Class of 2012 exhibition at the national centre for craft and design, Lincolnshire

"CLASS OF 2012 

Celebrating the work of art & design graduates
Every year the National Centre for Craft & Design celebrates the latest art and design talent to emerge from our national universities by exhibiting an exciting and diverse range of work by a selected group of graduates.

This year, exhibition curator Laura Mabbutt has toured regional university shows as well as visiting ‘New Designers’ graduate show in London to select the varied collection of talent exhibiting this year. “I look for fresh ideas that stand out from the rest and relate to current trends. The theme of the show arises from this research and this year ‘sustaining and preserving in a global sense’ really shone through.”

A range of high quality, visually striking products created by 12 specially selected graduates will be on display……."

Here are a few pictures of the exhibition

Belladrum Festival

I was lucky enough to be asked to exhibit some art at Belladrum festival this year. Belladrum is a music festival near Inverness. The idea was to take some bits and bobs up with me and 'skip dive' the festival to see what useful things I could find to do some live art with. I also took up 'The Ironic Chairman' and a few copies of 'The Art of Skip Diving' to display in a pop up gallery by the Hung Gallery based in Inverness. 

I arrived a few days early to set up and take part in a small presentation alongside the other artists in a preview for the press.

Unfortunately there was a health and safety issue with the scaffolding for the gallery resulting in its failure to open the whole weekend.

However, the sun was shining, the music was playing and everyone was having a great time so I spend a lot of time chatting to all sorts of people about my work. Here are a few pictures.

Unpacking the car

Explaining my work at the preview

Taking a break on 'The Ironic Chairman' in the gallery

Outside the gallery (still thinking it would open at some point)

Below are some pictures of festival goers enjoying my book and my chairs

The Art of Skip Diving

"This book is not intended to change people it is here for people that want to change"

The Art of Skip Diving is a book that explores the possibilities of sustainable design and re-cycling. It demonstrates what can be made with no tools or money with the aim to give meaning back to everyday items by putting the time and effort into them yourself. Anyone can do it. It will cost you nothing and the possibilities are endless.

The ebook can be downloaded for free for a limited time from iTunes

http://itunes.apple.com/us/book/the-art-of-skip-diving/id537042043?mt=11

So many uses

Here is a home made 'urban survival kit' all contained in a small mints tin.

Here is a detailed picture of the contents

http://www.flickr.com/photos/moomah/3317037435/

these mint tins have also been made into some very interesting things ranging from martini kits to miniature BBQ's

http://artofmanliness.com/2011/01/30/22-manly-ways-to-reuse-an-altoids-tin/

Survival Board

The guys at Every third Thursday have done it again and this time have made a snowboard pretty much for the things that I have been researching for my project.

Enjoy!

Surfboard

This summer I decided to deign and construct my own surfboard. It is the first one that I have attempted and has been a success as I took it out for its maiden voyage last week and have been for a few shreds since then.
The board was constructed and shaped from a foam blank, I then Fibre glassed it fitted the plugs and gave it a paint job and gloss coat. I will update this post with a video soon clearly showing the making process, but until then here are a few pictures.

A Trophy for a friend

For 4 years now we have been holding a skiing and snowboarding competition for all of the Scottish universities at the dryslope in Aberdeen. Unfortunately one of our riders and a good friend of mine passed away last year so we decided to make a memorial trophy for him.
The base is made from a simple log, cut, sanded and varnished. I had intended to use an old pair of his bindings but they had already been given away for someone to get the good out of them.
The trophy will be on display at the Aberdeen Snowsports centre for years to come ensuring that the memory of James Burn lives on.

jellyfish lifestyle

here are a few short documentaries i have been looking into which clearly show 'urban survival'

1.Quit Job 2.Jump in Bush - episode 1 from Harry Byrne on Vimeo.

1.Quit Job 2.Jump in Bush - episode 2 from Harry Byrne on Vimeo.

What has more than one use?

Whilst brainstorming things we use to survive I remembered the old yellow pages advert.
Used for the wrong reason, or is that the only thing its actually good for these days?

Do we really need money? What do we need to survive?

