I'm photographing it in the college on Monday so that I'll have a better chance of some decent shots of the acetate layers, die cuts and envelope pages and the reflection page too - which I really like. Looking forward to getting it up here on the blog! Finally! And looking forward too to getting some time back with my family.
Thursday, September 29, 2011
Done... but not Quiet dusted
I'm feeling great relief tonight - the book is printed and looking good. There was a bit of a technical hiccup with one section yesterday, which needed to be re printed today, so this project continues to work me to my limit, but I am pleased with how its come together and amazed too at how bulky it seems. I feel justified in my late nights of writing and designing when I hold it in my hands. It's been an absolutely insane couple of months getting it off the ground. I feel utterly shattered but seeing it printed and having done the die cutting and collating tonight I'm feeling pretty pleased with what I have achieved. As is always the case for me there are elements that I am less sure about visually and that I know I could have developed further but that is always part of my experience in design and in this instance I am far more accepting of those elements having surrendered this project to personal voice. It's miles from where I started with the visual development at the beginning of REV and I suppose thats a good thing although I do have some regrets at the amount of time lost in the early stages having spent so much time grappling with After Effects. In any case I am now the proud owner of a 100 page book. Although it won't officially be a book until I get it bound tomorrow... and that will be the moment I can really breath a sigh of relief... hopefully!
Monday, September 26, 2011
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy
I've just finished the design and layout of my book. I've now got to artwork it to get it ready to output to print - more complicated than it sounds as there are lots of bits to it across different papers and sizes. I definitely need a good nights sleep before tackling that. I'm aiming to get it output on Tuesday and then I've Wednesday night to collate, do the die cutting and folding and then get it into the binder on Thursday morning so as to be ready to photograph on Monday. I'm struggling to remember when I have been so wrecked... the lack of sleep has reached new levels in the birthing of this book. I'm feeling envy for those who have found REV so enjoyable.. for me it has been an exhausting battle against time - and I'm right down to the wire with it. Don't know why I'm posting this... just so relieved that the designing is done and that soon I will have time to have another waking thought.
Thursday, September 22, 2011
Judging a Book by its' Cover
Hooray! The paper for my book cover arrived today all the way from California. Its thermochromic so it reacts to the heat of your hands as you hold and handle the book. When its not reacting to heat its a lovely dense gloss black. I've set it carefully aside and am hoping that it survives the book finishing process intact! I'm starting to get a bit anxious about the binding now because there are so many elements to the book that I will not be able to see working until its bound - I hope I won't have any disappointments!
I've been into the binders yesterday to run it all by him. Unfortunatley given the cost of this paper and that its not readily replaceable he's not happy to bind it as a full wrap cover as I'd intended - the pressure on the cover as its bound may damage the liquid crystals, so I'll be just applying it to the cover board afterwards but I think this will still work OK... hope so! I'm enjoying its pristine loveliness for now!
Sunday, September 18, 2011
Saturday, September 17, 2011
Monday, September 12, 2011
Design of Book - Introduction
This intro is 90% there and I'm concentrating on other sections within the book for now. I will be revisiting this with fresh eyes before printing the final book. The writing for some other chapters is continuing and I 'm finding myself looking again at the structure of the book - what to include/omit/combine etc. I don't want to make too many changes to the structure at this late stage so I'm treading carefully in my efforts of getting the balance right. I have a couple more sections that are nearing completion also and will post on them soon.
Sunday, September 11, 2011
Design of Book - Section on Research Completed
Here are the designs for seven spreads in the book, these spreads make up a section on research. As I stated in my previous post I am working on a book that is a personal account of the ideas and responses I have had to the subject of synaesthesia - through my research and through my visual expectations and explorations. Some of the book will be output onto paper and some onto acetate (exploiting the layering effects possible with that material). I am also employing other types of paper mechanics and effects in the make up of the book itself, and in the design and layout, to help communicate some concepts around my personal account of my response to the subject. This section will be a paper section. The writing and designing continues... and is in varying degrees of completion!
Overview of Progress - An update of the last few weeks
What follows here is something I wrote a couple of weeks ago in response to feedback from Shelagh to Voicethread 2 - I decided to post it to my blog because it functions well as an update on what is happening for me within REV over the past month or so. I will post some design layouts too in the next few days as I am getting elements together for the next Voicethread which due this day week.
