A Question Of Research

 Last year I did a lot of laser cutting so I wasn't overly sure it would be worth going to main workshop induction during consolidation week BUT I'm glad I did go! Not only was I really intrigued by some of the techniques I hadn't yet heard about, I also gained an interesting idea which I quite like the idea of exploring, alongside conducting research to better understand how to do it effectively, of course. I took a few photos of the pieces that gave me ideas; An interchangeable stamp! That is intriguing... this would also work really well for my thoughts over my proposal/main project but this is a naturally intriguing idea. Design where design shouldn’t necessarily be - a physical object, that is designed to be interacted with. An object that is naturally interacted with, featuring a design that encourages further interaction, perhaps with other objects or with other people. A textured poster, that will no doubt create some interest and engagement... A photo of something ...

 I am intrigued with this combination as previously I have struggled with digital reading but I usually make notes in a notebook which is often intimidating and allows for too much space, encouraging me to just copy the text. I think the act of highlighting will help me to engage with and potentially better understand the reading but without a physical print out it may help me to better form my own thoughts, going off purely my hand written notes. I didn't even finish the intro of this book and already it gave me some interesting thoughts and ideas - I often use academic research as a way of spring-boarding a load of ideas myself which has worked well here, giving me lots of different thoughts to explore. I'm really intrigued by the idea of creating something specifically that will engage social curiosity and therefore engagement. Creating something that will either give you an answer to a question through interaction or something that will lead you elsewhere (similar to the ou...

 It was a bit intimidating to start the reading, following on from what felt like a mountain of books, journals and articles for my dissertation but I gave them a go! I started with 'The nature of research' which was a slow start but actually kind of interesting and useful: (The photos of the pages are relevant, in terms of research methods and engagement with the material) From my engagement with the reading my main takeaways were two main things; - In terms of research methods, you should follow the process of buidling an initial knowledge base (finding an idea), engage in deeper, targeted knowledge (gain a better understanding of said idea) before finally developing your idea into an outcome, through research.  This is something you do the entire way through a degree, sometimes without even realsing, because it is so engrainded into us. It is interesting though because the second reading is focused on (from my understanding) the 'how' and 'why' of design and ...

 Well... never before have I had quite such an instant headache as the briefing session for this unit! Rather perplexing, to say the least! I didn't even know 'materiality' was a word and what a difficult word to spell it is. It is an interesting array of questions though, certainly something to really stop and think about - not that I think there will ever truly be an answer to them as of course every individual creative produces work for different reasons, for different target audiences and through different mediums. I guess that is why the questions are angled towards our own practices, rather than in general.   Given that during this session my group was discussing the materiality question, my mind kind of took that question and RAN! I started to come up with a few ideas and even started to do some light research during the library lecture/workshop. Some interesting ideas... but I hadn't even broken down the other questions at this point so needed to back track slig...