Shoes for play

For my shoes for the play hand in on Friday I decided to do a pair that lit up the ankels of the wearer to show them off. Here is how its going so far. I've bought some surface mount leds and they are absoulutely tiny, I wanted them small but god they are small. Anyway while waiting for them to arrive i played around with normal l.e.ds to get to positioning of them right. I had been thinking of ways to mount the l.e.d.s and I saw these and loved the collar on them.

I played around and here are the results
I think it looks quite cool but one problem of having a collar is that the heal is acutally hidden from the sides and back which, for the shoe for the play hand in, I don't want. The surface mount l.e.ds are also white so a different effect. Next week is all about the making this work and look good. I'm excited and nervous at the same time. I don't know how much sleep i'll get next week.

Direction for Play

On Tuesday the 20th of Jan, I had my first tutorial with Jon of the new year. As the Play hand in is on the 30th i was kinda stuck and worried about it. Speaking to Jon gave me hope for Friday. As you may remember one of the objectives was to show wearable technology. This is also what Jon said to me on Tuesday. For my working prototype I am wearing a pair of shoes that have integrated technology to the presentations.

A pair of shoes that show a working version of the pride and pleasure theme.

This is my mission for Friday. This is going to be my working prototype. I also have to hand in a plan for make and this blog.

As for the other objectives Jon set me for play. I feel the story behind the shoes is quite concrete and Jon also liked the pride and pleasure statement. The relationship between Find and Play is quite strong to me but I'm going to post the evidence up for the hand in. Expect quite alot of blogs to go up over the next week. wish me luck

More thinking and Theory

so on the post Social context,theory and story post Kerry (my classmate) left this comment:

"hey so will the aesthetics of the shoes represent a pleasure that you can feel from shoes? is that what you mean, like warmth, comfort? or are you trying to recreate shoes that do these things for you and not look at the aesthetics?

is this what you mean?"

Good question. What I am trying to do is create a collection of shoes that allow the user to take pride and pleasure in their feet. Aesthetics is going to play a major role in this as this is a design course but also because some of the shoe's functions will be displayed through their form.

To try and clarify, for some of the shoes the way they look, e.g. no toes, will be the function as it will allow the wearer to just have their toes touching the ground creating a pleasurable experience. Where as others will have l.e.d.s to light up the foot and draw attention to the foot as their function. Does this make sense? please tell me if it doesn't so I can work on the clarification of my project.

Social context, Thory and Story 2

To clarify to you and me, especially as part of my hand in and essence on my project.

Mission Statement

A collection of shoes that allows the user to take pride and pleasure in their feet.

Social Context

From my research in FIND, people adore being barefoot, do not get to be bare foot as often as they like. evidence of this will be posted asap.

Influence

I want people to enjoy their feet more and not to forget about them.

Social context, Theory and Story

This is a really long post but bear with me, its a changing point in the project!

One of the objectives i have to meet for the Play stage of this project is to work on the story. Apart from proving I can make shoes I personally think this is one of the most important aspects of the project. The story comprises of the thinking and social context of the project. Why am I doing what I am doing?

Well I've been working on my story. I've been thinking and yesterday I did some free writing where i just wrote for 5 minuets on a topic from my project to try and get the momentum. I wrote about what i wanted to achieve and the aesthetic. This worked well in getting my mind flowing but was mostly just gibberish!

Today I went back to the story. I feel I need to get the story and theme of the project right before i can actually start designing and clarify the end result as this will influence the form and characteristics of my project. Here's the start of today's thinking:

-clogs of the future
-plastic fantastic
-recycled technology
-pretty cakes
-wooden wonders
-new wood
-industrial wasteland
-hard wood
-pain and pleasure

When I got to here I was defiantly struggling with my thinking. Then I came across designer and Illustrator Jasper Goodall

more themes arose like

-fantasy and reality
- dreams
-tomorrows shoes
-the future of feet

Then I realised that I have been working irrationally. I was trying to come up with a theme when i didn't even know what i wanted to represent, what influence i wanted to make.

