Tuesday 10/11/20 - Brainstorm

This workshop looked at making analogue based mindmaps and moodboards. The mindmaps were to be created using charcoal to cover a piece of paper and then using chalk / erasers to write all the words / other aspects of the mindmap. The moodboards would be using pinned images on a cork board.

I started this task with the mindmap, documenting my process with photos. Initially I started as if it were a regular mindmap, writing words related to the idea of altered states and that gave me ideas and inspiration in regards to the project. However, it wasn't long before I felt stuck for words that I could write down. This is because personally mindmaps don't help me with brainstorming ideas, I prefer to do things visually. So instead I decided to draw very quick altered states inspired sketches before rubbing them out. I drew one with a figure below a giant monolith-like shape. This helped me more than simply writing words as it gave me a chance to do very rough ideas that popped into my head, though I still feel like it wasn't the best choice for my ideas generation.

Next was the moodboard, this was something I felt would suit me better as I typically get my inspiration from different images and stills. I looked at a variety of stuff that popped into my head when I though of the concept of altered states. In the end I gathered a variety of photos from film shots and photography that's caught my eye previously.

To organise the moodboard I arranged the images by aspects they shared, most notably being colour. More cool shots using blue tints on the left, more red in the center, ones that featured bright lights on the top and black and white on the bottom right corner. Overall I definitely prefered this as from this activity alone it already gave me some inspiration for what would come next in the project. For example the images at the top featuring a very bright almost etheric light, it felt remniscient of scenes in films that featured contact with extraterrestrial life.