On November 22nd the popular rock band the Beatles released the "White Album," an untitled double album that featured some of the legendary band's most experimental music. Many of the songs were written when the band was in Rishikesh, India while they were attending a meditation camp. While the album received mixed reviews at the time, it still reached the number one spot on the music charts in both the United Kingdom and United States. Modern critics mark the album as on of the best albums ever created and it remains popular today.

"Star Trek" airs American television's first interracial kiss in an episode entitled "Plato's Stepchildren," the crew aboard the Starship Enterprise became enslaved by humanoid Platonians who have telekinetic abilities.

movies that came out in 1968

• The Graduate
• Guess Who's Coming to Dinner
• Bonnie and Clyde
• Valley of the Dolls
• The Odd Couple
• Planet of the Apes
• Rosemary's Baby
• 2001 Space Odyssey 

Dystopian Literature 

• the handmaids tale-Margaret Atwood 
• never let me go- Kazuo Ishiguro
• Animal Farm- George Orwell
• "Children of the New World: Stories" by Alexander Weinstei
• 1984-George Orwell

1984-As the novel opens, Winston feels frustrated by the oppression and rigid control of the Party, which prohibits free thought, sex, and any expression of individuality. Winston dislikes the party and has illegally purchased a diary in which to write his criminal thoughts. He has also become fixated on a powerful Party member named O’Brien, whom Winston believes is a secret member of the Brotherhood—the mysterious, legendary group that works to overthrow the Party......

(Novel Ending) Giving up Julia is what O’Brien wanted from Winston all along. His spirit broken, Winston is released to the outside world. He meets Julia but no longer feels anything for her. He has accepted the Party entirely and has learned to love Big Brother.-https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/1984/summary/

When demand for air travel reached sky-high levels in the 1960s, the world's then-largest passenger aircraft -- the Boeing 747 Jumbo Jet -- was a game changer. The ability to carry far more passengers than previous airliners suddenly made globetrotting a feasible option for would-be wanderers who previously thought they would never afford such exotic sojourns.

Wong Ping's animation style can be described as vibrant and 'sardonically comical'. Jungle of Desire was created in response to the pro democracy street occupations and student protests during the Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong in 201, which exposed episodes of sever police brutality. 

Wong constructed a narrative that dew upon this story and his own accounts witnessing the police crack down on political protestors. Jungle of Desire's bleak and scandalous pretext is offset by the animation's lighthearted tone and intentionally puerile content and laced with a peculiar masochism of daily life in Hong Kong. 

Wu Tsang -The Looks, also from 2015, is a sci-fi short-cum-performance document at opens with views of a futuristic cityscape-eerily glowing in unnatural the shades of red, orange, and yellow-green-and a robotic voice intoning "It's a beautiful day in the city of Tyrone." Tsang's frequent collaborator, boychild, plays Blis, a pop star overseen by the Looks, which Tsang has described as "digital avatars that control humans through a panoptical social media platform Blis in bed contrast with footage of her coated in glitter, singing and dancing on stage for the official PRSM Channel and before a rapt audience -until a glitch gives way to a moment of rave-like euphoria. With The Looks, Tsang calls into question the liberatory potential often ascribed to technology and conjures a future marked by both dystopian social control and pockets of ecstatic freedom.

-information booklet 

Issey Miyake stood out to me as a designer because of his ability to create garments that could be opened up and closed for easier storage. For example, his 'Flying Saucer' dress consists of a simple structural cocoon disc that would surround the body which would collapse into an accordion pleated form. Miyake achieved this shape through pleated polyester fabric and through careful construction of the garment. However, the main feature that gained my attention was the aura of fragility the garment exerted;the shape resembles a paper lantern, which can be easily twisted out of the intended shape. The bright colour of the dress bring more attention to the different pleats and structural elements, which I want to explore more in my own work; I think the usage of colour is incredibly important especially if it is not monotone colours, and I want to develop my understanding in which colour palettes compliment different folds of a garment. 

Similar to Chen Man, Issey Miyake shows his pride in being Japanese through his published books and by subtly including eastern elements into his designs. One of his quotes inspired me to look more into my own culture as well as the almost infinite range that reside among our world. 

