From looking at wrapping what causes the mystery behind what we’re about to open, what clues indicates what’s inside, the typical snow man wrapping paper at christmas? The brown envelop with a formal letter or certificate inside? Who decided what materials is best for both and what indication does it give us to know whats inside, the mystery behind the shape, a box? Or can we wrap something such as a wine bottle in material which makes the shape abstract? Ribbon? A gift?
Wrapping is crucial to an item, but its going to take further research to really come up with not a solution but a good enough answer to wrapping an item in a certain wrapping paper, which then could be taken on photographed and even printed as a flat texture to packaging.
I’ve never really thought about why we wrap certain things in certain ways and what we assume to be inside the wrapping from looking at the paper, it’ll take a lot of research even if I don’t achieve a perfect solution it’ll be interesting looking into why we wrap things in certain ways.
Crystal Deformity.
This piece has really struck me, I don’t usually like pieces as much as I like this one, before looking into the thought process I think its best to evaluate it before researching it, for my opinion both before and after.
The way the light is captured in the plastic wrap (even if it is plastic or not) is really something special, it causes such a calming mysterious feel to the trees, it makes their shape more abstract it doesn’t just show a tree anymore it shows the architecture of the tree, how they’re so powerful in shape and form, the way move naturally to create a shape which isn’t man made, its surprising how just by wrapping them in a film really shows this, taking tree’s for granted, I don’t look and see the beauty of the tree in everyday life because I see it so often, just by editing them slightly by wrapping them really shows how beautiful the tree is. Which makes me wonder in this assignment can I cause a greater effect? Can I make an item look better wrapped then unwrapped. Can I cause a greater and better effect than this piece. As I design I must look at work and evaluate it, but I must always try and beat it with passion for design. My aim is to beat this piece.
Other inspirations which could come in useful.
Even when we’ve wrapped the item, what interests me as well is do we want to deform the item if its such a nice shape already? Should i use a vacuum to make the packaging suck to the edges of the object? I remember in science in GCSE we put someone in a plastic bag so their head was sticking out and put a vacuum cleaning inside so then when plastic stuck to the edges of my friend who was inside the black bag, I remember thinking how great it looked!
It even inspired one my shoots I did, in which I modeled and thought of, even though we didn’t end up using the vacum we created the same effect with leg tight material and paint over my face
I think to use an alternative approach I’m scared of looking to much into wrapping before I loose my natural touches. I’m not a perfectionist I never will be, because in my view the pursuit of perfection is a never ending strive to become something which is completely unnecessary I find things that look abnormal and not perfect, perfect.
In china this is a growing popular theory I didn’t know this until surprising learning from Brian Molko from Placebo in an interview, but I already had this view before looking into different cultures. I think to wrap something its going to take effort but not perfection, maybe my objects should be quiet jagged. Which leads me to another thought that the material used must compliment the item for example a razor blade? It would cut through paper, in a business they need to look at what the item is made of and the effect it causes on the person who purchases the item, but then again we’re not looking at packaging we’re looking at wrapping. Should we wrap the packaging or the item?
I want to wrap something out of the ordinary. I want to wrap the stars, I want to wrap the moon, I want to wrap light, I want to wrap colour I want to wrap music. But these things are going to take too much scientific thought, which I’m not really capable of because I’m not that intelligent. I can certainly do it on paper. Maybe I should wrap 3 abnormal things and 3 objects which I can hold in my hand.
The universe wrapped in gravity and colour, the starts wrapped in a mixture of elements. Its getting confusing but I can’t help my mind wondering to these places. I’ve always thought in a weird way, or maybe my thinking isn’t weird its just what everyone else thinks of but won’t do it. Back to the point, I want to wrap something that no one else has done before. Although thinking abnormally isn’t going to help me in this project. I need to think back to the ‘apple’ whats the closest thing to the object in material form then wrap it in it. Thinking abnormally isn’t going to do me any favors in this project.
So with design I’ve figured that you can relate any object to another object with the right amount of information, yet what really matters is the closest object that relates to another object, but to be alternative in thinking you have to come up with something original, which is difficult because you have to have enough evidence to prove why you did that something in a certain way. As a designer you have to have the right information about what you’re looking into and why you’re doing it.
Cristo and Jeanne Claude
Even though from researching the artists, I still don’t quiet understand why they wrapped the environment, I think the main point of how it benefits my work is what material and why they used it, because they’re environmental artists they have to deal with elements of weather and mother nature. So from looking at their work, despite looking quiet fantastic and striking the thought process of finding out which materials to use must have been a long hard decision again because the material needs to look good but it also needs to put up with damages to the material etc… how will they look after they’ve weathered, do they weather are they causing damage to the environment? Will animals try and eat it etc…
On a more personal note, what interests me is the fact that I had an idea earlier in the project where I thought I could try and apply a bit of philosophy to a piece of work, someone said to me earlier on “you never step in the same river twise” later on in the project I was going to try and wrap a piece of a river with photographs of a piece of the river over the space of 5 days then wrap river water with the photo’s. I find it ironic that Cristo and Jeanne Claude’s latest piece involved wrapping a river!!! But maybe I can still expand on my idea and use element in which Cristo and Jeanne Claude did, rather then wrap the river. Cover it with the photo’s, but then again photo’s isn’t really wrapping the river, the photo’s are more related to the earlier briefs of packaging rather then wrapping, I really need to focus on the scientific matters of the materials and how they could get weathers or how other things could effect the object.
