Presentation Collaboration - Final Thoughts 

Extending the network beyond our group collaboration. Passing on the created artworks from our group to new people, making new connections, extend and maintain an interaction and join the movement of communication.

Share – the - work, - spread – the - web.

Great to see the lecturers participate on the spot and contribute to the collaborative network and even send back the work in the time of the presentation. It just goes to show the possibilities within a small time frame. It's clear our concept around our group collaboration was portrayed concisely within the presentation, as Cath, John and Shelly responses were instantaneous. There was a lot of excitement and momentum with emails being sent back so swiftly. 

I feel there has been a success in extending our network and it’s the start of something we can all as a collective hopefully take forward and grow. 

Working on this group project was more than just a simple pass on of our work. It was a test on our collaboration, communication and versatility. In a process where we were entirely reliant on the person before and the person after within the chain It wouldn’t have been possible without full cooperation within the group. Working in a cross-disciplinary network of individuals has brought out the best of all group member and we created professional partners for future collaborations. 

My Artwork - Final Thoughts 

As this collaboration comes to an end I wanted to revisit and evaluate and reflect on the work which has been produced in this short collaboration. Revisiting the artwork I created as part of our digital pass on, it was an image which I believed to best capture my interpretation of what a network is. A tangled inter-connected structure of links, bridges and communications. The task of the pass on truly allowed for creative freedom and spontaneous decisions making. What appears to be a simple drawing task, was not. It was a test on our collaboration. In a process where we were entirely reliant on the person before and the person after within the chain It wouldn’t have been possible without full cooperation within the group. 

The outcome of the edited piece on the right holds similar traits to my original creation but also hold many more layers of value and creativity. A personal reflection and what I want to carry forward from this, it to bring this collaborative concept into my work during the explorative praxis module. 

Extending the Collaboration 

During our presentation we started the continuation of the collaborative network. Towards the end of the presenting we simultaneously sent out three emails with three of the final artworks we created, to the lecturers present.  

Digital Pass on - Video to demonstrate artwork transitions.

As i had experience with using Adobe Premier Po before i suggested i could collate our work into one compete video. The video could show how each artwork went through the pass on cycle and transformed after passing through each member.  

We overlaid the video with a sped up version of the teams call we were in when creating the collection of artworks. We wanted to capture some of the group discussion.

Bibliography

List of books, articles and blogs which aided my thinking and contribution towards the group. 

Acaroglu, L (2017) Tools for Systems Thinkers: The 6 Fundamental Concepts of Systems Thinking Available at: https://medium.com/disruptive-design/tools-for-systems-thinkers-the-6-fundamental-concepts-of-systems-thinking-379cdac3dc6a (Accessed 20th January 2021).

Wood, J (2009) ‘John Wood Meta-design’ Designerly Methods [blog] 16 November. Available at: https://designerlymethods.wordpress.com/2009/11/16/metadesign/ (Accessed: 21 January 2021)

Azzarello, N (2013) Loci customised 3D printed sculptures of air travel. Available at: https://www.designboom.com/technology/loci-customizes-3d-printed-sculptures-of-air-travel/?utm_campaign=daily&utm_medium=e-mail&utm_source=subscribers (Accessed: 12th January 2021)

Useful Websites and Sources:

https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2009/06/embodied-energy-of-digital-technology.html

https://www.shortlist.com/news/tube-map-radio

https://labeoufronkkoturner.com/projects/takemeanywhere/

DEATH OF THE NETWORK LOGO

While doing some housekeeping within the collective blog, I and Sian were discussing teams about making the blog more fitting to our group theme. A suggestion was to add a logo. I volunteered to head into photoshop to mock up a small quick logo to make the page more coherent. Using the flow chart which has been used throughout our collaboration as the main image, I added our edited artworks in the background. I layered all the artworks and dropped the opacity. The effect it created was one of a network of lines, shapes, links and connections. It’s interesting to see how all of our work comes together to produce this network representation.

DEATH OF THE netWORK

Meaning of ‘Pass On’

Title Page

Designed using my flow chart I created for the ‘digital pass on” but reimagined it into a life cycle of the artwork. Using Adobe Illustrator I created this title image. Similar to the group photoshop session we did the same for this. The group were watching me as we all input our thoughts and ideas to the image. 

The title reflects all the we encompass and all that we collated amongst one another. Looking at the dictionary meaning of pass on, a polite expression for die. Pondering on this and the fact that we were moving on our work in our collaborative cycle and almost saying goodbye as we place it into the hands of another to breathe a new lease of life into it. 

Death Meaning: the death or the ‘pass on’ or exchange of our own creations. 

Life Meaning: the next member of the group brings more life and a new lease of life to the artwork. 

Growth meaning: as the work continues to pass through each member it's growing the network is widening. 

Mature Meaning: like most things in life things reach a point where they’re at their peak. 

Perish Meaning: the artworks will come to a point where they are never worked on again? or will that happen? will it be a forever cycle? 

Digital Collaborations - The Not so good...

During our collaborative digital pass on task, we faced some technical issues which were expected..... One of these included one group member not being able to scan her work to send over email on the first pass over. Thinking on our feet and weary of the timed 15 minute slots, we decided for the group member to hold her work up and we’d take a screengrab. This consequently completely changed the artwork and potentially impacted on the outcome of the artwork. The quality of the image was poor so the next person had to think on their feet, what could they do? What is most interesting is that the artwork was not lost, the next people to add their creative input completely transformed the piece to something truly attention-grabbing. 

Collaborative Photoshop Installation 

After our digital pass on exercise on Monday the 18th as a group we took to adobe photoshop to create a hypothetical gallery installation. As one person operated the program the others sat by and added their input into the installation. The above is a mock-up of what we could potentially do with our collaboratively edited artworks.  

The outcome came with two possible versions.

1. We display our work in frames in a cohesive layout. Originally they were going to be laid out in a single line across the wall. I, however, suggested creating this collage layout which better represents our theme of networking. The layout connected the pieces, brought them all together as a collection.

2. Similar to the above description, however, this time we thought of projecting a map of Swansea over the top of the artworks. The map represented the place where our collaboration should have taken place, in university in the heart of Swansea. Swansea should have been a part of this collaborative journey. While discussing this, we also wanted to map out where all of us have been working as a part of this collaboration. This, however, wouldn’t have been clear because the map would have been very zoomed out.

Pass on 4

Original = Left // Edited/My creative input = Right

The final pass on....the creativity flowing from each artwork now was gripping. For the final piece, I wanted to take a risk and try

to incorporate my CAD design skills into a 2D digital artwork. Bringing the 2D environment to the 3D environment, a true collaboration between environments. What would the outcome look like? would it work?

For this artwork, I wanted to bring out the original drawing which over the pass overs had been slowly lost or covered. Underneath the tangled strings and colours lays the original network of lines and structures. This seemed a perfect fitting to extrude these segments on CAD. The outcome proved difficult, the time limit of 15 minutes didn’t help so there was a lot of pressure to do the design on CAD and export it in acceptable quality. Does that add and play on this idea of digital collaboration, not everything is going to be perfect when working digitally in a group?

The outcome was experimental, a bit more time could have seen a better outcome but I was happy that I took a risk and tried something challenging.

Pass on 3

Original = Left // Edited = Right

The 3rd pass on was truly fascinating 2 people had worked on the work at this point, I was the 3rd. My first and initial thought upon looking at the image was, I thought it showed this idea of our collaborative group working online. 

I related the red wavy lines at the bottom like an audience, much like how we were all sitting on a teams call at that current point. The centre image masked with the previous drawing I had just worked on reminded me of a Tv screen, a stage or someone sharing their screen on teams. I was making links to our group collaborating digitally. The colours and aesthetics of the image also linked me to the image of a theatre, this gives reason to my addition on the velvet red curtains. A theme I wanted to try include and portray within a piece of work was the distorted technical issues we face when using technology to collaborate. To achieve this I added Sian's piece of work I edited on the first pass cycle, it made the middle square on the image look like it had an out of signal tv in the middle of the theatre. Additionally, I cut away some of the curtains to make it look like the image wasn't loading properly.

Pass on 2 

Original = Left // Edited (My Creative Input) = Right

For this pass on I decided to digitally manipulate the image keeping within the theme of

networking. Using the cut-up pieces I decided to rearrange them and I noticed whichever way they came together it still created a circular tree ring network. Even duplicating this and layering the new rearranged tree ring 3 times, the network of rings were still apparent and clear. Does this link to our digital collaborative space? despite the current climate and restrictions in place, we have still managed to collaborate.

