Brainstorming ideas over Easter

In the 2 weeks that I've been home for Easter, I have been very keen to continue the ideas process in order to bring back some inspiration that I can share with the rest of the group. Having such a strong manifesto with key ideas has made it easier for me to know what sort of things to look out for when doing my research.

The key ideas being: sustainability, site specific, and sensory, I began my research by exploring Pinterest for some initial inspiration. I made myself very aware that the ideas I found online would need to be developed to suit our original thoughts, and not just a direct copy.

I initially focused my research on the sensory element. Below are a couple of images I found inspiring and intend on bringing to the group discussions after the holidays.

I feel like light plays a major part in an overall sensory experience, which is what I was looking at in these images. We are trying to focus on creating an environment with a relaxing/calming atmosphere. So as well as light, I began to look into colour and how each colour makes you feel. This information will be very helpful in choosing the colours we intend on work with. From my research it was clear that colours such as orange, yellow, green, blue, and white would all be suitable for the experience we are trying to create. For example, orange is associated with happiness and creativity, and green has strong correspondence with safety, harmony and freshness.

Before this research, as a group we had quickly discussed the colours we had visualised in our heads. As we had chosen to work with the used print screens with colour already on them, we were thinking of using these as well as including the greens and blues to anything else we made. Realistically colour hasn't been the main priority in this research stage; however I felt that looking further into it at this stage would have us in a better mind set in the weeks to come. Also, in the past refining my colour palette has been something I have struggled with, so wanted to give myself time to think about it in the early stages of the project.

This unit I want to build on the things I learnt from the locating unit. One of my downfalls last term was not paying so much attention to the Learning Outcomes. This unit I want to make sure I understand each one fully in order to maximise my opportunity of increasing my grade.

Following my research into colour and light, I began to look into different structures that we could incorporate the screens into. Below are a couple of ideas I thought we could experiment with.

The only problem with these examples is that coming from a textile background I have no knowledge of how they would attach together and whether it would even be safe. This is an important question I will raise with the group when we next meet.

We had communicated once or twice at the beginning of the holidays to confirm the main ideas so that we were all on the same page with our research. We agreed we wanted to create a sensual enclosed structure. This was refined, but broad enough for us all to come back with a wide range of ideas to discuss.

Finally, as a way of following the sensory idea right through the design, I wanted to look into ways of creating this experience inside the structure too. Looking at my earlier research, this could be done using the lighting and colour ideas already discussed, as well as incorporating touch and smell.

Below is an example of the sort of thing I had visualised.

My initial thoughts with these are that they incorporate colour as well as touch (in that they are soft/comfy which would give a relaxing sensation). We could also look into experimenting with different smells, natural and artificial, combining them with the sorts of things you can see from the second image. I feel as though I would be quite relaxed in this sort of environment, which is something I have been keeping in mind throughout my research; “how would I feel in this environment?”