I had drawn some similar conclusions myself in terms of 'what next and how'. But your suggestions have been great in directing new explorations and for focusing and refining where I am headed with it. Looking into visual mapping further is without doubt something I will give time to as the work continues and I do love a lot of what I am
seeing in relation to data visualisation. (Thanks for the flicker and visualcomplexity.com links). Having been head down with the research into neuroscience, cymatics, the physics of wave forms etc, for quite a while I am, for now, moving forward in a less visually analytical way. So I'm looking to represent rather than analyse the information I have gathered. Like I had said before - it's a real luxury for me in REV to be free to be subjective so I am embracing that as best I can. Certainly though information architecture is a love of mine within my work, both in Trigger and in AIT, so the prospect of of working on a personal project in an aesthetic and insightful way through developing the SynaSence visualisation is something I look forward to in year 2. And perhaps the expression of that will propel the motion piece forward. (By the way your description of 'informative art' made me smile as I thought - 'isn't that design?' I had a friend who described designers as 'closet artists'..... maybe he was right! )
As for the photographic element of the work, it is progressing ok I think. I am a bit self conscious with them as I am no photographer and I fear producing work that may look very amateurish . However that is the nature of trying new things and I am enjoying the process of image creation. The intent with these images is not to give an artist’s
impression of the brain stimulation produced in the synaesthete as seen in a MRI or to present a real scan as an artifact. Really my intention with these images is to suggest the notion of heightened sensory feedback, the world as perceived by the synaesthete is richer, more intense. The 2 phrases that keep coming back to me are descriptions by synaesthetes of the condition, where it is described as being visualised 'as if on a screen in front of them', and also how not being a synaesthete is ' like viewing the world though a thin veil of unawareness' - there is
always more - we just can't see it. The images I am working on involve reflections and light, or focus on textural detail with the hope that they convey something of the idea that the familiar scenes we perceive that play out in an ordinary way have actually the potential for this other way of seeing, perceiving. An altered perspective. The element of the MRI comes into play subtly in the how the images are finished. The idea is to allude to the visualising that these brain mapping technologies provide. Again, going forward into year 2, this will be progressed when I am looking deeper at visual mapping - connectivity and activity and also (at your suggestion) the mental mapping that is metaphor. (Thanks for that - I look forward to digging deeper)
Finally with regard to the layered transparencies piece I had come to the same conclusion myself and have scaled back from the panels to a smaller scaled piece. I had also had a similar notion to your documentary idea, just not a video documentary. I am working on a personal account of the ideas and responses I have had to the subject of synaesthesia, through my research and through my visual expectations and explorations. It is in the form of a book that utilises both paper and acetate in its make up. And while it may not be fully compete, parts of it certainly will. I had been taken with your suggestion at the last face to face to perhaps use the research to form part of the artifact and not just be the back up of the project. That really appealed to me as I have spent so much time on the research and have enjoyed it so much and the fascination it ignited with each new discovery, that I wanted to capture that journey in some way. So in some respects its a movement away from the topic, in that the focus is my response to the topic, the subject matter has somewhat been removed - and has been tethered to the autobiographical account. I am still working through the structure of it, and the writing for each section. For some sections I have images and typographic treatments, for others an idea of what I want to feature and the rest is loose ended for now....
I had drawn some similar conclusions myself in terms of 'what next and how'. But your suggestions have been great in directing new explorations and for focusing and refining where I am headed with it. Looking into visual mapping further is without doubt something I will give time to as the work continues and I do love a lot of what I am
seeing in relation to data visualisation. (Thanks for the flicker and visualcomplexity.com links). Having been head down with the research into neuroscience, cymatics, the physics of wave forms etc, for quite a while I am, for now, moving forward in a less visually analytical way. So I'm looking to represent rather than analyse the information I have gathered. Like I had said before - it's a real luxury for me in REV to be free to be subjective so I am embracing that as best I can. Certainly though information architecture is a love of mine within my work, both in Trigger and in AIT, so the prospect of of working on a personal project in an aesthetic and insightful way through developing the SynaSence visualisation is something I look forward to in year 2. And perhaps the expression of that will propel the motion piece forward. (By the way your description of 'informative art' made me smile as I thought - 'isn't that design?' I had a friend who described designers as 'closet artists'..... maybe he was right! )
As for the photographic element of the work, it is progressing ok I think. I am a bit self conscious with them as I am no photographer and I fear producing work that may look very amateurish . However that is the nature of trying new things and I am enjoying the process of image creation. The intent with these images is not to give an artist’s
impression of the brain stimulation produced in the synaesthete as seen in a MRI or to present a real scan as an artifact. Really my intention with these images is to suggest the notion of heightened sensory feedback, the world as perceived by the synaesthete is richer, more intense. The 2 phrases that keep coming back to me are descriptions by synaesthetes of the condition, where it is described as being visualised 'as if on a screen in front of them', and also how not being a synaesthete is ' like viewing the world though a thin veil of unawareness' - there is
always more - we just can't see it. The images I am working on involve reflections and light, or focus on textural detail with the hope that they convey something of the idea that the familiar scenes we perceive that play out in an ordinary way have actually the potential for this other way of seeing, perceiving. An altered perspective. The element of the MRI comes into play subtly in the how the images are finished. The idea is to allude to the visualising that these brain mapping technologies provide. Again, going forward into year 2, this will be progressed when I am looking deeper at visual mapping - connectivity and activity and also (at your suggestion) the mental mapping that is metaphor. (Thanks for that - I look forward to digging deeper)
Finally with regard to the layered transparencies piece I had come to the same conclusion myself and have scaled back from the panels to a smaller scaled piece. I had also had a similar notion to your documentary idea, just not a video documentary. I am working on a personal account of the ideas and responses I have had to the subject of synaesthesia, through my research and through my visual expectations and explorations. It is in the form of a book that utilises both paper and acetate in its make up. And while it may not be fully compete, parts of it certainly will. I had been taken with your suggestion at the last face to face to perhaps use the research to form part of the artifact and not just be the back up of the project. That really appealed to me as I have spent so much time on the research and have enjoyed it so much and the fascination it ignited with each new discovery, that I wanted to capture that journey in some way. So in some respects its a movement away from the topic, in that the focus is my response to the topic, the subject matter has somewhat been removed - and has been tethered to the autobiographical account. I am still working through the structure of it, and the writing for each section. For some sections I have images and typographic treatments, for others an idea of what I want to feature and the rest is loose ended for now....
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