21st March 2013: Lauren Bowker

Todays lecture was by a girl whom was previous student at MMU. She graduated 3 years and go and already she has overcome so much and still is in her early days. I was really inspired by Lauren, and really is in awe of her and what she has achieved.

I took some sneaky shots of the presentation she presented, and a mixture of my own research i did to find out more about Lauren Bowker.

She applied on the Fashion course which i am on at the moment in which she was rejected and then she took the textiles course instead.
She said the rejection of this course of course was depressing however she wanted to prove them wrong and with the determination she had, this was achieved.

In this she combined everything and tried to get as much into the fashion course as she could.  After her first year she actually broke her back so she had to take a year out and then re join the course after she had recovered.
Her first advice was that we should go out, get drunk, and have fun. She said going to and getting drunk gets your numbers and networks with different people. Going out lets you meet people and then this creates contacts and sometime this can give you opportunities.
Sorry guys, looks like I've got to go out more: oh no!!....
Anyway, in her third year she had come up with an idea of creating a changeable ink, which on the garment would change colour. She was interested in how much pollution was in the garment so this ink would change colour due to the amount of pollution there was in the garment.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATgo-Z5SsTk

With this she got contacts within the science industry, where this was the first ever invention of the ink. Nobody has ever made this before. She won some awards and competition with this invention and then also got a place at RCA in london, doing her MASTERS in Printed textiles.
She wanted to follow through with this idea of changeable fabric and patterns with different atmospheres, RCA told her that basically where are the designs. That it wasn't very design based.  It through her and they told her that she had to create something for M&S. She immediately designed a jumper which using this ink allowed it to change colour and create a print through the rain falling on the jumper.

M&S said that this isn't very marketable and that it would not sell. She then went through the design progress again, and used the idea of the print which appeared after the reaction of the ink but turned it into a print itself and created a very normal 6 piece womans collection. With this she actually won, through how she explored the whole process.
Lauren stated that the best thing about being a designer is to keep being open minded, and also keep your artistic skills. if you loose these and forget them, you will become very narrow winded and keeping your self open allows you to achieve different possibilities. One for example is that she got collaborated with 2 engineers, which now are her 2 best friends. They were given the task to design the future 2040 air bus, which is simaralily like a plane however it is so futuristic. This scared me a little. I didn't like to think that in nearly 30 years, things like this would be around.
The roof became transparent and this allowed you to have such a view of the sky. The seats moulded to your body. There were so many gadgets it scared the hell out of me. However this was a prime example into how we can get involved to any design based projects if we kept being open minded.
She also said she became involved within this company of PHNX. This came apparent in her 2nd year of RCA and up until 6 months ago. She was involved in making wearable technology, and made use of the ink she invented and made feathers change colour.

The dye actually allowed the feathers to change colours from a variety of 7 different colours not from dark to light. I still don't understand how this can be achieved however it amazes me.  I have found another video of this, which if you check on my blog there is a post of it.

http://vimeo.com/54939542

She then splurged out that she is working on a project for the next coming olympics that they are trying to create clothing which is more aerodynamic and this also has the ink in the material so that it would change when the muscles are working. this would work through it changing with the thermal and temperature of the athlete.
She has also worked with a business: Wold and Badger, which admittedly said she was useless and not very nice to work for. She created a shop window installation for them, which changed colour when in the light from the sun. Eventually they wanted to move their shop and so asked lauren to have it back and look after it. Herself and another colleague: Ryan Hopkinson had to do some piece and spread for a magazine and had nothing to photograph. So silly enough they just thought they would set alight the installation. they photo documented this, and in the end the whole entire piece blew up.
Wolf and badger were not impressed however ryan and lauren got a nice set of photographs to use and publicise.

