ with all of the remnants of alcohol scattered around. (We did clean this up shortly after these photos were taken!) 

Although the first image doesn’t have the recycling box in the background, I decided that was my favourite out of the three. My expression is clear, the fact I am on the phone is evident without covering any of my face, and I think it is angled nicely.

I wasn’t sure about the colour in the photo, as I think the contrasting colours of green and the awful red of the kitchen curtains, so I decided to see how the image looked in black and white instead. I tweaked smaller things like brightness, contrast and cropping later.

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Seeing beneath the surface - to amplify the invisible: Research. October 2020.

Random Word Generator

To give me something to work with for this project I used a random word generator. I made 3 lists of 5 random words I was given; the first list was ‘any word’, the second list was verbs and the final list was nouns. I then called my grandmother and asked her to pick between one and five three times (to give me a word from each list) and then finally between one and three (to give me my final word). I was left with security, so I made a mind map to break the word down and highlighted things that spoke to me personally when I thought of the word security.

After working on a mind map exploring the meanings for the word security I was most drawn to the idea of sibling relationships, the idea of unconditional love and loyalty, links between people, manifestation and the hormone oxytocin.

Oxytocin

Oxytocin is a hormone released by the posterior lobe of the pituitary gland.

Oxytocin is often referred to as the ‘cuddle’ or ‘love’ hormone, as it is secreted when you experience social bonding with someone, or when you are come into physical contact. The main actions of oxytocin are contractions of the womb during child birth and lactation. This then had me thinking about my own relationship with my mother.

Secure Attachments

When I was in secondary school I studied GCSE and A-Level psychology. We looked into attachment for 6 weeks, which is when I learned about secure attachments between infants and their primary caregivers. Children with a secure attachment to their parents show some signs of distress when they are not around, but usually soothe themselves in the knowledge that their parent will return. Children with a secure attachment feel protected by their caregivers and know that they will always return if they leave. 

My relationship with my mum is great. We have always been very close and despite not living with her anymore. It wasn’t until I sat back and thought about it that I realised how much I actually pester my mother. I call her at least twice a day just for a chat, or advice, or to gossip.

I also thought to my relationship with my 17 year old brother, who I speak to every day also. I looked into the psychology behind secure sibling relationships and found a theory put forward by Dr. Neufield. He claimed that there were 6 steps to building a secure relationship between siblings:

1. Being With: Engaging positively with each other. Talking, playing, smiling, hugging, etc.

2. Being Like: Finding things in common. Interests, hobbies, anything down to TV shows you both watch. (At the very least, they have their family in common.)

3. Being Together: After working through the first two steps, the siblings can now find a sense of loyalty and belonging with each other as they realise their similarities. This comes naturally if the siblings live together as they spend extended periods of time together in a home setting.

4. Being Significant: This step is the realisation that they are significant to one another, and they are a team and they matter to one another. This can be little things like going to your siblings sports game, or waving at them from across the canteen at school.

5. Being Loved: When there is a mutual understanding that the siblings do in fact have genuine love for each other. This might be comforting them when they are upset, genuine apologies after disagreements, or deep concern for the others’ feelings.

6. Being Known: This is when a sibling feels that trust and love and understanding and feel comfortable sharing personal information with each other. They are able to communicate and support each other.

This may not happen when the siblings are young - sometimes these steps can long out from childhood to adulthood. 

However I feel like I have been through all of these steps with my brother, as we are very honest with each other. He comes to me for advice when he can't go to our mum and dad, or he’ll call me when he’s in trouble because he trusts me to help without running off and telling on him.

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MoDiP Research Exercise - October 2020

MoDiP Research Exercise - October 2020

‘Promote’

According to Google, the definition of the word ‘promote’ is ‘to support or actively encourage [a venture, cause, etc.]’ or ‘give publicity to [a product, organisation, or venture] so as to increase sales or public awareness’. You can promote negative subjects as well as positive subjects - depending on what message you are trying to get across. 

Synonyms include assist, encourage, further, boost and advocate.

Antonyms include obstruct and impede.

The word derives from Latin, a mix between 'pro’ meaning ‘forward/onward’ and ‘movere’ meaning ‘to move’. ‘Promovere’ became ‘promot-’ (moved forward) which then eventually evolved into what we know as ‘promote’.

MoDiP Exploration: The Sodacoda Butt Enhancing Pants.

The Sodacoda butt enhancing pads stood out to me when I was exploring the MoDiP page mainly because, as a young woman, body image is a prominent issue for me and among my friends. Current beauty standards are pretty much unachievable naturally, so cosmetic and plastic surgery/procedures are becoming increasingly popular to help people alter their physical appearance. 