Miyake also explained that while working in Paris during the 1960s, he discovered that what was supposed to be a disadvantage—his lack of Western heritage—could really be an advantage. “It freed me,” he said. “I had nowhere else to go but forward.” He used the title of his book Issey Miyake: East Meets West (Heibonsha Ltd., 1978) to make a statement that “the two polarities had become one” whereby “future generations will mingle even more.”-https://www.metropolismag.com/design/the-a-to-z-of-issey-miyake/

Another piece of work that can assist me in the development of my work is 'Plastic Body', which is a mass manufacturable synthetic skin that can be considered a second skin, or the start of growing thick skin. 

“The seamless and taut skin surface of the young body contrasts with the wrinkled and textured surface of the aged,” writes Yoshiko Iwamoto Wada. “Skin is portrayed as a two-dimensional plane that records the process of aging, imprinting the creases made by the force of time.”

research from Issey Miyake East Meets West 

Deborah Turbeville's work was more focused onto darker narratives that held an invisible weightiness within her images, which was very different to her male colleagues at the time (during the 70s and 80s). She wants the viewer to feel that her photos are 'films you might have missed but would liked to have seen'('Fashion photography-the story in 180 pictures',Thames&Hudson"), which perfectly sums up her storytelling concept throughout her works, often including elements of mystery, encouraging a haunting atmosphere to her images. She also aim to confuse viewers with the period of time in which the photo was taken; she rarely aims to show a an actual period of time but rather pushes the narrative to be the main focus. 

In the world of 1970s fashion, when images that highly sexualized women were de rigeur, Turbeville entered with an anti-fashion sensibility. Instead of suggestive shots of sexy women in gorgeous clothes, Turbeville’s works were dark, emotive landscapes that just happened to feature fine attire.

This series (Bathhouse series) established the ideal Turbeville woman to be mysterious yet romantically isolated, almost like a Brontë heroine, walking with a vulnerable power across decayed, derelict settings. There is a sullen glamour, a weightiness and sadness to these subjects that purposely counters Newton’s or Bourdin’s fantasies. Turbeville showed herself to be a woman who sees women as they are — and often in their darkest moments — not as others dream or desire them to be.-https://hyperallergic.com/381597/the-work-of-a-fashion-photographer-who-despised-the-fashion-world/

'The spread generated a good deal of controversy, due not to the extreme thinness of some of the models, but to their expressionless faves and dingy surroundings:.....all I was doing was trying to design five  figures in space'-('Fashion photography-the story in 180 pictures',Thames&Hudson")

ORLAN: A Hybrid Body of Artworks

edited by Simon Donger, Simon Shepherd

white is rarely completely white;the light and colours around a white object will change its tone completely. I like how it mimics other colours,in this respect white can be anything and everything. -rei kawakubo 

15th November 

We started with a lecture about fictional bodies, and the way designers can also use dance to express different body shapes. One work that stood out to me the most was Hussein Chalayan's gravity defying dance shows that created new boundaries for bodily expressions. We then chose tow other people to become a group of three, and decided on some materials we would want to involve in our work. We decided on using body neutral tones such as browns, pinks, whites and blacks; this is because we wanted to create a second skin and symbolise the actions of growing thick skin. We also wanted to lean towards more industrial materials such as foam or planks of wood, as well as plastic bags and stockinette. For clothing, we opted fro whit shirts, tight fitting garments, variations of tights, flowing dresses and simple knitwear. I also brung piles of materials in different colours for draping. Before we started, we created a few sketches to just get a simple idea of what we each wanted to achieve, but we realised that the majority of our ideas were quite similar so we started to experiment materials and find looks as we go. The first look consisted of a latex skin in a plastic inflated bag, attached to a twisted wood plank that was tied to a nude body suit. We also use nude tights and secured it mid thigh to create a sense of tension from the limb. I liked the colour palette of the look but I feel that there was too much in the upper half of the body and the bottom half was left alone; I think we could  have improved this by developing the look into a one colour palette with only the plastic bag as the main concept. We recreated this look at the end and I used a clear sheet mask I had bought from home to correlate with the plastic bag concept. I sprayed some white acrylic paint into one bag, and two similar shirts, to the one the model was wearing, into the other bag. The model also wore victorian inspired underwear she had fond from a charity shop and the delicate detailing of the garment suited the striped shirt on the model. The white tones varied depending on the lighting and worked effectively in a dramatic light as well as in a softer setting. 

