Disconnection and Re-Connection via Exploration.

I had come across a project being run by a classmate and decided I would produce something for submission. After playing around with some ideas and designs I came up with something that in fact began to mean a lot more to my practice itself and helped me kick start this semester. 

Nous magazine is a free quarterly magazine produced by Lisa Lorenz, a fellow MA D&AD student at MMU. It's main focus is around depression and this editions theme was "Disconnection".

Although the theme for this zine is different than what I usually tackle I could see some connections and felt a new direction would help broaden my work. I felt the disconnection element to this publication connected to the idea that we have become disconnected from our environment and the use of urban exploration as an attempt to re-connect. 

My first piece (above) is much more connected to the idea of depression than my second design and I feel that it works much better for submission but it doesn't so much connect to my own practice. 

I wanted to keep these ideas simple and to the point, I used the cutting up of my images to represent the disconnection along with the obvious desolation and isolation of the subject matter. The inclusion of a figure in many ways makes the image connect more on a human level but also lacks the sense of solitude and first hand perspective which total emptiness creates. 

I also wanted to inject a little positivity and used the lyrics to suggest that along this dark tunnel of disconnection there will always be a light somewhere along the way.

I initially began my second design looking at the hospitalisation and treatment of people with mental health problems and the disconnection and damage that can cause. I felt that on that level it worked quite well as a piece and related to the themes in quite a powerful way. 

I was pleased with what I had made here and submitted it for inclusion. But as I began to look again at the work and how I could move on from here it became clear that this piece also connected very much to my practice and that it could take my ideas in a new direction.  

I became much more aware of the signage and details of the image and how it's new state has changed these banal and everyday items into strange and somewhat eerie remnants of the buildings previous life. In an almost uncanny way they begin to tell the stories of the lives of the people who once walked up and down these now quiet and dilapidated corridors creating a ghost like presence.  It made me realise there is so much to be seen in those details and feel my work is now turning towards expressing the atmosphere and narrative they create.