There are so many different body enhancement surgeries available to us today to give us bigger lips, bigger hips, bigger boobs, and a bigger bum (to give only a few examples). Not only can these procedures be expensive and addictive, but there is also chance for mistakes. You could experience irreversible change/damage to your body, you must take X amount of time to recover after most surgeries, and there is even a risk of death.

Sodacoda owner and founder Linh Nguyen states the following on the Sodacoda website: ‘My goal is to provide quality fashionable lingerie and to inspire others to be confident in who they are and love who they are.’

The company’s aim is to supply affordable and high quality shapewear made from 90% polyamide 10% elastane with pockets for silicone implants for men and women to help them achieve whatever look they desire without the risk of undergoing cosmetic surgery. Not only is it up to thousands of pounds cheaper, but completely safe and the look is easily reversible. The company advocates self-love and acceptance of your natural body but they also understand that not everyone has that high level of self esteem and need that extra boost of confidence. So they have come up with this alternative solution that doesn't involve any surgical procedures. Their message is ‘Embrace and Enhance your body’.

‘Foundation Garments’

Foundation garments are not just restricted to shapewear like Sodacoda’s. Women have been using them for years (corsets!) but according to Wikipedia Debenhams reported a 70% increase in shapewear sales between 2009-2013.

Kim Kardashian launched Skims in June 2019, her own shapewear brand that made $2 million within the first few minutes of the site going live. While Kim K launching a brand like this is slightly ironic, she has really thought about the practicality of her products. Seamless bras, high waisted pants, corsets, all in a range of colours and sizes for all.

Overall, I think that the Sodacoda butt enhancing pants are great. I am a huge advocate for self-acceptance and I believe that everyone should love themselves and others regardless of what their body looks like. But being a 20 year old woman in a world where I am constantly bombarded with edited images of social media influencers and styled celebrities, it can be very difficult at times. This is not just an issue for women. I have met many men that wish they were 6 inches taller, 3 inches broader, more muscular or wish they had thicker hair, a smaller belly. This is just as unachievable for most men as a flat stomach, tiny waist and a fat ass is for us girls. 

We'll never be able to soothe everyone when it comes to their insecurities. But we can offer them solutions like this for when they need them most. The problem is, trends come and go. Twiggy and Kylie Jenner could not be more physically different but the body standard among their generation is. Everyone is beautiful - and I think it’s great that people like Sodacoda are helping them feel it.

Normal Bodies

Due to the time I had to work on this project being quite short, I decided to create some really simple images that had a meaning to me after researching Sodacoda, their products and their beliefs as a company. I collected 3 completely unedited photos of me and two of my friends wearing what they chose as their ‘favourite sculpting underwear’ or just something that they felt flattered their body shape. I told them they could pose however they felt comfortable and the image would be 100% unedited. I reversed the camera so they could see themselves and set a 3 second timer before the picture was taken.

They both told me they were quite self conscious as they rarely took pictures of themselves that weren't just ‘selfies’. I asked why they felt that way and they started to point out different physical aspects of their own bodies that they ‘hated’. So I began to point out things about myself that I didn’t like and they instantly told me that I was beautiful and why I would let such insignificant things ruin my confidence. Needless to say I returned the same question back to them. 

Critical Reflection

What I am trying to promote with the images I have created is self love. Not one person on this planet looks exactly the same as another. There is such an enormous range of body types, different heights and widths and colours and shapes. Why have we decided that one is more attractive than another? Why do we refuse to show ourselves unedited in order to be accepted?

Sodacoda, as a company, promote self love as well as temporary enhancement. I wanted to go right back to the core and try and express that as much as you are free to enhance your appearance however you would like to - you shouldn’t have to.

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Self Portrait Task - October 2020

Self Portrait Task - October 2020

I decided to stay within my comfort zone while creating my self portrait. I stuck with block colours and a familiar technique, and used ProCreate to bring it all together.

I like my work to be as clean and as bold as possible. So I used the simple and limited colour scheme of black, white, grey and red to create an obvious contrast between the background and the subject; in this instance, ‘me’. I also drew the defining features of my portrait in solid black lines and tried to use as little detail as possible to stop the portrait from looking too busy.

Wanting to be a tattoo artist, I have tried over the last few years to develop my techniques and discover what styles I like to work with and I like to try and incorporate this into a lot of my designs to make them as personal as possible. I feel like this portrait is a good example of how I like to work, as I believe that you can do a lot with a little when it comes to design.