This project as a whole has been eventful which is why I've felt the need to sum up all my thoughts in a post starting from the beginning of this project to the end.
My starting point for this project has always been psychological attachment. I am always interested in the human mind and psychology and my A-Levels were in Art, Biology and Psychology. The topic of psychological attachment seemed like the best way to marry my interests. My starting point for the word 'structure' came from everything that is the opposite to the usual connotations it has. Usually, structure makes one think of large robust buildings, heavy metals etc, but I wanted to look at it in a lighter light (pardon the awful pun) and decided I'd focus on fragility and dainty structures.
I first looked into my friendships. The art foundation had been underway for a few weeks and I still didn't have a proper idea in my head. I knew I wanted to do psychological attachment but the spectrum was too wide and I had no idea what I wanted to do within that realm. My friends were all started to slowly move out of London and I had a two week period of tension headaches due to the stress of it all. Personally, I am someone that relies heavily on my friends as they're my support network and when I went to the hospital fearing a brain tumour after a week of violent head pain, I was told it was probably due to my subconscious dread that my friends were moving away. With that knowledge, the headaches only began to subside one week later and my medication was 'Calpol, lots of water and fun times with friends'.
My best friend called me one day that week to ask how I was and it was then that I decided I would look into relationships between people as my field of psychological attachment. Since friends were on my mind so much, it made sense to look into the emotions that come with attachments. For example, babies often cry when their mothers leave the room and this is because they're psychologically attached to them. In the same way, I was feeling low because my friends had all moved away.
The two themes merged into one when I began looking at twins as a step up from friendships. I've known a few pairs of twins and they always seem like the best of friends. They typically live together, have the same friendship group and can even be identical to each other. Furthermore they were born from the same sperm and egg. This idea of birth fit in with my idea of fragile structures and this is when my headpiece designs took off in an alien/embryo/amniotic-sac-esque way. My inclusion of this headpiece in a final piece would incorporate 'structural' accessories into a very 'attachment' focused concept.
Another tangent off of twins was to look at Dr Seuss' characters Thing One and Thing Two. No one knows exactly what kind of creatures they are but they could be friends or twins, who knows? To tie in with my structural concept, I created simple headpieces out of thin wire resulting in a big 'One' and 'Two' for my models to wear. This would capture the essence of Thing One and Two which was derived and inspired by best friends/twins whilst also maintaining a stance on being a dainty structure.
Moving on into applying these concepts, my editorial looked into my original feelings of missing friendships. The emotions felt and portrayed in the photos are supposed to mimic that of an ending friendship (read: psychological attachment) and so the expressions shown by the models aren't happy but more subdued and sad. With the film however, it is the opposite. I wanted to explore the realms of psychological attachments and their implications on our emotions to the full extent and so I looked into how I would portray the happiness that comes with relationships and friendships.
As a whole, I have learnt a great deal through this project about myself, about the industry and about the subject in general. I've learnt how to take an idea, turn it into a concept and finally take it through to realisation. I've learnt how necessary it is to conduct thorough research and I've felt proud being able to use my own knowledge to help others. Watching my project and everyone else's projects bloom from the beginning stages into great final pieces has been the greatest reward for me along with the knowledge and skills I've picked up along the way.
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