HEY! LOOK WHAT I FOUND!

I was sorting through my photographs and stumbled upon these photographs taken of some of my favourite places/tutors at the old CSM location at Southampton Row. I may have posted them at an earlier date, but I often reminisce about those days.
Such a lovely time.

WHERE HAVE I BEEN?

OK I've been in serious recovery since the chaotic final hand in of our work for our degree. The first act following the submission (and pulling an all-nighter to finish with 5 minutes to spare) was to indulge in an ice cold Kopparberg at the pub. So, it's all over. Well – not exactly.

We are currently in the process of putting together our final show. The madness persists. Getting organized for the show and the transition out of student life has been terrifying and heaps of work. I've had to throw together a website (after battling with flash for a month, giving up and then creating one in dreamweaver), conjure up some business cards and sort out/prepare what's going in the show and produce all the signage that will accompany it. I have yet to attack my CV!

So what exactly did I submit? I suppose I haven't posted some items that went in. There was a box of photos, this Coachella fanzine (to go along with the music publication),



the postcards + a framed print of one (California) on bamboo paper,

then the Text to Drum concertinas... and that'd be it!


I have been working on my site for ages. The first site that is! Flash was being a total jerkbox, and even though my script was correct, and the .swf file worked perfectly, it still refused to function once applied to the domain. I can't remember for the life of me/don't have the time to relearn dreamweaver so I've created a really basic, temporary site that is far from refined. Please go visit it at WWW.CHRISTINAMARIEJ.COM.




My business cards came today! How exciting. I did them rather hastily so there's slightly cut off... but oh well! This is one of the two designs (the other is just the heart illustration in place of the brain).

Emilia discovered our hallway wall is a similar size to our space, so we've been able to use it to aid in our set-up!

Ever since Emilia did the 'pants' layout for the publication... it seems to have found a home in my head and now has creeped into my A5 design... here I was thinking 'oh there's a triangular C!' Haha, perhaps it was intended?!

I have been subsisting on crap! It's the only thing that's getting me through this craziness. This is the sort of delicacies I've been consuming. Who says vegans are missing out?

These look so sloppy, but the attempted Banana Cream Pie cupcakes was not overly successful.

NEUROCHEMISTRY

To help us choose subjects for self-directed briefs last term we partook in a mind mapping exercise. One of the three avenues I came up with was psychology and mood disorders.

For the self-directed brief I am working on now deal with neurochemistry. I have been reading a very engaging book ...

I've been looking art therapy exercises, particularly ones that fall into three categories: emotional, relaxation and happiness.

These are ones that I found particularly relevant:

HAPPINESS
Take photos of things you think are beautiful Draw a quote you like Represent freedom Document a spiritual experience

RELAXATION
Mandala (circle with a centre) depicting yourself as you are now Draw outside Use colour blocks to create an image
EMOTIONAL
Paint a mountain (what makes you happy) and a valley (what makes you sad) Release a balloon with a message attached Design a postcard you will never send Draw three wishes Draw yourself as an animal A free drawing
Keep an art journal

I chose a few to test out and record how I felt after completing, one or two from each category.

Take photos of things you think are beautiful
Mandala (circle with a centre) depicting yourself as you are now
Use colour blocks to create an image
Release a balloon with a message attached
A free drawing

At first I experimented with using the activity to try and improve my memory. I recorded my dream as soon as I woke up, did an exercise and then wrote what I recalled from the dream again. I got rather tired of recording the same information and realized it was just better to focus on how the activity effected my state of being.

First I tried the colour block exercise.

Next up was the Mandala... which left me feeling a bit angry.

The free drawing activity left me with the ability to concentrate.

Then I gave the mountain/valley exercise a go, but had a hard time thinking of things that made me happy/sad.

My favourite was the balloon send-off! It was pretty cathartic but somewhat disappointing... as you will see in the last photo.

After researching, my initial reaction to the symptoms of bipolar disorder was that they seemed typical of what we experience on a daily/weekly basis, particularly in London. I created a worksheet for people to fill in for 3-4 days, twice a day that indicates how they are feeling and what they are up to during the time.

I then made a graph of each person's feelings and where they fell in the range of symptoms from depression and mania.

My last experiment was recording where I felt symptoms of bipolar disorder during my journey from home to Uni. I generated a large list of symptoms to refer to and gave them numbers.

It's been since organized into an info graphic.. I am considering making a book, a handbook for 'Life Disorder' that encompasses all my experiments and their findings.

Screenprinting!

Finally picked up my prints from the screenprinting induction I did last week. The process is basically choosing what you want to print/making it and printing it on transparency film. Next is coating your screen, exposing the transparency film onto the screen, giving it a wash, drying it in the oven and then you're ready to print! Choose your paint colours/materials (you can print on just about anything - the wall, wood, fabric.. sky is the limit).

I really fell in love with the whole idea of the Arts + Crafts movement so I thought I would print the motto for the society of designers which embodied the principles that hooked me.

Life + Times Update

I haven't really been posting much work as of late. We have been manic preparing for the end of term - I have my term assessment presentation tomorrow. I haven't had too many adventures to share. But this is a glimpse of what has been going down in my life.

Sony competition - Emilia and I didn't make the shortlist. Our idea was to have an interactive installation of life surrounded by music - lyrics embedded in daily activities.


The weather has been slowly sneaking in more gorgeous days. Antonia, Aaron and I went down to the park to take advantage of one particular doozy.


The Frightened Rabbit gig on the 10th was incredible!

No excuses, no more monotonous conversing!

For the latest project, we have been asked to rewrite/redesign a previous brief we worked on. I chose the "R-Kive your music" brief because I wanted to use music in the next graphic outcome. My idea comes from my own disappointment in having really lame conversations with people who either a) are dull or b) can't be bothered to make an effort. Particularly because those who know me, know I love to ask (mostly unmethodical) questions. I decided to make it easy for people to engage in thought-provoking dialogue by throwing a bunch of random questions generated by various artists lyrics.

I combed through my music library and wrote down and questions that popped up that would be relevant to inciting a verbal exchange. I generally make little notes on my hand to remind myself of things.. and I know this is pretty common.. so I thought why not use that technique in the outcome. I jotted down the quotes on my hand/arm, in different coloured ink (artists were colour coded) and photographed the lyrics on my blackberry. The concept would be to either download these questions from a website.. or text "lyrics" to a number as many times as number of lyric images you would like sent in return. This would make it very accessible in transit and also on the sly, no one would know where you were generating such stimulating material.

It was something I just sort of threw myself into, out of idea desperation. But you can see the images of lyrics below.






I've since photographed a proper final outcome:


My other idea for this project was to create a newspaper insert so you could pretend you were reading the paper whilst you scanned a fake newspaper page loaded with questions at your disposal. It sort of sprung from an article I read about a BBC research study that discovered London has been rated as the loneliest city in the UK consistently for the past 40 years. So here is my somewhat hideous phony newspaper spread below: