Project Statement for Formative Assessment

From the initial starting point of innovation and creativity, I instantly knew that I would work better with a subject which I am both familiar with and interested in. Therefore, my initial approach led me to look into nature and the way this subject has been used in innovative ways. I didn't focus on creativity so much as I felt I could explore that aspect later on with my own unique development of the project. Through research, this led me to innovation inspired by nature, which in its more complex term: biomimicry. Instantly I loved how specific aspects of nature were already taken to invent new products and ways of thinking. This seemed to be the perfect entrance into the commission brief.

Once I had visited the 3M Buckley Innovation Centre and listened to Liz Towns-Andrews who is the primary client, I decided to stick to my original idea of biomimicry as it turned out that the client had a personal interest in this already. From this, I tried not to think too much about the clients personal interests as I wanted to present her something entirely new and different. This led me to take my own primary source nature photography to gain direct inspiration from nature itself.

After experimenting with the photographs in Photoshop, I felt that this approach was too generic so therefore brought some traditional media into my approach. The use of watercolour is very fluent and I feel this reflects the delicacy in nature so would be ideal for representing my work. Once I had experimented traditionally, I was able to put these works into Photoshop to manipulate them digitally. This brings in an aspect of technology which is very forthcoming in the 3M company and also the 3M Buckley Innovation Centre itself.

From that point I have chosen to concentrate on using watercolour as my primary media of choice for this project and use it to create more abstracted and simple imagery. I used this technique to illustrate existing forms of biomimicry as I felt that trying to invent something from nature in a technological way was near impossible for me, so decided to re-invent existing biomimetics with my use of watercolour, as my style captures a variety of images in innovative ways. I have also started to experiment with animating my work as it is a new approach for me personally and it challenges my abilities.