Short Interlude: Creating a Doll Database

Although I am intending in this project to sell the artwork I create.  I am going to practice how to create a database of customers here and a database of Sales figures to demonstrate how these databases would work in conjunction with with website.

For practice I am going to sell 20 different types of dolls at different prices.  Also I need a database of my customers details so  I began by creating this customer database:

To create this I followed the following actions:

Open Excel
Open Blank Sheet
Start adding the titles in row two of what I would like to fill in in each column.
I then started to add the details for each column until my table was filled with the correct data.
As I wanted to be able to filter and add formulas to this and to contain this on my spreadsheet I made this into a table so I selected from a row one to 12 all of my data and clicked on table.  This created a table around this

I added a title and changed the colour by using the colour filter and I merged and centred the text using this on the top menu. 

I now had my customer database as above.  I could now investigate that database by applying a filter.  For instance I could find out how many of my customers lived in London so I would go to Filter in the top menu and then click on the arrow over the address column and then deselect all and just type in London and the excel sheet would only show me customers in London like this:

ADD LATER

I then created a sales database - it looks like this:

My sales database included the following information:

Product ID
Product
Quantity in Stock
Sales to Date
Current Sales
Price
Reorder Quantity

I completed the same process for this as my customer database however on this one I wanted the database to add up the totals and to complete a sum so that I could know how much stock to reorder.
I also again wanted to be able to filter this so her is an example of a filter - say I just want to know how many products were just £10 I can apply a filter like this:

I also on this chart added up the totals just by going to Autosum in the top left hand corner and completing sum and did this manually by creating a sum and using insert formula: =SUM(C3:C22)
To work out my reorder quantities I used the sum - =SUM(C3:C22-E3:E22) and this told me how many dolls I had left in stock or needed. 

I then also created pie charts so that I could then show this information in a more visual form to investors, employees etc. 

Although this database is fictional it does show how data can be organised for business purposes and how useful this would be to the business to ensure that things ran smoothly.  Obviously this does rely on human input however if this was attached to a website much of this would be automate as sales were made.

I am going to play about with this further and I will look at how to attach a database to my own site for future use!

Project Plan

As I have taken some time out this term my plan is a little more disjointed however certainly still a good one!  

Alice in Labyrinth Dolls

The Army of Dolls: Project Plan & Timescale

Week One

Develop ideas and research these ideas, try something out to see what could work as a project and could be completed in the timescale.

Week Two 

Research and complete a development piece of work on the doll and start to experiment with that work. 

Week Three & Four 

Away 

Week Five 

Complete project Sign off & Plan of work - clearly I am a little late with this!  However Now back on track

Week Six 

Research further into Hans Bellmer, The Chapmans, & Bernard Faucon 

Start to create the first piece of work 

Week Seven 

Process, keep creating and blogging work as creating it with technical aspects 

Week Eight

Reflect and review all work and start to finalise this work 

Week Nine

Create a gallery online on the website, update website and showcase final pieces with a good written introduction

An Army of Dolls: Project Sign Off

As I am just signing myself off I thought I would just write this post to clearly outline my intended outcomes for this project and the skills that I will be developing along the way...

An Army of Dolls

Working Title: Army of Dolls

Progression Route: Photography

Intended outcome:

To create at least Four final scenes for my army of dolls.  Using Photoshop to create the landscapes and scenarios and developing an aesthetic narrative for these art pieces.

Aim to create work that would be sold in a gallery

Final Pieces will be showcased on my own website. 

Intend to maximise my Photoshop skills and update skills that I have not used for some time. 

I'm Back! Jack & Dinos Chapman - Doll Obsession

Yes after my break I am back!  Technically I have been back a week however I have not yet had a moment to write this.  I discussed in my previous post-Jack and Dinos Chapman briefly so I wanted to go into more detail here - as my work is definitely going to be using the doll that I posted. 

Jack & Dinos Chapman by Rachel King (2018) Source: Blain Southern

Jack and Dinos Chapman use many dolls, dummies, models and mannequins in their work -these all create the disturbing nature of their work as these dolls all look so human yet are not human - why does a child love a doll because it is like a human companion it has eyes that look  back at you and although the flesh maybe plastic it represents us/you. This work below Forehead (1997)  is a disturbing idea of a woman with four heads and a play on the word 'forehead'  There is a humour to all of the Chapmans work. Kupper writes in his article on The Chapmans; 'The Chapman brothers create works that are artifacts of this existential catastrophe of our own making. But what people most misunderstand about the Chapman brothers is that their work is hilarious – a laugh riot, an obscene and brilliant joke. If you don’t laugh, you are missing the point all together.' (Kupper 2017)

