Dhairya Patel

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Blog Post 3

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The Better Lives class that I chose was Mask Making and Politics. In which the brief stated that the project would introduce us to the fundamental principles and techniques of 3D practitioners to design and manufacture masks for the creative industry.

During the classes we were shown all types of masks used for a variety of different reasons. Specifically, masks created for specific topics such as climate change, human rights, equality and so on. Other instances that masks are used in are performances, rituals and more.  

During this time, global warming is at its highest so far and climate change is very prominent. The most recent major issue I could think of were the Australian Bushfires; so I decided to focus on forest fires and fires altogether. Currently the ones affected most by these fires are the animals that reside in the forest but if we keep going at this rate without changing its only so long until we humans are affected in such a way as well. I wanted the mask I created to be sustainable and environmentally friendly and I wanted it to be easily malleable and thin and then paint over it to get the desired effect. 

During my research, I came across a lot of different materials that would be used but none of them created the effect I wanted it to, I mainly looked into wax, wood and clay as the main materials as a lot of the examples I saw used them. I want my mask to look life-like and I want it to accurately resemble a person with second and third degree burns to both: keep the wearer unrecognisable but also to show the viewer the human equivalent of what the forest creatures have to go through. I want to create this effect by making sure the features on the face are not easy to figure out; I wanted to make the mask extreme because I think if the viewer can relate more to the mask then they might feel more obligated to help out, or there’s the risk of the mask creating the complete opposite effect and people avoid them. After watching my peers presenting their work I came to realise that although I had thought through my project, there was still a lot of research I could have done to be more detailed.

My final design was of a human face with second and third degree burns. It would be created out of paper mache and then painted over and it would have strings to put around the ears. It would also potentially be a little larger than the average face. Overall, I really like the way that my final design looks, although I think I could have put in more time to do more thorough research in terms of the material used.

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  1. Abigale Peterson: Peer review I really enjoyed reading this blog post, especially because of the thought behind the mask itself. Thinking about…

  2. Verena Wusatiuk: After reading multiple blog posts about the Better Lives lectures, themes and individual group projects, I decided to comment on…

Blog Post 2

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The three Better Lives themes are: Sustainability, Diversity, and Social Responsibility. These themes have become more crucial in the recent years in a lot of different fields. As a student in the Hair, Make-up and Prosthetics for Performance course, there’s a lot of issues in the cosmetology industry that could still be improved, that being said, the industry has come a long way in just the last couple centuries.

The better lives theme of ‘“sustainability” is not really very prominent in terms of the products being created, a lot of make-up companies use animal testing (even though this is slowly changing), they focus more on health and safety, and being sanitary. That being said, there are a lot more companies trying to become more sustainable, a couple of examples might be: L’Oreal, Circumference and Rituals. 

The theme of “diversity” has slowly become more prominent in the make-up industry in the last couple decades, this can be seen by cosmetics companies creating more shades of concealers and foundations for women with darker complexions as well as a wider range of representations in advertisements. That being said, there are still issues in some places, an example of this is natural hair discrimination, this forced independent natural hair companies to start competing with larger corporate companies. As a Hair and make-up artist, we should be able to work on anybody’s hair no matter their ethnicity or the quality of the individual’s hair. 

There are a lot of brands and companies to choose from when buying skincare products or cosmetics products, some of these companies are animal cruelty free, environmentally friendly and they dont take “short cuts”. This could often mean these products might be a little more pricey. In the more recent years the amount of people being socially responsible has increased but it’s important to bear in mind that due to poverty, some might not be able to afford the expensive products (they can still make more socially responsible decisions in different ways). 

The Better Lives project I am part of is “Mask Making and Politics”; all of the better lives themes can be applied to the project as masks are used for all sorts of purposes, ranging from rituals and ceremonies to medical reasons to political protests. There’s also so many different ways to go about creating a mask, with a lot of different sustainable materials that can be used such as paper mache, wax or clay.

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Blog Post 1

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In the two week period that all of the lectures took place, I attended a couple live streams or I tried to go back and watch the replay as opposed to physically attending the lectures. I found that it was easier for me to watch the lectures online as it gave me the ability to pause and play the video as I saw fit so that I could take my time in writing notes and to make them as informational as possible. Another aspect that I greatly appreciated from the online versions was the time the lecturers took to address the questions from students online as opposed to only addressing the questions of those physically present at the time. I also found it very useful that the lectures were recorded for us to watch at a later time, for those that wanted to watch specific ones but were not able to due to clashing schedules or other reasons and just the overall idea of being able to watch it online. 

All the lectures I watched were interesting in their own way and I was able to learn a lot and gain a lot of new information or just opened my eyes to a brand new perspective. That being said, I personally feel like not all of them were directly relevant to the course that I am doing (HMUPP), or not as relevant to me as it might be to others so I felt somewhat drained when listening to a number of the lectures. 

In particular, I really enjoyed lecture 9. Jekaterina Rogaten and Ameerah Khadaroo talked about Well-being and how it may be different and unique to everybody. I’ve studied Psychology in the past because I find the way the human mind works to be intriguing; so I was really invested when Dr. Rogaten also touched upon the idea that well-being is different in different fields as well and she asked the students to consider Wellbeing from a psychological perspective. Your well-being can be affected by a lot of things such as emotion, health, social situation, economy or financial status (to name a few). I think this subject is important due to the fact that it is important for everyone to take care of themselves. 

I can see the impact fashion could have on the human psyche; as this by far the generation that spends the most time on looks and being judged, be it through the amount of likes/ comments on social media, comments from family and friends, or even by the way an individual perceives themselves. The constant exposure to “trends” and being told what the “ideal body type” -no matter how ridiculous or unrealistic it might be- or to constantly look perfect due to altered image can often have a bad impact on a more insecure individual.

More representation and diversity in the fashion community and embracing these differences (any maybe even focusing on or enhance them), could impact the audience much better by more people feeling included and would therefore have a more positive effect on the general population.

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