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What artist/designer influences you? Essay

As an artist and designer I am often inspired to create from sources outside of traditional art such as film, news and popular culture. Most significant is the influence I feel music has on my practice. Even the smallest section of music can inspire an entire project for me and I feel listening to and exploring music is a key part of my creative process. Due to this I aim to explore a wide range of music styles to find new and interesting sounds and lyrics that could spark thoughts and ideas. A key music artist I have found is Claire Boucher, known better by her stage name Grime. Boucher is a 28 year old Canadian singer, songwriter, music producer, music video director and artist as well as modelling for fashion brands/ magazines such as Vogue, DAZED and InStyle. I feel she influences me not just through the interesting an unique sounds she creates with her music but also with her own creative process and her views of what it means to her to be a women and artist.   Grimes is a character or persona with her own narrative created by Boucher as if creating a brand. In an interview for HUNGER she explains “I guess I engineered a pop star but I used myself… I created a brand which is Grimes. It was totally DIY.” Not feeling she could express herself fully as Claire she built this new character that could perform in front of an audience something she felt uncomfortable doing as herself. In many ways I feel this parallels with artists and designers. We create our work building our own artistic personas through our practice without having to let the world know us as an individual if we wish. We are able to use our work to speak for us in a way we couldn’t as just ourselves. In an interview with The Guardian she states “In my life, I’m a lot weirder than this,” she explains. “Grimes is more palatable for humans” She continues “I try to make it digestible to a degree… That’s what I’m interested in seeing. I create a thing that I wish existed in the world, versus my own full unabashed creative expression.” Again an idea that I feel would resonate with many artists. We create things we wish to see or communicate to the world and to do so must craft our work carefully to realise our intentions. This narrative of Grimes has developed over the years and grown into to further personas named the Art Angels which she explores in her latest album of the same name. In a documentary for FADER Boucher states "At first, I guess, there was just Grimes … I don't technically have control of her narrative anymore—she very much exists in pop culture now. Grimes as one person cannot represent more than a couple of ideas. That's why I started developing some of the other characters, like really abstract from who I am and how I am." This way of creating is interesting to me, exploring different areas you perhaps couldn’t as yourself allowing for her work to become more abstracted from her original personal style developing it over the years. This way of creating is one we don’t see within the music industry and is one of the many reasons I feel she has been such a success within pop culture. Boucher has made a conscious effort to create every aspect of the Grimes world herself from the music itself to directing and producing her music videos, illustrating her album art work etc. Despite her prolific list of titles that have grown out of her career as Grimes she never intended to be a musician growing up and instead found her love for creating music later on in life at the age of 22 stating in an interview at Coachella “It’s really weird that this is my job” . She then began rising in popularity over the course of a year for her unique style in music, art and fashion. Her music has a creative and experimental electro pop style that takes inspiration from an array of music styles such as R&B, Hip Hop, Electronica, Pop etc. I feel having such as wide range of sources to inspire her has been the key to her success allowing her to take inspiration from so many different areas and applying that to her own ideas to create new and interesting sounds that break the boundaries of pop. When creating her work Boucher states in her FADER documentary ”process is just as important as the final product” in which she discusses how other music producers will offer to create songs for her in which she always declines saying “It’s like me saying to you guys hey can I film this interview for you… you know just people offering to do your job all the time” She then goes on to explain how this is infuriating stating “I don’t just wanna be the face of this thing that’s been built, I wanna be the person who built it” This view is refreshing I feel showing her true passion for what she does as an artist not just as a performer in an industry which tends to push for fame over creativity in my opinion.  Her passion and work ethic is a huge inspiration to me as a designer and is an example to me of what a true artist should be.   She describes how she creates her work in an interview for ABC News explaining “ I care about texture, I care about trying different production techniques, I care about referencing songs that are not usually referenced in pop music” This process can be applied in art and design as well. I feel experimenting with different techniques and exploring new process is a key to the creative process further showing how Grimes is not just a performer but an artist. To create each song she creates and explores a concept through her music for example ‘Oblivion’ was created “using the ideas of masculine physical power and building something beautiful with that and sort of me(Grimes) being some sort of voyeuristic figure within this sort of world” again paralleling the process of an artist/designer and showing how her songs aren’t just a collection of well put together sounds or a catchy beat in order to gain fame and money but is an exploration of ideas that culminate in a piece that communicate these concepts and ideas to an audience. When creating her 2013 album ‘Visions’ Boucher was given a strict deadline to work to which resulted in her creating the majority of the album in isolation for three consecutive weeks. During this time she had a period of nine days without food, sleep or company with Boucher also blacking out her windows as she felt it more difficult to create music in day light. She describe the experience as "equally enjoyable and tortuous" and explained ” After nine days you have no stimulation, so your subconscious starts filling in the blanks ... I started to feel like I was channelling spirits. I was convinced my music was a gift from God. It was like I knew exactly what to do next, as if my songs were already written.” This extreme way of creating led to an album that won the Electronic Album of the Year award from Juno awards and shows how her dedication and passion for what she does has resulted in her success within the industry. Her latest album Art Angels has been described as “one of the most innovative and interesting records of the decade so far” by  The Guradian and has allowed her to achieve the 2016 Bazaar Women of the Year Award for Musician Of The Year 2016. Creating essentially every part of her latest album Art Angels was a decisions made in response to the “treatment she receives in the male-dominated world of recording studios”. Her role as a women working within her industry is another reason I find her so inspiring. In an interview with The Guardian she explains “It’s of interest that we never hear anything where no men were involved but we hear things where no women were involved. [My album] was mixed and mastered by a man. There’s one mastering engineer who is a female, Emily Lazar. I don’t know any female mixers,” she says. “The whole record was produced, engineered, written, performed by a woman, which is pretty rare. I don’t know if I ever heard a record like that, fully, with vocals on and stuff.” Grimes is paving the way for women in music and showing that it isn’t just the men that can produce and use such elaborate technology. In her interview with HUNGER she discusses her experiences stating “It was difficult to buy a microphone ‘cause the guy at the store was laughing at me and wouldn’t take me seriously … people just seem to assume that I’m really an airhead” her determination to continue to create despite the industry she is part of suggesting it isn’t her place is truly inspiring and is one of the many reasons she is such a key artist within the music industry. There are many reasons I take inspiration from Grimes and I intend to continue to do so throughout my time as an artist/designer as well as continuing to explore music as a source of inspiration for my work as I feel taking inspiration from varying sources is an integral part of being successful within the art industry.

