OUGD601 / COP3 / Practical / Second Stage - Abstract

This project has been incredible for me in terms of learning a tool, and beginning to feel like a curator of shapes as apposed to a designer. I can't claim creation of the shapes that I'm working with but I certainly 'made them' on a screen and used my judgement as to what works best in this context.

So I came back to the plotter machine after previously producing the 3 layer hand print (which was successful and Simon was really liking the direction of).

The key tool I was using to produce the hand imagery was Scribble (in Illustrator). On a whim I decided to try the tool on more abstract shapes, squares and circles. What emerged was some incredible shapes with perfect geometry and incredibly three dimensional textures.

I began by using white ink onto black stock (the aesthetic I've wanted from the conception of this idea). Purely because it looks fantastic and rarely can you print white onto black. There was something in this already so I kept going, changing density of line and messing around with the scribble tool until the right shape was created.

For these next two, I used a black calligraphic marker onto a heavy white stock. I think that while weaker aesthetically than the white onto black version, the shapes are gorgeous and the inconsistency of line brought by using a calligraphic pen is getting somewhere conceptually. We're interfering with a process that is mathematically correct and should in theory produce the exact line width that you've set the plotter to follow.

I returned to white onto black again but cropped into one of the patterns to try and highlight some of the beautiful, otherworldly swooshes that the computer has generated. Because of this cropping, the plotter didn't follow one continuous line (as with all of the other shapes) instead taking near an hour to plot every little triangular shape, thus producing some blotchy lines and generally a less precise artwork. In some ways this looks the most human of the pieces - riddled with mistakes and imperfections.

I then tried using a silver ink onto the black stock, which resulted in the most beautiful results yet. There's this ethereal quality that is created in the shimmering light that leaves the pattern looking as if lost somewhere amongst the paper. It is definitely the closest I've come to conceptually hitting the right aesthetic. There's an eerie human quality to the finish - you can decipher the lines as pen marks but undeniably a human hand couldn't have produced these patterns.

I carried on playing around with shapes and textures until I stumbled across this! Undoubtedly the best shape I've created so far for the project, it has this humanistic curve mixed together with razor sharp straight lines. It first reads as a curved piece of paper itsself but quickly becomes clear that it's a 2D pattern. The silver ink plays a huge part in the success of this too, reflecting light in the central section where the lines are closest together.