FOUNDATION DIPLOMA IN ART, DESIGN AND MEDIA
18-27
OCTOBER
INDEPENDANT STUDY TASK 1
The Art of Watchmaking
The swiss watch is a marvel of mechanical engineering with over 200 parts working flawlessly together, driven by merely a spring. The men and women who build and service these machines are artists/designers blending science and design to create masterpieces. They understand the interplay between the materials used to make timepieces and have a mastered precision of movement and though needed to create an object that is a reflection of the care and attention given to create it a piece of living art, that is after all greater than the sum of its parts.
Mark Jones, Instructor: “The first time I took that loop and I put it on, it was like entering another place and I really caught my attention, all the detail inside the watches. People who work on these watches are very passionate and the people who designed them had incredible ideas”.
To be a watchmaker, you need patience, patience and patience. You need to have skills such as dexterity, have analytical abilities, figure out problems. You also need be able to memorise where parts go so you can put them back in the proper place. After you start to work on a watch, you start to develop these skills, dexterity improves. So, students with very little experience can be taught how to make a watch.
In recent years, the Swiss watch industry has experienced a renaissance of sales in the US of fine mechanical watches. These watches are designed to be handed down from generation to generation, so watchmakers need the skilled technician to service and maintain these timepieces for years to come.
Workshop (How do they document/present their work?):
The workshop itself is very well lit and organised. Library atmosphere; clean, quiet, ability to focus. The watchmaker sits at a workbench that is high, closer to eyes. It is constructed to make the everyday tasks easier, to keep the arms and hands steady. All the specialised tools, lubricants and any parts needed are close at hand. Watchmakers wear a loop – a magnifying eyepiece that enables them to see more clearly the intricate internal workings of the watch called the movement. Using tweezers, small clamps, screwdrivers and other specialised tools, the watchmaker disassembles, cleans, lubricates, reassembles and recalibrates the timepiece; every gear, every spring is placed with careful precision.
Sherrilyn J. Posey, Watchmaker: “Watchmaking is not for everybody. It takes time and commitment. The parts are so little and tiny that everything has to be exact”.
I chose to research watchmaking and watch designing as a way of looking into the creative processes of these designers, as well as how some brands have become world-renowned.
My main focus was on the watchmaking technique, as the process of actually putting a watch together is a design in itself. Though this may differ from the brief task slightly as I have not looked into any one designer specifically, I have managed to answer all the questions in the sincerest way. The idea was to find out how design professionals use the design process, and watchmakers as a group, in my opinion, are design professionals, with their own way of working through this process.
I decided my research needed a stimulus so the first, most obvious choice for me, was the Rolex watch, which is the watch I will be focusing on. The design here is not only the Rolex brand aesthetic, but the actual mechanism of the 'Swiss watch' that makes it up.
The Project
Something that FITS TO THE BODY
For AN ORGANISATION
A promotional campaign to raise awareness for the charity, "WasteAid UK" using bins made in the form of disfigured letters. The holes enable the public to interact with the installation and this is where the design aspect of the project overrides the fine art-sculptural take on the brief. The design lies in three questions:
1. How well does the installation promote the message of the charity?
2. How does the design allow the public to interact with the installation?
3. What happens to the installation after the
duration of the promotion?
STatement of Intent
My brief was quite confusing to start off with. Mind-mapping both parts of the brief with an aspect of design that I was interested in - Architecture, was a great way to space out all my ideas and experiment with the most interesting ones.
Looking at all these, it was obvious I wanted to design some sort of installation, be that sculptural or quite architectural; either Hepworth-inspired or Lloyd Wright. Trying to steer away from fine art as much as I could, as I wanted to get used to the 'design' way of working and thinking - i.e. working for a client and sticking to the brief.
At first, my ideas were very broad and very vague... there needed to be a clear motive. My thought process was: I knew I wanted a very worthwhile message to be given by the installation, and so the organisation had to be a charity. I then thought to myself: what is the biggest issue in the world right now? - CLIMATE CHANGE. I focused a lot of my ideas trying to come up with a way of promoting this issue to the world. I wasn't thinking about specific charities just yet, I knew I had to figure out what was it I actually wanted to design and use that to link it to a charity.
