Bristol Design Festival

Please, come and visit me at the Bristol Design Festival.

06 - 11 JUNE 2009
10:00 - 19:00

The Old Fire Station
Bridewell Island
Silver Street
BS1 2PY
Bristol




















You'll see: The website, the notebooks, and a big notebook where you can contribute with your story during the event.

It's been great to hear direct feedbacks and see that people are interested in the project. :)

Should this project be in a Design festival?

Something that makes me wonder from the time I submitted this project to a design festival is if this project should be exhibited in a design festival. And this fact is something I am still anxious about. What makes me a bit more relaxed is that the feedbacks I got from people so far was good, and could see people interested in the project. But I wonder how people perceives this project in this exhibition.

I wonder if when general public go to a design festival, if they expect to find beautiful, digital, shiny and sometimes "eye-candy" design. Am I underestimating the public? Do I have a wrong idea of what the public expects? Sometimes I wonder if people have in mind that design is about the process, the concept. As applied art, design have the tools to make people question, see from another perspective, get something from that. I am not speaking about commercial design which has specific commercial goals to achieve and works together with marketing. I'm speaking about design that is exhibited as "this is the design we have at the moment", "this is what designers have been doing".

Particularly, I've been quite disappointed in a few design exhibitions I've been in the last months (not in the BDF though, let me make it clear), especially because I keep seeing special effects, projects that are more concentrated in the aesthetics and keeps in a superficial level. This repeats over and over again. This project is not about the aesthetics at all, apart from the fact that I do want to question that and say "yes, this was hand-made", "Yes, it's made by human to human in the most basic level."

So, I wonder... should this project be in an art exhibition instead, or does it make any sense being in a design exhibition? What do you expect when you go to a design exhibition?

Please, help me out, let me know your opinion.

A short look on the website set up

Take a short look on the website set-up (animation pixalation). Please, disconsider the breaks between the videos and a few more details, which I'm still working on.

http://www.whathaveyouleftbehind.com/test/index_test.html

At the moment, I'm working on:

- How these videos work better in the Internet (video extension x quality x file size);
- The sound for this set up (I'm trying to get sounds made out of paper);
- The black background will be a photo of a black paper.
- I'm working on the sentences that will appear on the notebook area, and the videos of the drawing map.

Screenshots

A few screenshots of the website:

Notebooks exhibition

Photos of the exhibition of the notebooks in the International Day of Sharing Life Stories that happened in the university (UWE, Bristol).

(22 notebooks that I collected back from sending abroad to people in different parts of the world.)


(the two sketch books with the whole development the project)

The next exhibitions will be in the Bristol Design Festival and the Degree Show, Faculty of Creative Arts, UWE. I really hope I'll see you there!

International Day For Sharing Life Stories

This project is taking part in the International Day for Sharing Life Stories (http://www.ausculti.org) this year, registered under Bristol, UK through the University of the West of England.

To celebrate the International Day of Sharing Life stories, we will be screening a series of digital stories from around the world, which will take place in our seminar on the afternoon of 19th May at the Bower Ashton campus, University of the West of England Bristol (Directions to get there: click here, or ask me).

I'll be there with this project (website + notebooks) from 2pm on, so please come along!

I hope to see you there!

Creative Arts Degree Show 2009

Annual showcase of work by final year undergraduate and postgraduate students from the School of Creative Arts, University of the West of England, Bristol.

I'll exhibit this project on the Degree show from the 20th - 25th June. I'll be there with the website, the 22 notebooks, two sketch books, a notebook available for anyone who wants to take part and a special screening with the making of.

So, please, come and visit me! I'll be there just waiting for you. :) Drop me an email if you're coming so I make sure I don't leave the room on that time.

Directions to get there: click here, or ask me.

For more information about the event:
http://www.uwe.ac.uk/sca/view/

ISEA Conference

Great news! I'll be giving a talk about this project in the ISEA - International Symposium on Eletronic Art - in Belfast on the 28th August at 11am.

I'll be talking about this project, the outcomes and discuss the authorial decisions made along the way, in order to consider ways of representing ideas about identity and belonging in a globalised and digital world.


More information about the conference, please access: www.isea2009.org

Let me know if you're planning to go to the conference and I'll meet you there!