Lauren and I met today and managed to achieve quite a lot. We covered all of the areas that we agreed needed to be addressed on Monday. We’ve made lots of decisions too as we feel that at this point it is important to start pinning things down and getting an idea of how the final model will come together. I have posted my sketchbook pages that document our discussions but I will attempt to give a summarised overview.
The atrium:
The thumbprint wall design will feature on the main wall that you face when you enter the atrium from the design block. We considered having a design that spanned the entire circumference of the room as we liked the cyclical element but the walls are too broken up by multiple doorways and windows and we feel it would become unclear and ultimately be a weaker visual because it is unlikely that a chain of thumbprints would spread that far around such a big room. Instead the thumb/fingerprints will travel in a row(s) across this main wall and will give the illusion of a watermark(s). Our ‘aim’ is to get the thumbprints to span the length of this wall. We will break the length down into measurements in order to relate this to the technicalities of changing the nature of our sound piece in response to success.
We will have large plinth(s) in the middle of the atrium with all of the pledge cards laid out on top. Alternatively we could potentially use something like the rack featured above, but we feel that the plinth would be much cleaner and more successful. This plinth will serve as a sort of ‘station’ for making pledges. Its central location will attract the attention of anyone passing through the area who will walk right past the plinth (though of course our sound clip should have already attracted attention).
The pledge cards:
After examining the designs that each of us posted on the blog for reference, Lauren and I decided that my designs were most in-fitting with the atmosphere we wanted to create. We also decided that we would further develop these as we had physical tactile samples to play around with and further develop. We went and bought an ink pad and started testing out printing onto different surfaces (see my sketchbook pages for the successes of this). We really think that the thumbprint idea is effective and have decided to firmly stick with it – and of course it is reinforced by the wall design.
Above is a sample of the testing that we did of fingerprints on the actual surfaces. It became obvious to us that printing was much more effective on cartridge paper so we have committed to this. We also felt that the grey paper had a really nice clean feel to it, and we thought that actually, avoiding blue made the entire piece more abstract and begs the audience to think about their water usage in a less obvious way and to consider the things we might not always ‘see’. We also want to try and squeeze our slogan (Every Drop Counts) onto the card somewhere for everyone’s reference.
See the bottom two sketchbook pages I posted for a consideration of how to further develop the pledge cards. We have committed to the bottom left design in the image above because of the way that this will allow us to attach a removable perforated tag which will house the participant’s specific pledge and their contact email. This addition needs to be added to the design and tested. We are also slightly increasing the size of the pledge card to accommodate different sizes of handwriting. We are also going to look at developing the typeface used, considering alternatives. Lauren and I are working on this over the weekend.
Recordings:
We played each other the recordings we made this week, but as we did not have access to everyone’s we were not really able to make too much progress here. However we have booked out a recording mic from monday to friday next week so we can begin to do more high quality recordings for the duration of next week. I am going to pick up the mic at 10:00am on Monday so we can potentially meet on Monday evening, if not, on Tuesday morning.
We have also sent an email to Chris Petter to attempt to arrange a meeting next week to try and gain any advice or guidance he might have for us.
THINGS THAT STILL NEED TO BE DONE/DISCUSSED:
- Mine and Lauren’s development and refinement of the pledge cards
- Everyone needs to bring as many domestic water recordings as possible for Monday
- We need to consider the inclusion of an ‘Every Drop Counts’ banner in our Atrium location – Lauren and I feel it would be successful and less imposing if featured on the plinth we will hopefully be using…
- We also need to develop a sort of layout for the cards atop the plinth
- We also need to consider writing a very brief explanation of our piece that the audience can read as they participate
- We need to consider a way to all share our sound clips so that they are accessible and so that they can be linked to the blog
- Make recordings next week
Embracing Our Failures 