Moving on she also said she collaborated with Peachoo & Krejberg. Here she was asked to create 3 sculptures using the feathers and she was given 3 tones of set colours she was allowed to use. She basically created a wearable feather sculpture however did not make them change colour and used the palette she was given. But for the after party she created another which changed colour as a centre piece. This fashion show was in paris AW12.
I have linked a video which a found on youtube of the final walk of the fashion show which shows the entire collection including the 3 pieces created by Lauren Bowker.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8IaBVWgA-ME&feature=player_embedded

She also has worked with Tim Walker, which then had Kate Moss modelling one of Laurens Scultpures made from feathers.

After talking through the past work she has created she started to talk about what she is doing currently. recently there was a talk at RCA where a guest speaker: WILL I AM came and talked about how he loves fashion and the idea of wearing technology and computers. Immediately lauren thought that his ideas were very dated and at the after party she decided to go over and tell him,  that he should have her working for him, and then she started to tell him her ideas, and plans, and the work she is presently doing.  He loved her ideas and then asked for her number.
Lauren 10 minutes later received a text from him saying he would like to hang and chat about ideas. Cut along story short he then has Given her money into the company and has created a new label " THE UNSEEN".
This is still ongoing and is all confidential, so she would not speak a lot about it, however she did say that it involves wearing technology, and since she has already told us what she can do and whom she is working with to combine new materials and the materials she had produced. This will be something to watch. I cannot wait to see what this may bring.  The whole concept is putting human in the centre of technology.

To finalise everything off, she told us to go start networking.
NETWORKING IS KEY. You need to find someone that backs you up. If you believe in it, you will find someone that will back you up.
She also explained that she has quite a few projects coming up and so if we would like any internships that we should email her, and also that if she doesn't use us, she has a lot of contacts and she would put forward our CV to anyone that is looking for an internship.
This sounds so promising and has made me really determined to pursue what i want to become.
After i finish this post i am going to quickly update my CV and email it to Lauren, so fingers crossed guys.

www.seetheunseen.co.uk
behindtheunseen.tumblr.com
@PHNX

20th March 2013: Town Hall spooky tour with Johnathon Schofield.

I found this tour on the Event brite and went along with another film student in another group, but she is in my flat. We thought this would be an interesting tour, since i thought it may relate to my groups theme of superstitions and ghost stories. We were greeted by the man himself: Johnathon Schofield at 2pm Town hall manchester.

From this initial greeting he began to tell us the history behind the town hall, and he said that he would begin the tour with the ‘ TOUR OF UNITERESTING OBJECTS’. He started by telling us that the Town Hall was built by a man called Alfred Waterhouse. He stated that manchester was actually roman, and hence there are statues on the Town Hall itself of roman soldiers. I thought this was quite interesting since in our posters we included roman numerals and wanted to keep this a current theme. This would actually reflect the initial brief of 175: the 175th anniversary of the manchester school of art, and if manchester is roman, walllah.

Moving into the actual town hall itself, he took us to part of the building where the public is not allowed to go. He was showing us part of the outer building which was all black. The bricks were covered all over in this black dust which he told us it was due to the 200 year of industrial revolution. All the buildings were like this, and this is the only buildings that still look like this.

Theres the man himself: johnathon ( in the photo above). Anyway, moving on we came back into the town hall where there was a statue of John Dalton. He explained how he was so well known and what his purpose was. But on thing that struck me was that in the Museum Science of Industry they have a jar with his eyeballs. Since him being colourblind, they thought they would be able to find more information about it through keeping his eyeballs. I thought this was pretty interesting since within our group for UNIT X 175 we talked about using jars with unusual objects in relation to spells and ingredients. Maybe this would be a link to go to the archives and find Daltons eye balls. Bit weird but could be quite cool.

Within the tour Jonathan took us around the streets of manchester to give us some information which we wouldn’t find out ourselves. It was unrelative to my course however i found some facts pretty interesting.

The first being that on the clock tower of the Town hall, the minute hand is actually 9ft tall which puts the whole thing into perspective into how big the clock is. Also that on each 3 faces of the clock they have a quote from the bible in gold lettering.

TEACH US

TO NAME

OUR DAYS

All in all meaning that we should not waste our days. We then went to some alleyways to where they were medieval, and how they had stories behind them. One being “Pool Fold’ where they used to dunk women as punishments to them being prostitutes. Some people actually thought this was related to witch craft, but it was the total opposite.

