You Are Number One

Our brief for this short project was simple. We were to be given a number; we had to research everything that has ever been known since the dawn of time about our number. And then finally, graphically represent this number so that there is an idea communicated by it. We needed to make something that didn’t use our actual number, it has to be intriguing, and it had to be a 2D printed square image.

My number was 32.

I started off by asking people what they instantly thought of the number 32. The only answer someone came up with was… WRETCH 32.  I thought this might actually work to my advantage because my brother works of Ministry of Sound, and Wretch 32 is signed by Ministry, so maybe I could somehow do something with this idea…

Anyway I research my number even further, and here are a list of interesting facts I found out about the number 32:

• In chess there are 32 white squares, 32 black squares and 32 chess pieces
• In soccer ball there are 32 white and black patches
• There are 32 teams in the national football league
• There have been 32 teams that have participated in each FIFA world cup finals since 1998
• 32 is the 9^th happy number
• 32 is the country code for Belgium
• 32 degrees Fahrenheit is the freezing point of water at sea level
• In 2032 there will be a leap year
• 32 is the atomic number of germanium
• There are 32 counties in Ireland
• 32 is a full set of adult human teeth
• There are 32 pages in an average comic book
• Demolition man plot takes place in 2032
• Phoebe from friends predicted her death to be in October 15^th 2032

I thought about developing the fact about the chess pieces or the full set of adult teeth because they seemed to be the most interesting fact, however as we had very little time to come up with a visual representation of this idea, I acted on my first idea and just developed that so I produced something half decent for the crit.

In WHsmiths I found this book of puzzles that inspired my idea for my project. This book was full of visual representations of well-known phrases. Some were simple, and some were ridiculously difficult to understand.

I thought this example was pretty difficult to understand, but when I saw the answer I was kicking myself in the teeth because it seems so simple when you think about it !!

….start on the right foot.

This inspired my idea to visually represent my number through something similar to this.

I started off by breaking down the number into sections.

Thir – ty – two

Thir sort of sounds like thur…. Thursday?

This was meant to be somehow representing Thursday? – 2 days before the weekend… get it?

Then I thought about how I say Thursday… and most of the time I don’t say THUrsday…. I say FURsday (because I don’t pronounce my t’s very well)

So the first part could be represented by FUR

Next was TY… this sounds like tea… like a cup of tea?

 

Or tea is another word for dinner?

and then finally… TWO…. Too?  How do you represent TOO? TOO many?

To?---- this way TO (somewhere) ….an arrow? 

or another way of saying TWO without the number… hands! 

(this might be mistaken for peace or f**k you)

here were some combinations:

I took lots of photos of different ways of showing fur, tea and the number two with hands, and then I photoshopped each individual photo into the same image, so it looked like I took the picture all at once (even though some of them are the same person repeated.) So all the shadows are equal and the background is exactly the same. The combinations where it was only the object looks like I took the photo with one shot and all the objects on one piece of paper.

I then settled for this as my final image. It was simple, easy to understand, and I liked how each “object” was completely different so they each stand out equally from the white background.

Unfortunately during my crit, although the feedback was positive and people understood the piece, some people did get confused with the ‘fur’ bit. Because the fur on the hat isn’t that obvious, people were thinking more on the lines of ‘hat’ or even ‘A.’ So some people thought the number was eighty-two or even… hat-ty-two.

 After the crit I took the feedback on board and re took the photo of the fur bit, and used a real piece of fur. This hopefully is a bit more clear that the number is THIRTY-TWO.

This project taught me that research is important for ideas and concept, especially contextual research. I feel I lacked real research on this project, and I definitely think I approached this project wrong. I spent most of my time worrying about the idea/fact, rather than looking at other artists and doing proper research that could’ve sparked a really clever way of representing my number. Looking at other peoples work, I wish I had come up with a clever idea that could’ve involved more practical work like lino printing, etching, letterpress (more hands on work) and then photographed this. I didn’t even consider other materials and processes other than photography because I felt very rushed as we only had a couple of days. I was happy with my end outcome, but not so much my follow up work towards this piece. However I did learn a lot about presentation. Good presentation enhances your work, makes your message clearer, and makes your work look more professional.