Pok Man "The Chase"

The short film POKMAN "The Chase" made in 2009, was an exploration in placing La Pok into the urban environment. The chase as a plot enabled the characters Pokman, Fft and Chicken Heart to move through different landscapes. Their costumes juxtapose their surroundings, creating unexpected scenes in familiar settings. I don't have the movie at the moment, but will post it soon...

As we moved through different scenes, peoples reaction where varied. Little kids stared in amazement, some people applauded some people ignored us and one security guard escorted us out of the Northcote Plaza.

POK MAN

CHICKEN HEART

Ffft

This was my first attempt at making a short film and was a lot of fun. It was interesting to see what we could come up with using a minimum of materials. Basically cardboard, string and paint. From here we have begun planing another movie APokAFari, which will be shot at Tambo Station. 


 What I have learnt making this short film is that we need more durable customs, as they did not wether well. However we intend to still use found and recycled materials for costumes and sets.  

Tambo Dreaming

Annual Australia Day party at Tambo Station. Each year has a different theme, dressing up allows us to be transported to another place and time, but Tambo always comes with us.  The process of crafting our costumes is also important, this year most of us had to fashion our outfits from things around the farm, like 'Little Feather' whose headdress was fashioned from a retro Bolle ski helmet and rams horns.

For the first time this year saw the introduction of sculpture into Tambo's landscape. Above is a dream catcher standing roughly 5 meters tall made from young eucalyptus trees, poly pipe, and shredded chaff bags. Sculpture is something I've always wanted to implement into Tambo's working landscape.

Pok O Rama

The purpose of the Pok O Rama is to take the first step in making LA Pok Escapes. The idea is to extruded elements from 2d paintings and drawings I have completed in the past. Extruded they will create a life size 3d diorama or in fact a mini landscape. By doing so I hope to portray a better understanding of what La Pok escapes could be for myself and my school mentors. 

The rocks in my work will be an easy element to stagger creating depth in the Pok O Rama. They may also be used on the background.

The grass in the foreground on the right and below is also a good element to use, and and easy way of representing vegetation. although i do still wont real plants in the landscape.

I would also like to use fake and real vines through the landscape. The Pok representation of vines are shown left. The image below is Pok and Chicken Heart, otherwise known as Chickpok.

The above images are of some precedents of diorama styles.

 The first Pok O Rama I am going to build is inspired from above.

By creating this work I have realised that I have began trying to disguise the boxed space that the landscape is placed in. I have achieved this by rolling the sky over onto the roof of the box. This is something I wish to test further.

 

I am pleased with the illusion the ground pattern has on the sloped surface. I have hung vines in this work that i wished to test in a Pokorama, but am not sure if it works well in this instance. I think this box needs something else in the foreground so as to balance the work.

When I made the work above I imagined the bands across the top as bridges and the background the sky, as if looking up. When this work was translated into a Pokorama it took on a vertical format instead of a horizontal.

Although I am working towards doing more then just offsetting panels to create depth, I ended up doing just that in this work. What I like best about this work is that it is more abstracted then just representing a scenario.  

Painting the background in this work has proven successful in working towards the illusion that this space is not a box.

 

The forth painting I have extruded into a Pokorama

aims to remove the squared edge at both the bottom and top of the back of the box.

Having the piped form hanging off the sky has also worked well in changing the dynamics of the boxed environment.

Magic Lantern Green Wall

I have been commissioned to design a green wall on the facade of Magic Lantern shop on Brunswick st, Fitzroy . The owners of the shop Lucy and Gonzalo are looking to extend there window garden onto the wall. They say this little mini garden creates a lot of interest into the shop and wish to promote more interest.

One of my main concerns this year is how do I design for other people. This project is a  great opportunity for me to work in an artistic way, personalizing the project with the clients strongly established aesthetic.

 One of my main interests as a Landscape Architect is to create landscapes and gardens that promote the imagination of the viewer/ user to get lost in a day dream. The use of a vertical garden, that is segmented into little worlds will do just that, as the window garden does at the moment.  

              These images are of the existing window garden mini world.  

The proposed surface area for the vertical garden is around the windows of the shop front. As the walls are concrete, fixing the garden to the wall won't be a problem. The depth of the garden and dealing with vandalism of the exposed little worlds inside the garden are the two main issues to resolve. 

 I am thinking of two ideas at the moment. The first is having a ladder framework up either side of the shop. Each box is a different little scene. The scenes are then linked together by little ladders, similar to the levels of donkey kong.  

The problem with this is that people might try and climb the ladder, creating safety and security issues for the shop. For this reason as the viewers not being able to see the top or bottoms scenes easily, this idea might be concentrated in the middle of the columes.

If these scenes are as successful as the window garden, in attracting interest of costumers, it might be an idea that they could be taken out and sold. For this reason i am looking at making this part of the wall modular.

Keeping the same concept of a ladder as the framework for the scenes a door could be opened and allowing a scene to be removed. By having this door, it also secures the individual scenes from being stolen, as they are on the front of the shop. 

The windows of the door, might be covered in clear perspex so as characters and plants wont get stolen. This will also control how much water they get, as I don't think the planter boxes will have drainage, instead hardy plants will be used and watering controlled

When the scene is removed a frame can be attached in the same style as the Magic lantern signage and the scene can then be hung on a wall.

 

  The second idea is to create a maze over the facade of the shop. Little characters could then travel around the maze and scenes created within. I now have to consult the clients and see what they think of these ideas. Whatever the outcome I am exited create a mixed medium vertical garden that offers more then just a vegetated wall.

 

 Riding home last week I was thinking about how to achieve this maze wall, when i saw this skirting on a shop front. It is not exactly what I want to do, but helps describe me intentions. If you image the raised areas of the skirting as plants.

 

Image above and left sourced from http://inhabitat.com

Figuring out how to achieve this, it is almost easier to use the existing method of vertical garden modular squares, cover the whole area of this maze. Then covering areas to create the paths of the maze, where the characters will be situated.