The Collaboration Log (Continued 5)

Wednesday, 21/11/12

• We decided to distribute them around places in Manchester where our audience (students, young adults) would most likely see them, for example, Northern Quarter, Fallowfield.
•  Tinashe began distributing his and Mat’s that day as Mat was preparing to illustrate the responses.
•  Joe and Natalie had work, so were unable to do it for this day.

Thursday, 22/11/12

• Joe and Natalie began distributing during the day, but had the unfortunate encounter of heavy rain and gale force winds, so planned to venture out again the next day.

            Friday, 23/11/12

• Joe and Natalie ventured out again and posted them around Fallowfield and Stockport; documenting with the camera in the process.

The following days no responses came in and it was Tuesday, 27/11/12 in which we pitched our idea to the groups.

Answers of the People Facebook Page

One of my four posters

The Collaboration Log (Continued 4)

Tuesday, 20/11/12

• Mat, Joe and Tinashe met in room 4.106 again to begin informing each other of what they had gained over the weekend.
• Natalie was ill so wasn’t in.
• Joe had expressed himself through drawings in his sketchbook of people in distorted formations. He even represented his idea for the gig poster if it would come to that.
•  Joe had looked through the dictionary to link random words together, following the influences previously thought of on Friday. They were: Boot Boy, Column Commoner, Fluorescent Food and Parsnip Pastel.
• Mat suggested the idea of making a poster related to the protest group ‘Anonymous’ due to its nature of having no leader and no official members.
• He also suggested the idea of parodying the 2012 Mayan prediction claiming it to be illogical.
• He suggested things of a morbid nature but Joe spoke on Natalie’s behalf and said the group should keep things neutral.
• Tinashe told Joe and Mat of his idea relating to ‘Nightmare on Elm St.’ suggesting we make a social event of some kind and inviting people to experience what happens in the film.
• Joe then suggested the idea of getting people to interact with us via text. We would ask them a question and they would answer.
•  This spurred on Mat and Tinashe and started suggesting questions like: ‘How was your day?’, ‘Plans for the weekend?’ and ‘How are you?’
•  Joe then suggested making it more eccentric and took influence from the Monty Python question: ‘What is the average air speed velocity of an unladed swallow?’
• Then Joe and Mat suggested basing it around typical ‘Manc’ sayings like: ‘Cold, innit?’ and ‘They don’t make ‘em like they used to.’
•  Mat then suggested making the question surreal and philosophical, such as: ‘I’m thinking red. Discuss.’, ‘Should I?’ and ‘Any questions?’
• This left us deciding for a while whether we wanted the question to be vague or eccentric.
• We had an initial idea set out which was: the poster with a logo, a question and a number to respond to on it.
• We then had the tutorial with the tutors and Natalie had just arrived.
•  Mat, Joe and Tinashe presented the various ideas we had before going onto the concept of a phone.
• The tutors seemed happy and told us to hastily make the posters as the process of making them was less irrelevant as compared to people’s responses.
•  Natalie then introduced her ideas to the table which were to do with old phrases and sayings, such as, ‘A taste of your own medicine.’
•  The tutors also applauded her ideas and told us to incorporate the old sayings within the questions which would be asked within the posters.
• After the tutorial we all began discussing how we would process this.
•  Natalie suggested each of us having an old phrase/saying and with it makes four surreal or vague questions to give the phrases a much more varied response by appealing to people differently.
•  Tinashe now disregarded the logo idea due to our time schedule and suggested the phrase/saying should be designed and should stand out.
• Tinashe also said he had an old phone at home with a SIM card, so that was one problem sorted.
• Joe then suggested making a Facebook page in which we could put our illustrations of the responses we would get, in order to make the viewer seem more interested in texting.
• Natalie vowed to send us all various phrases to choose from and to give examples to fully explain her concept.
• After a lengthy discussion, we all agreed the format should consist of: our own individual style (to make introduce more range) of an A4 portrait poster with a typographical phrase in visual connotation at the top, one of the four questions underneath, the number in which to respond to underneath that and the Facebook page at the bottom which Joe would create.
• We vowed to all login on Facebook tonight to send each other information and to begin the overrall process.
• Tinashe sent us all the phone number and Joe sent the link to the Facebook page to put on the posters.
• Natalie researched and sent the various old sayings and phrases all beginning with the letter ‘a’ to give the posters more unity and explained the format of making four questions out of one of them. She even made a visual example out of scrap.
•  Tinashe chose ‘A leopard cannot change its spots.’ And his question was ‘Can we break from the conceptual?’
• Joe chose ‘A house divided against it self cannot stand.’ And his four questions were: ‘Straw, sticks or bricks?’, ‘What makes a home?’, ‘How do you get a full house?’ and ‘What’s the result of a divided house?’
•  Natalie chose ‘A stitch in time saves nine.’ And her four questions were: ‘What does your mind fester on?’, ‘What leads you to procrastinate?’, ‘If you had an infinite amount of time, would you value your mandatory work?’ and ‘Do you feel the value of craft has been lost?’
•  Mat chose ‘Absolute power corrupts absolutely.’ And his question was, ‘Can absolute power ever be a force of good?’
• Tinashe then suggested distributing them by Wednesday evening.

