ARTIST
NAOMI FILMER
Naomi Filmer is a contemporary jewellery designer, who describes her work as ‘wearable objects about the body’ rather than jewellery. After studying 3D Design, she completed a master’s degree in Goldsmithing, Silversmithing, Metalwork and Jewellery at the Royal College of Art, London. She acquired a reputation in the 1990s for catwalk collaborations with high profile British designers such as Hussein Chalayan, Shelley Fox and Alexander McQueen. Filmer works as a Research Fellow at Central Saint Martins School of Art, London, she lectures in art schools throughout Europe, and is a freelance designer.
NAOMI FILMER INTERVIEW
For the research section, we chose Naomi Filmer as our artist, the reason of why we chose her is because of all the jewelries she has made are the key to explain her inspirations and there are lots of deeper meaning behind the jewelry, the jewelries are becoming the way of how she communicates with the society, and how she explain her thoughts. I think that is exactly how should i included in my work, find a way to communicate with others. We are all different individuals, and there have to be some certain way to express myself, to put my thoughts into my work is one of the best way to express my emotion and myself, the work are no longer a work, but part of my self. her work inspired me about that each of my work should have a deeper meaning behind it, not only the society wise, but more about myself, to express myself in my work and I think that is the key to make my work to be part of me.
Ball in the Small of my Back, 2001 Blown glass and electro-formed copper (silver plated) Naomi Filmer
The work of Naomi Filmer is also intended to be catwalk pieces such as this glass and metal orb created for Alexander McQueen's S/S 2002 show:
"McQueen asked me to make bubbles that capture the negative space around the torso of a flamenco dancer...I was particularly drawn to her expressive hand movements, and so this bubble was a way of capturing both the space in the arch of the back, but around the hands in motion."
Naomi describes herself as a conceptual jeweler, focusing on the relationship between object and body; sensibility and sensation. Her designs pinches, plugs, hugs and melts on the body. Its about the correlation between human flesh and different materials. She explores this through finding unlikely relationships between the body, and objects like glass and plaster. These objects explore and celebrate, rather than decorate the body. The designs and use of material is minimal, which is what illustrates her ideas with such clarity.
Out of the Ordinary - Spectacular Craft at the V&A: Naomi Filmer Installation
“She explores the most delicate parts of the body to create her surreal and poetic art from metal, leather and glass.”
Creating big sculptural objects that echo the shapes of bodily movement but actually restrict it by having to be held carefully or are unmissable due to their largeness Naomi says: "Impact on flesh as well as to the eye is important to me."
Naomi Filmer is interested in ennobling body's least celebrated places. The sculptures of her Breathing Volumes project focus on the space formed by the mouth, the chin and the neck. She made an imprint of her own contours, capturing the facial expressions that appear as she inhaled and exhaled. The result is not exactly jewellery but a sculpture that enters into a direct relationship with the observer.
MY IDEA
As i was inspired by the Naomi Filmer’s Ice worlk, smelling of wood and eyewear, so i decided to make something which can hide you anxiety, but also can be disappeared by the time being, just like the anxiety will disappear in the end as well. The image on the right indicates how my design looks like, So, to overcome the anxious in a new environment, you can wear this on your eyes, there are some features of this eyewear below:
- smells like wood, can make you relax in a new environment.
- the shape is different every seconds, as the ice is melting. Also reminds me everything is changing.
- wear on your eyes but it is half see through because it is made of ice.
- can make people away from you (if you don’t want to talking in a new environment).
- this design is based on the alienation among human.
Wood is a porous and fibrous structural tissue found in the stems and roots of trees and other woody plants.It has been used for thousands of years for both fuel and as a construction material. It is an organic material, a natural composite of cellulose fibers (which are strong in tension) embedded in a matrix of lignin which resists compression. Wood is sometimes defined as only the secondary xylem in the stems of trees,or it is defined more broadly to include the same type of tissue elsewhere such as in the roots of trees or shrubs.
