dsdn1 101 | project 2 brief

I have gathered together some symbols from one of my ethnic cultures (earthy colours of bark paintings) and combined them with a small animation I saw the other day on tumbler:

Here is the resulting tile. Note the overlapping circles... I wanted to express the randomness of some of these connections.

©2013 helenkwilliams

And here is the pattern:

©2013 helenkwilliams

My brief:

In my project I will identify the cultures, both ethnic and urban that have shaped the person that I am.

There are a variety of ethnic cultural influences that contribute to this – I have lived in Australia, New Zealand, France, the United Kingdom, the United States and South Africa and the result of this nomadic existence is a ‘mash-up’ of cultures that I readily relate to and identify with. I am going to focus in particular on the Australian Aboriginal culture in this mash-up because I am able to draw comparisons between that nomadic way of living and my own own itinerant lifestyle. Even though we know there is aboriginal heritage on both sides of my family, there is no formal information about this so I have always been unsure of my background. I believe I have readily adopted other cultures throughout my travels because the history of my own cultural heritage is so enigmatic. My project will identify and express this similarity.

I have also identified within my urban culture a strong influence of and affinity to social media which I have used to support and maintain both my personal and business lives. My personal taste in music, entertainment and politics as well as my traveller life have been well documented by sites like Facebook as well as providing a means for connecting with old friends as I've shifted about so for me there is almost a symbiotic relationship between the two. My project will show how intrinsic networking and therefore social media is to my life as well as the potential it has for consuming my reality.

I will research precedents of aboriginal art for representing my abstract forms and will further abstract those to find a personal take on my ideas.

My personal way of moving is usually high paced, driven and sometimes manic. I will use these traits to characterise my work.