Paul Smith the fashion designer changed the face of the suit design in the 70’s, showing personality through a suit by having inner print on the inside of a suit, so you look once at a suit then look twice as you’d have a flash of bright colour under a casual neutral colour. I think I could use some of this inspiration in the sense of revealing because it shows what the object is revealing, almost like the personality of the object itself, depending on what I use as the objects it could be an idea to have an inner colour relating to the object, complimenting the object or even more so changing the string colour, if you were to use string in the first place.
•Object
•Research item – cultural, colour, designer, packaging (if packaging isn’t wrapping)
•Applying artistic methods from era, alternative approach’s and contemporary style
•Applying materials. – made from, how will it get damaged, colour etc…
•Quick note to self: DON’T FORGET- I am a designer, I design things to make them LOOK better. So make the item look ‘pretty’.
•Reasons, philosophy and other elements which benefits my final solution.
Another way of looking at wrapping is what is wrapping and what does it really reveal. For example this vase made of glass, the glass contains water and in the water we have the flowers. Wrapping water in glass, wrapping flowers in water to keep them healthy, why the material glass? To show the stems? To represent purity? We have the glass revealing the stems, it doesn’t cause mystery because its showing the flowers natural beauty.
First item or items I’ve chosen are quiet selfishly my own pieces. I think this is a good starting point for because I really love my outcome of the photo’s but I want other certain elements of mystery to them and I also want to preserve them if I can without using photo frames if possible. I did want them as loose pieces, more like them being pinned up rather then caged. I’m also working with my own work just as a starting point so I can from slightly emotional ‘pretty wrapping’ then follow into looking into how materials protect packaging and objects.
The pieces
The pieces wrapped.
Starts to reveal.
REVEALS.
Now i'm going to be looking at wrapping shoes in an artistic way. This could be used for fashion designs etc... when you buy a designer label piece of clothing.
Shoes-Leather-Box-Leather. Using representations of shoes etc... Using the lace wrapping as a sign of what's inside??
I've wrapped the shoes in leather and shoe lace.
From these pieces, i don't actually feel satisfied with what i'm doing. I don't feel i've expressed enough artistic feel through any of them.
Surreal thinking.
WRAPPING TIME.
This would be a ridiculous idea obviously we can’t wrap time, but we could wrap a time capsule, which expresses what time of era we live in. I’m not really going to focus pacifically on the objects during to the time I have to hand in the assignment, but I can certainly look at what decays, what would we use to preserve an object to make it last for century’s.
Wrapping the moon.
After watching a series that I’ve been more than obsessed with over the past few months. I concluded that I should look outside the box, my interpretation for this combined with the program about space was that I should try and wrap a huge object that could be seen from space. Even though I won’t be able to wrap an island like Cristo and Jeanne Claude did, I can certainly put a few sketches down on paper. I thought about doing a few sketches with a futuristic theme, if we made a sign which could be seen from other life forces that can be seen from space, would we use a logo? To represent who we are, what we look like? Just saying – hey aliens this is who we are? Seems like a pretty drastic idea but would be fun to do a few sketches then focus on what material we would use for wrapping a large island or maybe a desert or something. Which makes me think back to my original idea about wrapping the moon, as the moon’s been struck countless many times with meteors which has protected the earth, maybe we should give a little back to our cosmos and wrap the moon as a protection against meteors. This idea seems to be a bit insane and not possible but I thought for maybe some out of the box thinking, I thought it could work nicely. Even though I’ll have to think about gravitational pull and countless other theory’s and facts I might come up with a cool idea. Obviously the moon look’s to beautiful so we wouldn’t want to cover it up, but it would look pretty cool from a distance.
Surrealism and wrapping surprisingly have a lot in common, with all my experiments I’ve found that in most cases wrapping makes an object abstract, when we see a piece of wrapping there’s always certain elements of wonder in it, our eyes and minds connect with something then we try and relate to what the item could be.
When we look at wrapping, we can turn things into surreal pieces, we can use the expression second sights quiet literally.
This piece by Dali has always been one of my favourite pieces, unlike his melting clocks piece, this piece struck me as slightly more original, its said the open draws are a representation of him saying I HAVE NO SECRETS.
This relates to my rapping piece because unlike Dali I want my pieces to be seen as I have lots of secrets. But this piece jumps out at me and relates to the brief because of the way the objects are actually wrapped. If the draws are sticking out of cloth or dress draped around this women, then what else is underneath? The possibilities are endless because in surrealism anything is possible. To create a piece which tricks the human eye, maybe a horror piece, maybe a fantasy piece, is going to be my next bit of inspiration towards the wrapping piece.
At the moment i'm sitting on my sofa in my living room, surprisingly i've been inspired by the sofa itself. I'm going to get random objects from around my house and create a human like figure on the sofa and then i will wrap the objects, so it looks like i've wrapped someone up on the sofa.
Someone Laid on my sofa?
Nope!!!!
So taking the surreal side to wrapping has make me happy i'm now happy with the outcome i've got, it did take me back to childhood memories when i'd play tricks on my parents and arrange objects on my bed to fool then for when they came and checked if i was asleep, guess i was born for this brief...
So now i've established that we can make objects look surreal with the right techniques evolved. I've managed to merge both wrapping normal objects (shoe box) and then wrapping them at the other end of the spectrum (wrapping the moon) and managed to come up with a solution which holds BOTH elements, so i'm really pleased with the latest outcome.
My objects actually make me, who i am as they're my possessions, I’ve turned the wrapping brief into a self portrait piece. Because that’s who I am, I am branding it. Its me. The possessions I’ve used, represents who I am.
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