OCA preloader logo
innovation Blog Posts- Page 3 of 5 - The Open College of the Arts

#WeAreOCA

The Open College of the Arts' blog

Browsing Category:

innovation


Thinking about drawing space thumb

Thinking about drawing space

Drawing (the act of) is a vital tool that helps us as artists and designers to think, to test and explore our thoughts and ideas, and to visually and critically analyse the development of our work. Therefore drawing, and drawings, are about describing and conveying important information.

Read More
Culinary tools and notational drawing / Eating space and drawing eating thumb

Culinary tools and notational drawing / Eating space and drawing eating

There is value in exploring food within interior design because we can use this to engage our audiences and help them to understand our design intentions. Food isn’t the only thing that we all have in common, but it is a universal language of ingredients, processes and tools that we can all understand.

Read More
Green design thumb

Green design

Good interior design sets out to create ergonomic, functional and aesthetically pleasing environments that are pleasant to interact with. In response to increasing societal awareness of environmentally responsible design, more clients are seeking to incorporate the principles of sustainability into their interior spaces.

Read More
Interior Design: What is luxury? thumb

Interior Design: What is luxury?

Within interior design, there are definitely certain connotations when it comes to the idea of luxury. The most often association of luxury within interior design is expense. This can be realised in a variety of ways, such as the glitz and glamour of traditional palaces or in the solitary minimalism of contemporary spaces. But I wanted to recap and expand upon some of the ideas of luxury that were discussed by the group. Luxury can mean so many things to different perspectives. 

Read More
Perception: Where Science and Art Meet. Sort Of. thumb

Perception: Where Science and Art Meet. Sort Of.

The important point is our brains are wired in a certain way and we invent and build the world in our heads as much as perceive it as ‘truth’. This is important for anyone attempting to represent three dimensions in two. The world is indeed out there but perhaps capturing it requires more intervention than we might initially think.

Read More
What kind of spatial designer am I? #4 Grant Armstrong thumb

What kind of spatial designer am I? #4 Grant Armstrong

Studying Interior Design, Spatial Design, Interior Architecture – or any kind of design of the built environment – can lead to many different careers. In this series of blog posts we are looking at the experience and careers of different design professionals and finding out what inspired them to study in the first place. Our fourth design professional is Grant Armstrong, an experienced supervising art director and production designer for film and television.

Read More
OCA Music: The virtual choir project thumb

OCA Music: The virtual choir project

With in-person study visits, especially those involving singing, off the cards due to the pandemic, we had to think somewhat outside of the box to get a composition workshop together in 20/21! With a handful of singers within the student body of the music department, we decided to give a ‘Virtual Choir’ project a try.

Read More
Old and new: Riddle Songs thumb

Old and new: Riddle Songs

Working with ancient texts and dead languages might give one cause enough to steer away, presenting the composer with all sorts of challenges in interpretation and performance. Add into the mix historical instrumentation and such projects could easily lose focus, become too academically dry, or even a pastiche of itself. The key, in my opinion, to the successful combination of old and new, is that the composer needs to respect what both sides have to offer any potential soundworld and then somehow keep them in balance. 

Read More
Printmaking studios at home thumb

Printmaking studios at home

During covid lockdown I’ve been so grateful I have a studio space at home. I was reflecting how my OCA students use their homes as studios. I asked a number of printmaking students to reflect and share how they made printmaking spaces within their homes.

Read More
Textiles and jewellery thumb

Textiles and jewellery

As my own textiles practice has, for the past few years now, been venturing more and more into the jewellery sector, I have built up a real fascination with how textiles and jewellery disciplines have such a fine line between them and so easily blurred. I know that many, many practitioners work in a multi-disciplinary way, with many choosing to not specify which ‘section’ of the art and craft sector they reside – which I equally appreciate as well- but focusing in on just the relationship between more ‘typical’ textiles and jewellery disciplines is a very interesting area of research to me. 

Read More