Merry Christmas...

Okay so my blogs have become a little quite since leaving uni, but I'm planning to start writing again in the New Year. So this is just a quick note to say:

MERRY CHRISTMAS

&

All the best for 2010!

Love, Emily x

Post-it Motion...

I love post-its and so here is a great bit of animation a friend showed me:

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth.

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same.

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

- Robert Frost

It's Degree Show Time Again!

Come one come all, if you're in Dundee it's free!

My work will be at the Dalhousie building as of Friday! But Assessments tomorrow so keep your fingers crossed!

Good Luck to all the Masters students! x

The Thirtiest Year...

And a very very special piece for me which had taken a little bit of my time away from my research...

A new wedding ring designed for my mum. My dad commissioned me to make a new wedding band for my mum for their 30th Wedding Anniversary today, so this is what I made.

Traditionally the 30th wedding anniversary's gem of choice is a pearl. My mum's not keen on cultured pearls and I have to admit I'm not either, so I was very happy to find out that the modern equivelant has become diamond jewellery...though the modern equivelant for most anniversary stones has become diamond therefore rendering the diamond wedding anniverary a bit of a let down.

Anyway, the band is made of 1.5 mm Stirling silver, 18 carat gold and a diamond which I forget the specifications for...but it was more or less colourless, had few inclusions (flaws) and was the first diamond I've ever bought or set. So I'm really chuffed with the outcome and the fact that not only does my mum love it, but it fits perfectly...and I never got to size it properly!

At the drawing table...

Designed by Monica Hughes.

"I wanted to provide 'an experience' for the senses. I have found I cannot resist touching things (particularly in Galleries!) and I am constantly being told 'don't touch!' I therefore wanted to encourage people to instinctively touch and interact with my work."

A good starting point for considering my degree show space. Unlike my undergraduate degree show I want people to touch my work. That was the biggest mistake I made with the chess sets, people wanted to play with them and I didn't want that, but the whole point was not to make static objects. This year I think I've come up with my solution.

Brainforest...

This is definitely what it would be like to be inside a designers mind!

Brainforest is an enchanting installation by Gerda Steiner and Jorg Lenzlingerbut at the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa (Japan) from 2004. And while I think it would be my ideas way of displaying the madness that is my thought process, their explanation is far more elegant:

"In the rain forest of the brain, the bio-diversity of thoughts proliferates and the intellect's short-circuits whirr in your eyes. Needless to say, as time goes by the circuits get tired and nervours; there are burn-outs and failures. But chance creates the sparkling ideas." - G. Stiener & J. Lenzlingerbut

In third year the design school gave us two interdisciplinary projects with the other departments. Our first project was to define design - our group decided to show how our design process worked in a mess of objects and the way it condensed into coherant ideas. In the end it was a mess as this installation could have been, except it isn't. It's beautiful and elegant and says everything our project wanted, but failed to do.

(This website has more wonderful photographs of the Brainforest.)

Orbital...

Orbital use their trademark torch glasses (which you can buy at your local hardware store) during their live performances to help them see what they're doing.

"They're born from necessity but have become what they've become...we customised them ourslves cos the originals kept breaking" (Orbital Interview)

Reset...

I'm not a big traveller - my friends are often shocked to hear that not only have I not been out of the UK, but I also don't own a passport...shock horror! This isn't because I don't want to gho abroad or that I'm scared of flying or a growing carbon footprint. It's more that as a kid I was in a family of 5 and holidays abroad are expensive and when I go to the wonderful places around the world, I want to go somewhere special, when it can be special and not a moonlight flit where you come home more exhausted than when you left. Is it any wonder people always say they need a holiday to get over the holiday?

Anyway, researchers in Australian have been developing a set of glasses to help combat the trouble that more frequent flyings that I have with jetlag and other people have with insomnia by re-calibrating our biological clock with LED lights. By beaming light directly into the eye of the wearer the battery powered glasses helps to reset the body clock or circadian rhythm which is our bodies response to the sun, moon and seasonal changes which is what makes us wake up and become alert in the morning and feel sleepy at night.

They have also been used in the treatment of S.A.D. (Seasonal Affective Disorder) which normally involves the use of a light box or lamp which the sufferer sits in front of with their eyes open - though not staring directly at the light - for a prescribed period. The glasses allow the user to stop being inhibited by the stationary nature of the light box and the ability to

Re-Time glasses are still in development for commercial use by Flinders Meditech and I just thought that the use of LEDs was really interesting. For more information on the use of light for resetting the body clock see Flinders University: School of Psychology who did extensive research into their use.

Bubbles!

Anyone who knows me will know I'm obsessed by bubbles, always have been and probably always will be, but I now know how I will paint my studio if I ever get one sorted out. These cool decorations are vinyl stickers you order in whatever colour you fancy and just stick to your wall. I'm thinking if they're not hugely expensive or if I can find somewhere that does big letters closer to home that they could work as part of my display for my degree show.

They're designed by a company called Miraentu Interiors and these cost upwards of £100...perhaps I'll just make stencils or paint them by hand...

Strangled by Words

Made of laser cut suede, these scarves come in black, grey & white, upper case, lowercase and numerical and could be a good way to made distortions into something tangible.

Designed by The Little Factory.com

(I want one!)

Word Games...

Scrabble based seating area, designed by industrial designers Stephen Reed and Alistair Willmott for the Bloomberg offices in London. The cushions printed with the traditionally point laden letters all the office workers to leave one another messages in a playful, relaxing means.

The end tables also act as double and triple word scores which can be used - as with the smaller more traditional game - to gain higher word scores.

I'm bad at word games, but I love the idea of making things playful, trying to work games into design work. A trend which started in 1st year and dominated my final year.