The Arches of London

The start of our new project 'The Recorder', we walked alond and under the bridges of South Bermondsey to London Bridge recording areas and spaces that we found interesting. It was difficult walking in a large group to focus on places i liked, so i am going back there tomorrow. I tryed not to be too snap happy, so here are a select few. I noticed I was drawn towards the areas that were more dirty and grotty, I might incorporate this into my project.

Film Project

So, over the last four weeks we have been given a task to create a film project within our group using spaces and interpretations. I have found this project really interesting. There have been many advantages and disadvantages of working in such a large group however I think overall it has brought our group closer together. Attending regular meetings and discussions has meant that we were able to establish what was working and what wasn’t. I really enjoyed working with new people within my group, because I am a person with quite an big personality it was good to involve myself with other people who had the same ambitions and inspirations as I do.

I found it difficult to write regularly in this blog because I am normally the kind of person to write in a diary by hand. So this is the basic story outline, our group is remaking little red riding hood & she's got schizophrenia, the wolf is blind and the wood cutter has claustrophobia... so that's distorting perception of spaces etc.

The story's been split into 4 sections:

Group 1. Beginning - Journey in the city

Group 2. Middle - Journey in the forest

Group 3. Middle - the flat scene (Grandmas)

Group 4. End - Showing her snap back to reality

In the first week I helped film some of the journey sequence with Zoe and Anoah for the little red riding hood, and found it very embarrassing walking down Piccadilly circus in a bright red riding hood cape. It was good because we made sure that the whole group had something to contribute to the film process. When everyone had there clips and filming, it was just the fact of putting it together and making it flow! The regular meetings with the tutors was really helpful because we got constructive feedback that we could then go away and change. Today was the final day of editing; Zoe, Donneh, Anoah, Leah and myself sorted out the music and sound effects to match the film sequence. It was something that the whole group couldn’t be involved but we will get feedback tomorrow from the whole group.

Dead Photos

The other week I visited the Atlas Gallery in Baker Street. The exhibition was called ‘Polaroid Expired 09.10.09’ for the end of Polaroid cameras, above are a few interesting photos I came across.

Cardboard Love

One of the most interesting things I have learnt from this project is that I absolutely detest the smell of cardboard. Something that looks so harmless and functional actually has an evil side to it. You probably think I’m being over dramatic, but lugging round industrial size pieces of card on the rush-hour train and bus just really doesn’t tickle my fancy. Not forgetting being completely wrapped up in the stuff, so that I leave my project site with the smell of dampness and a hint of curry.

However with all the negatives of card in general put to one side, our new project that was set the other week was a really good task! We had to explore interesting areas that were normally disregarded, and then adapting and designing a structure to fit within the site. After building our structure we moved onto the more complicated stuff...

Believe it or not, I’m a bit of a maths geek at heart. I love having something to solve and figure out and then the final result being a simple right or wrong answer. Although I never really paid much attention during maths classes all those years ago, I can only thank god that I was listening to Mr Gilbert blabber on about Pythagoras’s theorem, because despite me thinking at the time ‘when on EARTH would I ever need this in my life?’, I applied it to my plan, section and elevation work! The process of angles and measurements was very long winded and required patience, and our structure was fairly complicated especially when it was half destroyed during out day of measuring it!

I’m still working on our axonometric drawings at the moment, so I’ve got quite a bit more to go. Thanks for reading my first ever blog! I’m sure I’ll keep you posted on my recent activities and projects!