So here it is... Unit X. Yesterday we arrived at our Geoffrey Manton lecture, to be greeted by new faces from both Fashion and Film and Media Studies, in order to kick off our new project, Unit X. At first glance (and even now) we all seemed very intrigued and confused by the meaning of X.
We were given the project topic of 175, as this is the 175th anniversary of The Manchester School of Art. Now, still completely overwhelmed by the idea of working with this number , we were sent away to research what the number, or numbers taken separately, could actually mean, and how they could be adapted into our practice. The first ideas that I researched came in all types of forms- from the idea of weights and that 175cm was the average height of models in industry, to the meanings of each individual number- which could have taken me through a journey of meanings and semiotics. At this point nothing made sense. I was looking forward to meeting the rest of my group- now known as 'Revolt Three' , tomorrow, hoping that we would be able to unpick the meaning of this number together.
Meeting for the first time as a flurry of art students from different practices seemed both exciting, and slightly nerve racking, waiting for the rest of my new collaborative group to turn up. It was so lovely meeting the rest of the group that I am going to work with for the next ten weeks, having a mix of practices will be a really interesting approach to this unit. I have never had the opportunity to work as a collaboration before so think that it will be exciting to look at one another's strengths and work with them to not only project my own ideas and art work, but also combine with other people's work. Another positive regarding working with this group is going to be adding to my friendship group through this project.
When we first sat down together, it was nice to hear about past projects that each of us had undertaken- the nice thing about Unit X is that I will be able to develop in skills that I have never before had chance to approach. As well as this, we began to think about the number '175', and created a mind map of the ideas that we had all researched the night before. Through the group of ideas, two stood out as the most interesting, and adaptable to our practices- the number 13 (addition of the three numbers), and that 175 years prior to the date, the Coronation of Queen Victoria.
We have decided on the latter of our ideas to carry forward. We felt that there was a lot more scope for interpretation of Queen Victoria, and the victorian era. With this in mind, as a group we made the decision to go away and do further research into the topic, and have planned to meet at the Student Union tomorrow afternoon, to have lunch, get to know each other a little better, and work into our topic area a little more.
I am really looking forward to seeing how this unit unravels, and seeing how our ideas can be translated through-out the coming weeks.
Unit X, Rebel .