Underplay

Pop up self-reflection

After Rough Guide, we began a big and major project, within which, we 80 students were divided into 4 groups and touched deferent pathways including print, knit, weave and stitch one by one.

Before the technical blogs, we have done some drawings, paintings, mark-makings, 3d things for research. To me, it was actually a revision of research as well as development methods. From these preparation we called Pop up, i have reviewed a lot methods i had learnt before and I have also found some new methods for research and development.

Precisely, in the Pop up 1, i leaned how to construct a sophisticated colour palette( thanks to my tutor, Julia, and I think she’s really strict and serious when it comes to colour!) I could construct my palette not just from seeing, but touching, reflecting，mixing and more. For example, my objects for pop up 1 are mainly transparent glass bottle，and one of them is the dark green one form my previous view. However, Julia let me realise that there is in fact, countless green in just a little bottle, and some of them are easy to catch and appealing, some of them are settle and deep in colour changes, like water in a wave.

As for pop up 2, I became so bolt to make mark. I really like making marks, and the process itself is an ecstasy and outcomes are something i didn’t expect, some of which are happy accidents while others are just messy and screwed up by just a tiny shake. And I think Karen is right, she said in mark-making, no one can tell oh that is beautiful or not because they just some marks by intention or chance. Tools and methods i was using made me feel like i was a little boy casing sand castile in a park. I like folding, cropping, spilling, spraying…

Expect for methodology, i also began to adjust the way i used for all projects in my foundation, and that is make it step by step, little by little. That might be essential when doing foundation, but in a BA course, i can be more spontaneous because some certain steps in research and developing are actually for interviewer to see if i have a clear and logical developing process and now that I’m a BA student, I can skip some of them for sure. It’s more time-saving and also keep the developing process in a mood.

Tattoo I found in London

Rough Guide self-reflection

Overall, it’s far from satisfied to finish the very first unit in my college career in Chelsea with the following points.

Above all, I quite like the Rough Guide as a warm-up project for a fresh start, because I think it is a good starting to know about London in various ways and aspects, and it is also a way for us to know and get along with our peers. I don’t think I did a good job for this task,like research, analysis, and more, which are quite problematic. The depth, width, diversity of my research into the region, galleries, shops are not enough.

I dont think I had seize on a great opportunity to explore an exciting city like london. 

From the peer study in ways like group researches and tutorials I lean how to construct a research in a way that is efficient and valuable. That is I just need to focus on some certain aspect of the objects i am supposed to look at. 

For example, for the first research, I focus on the atmosphere of bond street, which is extremely abstract to some extents and as a result, I kind of lost my way and made the research quite confusing. Yet, lots of research by peers impressed me a lot. I particularly remember there is a student studying the texture of the street she was looking at and she focused on the flooring texture rather than every bit of objects in the whole area. 

So i understand i should narrow the range of my research and then focus on one or two aspects of it. In this way, i can learn this aspect deeply and widely. And i think it is very profound in the coming study of any project.