Houses and Shops

My self directed study at uni is about priorities. Looking at how different people have different priorities and how they can change throughout the hour, day, month, year etc. I started looking at priorities in the environment, first looking at how people organise their front gardens and then I had a look at how shops prioritise the front of their business. I made another book.

Protest

On the 10th November, I joined the student protest in London, against the raise in tuition fees. I made a book about it.

Mushroom type

Using the mushrooms natural reproduction method I decided to try and create a typeface. I first cut out a stencil of the alphabet in both upper and lower case and then also cut out the words 'Hortus, Sylva, Silva' the latin translation for the word garden. I then lay mushrooms over the stencil and left them for a day. The outcome was pretty incredible and worked really well. I made a poster to show the results.

(The lines across the text are from InDesign being gay.)

Super macro love

So this was a pretty exciting discovery. Taking the regular lens of my digital SLR and turning it round makes it work as a super macro lens. Perfect for photographing plants for my project! It's pretty hard to get used to because you have to guess focus and hold the lens on yourself and you can't see anything through the view finder really. But with a bit of experimenting I eventually got the hang of it.

These are just some bits of a flower I was analysing for my project.

Flowers - Day Five

Ok so my internet was down because we didn't pay our bill but these photos are from the fifth (last) day of this little experiment.

Hanging flowers remain the same.

As do the cupboard ones. They're just getting more and more crispy.

The rice flowers have lost a lot of shape and are getting quite delicate to touch but the colour is still fresh.

The flower that was once purple and white is now orange and very moldy. The rest of the flowers that have been pressed are just flat versions of their former selves.

These are the berries I picked a few days ago. I just left them in my room while I decided what to do with them. They've gone all wrinkly like a week old balloon.

Flowers - Day Four

Slowly getting there, the leaves and petals on some of the flowers have wilted away but others still look fresh

Still getting crispy but the more delicate flowers are still just floppy

Most of the flowers from the rice still look fresh too. Just the white ones are looking sad.

Not much change since yesterday for the pressed flowers. They're not getting much flatter, nor loosing anymore colouring. I might try putting a new sheet of kitchen towel on them so see if it encourages any more colouring out.

I think the mushrooms might be the way forward with this project.

Day Three - Flowers

Hanging flowers are still pretty much the same, just a bit more floppy.

Dried flowers are getting there. The leaves are drying quickest and the mushroom is amazing!

Rice ones are still really fresh but the rice has gone a bit sticky!

Pressed flowers have seen the most change but they're still not dry.

Work

Here's the final outcome for my most recent uni project. The brief was about connections. I based my project around the connection of information, originally it started off with historical information but I ended up basing it on the recent government budget cuts to keep it open to a wider audience.

The book is made from paper and acetate. The idea is that on each page you can read a new piece of information and as you read through, they all layer up to show their connections.

I had a massive printer malfunction a few days before hand in so the book didn't turn out the size or length I wanted but I think it still works. Just a shame it really doesn't represent 4 weeks worth of work. Here are a few pages from it...