Throughout these past six weeks I have had to go through ups and downs, setbacks and adapting to changes that arose with my project. In the third week of the FMP I had been given news of an unexpected death in the family and had to fly back to California for a week. I still kept up with development of ideas but I know it wasn’t the best first week development I could of done. For my research, I mostly used the internet and site visits. I did go to the library during the first week of research, but I was unsuccessful in finding any books that had to do with springboard diving or the Olympics and or other water structures.
From very early on, about the first week of research, my initial idea had changed without me really catching it until the second week when I realised that my research was leading me in a different direction. Originally, my idea was to create a springboard diving center because I was not able to find one in London when I first moved here, but after the research weeks, I found that I was looking at the line shapes that the dives made and I became more interested in creating something with them then creating a diving center. While out in California I had access to baling twine, used to keep hay together, and wax. Because I wanted to look at creating something with the line shapes of the dives I visited my High School divers at their practice and photographed their dives. I used the photographs to twist the twine to recreate the dive and used the wax to hold it in place. I then went on to using wire and from that I came up with a design for my final model that I liked.
I visited the 2012 Olympic site many times, taking pictures and making drawings of the site and while there the ‘Orbit’ by Anish Kapoor was being built and I went back and did research on him and found that I have seen his work around London without actually knowing it was his. There was an exhibition in Hyde Park that his work was featured in along with a few pieces in the Tate Britain. His sculpture inspired me to create a sculpture for any Olympic aquatic center. Since I had voids in my design, a friend suggested that I look at Barbara Hepworth. Her work was all about looking at everyday life and the voids that were overlooked. Both Barbara Hepworth and Anish Kapoor helped inspire my design final design.
I have learned that even an original idea can change once research is conducted and not to fight the change that happens but rather embrace it because something really interesting can come of it. I think in future I will be less likely to run with my first idea but enjoy the process of always developing ideas. Overall I am very pleased with my final project and the development process it took to get to the end result.