Chav

The Pope's Preaches

Gig Poster

Manc

Take a walk...

Screaming

Regret

The Collaboration Log (Continued 3)

Friday, 16/11/12

• We all came in for 10 and met in room 4.106 to begin discussing ideas.
• Mat’s first point of research was the infamous ‘OBEY’ poster, which spurred on the idea of our outcome being somewhat political.
• Natalie disregarded this political theme, so we dismissed anything related to it.
• We decided to move to the Mac suite to gain more visual research.
•  Natalie presented her ideas to Mat and Tinashe from Wednesday which kept us more open-minded.
•  Joe began bouncing off more of Natalie’s ideas and began researching image techniques. He suggested the band Melvins album cover ‘Houdini’ because it displayed an innocence but had subtly contained deformity. We all agreed it was an interesting concept.
•  Had the initial idea of having a phrase, so began researching and imagining words.
•  Joe looked at previous text messages of his to gain ideas and suggested the phrases ‘Where are you?’ and ‘Empty Subject’ which spurred on the ideas of vagueness and philosophy.
• Mat bounced off the idea and gave a load more including: ‘Everything’s gone blank’ and ‘There’s nothing there’.
• Mat also suggested ‘Traveling Insomnias’ which in turn spurred Joe on to suggest a dictionary as a good source for putting random words together. David Bowie’s lyrics and Muse’s song title ‘Muscle Museum’ were good examples of this.
•  As well as ideas for phrases, we all began thinking of how we would display our message/information to the public. Mat suggested the use of stickers due to them being easily distributed without any danger of prosecution.
• We researched how much stickers would cost and found it to be too expensive, so started thinking of posters.
• Tinashe daringly suggested we could make them at least A3 in size to alert the public more.
•  Going back off the idea of the Melvins album cover, Joe suggested a fake gig poster: something that appeared not as it seems.
• He also suggested an American 50s style poster relating to a post-apocalyptic context, based upon the video game Fallout 3.
• Mat, Tinashe and Joe all had the initial idea of having a potential logo for the posters.
•  Mat suggested a face of some kind, like the V mask.
• Joe suggested a quick paint stroke or two to represent something universal (something anyone could participate in) also spurring on the idea of a movement.
• Tinashe showed us his previous work on logos due to his experience in graphic design.
•  Tinashe also showed us logos from a website he refers to named ‘fromupnorth’ which spurred on the idea of basing something to do with Manchester’s culture and its public.
• We had discussed various ideas but still hadn’t fully fixed our motives for what our idea properly would consist of, which was a good thing because it kept us open minded.
• We vowed to carry on development from today and to keep on researching.

