This is an interactive book about Yoko Ono, her love & peace spirit went through the book, butterfly is the symbol as I’d like to describe her as a butterfly – dancing through life, light but powerful, possibly caused some butterfly effects. Back to the book, it was divided into three chapters of I/LOVE/YOU (inspired by one of Yoko’s love and peace campaign ONOCHORD in 2009, speak I LOVE YOU to anybody by a little flashlight, just as love itself). For the electric part, i collaborated with a friend studying industry design in Delft, he helped me to add the light behind the butterfly – in the beginning of each chapter, press the word in the headline, the page will be shining. Even a little experiment, we spent two days to work it out. For the contents, also asked some professional comments from Editorial Design. There are far more things than I thought to be done to make a qualified book, the execution of every details, the applying of innovation, the style, language, size, color, paper choosing and printing … When the book got done, I still had some more ideas, such as make an interactive poster or a DIY paper garment… but all of these developments were based on the first step, it is just the beginning.
Information Visualization
This is the outcome of a corss-disciplinary study about Index Design in last January, collaborated with a Lebanese girl and a Finland girl from Public Space Design, we made a data visualization demo based on our email accounts in three days. In the first day, we discussed and exchanged our ideas, and chose the topic we gonna work; in the second day, we made some drafts and tried different ways to range and visualize the data, while built some excel databas as the backup; in the last day, we brought proper materials and built the damo. We didn’t want the design looks too formalize, so used a cartoon image to show the data volume, moreover, as my teammates are from spatial design, there is a sense of architecture, is it?
The Living Shadows
Had some ideas about shadow for the graduation exhibiton last year, we have discussed a lot almost every possibilities of how to use the shadow effectively to the exhibion, and we spent half day together to built a lovely matrix, but actually the concept was not applied to the exhibition, it was ended up in a ridiculous way. Now looking back to the concept, what i am interested is the living shadow, it is notl only the reflection of something but has its own life, even an independent existence, find it out or create it in a smart and humoristic way, still plays low-key but expressively.
These three posts are the outcome of the desing project for my graduation exhibition of maHKU 2010.
I picked up three pieces of jewellery which consisted a series of stories from my primary school education system. In my desing, I tried to deconstruct the straitlaced education system by means of some little fragments within itself, and tried to transform the collective memories into a personal perspective – showing a contrary meaning of the same old symbols, endowed the Red Scarf, Captain Armband and Little Red Flower with a vivid, humoristic and flexible style.
Black and white are the grounding color of the design, red, yellow, blue and green – the typical primitive colors which have been used in the uniform system when I was young were composed the rest of tone.
Fashion and Modernity
The Fashion & Modernity project, is a major collaboration with Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design and is funded by an AHRB large grant until 2004. Through a range of interlocking collaborative and individual studies resulting in publications, symposia, conferences and exhibitions this project will investigate the relation of Western fashion to modernity from the late eighteenth century to the present by establishing a critical relationship between theories of modernity and contemporary cultural theory and practice in fashion. The project leader is Caroline Evans, Senior Research Fellow, Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design.
The project is focused on the development of consumer culture in the wake of the Industrial Revolution. Specifically, it aims to scrutinise the relationship of modernity to technology, industrialization and consumption, examining their effects both on subjectivities (raising questions of body and identity, be it national, gendered, posthuman, etc) and on appearances (raising questions of the importance of fashionable appearances in periods of rapid transformation).
The project has two aspects. The first is collaborative work where a large group of individual researchers will come together for a symposium and conference, resulting in two group publications. The symposium will focus on history and theory and the conference will address the interface of history and theory with contemporary practice.
The second aspect involves the work of a smaller group of individual researchers, more specifically focused on fashion, where outputs are books, an exhibition and a practice-based PhD project.
Examples of single-author books to be published by LCF and CSM staff as part of the work of the project include:
Christopher Breward, Fashioning London: Dress, Space and Identity 1750-1970 (Berg Publishers, 2003) accompanied by a major exhibition of the same title at the Museum of London in 2003;
Caroline Evans, Fashion at the Edge: Spectacle, Modernity and Deathliness (Yale University Press, 2003) and Living Dolls: A History of the Fashion Model 1850-2000 (publisher to be confirmed, 2005);
Alistair O’Neill, Mapping Fashion in Modern London 1870-1995 (Reaktion Books, 2002) and Tommy Nutter and the Disproportionate Suit (2004)
Other projects culminating in chapters in the two published collections entitled Fashion and Modernity (2004) and Fashion: History/Theory/Practice (2005) include:
Andrea Stuart: Queen Henrietta: 17th century masques, self-fashioning and gender;
Caroline Dakers: the development of the retail haberdashery market in the early 19th century;
Kitty Hauser: a critical article and performance based on the work and studio of Degas, in whose paintings women’s participation in fashion is seen as a kind of theatre of the city;
Becky Conekin: surrealist and fashion photography as symptomatic of modernity in the post-war work of photographer Lee Miller;
Andrew Hill: the experience of modernity and of fashion in the film ‘Performance’;
Frances Geesin: on her collaborative work as a textile designer with the electronics firm Philips.
Suzanne Lee: ‘Digital Dress: Fashioning the Future’;
Jamie Brassett: ‘Spaghettification’: the ways in which technoproducts & bodies can interact in order to ensure that subjective & objective entropy is lessened, & emergent possibilities heightened;
and chapters by Judith Clark on curating, Jane Harris on digital technologies, Shelley Fox on design and Sharon Baurley on textile design and new technology.
Funding from the AHRB for the whole project amounts to almost £300,000 over three years.
Contact:
Dr Rob Lutton
London College of Fashion
20 John Princes Street
London W1G 0BJ, tel. 020 7514 7690 email research@fashion.arts.ac.uk
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