I almost drew to the conclusion that I wanted to make a ironic trophies/awards for a trophy stand and have them located in parts of the world where this issue was most prevalent, e.g. the melting glaciers in Antarctica, or the deforestation in the Amazon Rainforest. Here is an example:
The main idea was that the trophy stands would be placed in locations where these problems were most common, but also where there would be a lot of human footfall, as they need to be noticed. the trophies would say things like "Congratulations for 152 cubic km of ice lost in Antarctica between 2002 and 2005 alone!"...it's a play on receiving an applaud for something which is so horrible, and allowing the person to feel like they have are alone responsible, when the message is that human activity is a key player in the changes in global warming in recent years.
However, this idea went down the drain. Although there was a motive, the design was impractical. where would I find these locations, and how would the message spread across the world even if someone does come across these award stands.
I then decided I needed to go back to basics - I had to do some artist/design research. I looked into the sculptures of Barbara Hepworth and the Urban Light installation by artist Chris Burden; I researched their purpose and the motive behind their locations.
Barbara Hepworth
Dame Jocelyn Barbara Hepworth was an English painter and sculptor, perhaps one of Britain's most influential artists. Her work exemplifies Modernism and in particular modern sculpture. She was one of the few female artists of her generation to achieve international prominence. Along with artists such as Ben Nicholson and Naum Gabo, Hepworth was a leading figure in the colony of artists who resided in St Ives during the Second World War.
Hepworth was especially active within, and on behalf of, the modernist artistic community in St Ives during its period of post-war international prominence. Her experience of the Cornish landscape was acknowledged in her choice of titles. In a wider context, Hepworth also represented a link with pre-war ideals in a climate of social and physical reconstruction; this was exemplified by her two sculptures for the South Bank site of the Festival of Britain (1951). Public commissions and greater demand encouraged her to employ assistants for preliminary work - including Denis Mitchell and Dicon Nance - and to produce bronze editions.
Hepworth lived in Trewyn Studios in St Ives from 1949 until her death in 1975. She said that "Finding Trewyn Studio was sort of magic. Here was a studio, a yard, and garden where I could work in open air and space." St Ives had become a refuge for many artists during the war. On 8 February 1949, Hepworth and Nicholson co-founded the Penwith Society of Arts at the Castle Inn.
Hepworth was also a skilled draughtsman. After her daughter Sarah was hospitalised in 1944, she struck up a close friendship with the surgeon Norman Capener. At Capener's invitation, she was invited to view surgical procedures and, between 1947–1949, she produced nearly eighty drawings of operating rooms in chalk, ink, and pencil. Hepworth was fascinated by the similarities between surgeons and artists, stating: "There is, it seems to me, a close affinity between the work and approach of both physicians and surgeons, and painters and sculptors."
In January 2015 it was announced that Tate Britain was to stage the first big London show of Hepworth's work since 1968. It would bring together more than 70 of her works, including the major abstract carvings and bronzes for which she is best known.
Hepworth was predominantly known for her garden sculptures at St. Ives, a place that is close to her heart and where she got most of her inspiration from. Her most acknowledged work is that which she made that provoked and enforced her feelings, such as the sculptures inspired by her daughter's various operations and surgeries, not ones commissioned for.
Urban Light
Urban Light (2008) is a large-scale assemblage sculpture by Chris Burden located at the Wilshire Boulevard entrance to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The installation consists of 202 restored street lamps from the 1920s and 1930s. Most of them once lit the streets of Southern California.
The cast iron street lamps are of 17 styles, which vary depending on the municipality that commissioned them. They range from about 20 to 30 feet (6 to 9 meters), are painted a uniform grey and placed, forest-like, in a near grid. The lights are solar powered from dusk to dawn. Writing in the Los Angeles Times, Susan Freudenheim described the restored lamps as displaying "elaborate floral and geometric patterns" at the base, with "fluted shafts and glass globes that cap them...meticulously cleaned, painted and refurbished to create an exuberant glow."
Urban Light was preceded by Sheila Klein's Vermonica (1993), which places 25 Los Angeles street lamps in a parking lot at the corner of Vermont Avenue and Santa Monica Boulevards. The intersection had burned during the 1992 Los Angeles riots. Burden viewed his sculpture as a formal entry way to the museum on Wilshire Boulevard: "I've been driving by these buildings for 40 years, and it's always bugged me how this institution turned its back on the city."