Thinking back to my FIND stage, what was it i was looking at? What was the rational behind my FIND?

"So many people experience joy from their feet...How can you recreate and improve pleasure whilst reducing pain?"

I have therefore decided to go back to FEET instead of concentrating on SHOES. Don't get me wrong I'm still going to make shoes but they are going to concentrate on pleasures from the feet instead of "what new things can i so with shoes"

More Influence

Bernadette Deddens has designed a few shoes and accessories.

Hussein Chalayan

I love his work!!

http://husseinchalayan.com/#/art_projects.2000_afterwords/

Inspiration

I love these designers. I am taking inspiration from them. "Gwendolyn Huskens amazing Medic Esthetic footwear project. Gwendolyn is a student at the Design Academy in Eindhoven and her project toys with the taboos of physical deformities in our society - creating some very lovely shoes made out from medical supplies, such as synthetic plaster, bandages, stainless steel and band-aids." I'm thinking of creating an exhibition like this in the way that there is a theme and unusual materials. These striking shoes are from Marloes ten Bhomer " Critically acclaimed designer Marloes ten Bhömer produces shoes that are both provocative and otherworldly. Her work fuses artistic and technological experiment in order to discover shoes anew." And also inspired hugely by Hussein Chalayan with his work shown below

What I like is the innovative use of material and the questioning of form. I also am in love with high fashion designers John Galliano, Christian Dior, Christian Lacroix, John Paul Gautier, Valentino, Alexander McQueen, Yves Saint Laurent and Vivienne Westwood. Hopefully you can see the direction I am going with my shoes now.

Play Crit

So the play crit went well. Here's my feed back from Jon:
Hi Jackie

Some feedback on Friday's PLAY crit

Great work so far- and you currently sit on the B/C threshold, with a clear potential for an A if you successfully explore the following:

• PLAY with the technology to show working shoes that are WEARABLE.

It is important that you deliver a wearable and therefore usable pair of shoes that is to degree show quality. This will demonstrate
the viability of your work. This can be a simple solution - e.g. a sports radio in a shoe, the dynamo flashlights in a shoe (but more
finessed that Friday's presentation) - or it could be a mechanical solution such as the changeable heel.

• PLAY with making shoes - this can be acheive by either you making a shoe or by contracting a shoe maker to do this for you.

• PLAY with the story behind the shoes - is it 49 random shoes or is their the potential for a clear narrative - e.g. shoes found from the future...shoes from fairy tales, shoes from an undiscovered 2nd world war lab in Estonia...

• Bring out the relationship between the FIND and the PLAY stages.

Great work, the focus needs to be more on the finish at this stage (you've achieved a lot, just show us the viability of the finish)

I'll be back on the 12th Jan

Have a great holiday

Jon

So the bullet points are what i will be working on for the next couple of weeks and also looking for some infulence.

Update and Happy New Year

Ok so I'm back. hope you had a good new year cause I did. The project - latest news was Monday the 15th of December. Lots to catch up on. firstly Jon (my tutor) and i discussed my project on the Tuesday ahead of our crit on the 19th of December. We all were given wee challenges to see what we came up with. my challenge was to show that i could integrate technology into a shoe and make it look good. I decided to make a light up shoe. Here's the process.

firstly i had to hollow out the heal of a shoe to put the electronics in. this was a lot harder than it seemed. i went down to the workshop to talk to Roddy (one of the technicians) and he helped me a lot. the problems we encountered were we couldn't drill right through we had to get all the meal out and there was quite a bit. staples and nails holding the shoe to the sole. We had to use Roddy's man power to remove these and my scalpel wheedling techniques then we could drill a hole.
But this meant we cut the leather making a hole. This was just fixed with contact glue at the end. so once the inners of the heal were carved out i made a wee circuit to go into the space that just lit up 6 white surface mount LEDs at once and stuck it all together.
Here's the result. the light shines through the holes in the brogue shoes. This is the stage i was at before the Crit.