WAYS OF USING WOOD
Wood is one of the most useful materials, it has different concepts in different situations, If we burn the wood, it will become carbon, and we can use it in totally different ways with wood. Back to wood, we can use it for furnitures, interior, accessories etc. For me, what i found is interesting with wood is there are so many different kinds of wood, and they all can be use in different areas. In China, people use bamboo as a container for eating, the smell of bamboos will sink into the food when they steam it. Also, there are lots of perfumes which got the wood as one of the scent in it. So, there are several interesting ways of using the wood.
Wood can be used for furnitures as well, Furniture is the mass noun for the movable objects intended to support various human activities such as seating and sleeping. Furniture is also used to hold objects at a convenient height for work, or to store things. Furniture can be a product of design and is considered a form of decorative art. So that, wood is one of the most suitable materials for furniture, because of its special concept, it can hold elements strongly, but also, it can be a decoration, such as the image above indicates a light made by wood in geometric shapes. Personally, I really like this design as it is simple, but actually when you turn on the light, it will have shadows in geometric shapes on the wall, which i found is really interesting. It inspired me about using reflection from lights to have certain shape on a surface or to express something by using shadows.
Gavin Munro, a furniture designer based in Derbyshire, England, has found a simpler and more eco-friendly way to create wooden furniture: he uses specially designed plastic frames to mold young willow, oak, ash and sycamore trees into the shape of chairs, tables, frames, or lamps as they’re growing.
GROW A CHAIR
Except the normal wood, we can also use bamboo as well, unlike other wood in the world, bamboos are empty inside, and bamboo can be used in lots of different areas. In bamboo, the internodal regions of the stem are hollow and thevascular bundles in the cross section are scattered throughout the stem instead of in a cylindrical arrangement. The dicotyledonouswoody xylem is also absent. The absence of secondary growth wood causes the stems of monocots, including the palms and large bamboos, to be columnar rather than tapering.
Bamboos are some of the fastest-growing plants in the world, due to a unique rhizome-dependent system. Certain species of bamboo can grow 88.9 Centimeters within a 24-hour period, at a rate of 3 cm/h (a growth of approximately 1 millimeter (or 0.02 inches) every 2 minutes). Bamboos are of notable economic and cultural significance in South Asia, Southeast Asia and East Asia, being used for building materials, as a food source, and as a versatile raw product. Bamboo has a higher compressive strength than wood, brick or concrete and a tensile strength that rivals steel.
Due to the special concept of bamboo, there is a group of people who are making bikes by using bamboo in Beijing, i joined them this summer, and made a bamboo bike by myself as well, the image below is the bike i have made.
BBB INTRODUCTION
Bamboo Bicycles Beijing (BBB) is all about 以小见大 – “seeing the big from the small”.
While one bamboo bicycle cannot save the environment, it has the potential to start big and important conversations about how our mobility choices and we can make a positive impact on our community and the city’s environment.
30 years ago, Beijing used to be the bicycle capital of the world. Today, the city is filled with smog and congestion due to Beijing’s motorization that has led to more cars, heavy traffic and more air and noise pollution. Bike lanes are filled with parked cars and the city has become a graveyard of rusting bicycles. Yet, Beijing has all the elements to be a fun and sustainable cycling city!
This is why BBB exists – we believe that the small decision to cycle in Beijing (especially on a bamboo bicycle!) creates big opportunities to design Beijing for a future of low-impact modes transportation.
BBB is the first open, do-it-yourself bamboo bicycle workshop in China. By opening a community space, we seek to help people make, think and talk through providing a fun and constructive experience for everyone to work together. We know that this idea of making bamboo bicycles isn’t new, but our focus is oneducation rather than profit, and we hope to spread this theme of sustainable urban mobility among the locals, especially the Chinese youth. We aim to provide opportunities for them to explore, engage and create things that are meaningful and important to them as well as their communities.
At BBB, we strongly encourage everyone to be hands-on and get involved in as much of the bicycle-making process as possible. We believe using your own hands to build your own mobility practices translates to practiced learning about engineering, urban planning, environmental studies, economics, and a whole range of other topics.