I'v been looking into what you need to survive in extreme situations caused by climate change, but then today I thought to myself "Im surviving right now" which made me remember a documentary I had seen a while ago by Harry Byrne about 'A relaxing holiday' where he went to Japan for 3 weeks with no money for a 'homeless holiday'.
This has made me start to think about what we actually need to survive or what objects we use for more than one purpose everyday. Eventually perhaps making it possible to survive only on the things in your pockets.

Harry also has some other interesting documentaries on hitch hiking and experimenting with sleeping rough and the aspects of getting by on next to nothing.

Have a look at his blog


http://jellyfishlifestyle.com/videos/japan

Can we survive without money?

Mark Boyle decided to give up money for a whole year, This seems to be a grab way to make people live off the land and reduce their carbon footprint, as in one article in the guardian he states that he refers to them as food metres rather than food miles.
However I do not think that this way of life would be for everyone.

water pebble

The water pebble is an ingenious piece of kit that i have come across recently its sole purpose is to aid in reducing your water consumption when having a shower. it starts by glowing green, then amber, then red; indicating when you should get out the shower. Each day it slowly decreases the time so that you have shorter showers without even noticing and therefore using less water.

http://www.waterpebble.com/

Philips microbial home

The guys at philips have designed a whole heap of fancy new products in a bid to encourage people to 'go green' my favourite is the urban beehive.



take a look at their other new designs

http://www.design.philips.com/about/design/designportfolio/design_futures/design_probes/projects/microbial_home/index.page

Recycling and re-using

Products are now becoming obsolete very fast especially computer technology with things advancing so fast, can we continue to find uses for these items once they have fulfilled their original purpose?
Above is the Macquarium. The shell of an old mac computer modified into a fish tank.
There are more innovative designs at the website below, including such things as sex dolls being used as jackets?

http://www.takepart.com/photos/upcycled-recycled-repurposed-stuff-found-second-life

Al Gore

Looking at climate change I decided to watch a film by Al Gore 'An inconvenient Truth' it is actually very interesting and not as dull as you would imagine.

Here is the trailer

recycled snowboard

This year I have been looking into reducing our carbon footprint so here is a great video from the guys at Signal snowboards who like to experiment with snowboard design, this is the recycled snowboard

Interesting new design for cash machines

Have you ever stood at a cash machine and received a friendly tap on the shoulder to alert you to a discarded £20 note on the ground?

If so, then shortly afterwards - after you crouched to pick it up - you probably noticed that your card and perhaps the cash you were withdrawing had disappeared.

Some £33m was lost to cash-machine fraud in the UK in 2010.

Although the figure has been falling in recent years, the industry is still trying to find ways of reducing it further.

As part of this, 13 students were commissioned to come up with designs to make ATM use safer.

Not all of their ideas will make it into production, but some - which have been exhibited at Central St Martins College in London - do raise some interesting views on how consumers can be safer when they take out their cash.

For the full article
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-13798386

Pineal gland headphones prototype

These headphones will allow the user to listen to music at the same time as recieving SAD light therapy.

The First step was to take apart some headphones and figure out a way to fit a bright LED onto each of them whilst still allowing clear sound.

I powered the LED's with two small 2V batteries and created a switch, although I plan to look into means of powering the lights from the music player.



These headphones would solve the problem of getting SAD light treatment on the go and also they are hidden so the embarrassment factor for users is a lot less than that of a huge light box.

Light illusion blinds prototype

The aim behind these prototypes were to give the illusion of light trying to shine through them. The origional idea was to use electrluminescent sheets on the underside of each blind. For these prototypes however I have just used glowsticks to convey the idea

This first prototype was constructed with white foam mounting board. I think that the mirrored version (below) was too reflective.


I made another version of this idea using mirror in a bid to reflect the light even more, but i soon realised that this was too much and no longer gave an illusion but instead was too bright.

SAD Brightlight hat Prototype

Here is a prototype for a SAD Brightlight hat. Using similar ideas of combating the condition to the 'VALKEE' Brightlight headset. Yet this design disguises the product even more and so avoiding less embarrassment.


I simply used some LED's, watch batteries and ear pieces from headphones.





The batteries are concealed beneath the cuff of the hat. Obviously water proofing, power supply and comfort will have to be thought out more if I choose to take this product further.

This set could be manufactured to fit onto any hat or simply manufacture them into the hat.