Starting off

See images hereResponding to an empty site on the 'High Street', bring it back to life through immersive art
I began research by thinking of places we could use in Birmingham, to get us started generating possibilities from our immediate surroundings. I recently learned that the Crown Pub is where Black Sabbath had their first gig, so it seemed a shame that it was abandoned. I also learned that BOM was in the process of taking on the building, so I got in touch with Chloe the learning and engagement lead from BOM. She said we couldn't access the building as it wasn't safe. She did point us in the direction of the now closed John Lewis in Grand Central.
I imagined a light installation that reacted to the vibrations in multiple instances in New Street Station and Grand Central. The purpose is to create a peaceful haven for anyone coming through. The vibrations and noise from New Street can be intense and overwhelming at times, but with my installation, I would like to have taken these vibrations, manipulated and smoothed them into a wonderful soothing art piece. The premises could accomodate a very large scale installation. I imagine different parts of the place lighting in different colours and behaving according to the vibrations.
I think my idea may have been prematurely fleshed out, and didn't leave much room for collaboration.
Niamh suggested Northampton the town's highstreet is dying and she has links to the town. It was put to a vote and we decided on Northampton, however I was outvoted. I was disappointed of course, but I accept the majority vote. My only concern was that we decided on a location that only one of us had a connection with, whereas Birmingham is a commonground for all of us. This may limit the amount of primary research most of us can do, as we're limited to reading books and online articles, and emailing people.

So far, we have decided on a town and loose concepts, organising our thoughts on a miro board. The miro board is good for documenting every thread of ideas, however when collaborating in a group of 5 it can get messy. Perhaps establishing some design rules around fonts and images could keep things tidier. We have also been using a whatsapp group to communicate, but this is not ideal for all purposes. I prefer real time communication, but it has been difficult to all meet up at the same time.
We had an adventure in Birmingham, trying to spot any vacant buildings. We walked to Brindley Place, even though I felt the highstreet was alive in that part of the city, but I was open to suggestion as I didn't want to shut down any ideas. We bumped into Ryan Hughes, Artistic Director and CEO of Coventry Biennial. He pointed out a vacant office building saying 'That's where I would put an exhibition if I could", so we visited and took photos. I simply rang the bell and asked for access or contacts for the building, but the security guard said he couldn't help us. We also visited a large new office block which was semi-vacant, occupied by big companies like Goldman Sachs. This had the potential for an intervention, but the idea wasn't pursued.

Initial Research

Reading the Portas Review gave me a good insight into the problem we are tackling. The review references the riots that happened in Birmingham and other cities in England, which further made me think that Birmingham would be a good place to start. There are plenty of places in Birmingham that could be used for an intervention for example City Arcade and Union Passage, which features beautiful architeture, but is often just a place for loitering, and would feel intimidating to a lot of people. One of the main takeaways that inspired my intentions for our project was giving people the opportunity to try out their business ideas in a safe environment. I suggested to the group that our venue could be a place where local people could sell their art or zines. I am inspired by a number of venues in my local area. Temperance is a cafe located in Leamington Spa that has a rolling schedule of exhibitions, many live music events in their basement, but is also a place for people to socialise and study during the day. They use a PA system and CCTV cameras to stream the performance in the basement to the ground floor, maximising the audience. Before being a cafe it was a furniture shop that shut down. Leamington has a big student population, especially in the south of the town where there are many studeny accomodation complexes nearby. Temperence proves popular with this demographic. LTB showrooms is an exhibition space and music/performance venue in Coventry. Starting from above the Litten Tree pub, (hence the acronym, b for building) it has since grown to occupy the entire building after a touch-and-go period when they expected the council to end their tenency in late 2023. Instead it has been extended and they took on the closing pub as more space, now occupying four floors. This place is great for exhibitions, as there are big spaces with white walls, capable of accomodating lare installations.

Visiting Northampton

Upon arriving in the town, I made my way to our chosen location. I found it under renovation with builders inside. I did get a better sense of the space however. I do wish we had chosen a location closer to our vicinity, as I did not feel very excited about this place but it felt too late to change plans. The place is in a great location for a business. It did not scream dying highstreet to me. However after meeting with my group we visited the museum and saw the permemant Shoe Gallery, and a temporary exhibition called "Punk Rage and Revolution". I learned a lot about the Punk and New Wave music culture in Northampton, noticing shoes originating commercially from NH like Doc Martens and Brothel Creepers as staples in punk attire. Northampton has a clear identity rooted in its history. We also walked around and considered alternative locations, and I did see some interesting places that could be used for an intervention. However we later decided to stick with our original location.