Moreover, a beautiful handmade bamboo bicycle using locally sourced bamboo is a gleaming beacon of hope in Beijing’s dismal, polluted city. In other words, you look cool riding one and it’s a nod to a future of sustainable transportation!
Our bicycles are made with Tonkin bamboo and Japanese timber bamboo that has a fibre glass core, which is then reinforced with carbon fibre. All our bamboo and bicycle parts are locally sourced in China and with proper care, our bicycles can last for at least 5 years.
http://www.bamboobicyclesbj.com/bloggingbamboo/about-us-%E5%85%B3%E4%BA%8E%E6%88%91%E4%BB%AC/
Let’s thinking about wood in some other ways, such as the smelling of wood can be part of wood too, the smelling of wood is peaceful, when i feel anxious, the woody smell can make me fell better, so in my design, instead of using the real wood, i decided to use the smelling of wood within my design, as it is much more powerful than wood, and it will not be limited as i can only use wood, but i can use the smelling of wood as well.
I use cedar wood oil for the night, it can make me feel comfortable and peaceful, so i decided to use cedar wood oil in my piece which can keep me away from anxiety. Cedarwood oil, is an essential oil derived from the foliage, and sometimes the wood and roots, of various types of conifers, most in the pine or cypress botanical families. It has many uses in medicine, art, industry and perfumery, and while the characteristics of oils derived from various species may themselves vary, all have some degree of bactericidal and pesticidaleffects.
In order to make a jewelry which can be see through also included cedar wood oil as well as combine Naomi Filmer’s style together, the idea of using ice has come to my mind, so, I searched some photographs of ice jewelry to inspire myself.
Ice has a significant feature which is by the time being, it will melted into water and then water will be evaporate into air, so finally, the ice become the part of the environment around you, you can’t really see it, but it was there, made you feel cold, uncomfortable, but after it has been evaporated, it can not make you to feel it anymore. And the ice, the cold, the uncomfortable has become a past tense for you.
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The photos above indicate the process of my trying, as i was thinking about what shape should i use and how much should it be seen through, so i have tried with dark blue, red and pale pink, i found the red one is the best, as it can just half see trough, not too weak, not too much. Also, i did some try outs with the straight line shape and the cross shape, but i just want to keep it to be simple, so i chose the straight shape for my design.
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The photos on the left show the model i have made from different angles by using wires, as i can’t get any ice in my room, so i made the wire into shape of a 3-D square.
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The photographs on the right are from my sketchbook, so it shows the process of how to make my jewelry and how long it will take to be melted. Also, the last photographs shows how it going to be like when people are wearing it.
DEFINITION
In materials science, wear is erosion or sideways displacement of material from its "derivative" and original position on a solid surface performed by the action of another surface.
Wear is related to interactions between surfaces and specifically the removal and deformation of material on a surface as a result of mechanical action of the opposite surface. The need for relative motion between two surfaces and initial mechanical contact between asperities is an important distinction between mechanical wear compared to other processes with similar outcomes.
The definition of wear may include loss of dimension from plastic deformation if it is originated at the interface between two sliding surfaces.
Clothing is fiber and textile material worn on the body.
The wearing of clothing is a feature of nearly all human societies. The amount and type of clothing worn is dependent on physical stature, gender, as well as social and geographic considerations.
Physically, clothing serves many purposes: it can serve as protection from weather, and can enhance safety during hazardous activities such as hiking and cooking. It protects the wearer from rough surfaces, rash-causing plants, insect bites, splinters, thorns and prickles by providing a barrier between the skin and the environment. Clothes can insulate against cold or hot conditions. Further, they can provide a hygienic barrier, keeping infectious and toxic materials away from the body. Clothing also provides protection from harmful UV radiation.
