Creativity Inquiry Exhibition
This semester our exhibition was in the form of a gallery walk. Scroll down to look at the range of visual, tech inspired and written projects.
Products
Garment:
How can one garment be worn in at least 10 different ways, and how can the journey of a garment, from the farming of the fibres to the disposal of the textile item, be shared with the world?
I have created a wrap dress that can be worn in over ten different ways adapting to a situation, place or event.
I was looking at the sustainability of the textiles used, and how this information can be shared into the wider population. Another element was communicating the history behind the print (Gingham), which enhances the meaning and importance of the garment.
The QR linking to this information is an easy way to be able to retain the knowledge and a simple conversation starter leading to a wider audience gaining this imperative information.
This project was inspired by my plan to travel and having clothing that can have multiple designs.
My first step was to research how to actually make a garment that could be worn is many ways, once I had a few ideas I had to think about the fabrics I wanted to uses and how this would translate.
This lead me to a wrap dress as cotton is not able to stretch, thus needing a zipper, so a wrap dress enabled me to use the fabrics I wanted and gave me the diversity within the design. I then made a toile (draft) shirt to test if it worked before making my final product.
Lucy Francis
Water Bottle Design:
My project is to design a plastic drink bottle that can double as a building material. Be it to build garden beds, or be toys for kids, or fences.
I do a class called oceanography, which is studying the ocean. And watching war on waste and seeing the amount of damage plastic is causing to marine environments sparked the idea that maybe plastic bottle can be used for good.
Instead of a one use item, the bottle is aimed to be something that can be used for a range of different things. Hopefully stopping someone for throwing it away.
When I started the project I thought I just had to design it and that it was simple. As I went through the stages I figured out that I was so very wrong.
The interlocking systems seemed at first like a simple idea, but then I had to consider the cosmetic side of it. That it’s cool to have a groovy looking drink bottle. That it’s now a thing to have a plastic drink bottle with a cool design- and only use it once.
So I had to make it both functional as well as cosmetically appealing. That I found the challenge with the look of the locking system. Nothing too bulking or confusing, something that could also be used as a grip for the bottle.
-Mahony
Visual Projects
Perspectives
Mathematics and the creative arts are often seen as disconnected disciplines. This project aims to show that there are more connections between the two subject areas than people might expect, and by looking at them as related rather than segregated, a broader understanding of both can be reached.
Through an installation piece, my project explores how creativity can be used to effectively communicate that mathematics and art are fundamentally two experimental and creative perspectives on the world around us. This installation, placed along the maths and art corridor, presents these ideas through the use of an optical illusion. This is not only both mathematically and artistically significant, but also clearly demonstrates the perspective concept, as the piece can only be understood when viewed from the central point that links the two corridor sections.
Another element of this piece is that it is designed to raise questions and start conversations, as from any perspective other than the focal point, the installation’s shape becomes confusing and difficult to comprehend. It also opens additional questions such as why the maths section is colourful, while the art side is in black and white. This is a purposeful feature added as a way of challenging the common perceptions associated with each discipline, thus encouraging people to think beyond preconceived stereotypes.
My inquiry project as a whole is part of a broader movement known as STEM to STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, Mathematics), designed to bring artistic perspectives into STEM inquiry. This installation piece will hopefully open new perspectives on the interconnection of these two subject areas.
Tilda Blackbourn-Rooney
How we can creativity communicate complex scientific concepts to society?
Formal scientific education teaches students precisely how to communicate scientific findings to other scientists such that experiments are reproducible, there is no room for interpretation or ambiguity and the purpose is to dehumanize. However, if scientists try to communicate their findings to the general public in the same way, the objective and complex language simply sounds cold, abstract and convoluted, and society will neither care, respond nor act. However, the challenges we as a global community currently face can be solved through advancements in science and technology. We can not rely on the select few who choose to study science to solve them, rather we need everyone to contribute. Connecting society to the science will take a complete reworking of current communication methods and can be achieved through creatively communicating science, for example, through the medium of a story.
Thus, for my inquiry I have developed a children’s picture book about the carbon cycle that attempts to convey the wonder and interconnection of science to kids of all scientific interests and abilities. I have prototyped my ideas to students in year 6 and asked science teachers to fact check my work. Through this process I have found that creativity doesn’t just appear like I once thought it would, rather it is continuously adjusted, develops and is never ‘complete’. Thus, I have presented my story in various stages of completion, such that the story is readable but the process is visible to the viewer.