From the alley way we were lead to st annes street if I remember correctly. This was named after a lady called ann whom had built the church we were stood across from in the 17 hundreds. Looking in particular at the Tomb tables. There were lead to believe  that if you were to run anticlockwise around the tombs 3 times and put your ear to the tomb you would hear the dead speak. Going anticlock wise is called widowshins, and the term anticlockwise is un natural and relates to the devil.. One of the tombs was the body of a man called Thomas Deacon whom was a traitor and he was punished and killed in the most horrible way. He was half hung, naked. Then was pulled down and his stomach been cut open.  His intestines pulled out, and all this time he would be still alive choking, and from this his body cut up into bits. How horrid is that.

On a happier note he explained all the intricate details on the buldings, and in particular went to show us the building where now is Jamie Olivers resuturant. The building itself was mathematically put together since it is made from 3 floors and each floor is a third smaller than the one above and the whole building is on a slant backwards to make it looks overall larger. We went inside and was took to the toilets. They reminded me instantly to harry potter: sad as it may seem, but it really did. There were 4 doors on each side of the wall with a big golden knob in the centre of the door, with ascending numbers above each door 1-8. But straight in front of you was a big metal safe door. Inside this safe was hundred of different compartments, however it was a room to hold events for the restaurant. It was so amazing! It was in describable and you would only imagine it if you would see it for yourself.

Finally moving on to the last part of the tour was the ghost underground tour. He took us to  Barton Arcade Chambers.  Down their was all dark and brickwork abandoned buildings underground.  He started to tell us two different ghostly stories about the historical insight for the underground chambers.  Actually videoed each story since I would have not remeberd it. It is only for audio purposes since it was pitch black, apart from his red torch.

I did take a couple of photographs too with my flash on, but they were for my purposes to actually see what was in front of me. Looking back on the photographs there were lots of spiritual orbs on the photos. Which I found very peculiar.  Anyway here are the two videos. Sorry for me and my friend blabbibg about how scared we were, or like if we swear. I was literally bricking myself down there. Enjoy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8PyBfDJjss&feature=player_embedded

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNQKKjlP_eY&feature=youtu.be

Also here is my sketchbook notes on the tour itself. 

20th March 2013: New Purchases £££

Hey, i know it isn’t to do with my work, but i thought i would put a spanner in the works and spice my blog up a bit instead of carrying on with my work. I thought i would let you know on my new purchases this week.

I have been recently looking for some Nike air max 1s, however they are all so brightly coloured and i didn’t want them to stand out so much. I fancied some that would kind of blend in with anything i wear, more on the neutral colour pallet. Well anyway, i found some online however knowing my luck they were from america and i did not want to chance it with their VAT custom charges on top when they hit our border. So i found some very similar to the ones i wanted.  The are a pastel green with grey and white and yellow. I found these quite neutral but still not so neutral they have a life and a bit of fun!  Nice purchase off a lady on ebay!

Also this week following on with the vintage style i bought some tapered jeans. Last weekend i was actually having a conversation with my mum on how i fancied some and she was telling me stories about back in the day and how she used to have some with a big stripe down the side. Anyway, i had a look online and i couldn’t find any that i liked, and so i went into Blue Rinse Vintage Store which is in Northern Quarter. There were some light blue Levis tapered jeans, on the paper label they said they were a size 10, however when putting them on i knew this was wrong. They were so big around my waist however with a belt they look good, they look better bigger as they give it the style i wanted. Cheeky little bargain of £25. + charity shop belt £2.99. You can’t go wrong with that.

Finally i bought some green pants. I am still not sure on what to think of these yet, but i haven’t worn them yet. Again from another vintage store. But they are bright green. They are kind of track suit like, but high waisted. I thought they were slightly shell suit but i am not sure on this one. They are really light and very comfy and pretty cheap also for £14. 

The photos don't do the pants any justice, the colour is so much more green and they are so much nicer in real life. Just to let you all know.