Tree Rings.

I've been looking for trees that have been cut down to leave the stump behind so I can have a look at the tree rings. As luck would have it, a neighbour  had some trees cut down and all the stumps were in a pile outside the house, so before they took the stumps away I took some photos!

Searching for Pattern.

With the nice weather, I've been out and about a lot, so have constantly been on the look out for possible patterns and textures that I can use within my work. 

Trees Please!

I've been looking out for pattern over the past week to get some drawing on the go, I feel I need to start with a visual catalogue of patterns to give me a good base of stuff to start off 3rd year with.
I've been particularly looking for good trees to take photographs of and I did come across a few...

I liked the patterns in the bark of these trees, I would like to try and draw out the marks, I want to keep it quite simple to start with perhaps just starting with line drawings and progress from there. 

Patterns In Nature.

Brainstorming natures patterns;

- Flowing water

- Lacework of clouds

- Spirals;

       sunflower head

       snail shells

- Sand patterns, repetitive although no two parts are the same.

- Trees:

      bark

      branches

      leaves

      tree rings

- Dendrochronology- tree dating based on tree rings, also known as growth rings. 

- The honeycomb

- Butterflywings 

- Animal fur

PATTERN IS EVERYWHERE.

To start off with I think i'll explore different patterns within nature, sourcing my own photos, play with mark making and looking at texture. 

Perhaps patchwork together different patterns, to hide the original identity of the pattern? 

Thinking of ways to link concepts. 

Identity In Nature.

Having discussed my project ideas with a friend who studies Natural Sciences, she suggested that I look into crypsis and mimicry.
Having looked further into these, I feel that this could create the link I wanted between nature and online identity.

CRYPSIS-  the ability of an organism to avoid observation or detection by other organisms, organisms can visually evolve so that they resemble their surroundings, others use chromatic response to change colour in changing environments.
Other examples of this are:
- TRANSPARENCY
- CAMOUFLAGE
- NOCTURNALITY
- MIMICRY;
- BATESIAN MIMICRY- Harmless animal appear to be distasteful or poisonous.
- AGRESSIVE MIMICRY- Predators or parasites which share the characteristics of a harmless             species, allowing them to avoid detection by their prey.
- AUTOMIMICRY- Where one part of an organisms body resembles another.
- EYE SPOTS- An eye like marking that resembles that of a different animal to deceive potential predators, drawing the attention away from the most vulnerable body parts.

Eye spots shown here on a caterpiller. 

www.heritageradionetwork.com 

Batesian Mimicry 

The Viceroy butterfly mimics the foul tasting Monarch butterfly

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batesian_mimicry

Camouflage 

www.zmescience.com 

Camouflage

www.telegraph.co.uk

Colouring changing chameleons 

www.flickr.com 

Nature's Patterns.

I've been researching nature's patterns and came across this series of books by Philip Ball, I think it's important and interesting to take a look at the science behind nature's patterns, and also give me inspiration for possible things that I can look into further. 

I haven't read all three books yet, but I've been dipping in and out of them, finding points of interest to research. 

Thinking 3rd Year.

Having looked over my Unit X feedback, I've decided to take elements from that project forward into 3rd Year.

I enjoyed working with more of a concept, and although I don't want to concept to be something I stick to like glue, I want it to grow with the project and see where it takes me. 

Something I touched on whilst undertaking Unit X, was identity online, and how identity can be changed, people can pretend to be something they're not, or pretend to be others, it's so easy to pretend online. 

I'd experimented previously with hiding the identity of people's faces, scribbling out reconisable features, changing parts of the face so the eyes are no longer theirs, or they have a different nose, basically warping the reality of the face, changing the identity. 

I definitely think that this is something that I can progress with further, but  I want to put a totally different spin on things. When I spoke to Lauren Bowker about my DATAWHERE project, she said it might have been nice to not look at actual data, but to look elsewhere, to perhaps take nature as a way of finding data and imagery, so that the data could take on a more abstract form. 

Since nature is something that I always find and take inspiration from I thought this would be a good place to start and see if I can try and link the two concepts, identity online and identity in nature.