Except clothes, jewelries can be worn as well, there are lots of different kinds of jewelries,
such as luxury jewelries, casual jewelries, and wearing installations as well. Naomi Filmer’s work is a perfect example of wearing installations, it is something that you may not considered as a casual look, but more about the way of expressing yourself, the way of communicate with others. Unlike clothing, jewelries are something which you may not necessarily need for daily life, but it is something which can highlight your look, can make you feel better with yourself. Because of this feature of jewelry, people like to buying them, they enjoy to wearing them. Form this point, I am considering something totally different with this feature, which is why not create something which can also be a useful thing for our life, to create something can make our life better by wearing them. So i got an idea of “A WEARABLE HOME”.
Except clothes, shoes also can be worn, shoe is an item of footwear intended to protect and comfort the human foot while doing various activities. Shoes are also used as an item of decoration. The design of shoes has varied enormously through time and from culture to culture, with appearance originally being tied to function. Additionally, fashion has often dictated many design elements, such as whether shoes have very high heels or flat ones. Contemporary footwear varies widely in style, complexity and cost. Basic sandals may consist of only a thin sole and simple strap. High fashion shoes may be made of very expensive materials in complex construction and sell for thousands of dollars a pair. Other shoes are for very specific purposes, such as boots designed specifically for mountaineering or skiing. Traditionally, shoes have been made from leather, wood or canvas, but are increasingly made from rubber, plastics, and otherpetrochemical-derived materials.
Wrong Sole is one of my favorite shoes brand, it does really limited styles of shoes. It is a feminist brand, there are not much introduction about this brand online, but i found an advertising video online which is shown below.
wrong sole
In this video there is absolutely no conversation within it, but still, i can feel the strong emotion in this video. What i really like in this video is the way they expressing the thoughts and the way they edit it. Personally, i really wants to do something like this, to record a thing that i want to express, and then edit them in my own style. So in this way, i will be able to express my feeling, not only by drawing or photograph it, but in some other ways as well.
Eyes are the organs of vision. They detect light and convert it into electro-chemical impulses in neurons. In higher organisms, the eye is a complex optical system which collects light from the surrounding environment, regulates its intensity through adiaphragm, focuses it through an adjustable assembly of lenses to form an image, converts this image into a set of electrical signals, and transmits these signals to the brain through complex neural pathways that connect the eye via the optic nerve to the visual cortex and other areas of the brain. Eyes with resolving power have come in ten fundamentally different forms, and 96% of animal species possess a complex optical system. Image-resolving eyes are present in molluscs, chordates andarthropods.
Eyes are generally adapted to the environment and life requirements of the organism which bears them. For instance, the distribution of photoreceptors tends to match the area in which the highest acuity is required, with horizon-scanning organisms, such as those that live on the African plains, having a horizontal line of high-density ganglia, while tree-dwelling creatures which require good all-round vision tend to have a symmetrical distribution of ganglia, with acuity decreasing outwards from the centre.
Also, eyes can express moods and feelings as well, in a communication, eyes are the most important part in the body, it tells everything. If you feel anxious, eyes can truly express your anxious. Actually i always feel anxious, sometimes it is because of i am afraid of smoothing, sometimes is just because people is looking at me. it really make me feel anxious, i don’t like to look at stranger’s eyes, i feel discomfort when they are looking at me, i guess this kind of anxiety is because of in a new environment, i don’t know anybody there and i feel alienation in the environment, so, at that time, i just want to hide my eyes with something. it cane a sunglasses, but i need something more special than a sunglasses, i need something which can let others know i don’t want to communicate with them, i need something can express my thoughts obviously.
With a refined palette of black and white, Green produced a dark and directional collection that appeared both artistic and hugely creative.
Focusing heavily on detailing and layering, Green mixed fabrics and finishes to create an interesting visual. This, combined with covered faces, ultimately lifted the entire collection and resulted in an alluring display of talent and skill:
Maya Luz is one talented 22 year old. This designer recieved her BFA from Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston, graduating with Distinction in May 2009 and has already gone on to win awards as well being a contestant on Project Runway, Season 7. She has also interned with Hannah Marshall.
Her work seems exceptionally personal and the narrative is prevalent throughout her worka
Maya Luz’s eyewear really inspires me about the ‘half see through’ eyewear, i think i am going to do a design which is also half see through but by using some other materials.