Artist: Jake and Dinos Chapman (British) Title: Forehead , 1997 Medium: fibreglass, resin, pigment, wigs and training shoes

Looking at the work of The Chapmans is supposed to be challenging and what is clear that what they create is created out of our world which is chaotic, disturbing, and at times hateful, sickening and funny.  The Sum of All Evil encompasses all these ideas and by looking at this work there is a monumental quality to it and as I consider this in relation to my own work I do think my army of dolls now have more direction - there is much more I can achieve by using them - I like the repetition of them, their face over and over again in a landscape, maybe they can talk to God, or have a spiritual revelation or maybe it will be a digital breakdown - I can't wait to see how my army develops! Just as below the feet of God stand above the destruction and He is destroyed in this nightmare vision!

Holy war … detail from the Chapman brothers’ The Sum of All Evil – part of In The Realm of the Unmentionable at the Jerwood Gallery, Hastings. Photograph: Felix Clay

References

Kupper, Oliver Maxwell (30th January 2017) Autre, Brothers Grim:An Interview of Dinos Chapman on the power of Humour and Violence [Online] Available from: https://autre.love/interviewsmain/2017/1/30/brothers-grim-an-interview-of-dinos-chapman (Accessed 04/0819)

Jones. J (24th October 2014) The Guardian,Jake and Dinos Chapman review – a hilarious, horrifying orgy of darkness [Online] Available From;  https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/oct/24/jake-dinos-chapman-review-hastings-jerwood-gallery-realm-unmentionable (Accessed 04/08/19)

Development of Ideas: The Doll's Head

After considering the ideas that I created in the last post I started to look at how to develop these.  I looked at different ways I might transform a doll I thought perhaps I could make it older, stranger but I was not happy with how these turned out.

I went back to looking at the patterns and the forms of the dolls and started to experiment with these;

This dolls head really struck me - it sort of reminded myself of me and so in my own images I started to see what could be done with her - I found some bodies and began working...

I liked these armies of dolls and their patterns - I may order these online to physcially created something with them or I might start to develop this further - whether this becomes an art installation or photoshop/digital design I am not sure of yet.

Still considering the possibilities...

Object Lesson

The object of the object lesson is to pick an object and think of ideas that can be drawn from this for a project.  Here I placed all my ideas on a Milanote board:

To view this board in a larger view please click here. On this board, I explored the ideas from the starting point of a artists mannequin and I looked at; Bernard Faucon, Hans Bellmer and The Chapman Brothers as these artists all use dolls and mannequins to disrupt, disturb and question.

Project Ideas that have come from this are: 

1.  A photographic project that uses mannequins as the artists do here to wake the viewer 

2.  A digital photographic project that will manipulate images to create a new form of life in a series/collection something future human.

3. Use the body parts to create a sculpture, embed the sculpture with eyes/cameras that will watch the viewer watching the sculpture. 

In my next post, I will choose one of these ideas to explore over the next week to see if this will work as a project throughout the term...

Welcome to Summer Term Two!

Welcome to a new term and a new project.  This term looking forward to the summer sun, taking more pictures and really getting excited about making a new project.

So to start the term I was looking through the images in George Bataille's book The Tears of Eros and this one I very much enjoyed.  Mainly as I didn't know much about Labisse and therefore I thought I would start with him this term.  

Félix Labisse (March 9, 1905 – January 27, 1982) was a French Surrealist painter, illustrator, and designer.  Labisse designed sets and costumes for many theatre productions in his lifetime including; "The Martyrdom of San Sebastián" by Gabriele d'Annunzio and Claude Debussy at the Théâtre National de l'Opéra, "Paris - Magic" by Lise Deharme and Germaine Tailleferre at the Opéra-Comique and Partage de Midi" by Paul Claudel directed by Jean-Louis Barrault.

His painting however are what I am interested in here - Poetic morning has an array of artists and writers who sit together with two women both of which have become objects, mannequins.  Apollinaire holds the model standing around the waist as you might a shop dummy and the other woman lays prostrate in the chair with a head painted like a Picasso.  The scene is cold as there is no connection through eye contact of any of the participants in the image.  they star into space almost in jest of the painting itself, they knowingly cannot sit in a room together and they have been posed and dressed just like the women in the scene.  This alien scene with its unwilling participants becomes more interesting as it disturbs the normal sense of the portrait where elements bring the sitters together - here they are intentionally separated and individualised.  

This disturbance interests me....

References

Felix Labisse Official Website [Online] Available from: http://www.felixlabisse.com (Accessed 30/06/19)

Bataille G. (1989) The Tears of Eros, City Lights Books, San Francisco