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YOUTH Project Final Exhibition (A4 sketchbook pages)

Here are some examples of how I planned and executed setting up my exhibition space for my YOUTH Project.

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YOUTH. Project - Newspaper/Zine Final Outcome. (A3 Newspaper Print)

The aim of this project was to explore the impact media and pop culture has on youth and how views and perceptions are perhaps formed and manipulated by this, broadening my own understanding and awareness of these issues. When creating a final piece I used the work I produced to create a zine to raise awareness of these issues for the viewer which will be primarily aimed at young people, encouraging them to look more closely at and question the issues they may face to inform not condescend.When creating the zine, I considered carefully which printing method I should use and decided that my zine would be effective printed as a newspaper as I felt this was an interesting  juxtaposiotion as the subject and design of my work is more modern. I also used a colour scheme throughout to tie the work together reflecting the "millennial pink" trend. The zine was created using Adobe Indesign and printed with The Newspaper Club.

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YOUTH. Project - Routine shoot final image. (A3 Photo Print)

This shoot was inspired by beauty vloggers morning routine videos. My intention for this shoot was to convey the idea that youth are trapped in a routine and the model within the shoot representing young people trying to break from this routine. The shoot was inspired by contextual artists Eliška Kyselková and Arvida Byström. Taking inspiration from their use of colour and Bystrom’s nonchalant expressions, I developed this in my own shoot to convey my concept. I feel this facial expression creates a sense that the model is doing these actions automatically reinforcing the idea of a lack of freedom. 

Research -  

http://hannahdolphinart.tumblr.com/post/141595022723/unit-13-shoot-1-routine-edits-my

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YOUTH. Project - Scanography development/experimentation. (A5 Photo)

For this shoot I wanted to portray how young people change who they are on social media to appear more attractive and likeable and how this also distorts our own perceptions. This was created by taking edited images and dragging them across the scanner to distort the original image.

