Burning Cigarettes - What shape?

These are some photos of the experiments I made for the cigarettes burning marks. When I was observing the cigarettes burning, I was also thinking what I could do with these marks. I was thinking what shape can I make with these marks and why.

Experiments about Burning Marks

After the class with Silke Dettmers last Wednesday, I really thought about my budget and the experiments of burning marks on surfaces of some beautiful things. I don't have so many money to buy an ipad, then burning cigarettes on it. However, I still did some experiments last weekend.

Firstly, I thought about damage of smoking. I came up an idea that when I 'open' some beautiful things and I find it is broken inside. For this, I made some experiments. Cut some fruit half and put burning cigarettes on them. It would leave cigarette marks on the surfaces of these fruit.

It is an interesting experiment, but the marks I got were not so strong and the visual effect was not very good. What can be open? Books. I did another experiment with books.

Maybe because the papers are not thick enough, so it damaged so badly. Then I tried another paper - hand made paper. It looks better.

After this experiment, I changed my mind. I want to do another book about cigarette marks. When I burned cigarettes on a book, I got different marks in different pages. They are fading out with pages. If you read this book from the 'lighter mark' page, then you found the marks would be darker and darker. It likes addiction and damages of smoking. The marks are lighter, because you do not smoke a lot at the begining. With time flies, you are addicted to smoking, you smoke a lot and the marks will be darker. The damage of smoking are the same, darker marks mean damage more in body.

So I got this idea and I do need to try more differet papers.

Burning Marks

In the end of unit one, I made a work about cigarette mark after doing some experiments. I put some burning cigarettes on butts in some photos. Then I got pictures about burning marks. It is interesting. However, I found that the marks looked better on the opposite side.

I really want to make some works about these marks. After tutorial with David, I tried to find works of Rogen Ackling who made works about burning marks of sunlight. Here are some images of his works 'Voewood'.

He made use of sunlight to make these works. The surfaces of these objects were burned by sunlight. I think they are beautiful. I am doing some works about burning, but burned by cigarettes. Maybe I can burn cigarettes on surfaces of  some beautiful things, which means smoking can destroy some perfect things like health. What kind of these beautiful things? Book? Computer? I need to think about this and do some experiments.

Reference: http://www.inglebygallery.com/index.php



My Book Project!

In the spring term, we had bookbinding workshop and some classes about books. They were all interesting. On 7^th March, we had Design for Print with David. On 8^th March, we had Design for Print with Marit Münzberg. After these sessions, I knew a lot about printing in paper and ways to make a book. On 5^th April, we had Book Design Page Layout with Sigune and we drew some grids in one A4 paper. There are different sizes of layouts we can design on one A4 paper. I learned something I did not know before in this session.

Now I have to make a book. I used what I learned from these classes to make my book. However, saying is easier than doing. When I set up every pages of my book and went to print them out, I met a lot of problems. I wanted to use ink jet printers to print them, but there is a little extra ink in papers. Then I tried different kinds of paper to print, but the results were the same. I had to print them with laser printers. So I went out to print them and also tried to print in different papers. Finally, I printed them out and the result was not bad.

Sometimes, what you think can not be true. You should make it out to see the result. Maybe the result is not the same as what you think. Printing is important to designers. I should learn more about it.

Burning Experiment!!!

I did a experiment about cigarette burning. At the beginning, I wanted to have a mark of cigarette burning that I can use in my work. However, it was windy yesterday, five cigarettes burned together made the papers under them begin to burn, too. So the mark is like this:

But I gained other things through this experiment. I recorded this burning video and knew how much time of a cigarette burning in nature. It is about ten minutes. Laias said it would be so long if someone had a cigarette. I got a smell in my whole body, from my hair to my clothes. Actually this was terrible. Finally, thanks Laias for helping me in this experiment.

Here are some pictures of this experiment:

This picture is interesting. It made a mark on the ground...

Butts in Paris

People in Paris are also throw butts in the streets. I can see many butts in the streets in Paris.

One interesting thing is that garbage cans in Paris are like this:

If people throw the butts into this 'garbage can', maybe it will burn? And I found butts inside it:

Maybe people in Paris are familiar with this situation, they know they need to put out the cigarettes when they throw the butts into these 'garbage cans'.

Interesting Photos

When I found this, I thought it was beautiful, but how could them be cleaned?

Mid Point Review

This is a work I did recently. Nobody Claim

In unit1, I chose ‘smoking’ as a theme of my project. I did some researches of smoking and tried to understand smokers’ thoughts of smoking. Also, I did different practises according to my project.

Walking on the streets, I took photographs of people who were smoking and discovered butts everywhere which I thought it was interesting. Using these pictures, I did some works about my project. On the Christmas show, I exhibited some photos of butts. Also, I did a short video about smoking. After this, I shaped my idea that combined smoking and time or space. Thinking time, I was thinking about how much time are people spending for smoking, e.g. smoke a cigarette will cost how much time. And I did a work about smoking and time in letterpress workshop. Thinking space, I also took photos of a street and used these photos to make a book. I found that spaces of smoking are worth to think about. Now the mid term is arriving. My last work about smoking is called Nobody Claim. It means people do not care much about the butts on the street. Nevertheless, these butts take some places on the street. It shows a long street on a book and I use white circle to highlight the butts on the street. They look like marks on the street. It is interesting. This work is not my final work of my idea. I need to do more practises.

To develop my study plan in the following term, I should focus on some impacts. I need to do more research about smoking and understand smokers’ thoughts about smoking. The aesthetic quality of photos I took can be better. I should improve the skills of taking photography. In addition, I should try different papers to print my works and do more experiments to present my concept. And I need to choose a proper way to show my work. In sum, I should do more experiments to find a way to improve my work that can express my idea better.