Library Design:
This project examines how library designs have so much potential for improvement and innovation. This examination will be shown through conceptual library design for Dickson Public Library. The main driver behind this project is the lack of creativity and experimentation in Library Designs. Even in newer Library designs, they rarely introduce any new concepts. This is an issue given the large array of functions in a Library service. Libraries can be used for recreational purposes and yet the only way this is met in the current Dickson Public Library is by having a “chill room” with a few bean bags thrown in. Library designs need to evolve in order to become more relevant in today's society. By taking into account multiple Library surveys, research articles, concepts from books and other ideas from Librarians, I’ve created a model redesign of Dickson Public Library, that incorporates a variety of different creative strategies for innovation, that will demo what could be possible in a public Library, which will hopefully open up to a larger target market. The SketchUp model and floor plan introduce many new ideas, some of which are abstract to Library designs. Obviously, a lot of these design elements are more complicated to execute in the real world such as the funding for the building, surrounding parking, safety requirements and even how the coffee shop is supported. I am aware of these quite obvious real-world limitations, however, the purpose of the project is not to create a real-world design for Dickson Public Library, but to demo more creative design elements to inspire more creativity and innovation in the world of Library Designs. The implications of these design elements go further than just libraries, and could also be applied to offices, schools, and many other work-related environments. -Ben.
‘Suburban Angel’, Ella Kruger
My final project aims to explore how imagined interpretations of the known then expand the knowledge base, in portraiture. Focusing on three of my favorite archetypes and portrait styles from my childhood, Mary, Bratz dolls and Dionysus, I combined these forms into a final piece. My project should reflect how each of these still influence how I interpret people and situations in my life today.
Tech Inspired Projects
I decided to create projects around technology that link into the uses of morse code for the present day populous. Last semester, when I was researching morse code, I discovered that morse code and the telegraph had many inventions based off them. Such inventions include the telephone and binary which it the bases of computer technology. When I was thinking of this semester's project I had the thought of making my original project and using the basic idea of simple and useful communication and transforming it into projects that show how versatile morse code is. I also wanted to show people how easy it is to use and what methods you can use to send the code. For my projects I wanted to link the old communication technology into the modern age of technology and show it still has a place in the world, even if is outdated.
1. one option is to build and create a communicator with an arduino, as morse code only requires 4 units (i.e. dit, dah, space between letters, and space between words) it is not a difficult system to use, but slow to when starting to learn. I could could use morse code as a basis to design a faster code system.
2. Second option is to use arduinos to encode messages and decode messages sent through light. One arduino flashs code through a led, the second arduino with a light sensor that reads the code. The second arduino then interprets this data and display the message on a computer monitor.
3. Third option is to complete the lesson from last term with a different structure. Instead last semesters plan, I will have a wide variety of activities for the class to choose from. One could be sending messages through programing spheros, another could be a lone arduino programed to blink a constant message, or a student programmable arduino that is connected to a LED. Finally a similar morse code circuit to the one used during the age of the telegraph.
-Jasper
Our eyes are the main way that we receive and process information, it’s much easier to process things when we have a physical thing to look at. It is, for this reason, I decided to create a visual representation of the human race and what we do and have been doing over history. It will hopefully open people's eyes to what they can do and what others do in order to keep our natural world healthy and prosperously. By creating a visual representation of the human race and world, I’ll be showing a creative way in which people can see and understand the world we live in just a bit more. This falls into the idea that imagination is more important than knowledge with creativity replacing imagination for this project, by using creativity I can inform and educate people in an interesting way.
The creative approach I took was to make an animation that shows the population density of each continent, as well as their population and GDP. I made it frame by frame in adobe photoshop.
The reason I decided to choose the population and the human race as the main idea around my project, is because lots of people live on their own little bubble without learning much about the other continents and countries in the world. I’m also quite interested in the debate as to whether the human race is approaching the point at which we are overpopulating our world. Even if the world is not overpopulated it is still under strain because of the amount of waste and pollution we cause, not to mention the number of natural resources we use each day.
-Jack.
More Exhibition photos