Contextual Research - http://hannahdolphinart.tumblr.com/post/144411332493/unit-13-shoot-4-artist-research

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YOUTH. Project - Liquid Light Experimentation (A4 Print)

I produced this liquid light experimentation/development to create a distorted image to convey young people's growing struggles with mental health and the feeling of confusion and being lost that many young people face. This was created in the dark room experimenting with different photo developing techniques to develop my initial ‘Keep ‘em Perplexed’ shoot.

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YOUTH. Project - Self image polaroids.

A creative study exploring young people's thoughts on their own self image. Every person asked gave a negative response. 

Contextual Research - 

http://hannahdolphinart.tumblr.com/post/144053937088/unit-13-shoot-3-development-research

http://hannahdolphinart.tumblr.com/post/143757175598/unit-13-shoot-3-self-image-artist

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Music Branding - Local Heavens Visions EP album artwork. 

This was created for a music branding project. I created the work for my friends band and began the project with collecting information from her about what she wanted as the client as well as listening to her music so I could reflect this visually within the design. I created several potential outcomes and this was the one selected as the most successful outcome. 

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Music Branding - Local Heavens tour poster design. (A3 Print)

Poster design as a development to the original album artwork to show example how this could be used for advertising. This was created using Adobe Photoshop.

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Music Branding - Local Heavens merchandise design.

Mock up designs for potential merchandise to further develop branding work. This work was created using Adobe Photoshop.

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Transform Project - Final app design. ( Digital work )

The app is aimed at a teenage/young adult audience. It was designed to help find the best fashion deals and to find the customers favourite stores in the area easier like a sort of fashion sat nav. It also includes features such as a shopping list and fashion recommendations based on the customer's list, previous purchases and favourite stores. This work was created using Adobe Photoshop.

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Transform Project - scanned sketchbook examples. ( A4 Sketchbook Pages)

Here are some examples of sketchbook pages documenting ideas and process when creating work for my Transform project.

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‘Antichrist’ Stop Motion for Unit 7 - An integrated approach to time based problem solving. (Duration 1:19)

For this final piece I created a music video for ‘Antichrist’ by The 1975 using the techniques I had learnt from creating GIF files and a stop motion animation throughout Unit 7.  To create my animation I first collected my raw images by taking a range off shoots in the studio as well as some landscape and outdoor shots. I then batch edited all my images in Photoshop, re-sized all the images and made them all black and white. I also adjusted the levels to create a higher contrast within the images. I next made some of the images into GIF files which made editing in Adobe Premiere as this helped make some of the moving images smoother. I finally imported all the needed files into premiere and edited them together making sure that the animation matched the songs timing. The video was intended to convey emotion.

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Journey project - DADA inspired collages.  (A5 & A4 collages)

This project was to collect information on a journey taken and create work exploring this journey visually. These collages were inspred by the DADA movement as well as the work of Melinda Tidwell and were created using various found materials.

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Journey project - Collaged monoprint of journey photograph. (A4 print on cartridge paper)

This mono print was created using an image taken on my journey which I then developed by creating a collage that I then scanned and copied onto the original print to add more depth to the initial piece.

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Life drawing class outcome. (A3 sketch on cartridge paper)

This was created as part of a life drawing class by drawing the model without looking at the page.

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Future Forecast Project - New planet advertisement / Valerian poster. (A3 print)

My future forecast project was based on the concept of a new planet being discovered as Earth becomes increasingly uninhabitable, however only the social elite can afford the trip to space and lower classes are left behind on our dying planet. The work created follows the story of a group of outcasts trying to survive. My final outcome was an exhibition display set up as if it were placed in a museum on the new planet, of artifacts found left behind by the group after they had gone. 

Contextual Research - 

http://hannahdolphinart.tumblr.com/post/137386968463/unit-12-future-forecast-posters-digital 

http://hannahdolphinart.tumblr.com/post/137386383898/unit-12-future-forecast-initial-contextual