One of the other more successful looks was largely inspired by Rei Kawakubo's Future of the Silhouette AW17 looks. We used stockinette, fur coats and another filled plastic bag to create bulging characteristics from the body. We felt that leaving out some of the contained materials underneath he stockinette created a spilling/leaking effect which worked well as it made the garment seem more alive. We also covered the model's head with a lampshade and this was highly effective sit followed the patterns of the lower garment and it had just enough space to let the models fringe come out. From this experience, I learnt that experimentation is key to creating a successful outcome, and that working throughout the night felt more familiar to me as it shut off the life that usually goes on in the day. I also learnt a lot about typography, and one fact that I found particularly interested in using different fonts every other letter to create a flickering effect. I also learnt that programming fonts can create a large variety of different modular shapes and also this may not be related to my current work, it can be of use later when I experiment with type on image. 

17th November 

I started to develop my drawing by using the same wood we used in the 24 hour project, and this gave my illustrations a more neutral effect. I also looked at the screenshots from the video of took when my team was taking photos of the model and took notice of the twisting of material as the model would move her arms or head. I want to develop the future appearance of our facial expressions, and how we already choose to hide behind a facade on social media. I realised that the majority of my researched work was based around expanding the body silhouette as far as possible by relying on excessive draping and piling of materials, and this could hopefully be developed to become a cleaner simper piece of garment to show an ongoing extension of our body limits. 

18th November 

I carried on with my research and expanded onto anatomy books to see if i could deepen my knowledge in the revolution of our body. However, many of them focused on the brain and this lead me to think about the colour palette I will be going for, and whether i want to lean towards brighter vivid garments or monotone looks. 

I did many sketches that were directly inspired from the outcomes on the 24 hours project, such as expanding the plastic bag concept but creating it around the head, or using chicken with and wood to create a similar silhouette to the lampshade one. I also used tape to create my illustrations, but my ideas started to become stuck as i realised i had an ongoing theme of just creating bulky body shapes. I thought about why our bodies start to change, and I remember a quote from Rei Kawakubo that said 'Fashion is something you attach to yourself, put on, and through that interaction the meaning of it is born. Without the wearing of it, it has no meaning, unlike a piece of art.' This made me think about changing the position of clothing and how that can gradually change body shape, and I want to express this through a simple draping of a black organza or mesh sheet of a few rods attached to the body which will show the ongoing change of body shapes.

Monday
we had a one on one tutorial and jo talked about how we need to differentiate costume from fashion, and that piling on materials doesn’t necessarily mean it is fashion. From the group discussion I realised that I should make the black material into clothing instead as it would follow my concept further. I started to gather garments form my home and wanted to see if I could find anything similar to the lampshade we used in the 12hour project and this was the most effective feature from our outcomes. I found a top that was similar to the shape and I also used a range of black garments to create my look. I painted wooden rods black and started to put it through buttons on clothing to keep it upright and make it straight. I think the most difficult part of this was making sure the clothing stayed on and trying to remeber how it was formed. Tomorrow I will choose a location to shoot in and also work on sketchbook.

Tuesday
after arranging the look on my model, I wanted to try a vibrant backdrop to contrast the dark figure, but I found that the reflective material did not compliment the outfit. I also felt a more neutral toned background would work better so we moved too the curtains in our living room, and this was improved as the backdrop had a very simple pattern that didn’t take away too much from the clothing. However, I think the more effective location would be in front of the three trees in my garden as the tall structure emphasised the height of the model and showcased the protruding parts of the look. Most of the photos were quite dark and I think I should improve this through editing. I did not use the studio because I feel that the black material would have worked better if it was blended in with a location.

Wednesday
I shot in another location whcih was around the corner of the garden house behind my home, and this was much better due to it cool grey background and angles of the building jutting just behind the model. When I edited these photos, I wanted to crop them as I had too many full body portraiture and using a viewfinder to choose where to crop helped me find the more interesting parts of the look. This included the sleeve of a shirt dangling by the legs, and the garments extending from the belt or the thread that rugged on the rods holding the outfit up.
I think the exterior locations worked much better than the interior as the colder hues complimented the black figure more and I also tried to add text to one of the photos with the trees. I think adding the text near the top of the photo would also balance the amount of trees shown against the look. I still want to experiment more with typography and I want to develop my project with more text on image.