Conflict

Seeing Sarah's presentation on conflict allowed me to reflect on the process of collaborating with my group. From the beginning there has been disagreements, originally resolved with a vote on what town to pick. I disagreed that we should even be deciding that before thinking about the concept too. However it was decided by a vote to pick Niamh's suggestion of Northampton. After this, I felt like the group was confused about what idea of this place to pursue. I feel like there has been less issue with conflict as there has been communication. The idea of this place has become a bit confused over time. I had to make an effort to summarise the idea to the group. I feel like we have become too polite to say "No I don't like that idea", or just admitting that the idea isn't clear to them. The idea spawned as an art centre with a cafe, but then the emphasis began to shift onto the hospitality side, plus the place has a stage for music performance. I found this all a lot to imagine, however I did relate the idea to my existing schema of such venues. The downfall of having all these facets is that the branding and design can become very complicated, especially when working in a team of five with a tight schedule. Also trying to fit all this into the place, as well as assume there is the funding for such a project. I felt reluctant to be a constant disruption by disagreeing with the idea, but I regret not being more upfront with my concerns later on. I did try to suggest half way through that we find a place in Birmingham, which seemed to upset other members of the group. My reluctance to speak up also stemmed from the environment we work in. Often we will sit on the long tables with the other groups, which can be distracting and stiffling for free discussion. I did get us to move away from the tables to the beanbags at one point and lead a discussion on the beanbags, writing a mindmap about the narrative of the place. I felt a bit disappointed when half the team ended up looking at their phones. I do feel ignored sometimes, as one of the main ideas for the design of the interiors was decided at some point without me. The Everest mural theme seems twee to me and I would have said I don't like that idea but it had everyone else's go ahead. At this point I decided to just go with the group's ideas and help where I can.

Bar Design and technical challenges

Between me and Vivian, we decided to take on the challenge of making the 3D digital model. Vivian took on the work of producing the building, and I took on the challenge of creating a Shoe Bar. The Shoe Bar is designed in the form of a Creeper shoe. It features a split level for better accessibility, and a natural flow from queueing at the heel, getting served at the narrow point and collecting drinks toward the toe. I was inspired by Rachel's drawing of a bar, so I drew the shape a few times and realised it seemed like the form of a shoe. I have spotted more bars designed for people in wheelchairs and noticed the void before the heel could naturally accomodate serving shorter people.
We had major challenges because we both know different software (Blender and Cinema4D, which feature very different user interfaces) and we also tried to use Vectorworks. Vectorworks would not let us share files because I used the English version and Vivien used the German one. We were also very new to the software and could not learn it quick enough to match what we could do in our preferred softwares. I made the shoe bar in a complicated manner with modifiers and materials, but it proved very difficult to actually export the object with the materials and send it to Vivien. When I thought I had done it right, it was hard to know how to help her import it because her software is in German and I have not used Cinema4D. I have had to use a lot of techniques that I have seldom used before in this process and demonstrated my modeling skills. I followed some youtube tutorials to help understand different techniques of modelling a shoe and adapted the methods, but in the end it came down to trial and error. I tried multiple times and came up with a good method by using less geometry so that I'm not overwhelmed when modelling. I did ask Tony for help with exporting the object with materials, and he suggested the methods I had tried, but also suggested I let the recipient connect the textures. I could not figure out another way so I went with this option. This is frustrating because I don't like creating more work for Vivien and I also scaled the textures correctly so that it looks like a huge shoe.

Projector experiment

One of the ideas we generated was having an installation of feet walking past the building. We thought about having projections in the middle of the room, in a similar style to an installation we saw at the Ikon gallery in the Dean Kelland exhibition, where a circle of black fabric was projected with videos from the inside, concealing the projectors. I decided to try making a small stage model with a projector using scrim and foamboard. When I took my phone camera out, the black and white video became colourful on my phone. I had never seen this effect so dramatically, so we decided to incorporate this into our final design.

Marketing bits

I thought that making a manifesto would clearly present our intentions, so I designed a poster with four statements of intent. I also decided to try and improve the logo as the first one was a sketch. I used Adobe Fonts to scan the font and discover the closest looking. I used Rosewood font to replace it and took out the stylisation that made it look like a circus font. In Photoshop, I used the pen tool to create a path and the fill tool to fill the path with a pattern. This way I could get an even amount of lights around the lettering, then I could go in and move them around if needed.