Ideas

The initial idea was to track/ record life in some way. I'd originally thought that to track a persons day to day movements or routine could be quite interesting. But it would be extremely time consuming and probably quite monotonous. I need something bigger.

SOMETHING BIGGER

Instead of tracking people i could  track buildings?
How would i track buildings? - photography
What's the relevance of the buildings? - buildings grouped together form the basis of a city. 

IDEA: map London in a sequence of photographs of significant architecture.
DEVELOPMENT:  it needs more of a connection to the project.

- collections take time to accumulate in to something interesting enough to be of note.
- main focus is the Victorian era
- LOOK AT THE PROGRESSION OF ARCHITECTURE FROM THE VICTORIAN ERA THROUGH TO THE PRESENT 

Bingo! Finally i have something to work with.

Random Research

We were told that the focus of this project was purely on how to research, but that doesn't give me much to work from. At the start of the project i began mind mapping and i came up with about a million ideas. Literally anything i could link to the project i could then find a path of development for, which in a sense is great but also insanely unhelpful when trying to decide what to actually do. 

I started out thinking about photography, as it's something that i've recently become interested in but don't really know much about. I've always been too scared to do anything more than normal digital photographs without some sort of help or at least some basic knowledge. I thought that since Lcc has a photography department this could be the perfect time to start experimenting and learning the skill. Then we were told no final ideas, which screwed my plan up a tiny bit.

I started thinking of other possible things, while continuing with the research Stephen set:

• Victorian Life
• Chimeras/ mythical beasts
• explorer and the new world
• Carl Linnaeus
• Frederick John Horniman
• Charles Darwin
• Natural Sciences (e.g. Zoology, Astronomy, Botany, Vulcanology)
• Early/Old museums
• Taxonomy
• The Psychology of collecting

These were quite helpful as they gave me somewhere to go that stopped me looking for a final idea, but bu the time i'd researched a few of them i started thinking about the project slightly differently and i couldn't seem to relate my original ideas anymore. By the time it came to one to one's i was totally lost, and being the indecisive person that i am i couldn't decide how to go about becoming focused. 

Decisions Decisions...

The outcome of my one to one was that i had to decide on my final idea/ pathway by the end of the day.

The choices:

1. Film Canister

1. Explorers 

At the time i couldn't think of another idea that i actually wanted to do. I was pretty stuck on the Film canister idea, i just couldn't think of a way to make it relate. It seemed a little to random for me to properly convince myself it was worth pursuing. Never the less by the end of the day the verdict was that i would continue with the Film Canister idea...somehow. 

Thrown in at the deep end

Project 1: CABINET OF CURIOSITY

Theme: Structure

The brief was to look at Cabinets of Curiosity which was one of the very first forms of collecting. It started in the Victorian Era, and has carried through to present day as people continue to collect things that fascinate them and be fascinated by things that other people collect.

Frederick John Horniman, Henry Wellcome and John Soane are all brilliant examples of Victorian Collectors whose collections are still in use today. 

To get us started on our projects we went to The Grant Museum of Zoology. We were challenged to sketch with a range of different materials and do each sketch in 5 minutes or under. The idea was to look at the objects  in terms of structure and try and portray it quickly. I hated this. I have serious issues with quick drawings, because they never look finished, there's no time for detail and half the time you can't even tell what they are.

We then did the same thing the next week at the Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons. 

 The mummified foot is my favourite sketch. By this point i was getting slightly more comfortable with working quickly. Weirdly the less i worried about the outcome the more i started to like them. They aren't perfect but i think they're more interesting to look at that a precise and detailed sketch.

New Begginings

Realistically i should have started blogging at least a month ago but i'm hoping that in this case "better late than never" applies. Thankfully i have my reflection journal to help me work out what's what so that i can give a quick run down of  my first project to bring us up to date.