http://obeygiant.com/store/images/P/offsetobey.jpg

http://www.themelvins.net/wiki/images/7/7a/Melvins-houdini.jpg

http://www.thatvideogameblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/vault-boy2.jpg

http://takemydough.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/v-for-vendetta-mask.jpg

The Collaboration Log (Continued 2)

Thursday, 15/11/12

• Natalie made further notes such as visual representations of the surreal that we see everyday; one in the form of a cartoon (for a DJ advertisement) of strange animals out of context, using quirky strap lines when sat at a restaurant, “There’s a bass line in my soup.”
•  She also suggested incorporating a positive protest. The group questioned whether this could be done as most of the ones we encounter are of a political nature, for example it was suggested that the fable idea could be applied to modern day to express how much things have developed how lucky we are to live in this day and age, by applying modern day reflection of life within the context of folktale quaint imagery to work in harmony in suggesting how lovely things are now.
• She also suggested research on Ricky Gervais’ ideology on Atheism, but we discussed this wouldn’t be wise as it would offend a percentage of our audience.

The Collaboration Log (Continued 1)

Wednesday, 14/11/12

•  Joe and Natalie came in to college independently to discuss ideas.
• Natalie brought up the idea of surrealist humour and research sources included: Monty Python/Terry Gilliam, Noel Fielding’s Luxury Comedy and Salad Fingers/Take this Pill by Doki66 (YouTube channel). This spurred the idea of a performance of a bizarre occurrence (themed event) with the use of costumes and masks.
•  Natalie also suggested surreal music videos from artists including: Lady Gaga, The Horrors (Sheena is a Parasite) and Aphex Twin.
• Natalie referred to also how we could incorporate the surreal into language and suggested the source ‘The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat’ by Oliver Sacks.
•  She also suggested surrealist photography like the work of Stephen Gill who played with the elements of combining one meaning within the image with the use of relief objects upon the image once retaken would adapt this meaning changing the way the audiences perceive it; thus adapting the reality of the subject matter.
•  Natalie was intrigued by the idea of the eccentric and creative language.
•  She even suggested producing an invented code, some sort of cryptic language with references such as hieroglyphics and Nadsat taken from Anthony Burgess’ Clockwork Orange (a Russian influenced English slang).

http://elastico.net/archives/horrors1.jpg

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNk1JwwJUcouXupkStH3nwTTXU30PmKh2LyG-J87_mPoHg6stzm8Hxq5GGzblKw_-cyq4jbl6upA4hFnmak6S0tFe_kES7h8qkTykEHP-v0UtvNQRXP3lvyyOeDzxSPsdD5NlSrtFU5AG5/s1600/A+Clockwork+Orange+4.jpg

http://www.photoforager.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/stephen-gill-outside-in-2.jpg

http://www.youdopia.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/come-to-daddy-aphex-twin-craziest-shit-ever-music-richard-d-james.jpg

http://sarcasmandtwosugars.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/blog-photos2-1.jpg

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-rUTx-5jewR0/Ty43mNKRwZI/AAAAAAAAANo/YVpZE1Q1J1c/s1600/gilliam3.jpg

http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f96/looloo071791/a9a0a2b6.jpg

The Collaboration Project

 For the next project, we were each given three choices of topic to collaborate with people on. I chose the last one which was named 'Fiction and Reality'. It was a conceptual brief with a vague outcome. The idea of it was to get a message to the public but to do it in an unexpected way, so anything was possible for this project. I chose to be with three other people: Mat Coffey and Natalie Bell who were illustration students like me, and Tinashe Muzengi who was a graphic design student.

Tuesday, 13/11/12

• The four of us chose the ‘Fiction or Reality’ project and introduced ourselves to one another.
• We made a manifesto which ruled:

1. Be in on the scheduled days.
2. Agree on a concept by the end of the week.
3. Deliberate equally.
4. Stick to plans and keep informed.
5. Explore and don’t stop (stay motivated!)

• We showed past work to each other to get a grasp of our styles and interests.
• We each dispersed our phone numbers and vowed to begin researching ideas from home to bring in for Friday.