Update

Today is my mid-year exhibition. For the past two weeks I have been improving, extending and finalising my projects. My photography has stayed largely the same, as has my illustration (the book is now bound!) but my Design Achievers work has changed quite a bit. For the first project of the year, an establishing project during which I created the design brief which guides my year’s work, I now have an introductory booklet as well as a business card. I now have to pack up the large pile of mess I created during the night setting up, then have to move out of my res room, take down my exhibition at 4pm and will then be heading to the airport because today is the start of my holiday and I am going home to Joburg! 🙂 I will post pictures of my new improved work an my exhibition as soon as possible. For the next few weeks I will be working on my art theory research essay, which is due straight after the holiday.

City Poetics

Here are some of the images I created for our latest illustration project. Once the book is complete, I will put photos of it up too. Our brief asked us to create a print-based project that dealt with our year theme from a poetic perspective (next semester the brief is to create a digital, informative illustration project). I plan on making a book, with text created out of extracts of poetry and lyrics written about cities.

Design Achievers Award

For my Design Achievers project, I decided to create a park upliftment campaign. It works like this: Park Life approaches schools in an area and asks them to take part in the programme. This programme comprises of having a park day in their local park and growing grass benches out of a cardboard frame created from old boxes, pebbles, soil and grass. These benches are very eco-friendly and become a unique, usable feature in the park. This park day will allow school children to make a mark in the park and give them a sense of belonging. A letter is sent to their parents alerting them to the programme to gain their support.The school brochure, as well as the reward badges the learners get after the Park Life day have not been uploaded yet.

This park day will be complimented by a poster outside the park, a newspaper advert and a sign by the benches explaining the programme, all aimed at other community members.

Aandeboom

Dutch design duo Aandeboom specialise in making strap on tree accessories. They have three main products, the P-Tree, Treebench and DIY Treehouse:

The P-Tree is a portable urinal, especially useful for festival.

The Treebench was originally designed for the municipality of Amersfoort.

All three designs are available for sale on their website. The tree accessories defy gravity by using a suspension system and do not hurt the tree. A great way to use trees to improve the urban environment!

 

Clockwork Forest

Public art team Greyworld (commissioned by the National Forestry Commission) created a magical installation in the forest of Grizedale, England, in October 2011. They put oversized clockwork keys on selected  trees in the forest that, once turned, play back the haunting, dainty melodies of music boxes.

I encountered this work while attending the Design Indaba in Cape Town this year, where Andrew Sheldon was a speaker. This fairytale-like experience is only one of the collaborative team’s very interesting portfolio, I would really recommend looking at their website if you are at all interested in public art, it is beautiful: http://greyworld.org/

Adding interest to natural public space is what I am researching for my Design Achiever’s Award project.

Benches Go Green

Creating grass sofas and benches is one of the outcomes the trend towards organic furniture has produced. This grass sofa, which I found documented on dornob.com, is just one of the many different ideas they discovered when going in search of grass seating. It was created by potting soil into an existing sofa frame and planting grass seed in it. This second example isn’t as eco-friendly but still looks rather amazing. Created by designer Ling Fan and entitled Floating Green this is a metal bench frame with grass draped over it from the front only.

I’m sure there are many other examples of such couches out there. Another interesting thing I found was a kit to grow a grass chair, consisting of a pre-cut cardboard frame one assembled.

This all forms research towards my Design Achiever’s Award project solution.

Immaterials: Light painting WiFi

How does one visually communicate the world of invisible Wifi networks in urban space? This project provides a solution by using light painting to show Wifi signal strength in long-exposure photographs. A whole unperceived word suddenly comes to light (excuse the pun) that we unconsciously walk through and live in every day! Seeing this makes me wonder about all the other waves, signals and networks that remain unseen. Do they affect us at all? Do our bodies unconsciously sense them? It just shows how little we know of even our immediate surroundings. Enjoy!

For more: http://yourban.no/2011/02/22/immaterials-light-painting-wifi/

New Project: Design Achiever’s Award 2012

For our new project our class was given the brief from the Design Achievers Award, an initiative of the South African Design Institute. In summary, this asks that a final year design student use “their design discipline to identify a business opportunity and apply design expertise to develop an innovative solution. The business opportunity can be a viable commercial venture addressing a social, environmental, industrial or cultural challenge currently experienced in South Africa or further a field in Africa. Their solutions could include any relevant theme such as health-care, education, transportation, rural development, environmental management, leisure and the like.” (https://www.sabs.co.za/index.php?page=ddaoverview)

So that is my new project! I need to have an initial idea by Wednesday 28 March. Time to start finding a problem in city living to solve…

Beautiful Effects of City Lights on a Passing Storm

This time lapse by Simon Christen shows how emerging city lights drastically alter the natural surroundings of San Francisco – from quite a dull scene it suddenly bursts into incredible light that reflects in the passing storm. Quite amazing to see four hours compressed into just over a minute!

Beautiful South African Writing

“The attribute of all true art, the highest and the lowest, is this – that it says more than it says, and takes you away from itself. It is a litte door that opens into an infinite hall where you may find what you please.”
– Olive Schreiner in ‘The Story of an African Farm’