As part of my personal research for this project I looked into man-made vs natural networks, I wanted for this piece to create a collaboration of the both so I created a small electrical circuit in illustrator and overlaid it on the image. When looking closely, you can see where the man-made and natural lines of each network collide and join. It represents a bridge between both.

Pass On 1 

Original = Left // Edited (My Creative Input) = Right

My first thought when i saw Sians image, was that it had this distorted blurred look which is caused from her duplicating the brain in the centre of the page. From this i thought id start by duplicating the bring 5 times to represent the 5 group members brains in the group. 

Playing around with the layer style then i created overlays and exposure effects to manipulate the images to look like there was more than 5 images. (extending the network of brains) The cells of the brains looked like they were all connecting and joining up to create a larger network of cells. 

Digital Pass on Group Collaborative Exercise 

Meta-Design - Synergies 

About:

Each member of the team was tasked to create a drawing/artefact along the theme of networks. We would then pass along our piece of work to another member of the group until you received yours back. Each pass the person would add their creative input into the drawing.

Each member would get 15 minutes with each other’s piece of work. We would then digitally capture the work and pass it on through the means of emailing.

Organising who would pass to who and how we would digitally pass the work on required a systematic approach and logical thinking. While we were discussing this idea I quickly turned to pen and paper and started to map out a structure for this. Using the synergies created within the discussion it prompted me to make links between one or more factors and eventually working a way of performing the task. 

“John Wood argues synergies go beyond what we are used to. We may not even notice them when we experience them as the mind does not notice things that are running smooth and well.“ John Wood - Meta Design Lecture 

Having an open optimistic and structured mindset and using the discussion of the group allowed me to be methodical and provide answers without even realising. 

Notion of a Digital Pass On - LaBeouf, Rönkkö & Turner - #Take me Anywhere Project

Artists LaBeouf, Rönkkö & Turner have been making art together since 2014. Their participatory projects and performances utilise empathy, emotion and social interaction to foster new forms of communality across digital and physical networks. Below is one of their projects where they collaborate with people and create networks through the digital platform Twitter.

https://labeoufronkkoturner.com/projects/takemeanywhere/ 

Each day for a month, the artists would post their coordinates online with the hashtag #TAKEMEANYWHERE and wait for a ride. Whoever then appeared could take them wherever they chose. For the duration of the project, their journey could be tracked in real-time at take-me-anywhere.net, with their path entirely in the hands of the public.

In relation to our group collaboration, it is very fitting on our theme of networking. It shows the connection between people and places, done through a digital platform. It also arguably fits the notion of our digital pass on exercise which we will complete on Monday the 18th. We each create a starting piece of work along the theme of networking and then each time a member of the group take their turn to manipulate, adjust, deconstruct or add their creative input to the piece of work. Thus moving the artwork to a new creative stage/place/outcome. Below is the diagram I drew during one of our Teams meetings to illustrate the order and the direction our work would rotate in.

Just like the artist's in this #TAKEMEANYWHERE project, they are taken to a new location each day (or passed over by the next person who collects them) and each time they are learning, gaining experiences, meeting new people and seeing new places.

Collaborate - Merging Ideas 

A screenshot of a virtual ‘banging our heads together’ to form ideas and discussions. What was a fun interaction turned into some constructive progress within the group collaboration. While discussing Dora Maurer, a photograph.  We were discussing creating a network of work, similar of her self portrait that is a copy, of a copy, of a copy that's been twisted and turned and re-photographed creating a collection of the same image with an image, with an image. 

We talked about doing self-portraits while holding our own ‘network drawings’  and manipulating and re-photographed each other into one another creating a spiral and twisted collection of our work.

Network 3D Piece

Using the final piece which I decided to use for the digital pass on I played around with taking pictures through a cloudy glass material. 

My thinking behind this was to take pictures of the network of plastic filament up close to get a detailed shot of how the filament join, bridge, connect, link and tangle into one another. The piece of work just so happened to be on my clouded glass desk and resulted in these cool x-ray styled images. Using the notion of x-rays and the network of the human body which appears on x-rays this is what i thought of when constructing these images.