Shelter Project

This year's first project we assigned is a Research Theme and Collaborative Project. The theme is 'shelter'.

'It can be treated as openly as you wish whilst reflecting your artistic practice.
It can be a critical statement, an evaluation, a celebration, a contradiction or manifesto...
It can be explored through any medium it may be an object, image, performance, or event, analogue, digital real or virtual.
It will help you to define your practice and professionalize your methods.
You will test your creative ability in stretching a brief, finding an inroad for your curiosity.
You will learn to develop a contextual question and objective.
You will be inspired by undertaking comparative research.
You will make unusual findings transparent to others and work in a team towards a shared goal.'

Project management:

-Project Introduction and definition
-Discussion and work in small groups
-Development of initial individual project ideas and research  question
-Individual research
-Plenary discussions

In our small group, we discussed all possible ideas about what shelter could be. We came up with; buildings and architecture, wildlife and nature, an attachment to technology, emotional and psychological support, and homeless people and charities.

My immediate idea to work with is the nature and wildlife route. Natural shelters may include: caves, snail shells, hermit crabs, tortoise/turtle shells, trees, nests, burrows, rabbit warrens, mole tunnels, beehives, birdhouses, any animal shelter, woodlands and forests, acorns and conkers, flower buds, rocks and stone, dry stone walls, grass and water.
Possibilities of this could be; the landscape, exploring minute proportions of scale, natural textures, animal characteristics, found items in the landscape, man-made shelters found in a natural environment.

As a starting point, I went out on a walk and took several photographs with shelter/landscape/nature in mind.

Summer Project 2010

Wearable Gallery Project

'We realise you might be off around the world and therefore your summer project is designed to fit neatly into your summer schedule.

We would like you to record, in whatever way you choose, the habits, customs, everyday things you notice in your new environment (or down to the post office for the less adventurous). And compare them to your home. We would like you to produce a series of work using the information you glean. You will need to make your work transportable and become your own "Walking Art Gallery."

Hazel's Examples:
"A comparative study of pocket findings in England and Australia."
"Measurements of Gravy Lumps in Bolton and Basildon." '


This is the summer project brief for second year Interactive Arts students. My immediate thoughts were comparisons involving Glossop's countryside/nature and a city's hard edged structures.

About the Scale Project...

"Investigating everyday objects, details and structures in and around Manchester.
 Be inventive with scale.
 Play with contradictions of proportions, perspective and ratio."

I chose to look at the structures found in Manchester's city centre. I have always quite liked that not many of the buildings in Manchester properly match one another. For example in Exchange Square, there is the glass-fronted Selfridges store, the grade II listed Triangle, and the old half-timbered black and white Sinclairs Oyster Bar; and glass buildings, the big wheel and Manchester's Cathedral all sharing the skyline too. I thought an interesting exploration for this project would be the differences in scale between these old and new buildings.

As a starting point I took photos of Manchester buildings.