Since its 2008 installation, Urban Light has become a very popular and much-photographed attraction, and has been declared a Los Angeles icon. Director Ivan Reitman was one of the first filmmakers to incorporate the public artwork in a motion picture, using the location for a scene in his film No Strings Attached. Echoing Burden's own view, he called the artwork "an extraordinary beacon" that "lights up a desperate part of Wilshire that felt almost abandoned at night." Urban Light was featured in the Tori Amos video Maybe California and the film Valentine's Day. The work appeared in a Guinness commercial and in a Vanity Fair article featuring cast members of the television series Glee, as well as in numerous amateur photos posted online. LACMA itself has featured the work as part of its own promotional efforts, including a 3D public service announcement preceding the film Megamind. In 2014, the sculpture was used in a dance scene in VH1's Hit the Floor.
The reason I chose to research into this installation was because of it's interaction with the public. Though they lamps serve no purpose in terms of the public being involved in it's display, but the fact that they are able to wind through the parallel lamps makes the atmosphere very romantic. The silhouettes that are created when the lamps shine at night and people are photographed within, is very aesthetically pleasing. They start to make the public wonder about their purpose and are extremely ornamental to use as the background for films and music videos etc.
USING this research, I decided to first research a charity I would happily support myself and one that is active in the local area, so the design is relevant.
I came across a charity called 'Waste Aid UK'. The main reason I decided to go with this charity, though I try not to believe it, is because of how quickly it grabbed my attention.
Being completely true to myself, I relate to that first sentence so much this week. I live in a shared house with four other girls and our bins did not get emptied last week. The amount of waste that built up in the past few days in honestly ridiculous and because we had nowhere to put it, it was right in front of us the whole time. The smell, the look and the aura all that waste was giving off, it was uncomfortable, nasty and we just wanted to get rid of it. SO, I decided to choose this charity as I knew exactly the point they are trying to get across, and I hope to bring this into my installation.
Waste is big issue that needs resolving, and us humans are entirely the reason why it is an issue in the first place. It cannot be avoided but it can be controlled, which is what this charity aims to do, in the developing part of the world, as well as the already developed. They focus on projects for waste collection from the areas that cannot afford a bin collection service offered by the government, who are unable to provide it in most cases.
Using Hepworth as stimulus, I knew my project had to be something close to my heart, and this week the theme and charity are definitely something have been on my mind a lot, because of the current circumstances. Using inspiration from the Urban Light installation, I knew I wanted interaction with public in a way that they feel something when connecting with the installation, not just because it has to "fit to the body" as written in the brief.
The Main Idea Development
Finally, I have a vision. With Hepworth, Burden and Waste Aid UK behind me, I want to create alphabetical installations which promote the charity, using the letters of their name: W A S T E . From a bird's eye view, you will be able to see the letters marked out, in a deformed manner. I didn't want the letters to just spell out the name in a neat font, I wanted the public to try and guess what it says, adding the element of wonder within the installation.
At first, I was trying to think of the quickest way the public could interact with an installation such as this - glue. My initial idea was the create each individual letter using acrylic rods that would join up, somehow, and have light dangling down from these, with an adhesive where the public could pick up rubbish/waste and just stick them to these hanging, sticky lights...complicated, I know.
Again, the idea was impractical. I knew I was overcomplicating it. Again, I went back to basics and thought, how can, what is the easiest way to pick up rubbish from an area? - BINS! Then, I knew I had it.
FINAL DESIGN PROPOSAL
I want to create a series of bins, made from recycled plastic, in the shape of deformed letters that spell out the word 'waste', as a promotional campaign for the charity, Waste Aid UK. These enormous bins will have holes at the top which will enable the public to put their collected waste into, and this becomes an interactive experience for the people. Not only does the issue of collecting rubbish in locations where a lot of waste is built up gets resolved, the charity has been brought into recognition, and many will actively take part in throwing away rubbish (recyclable waste) to be a part of something, even if they do not know what it is. On the side walls of the bins, I will produce promotional campaign murals and posters that highlight what they charity is about, what the public can do to show their support/get involved, and also how this project has helped it grow, not only in conversation, but as a community.
Here, I have made a few prototype models of what these bins would look like in real life:
To take the project further, I decided to look at places where I would put these bins. These locations would have to be somewhere where litter is so common the bins have to be emptied at least twice a day, because they have huge masses of human footfall, so there is bound to be a lot of council bins in the area. I would have to talk to the council, one of the major clients for this design project, to try and remove the public bins in the area, so people are forced to use the letters to throw their waste. it is also a social experiment to see whether people can be bothered to walk just a little bit further to throw their rubbish away in the bins, or because they are not within a 10 second radius, do they just leave the rubbish on the floor.
