Our Final Product
Success
I must say that this project was extremely successful as the project actually WORKED! In my opinion this was the best project I have ever created in any art and music class. I personally think our entire group put in a lot of effort with the whole creation and no one was left out or had nothing to do. A success of ours was the our team work and collaboration skills as we wisely split up different jobs for each group member. For example, if I was in charge of building the tail, ATM would be spray painting the boxes, Michail would be creating the music and Aria would be painting the head; no one was ever left out . Another success was our communication skills. If we had problem we would ask for help, we shared our ideas and listened to others, not judging them but being open minded and taking them into consideration. We even created a WhatsApp group so we could communicate out of school to share pictures, information or reminders for the next day. Our time management skills were good as we planned out time wisely and for each lesson, we had certain aims and goals that we had to complete. The tail was the first thing we had to finish - we gave ourselves 2/3 weeks to finish it and we repsected the deadline. We never fell behind with our work and even if we had an obstacle or if there was a problem, we would solve it in the lesson so that next lesson we wouldn't have to worry about it. We brought all the material we needed on time, so that during lessons we wouldn't have nothing to do. Meanwhile, not only was the artistic side of our project a success, so was the music. The music that Michail had created sounded beautiful and represented our sculpture really well. The music and sounds that played from under the box fit the whole theme of the project and reflected the idea behind the peacock. Whilst sounding very delicate and nature like, it also was very abstract and unusual. In addition all the musical elements that we had originally planned for the peacock to have worked and functioned really well. The music coming out from the golden box played, the tail created abstract sounds with the bells and metals clashing against each other and lastly the 'guitar' strings (which turned out to be elastic bands) created a fitting sound effect for the peacock. Overall the main success was the whole project. It turned out to be colourful, fun and fits exactly the target audience (children). It reflects the aim of recycling, abstract art and functional sculpture.
Challenges
Challenges
There were several challenges that we faced as a group and as individuals. For example, we faced several challenges/ obstacles when actually putting all the pieces of the peacock together. We didn't know how to attach the tail of the peacock to the big golden box, since we obviously couldn't stick it as the tail was too heavy and the glue wouldn't work. We were stuck on what to do, so we asked Ms Jewanjee and she suggested that we use nails to attach the plastic top of the tail to the box. We used several nails and after a lot of screwing, the tail was attached. It was very secure and didn't detach itself from the box. Another problem we had was when ATM and Aria started spray painting the box, because the colours they were using and the texture wasn't nice and completely ruined all the boxes. So we had to restart again, cut the big box again and spray paint them. However this time, we borrowed golden spray paint from the art department and Aria took the boxes home to finish spray painting. A main problem which I have mentioned in my weekly updates was the guitar strings in the box. The issue with that idea was that we didn't realise that guitars or violins needed a certain piece at the end of the strings for them to play. We clearly didn't have that so we had to use a different material instead. Aria came up with the idea of placing the strings horizontally, vertically and diagonally to form an abstract look. Instead of using guitar strings, we used elastic bands that when stretched out, still create a sound. We had problem with the head being too heavy and the neck being too thick so we placed rocks on the bottom of the big box to balance out the weight. We had a last minute issue with the music not playing on the speaker as it wasn't connecting to Michail's iPad. The music teacher suggested that we had to change the file format to mp3, which I had previously done so I could upload the music onto my blog. Also to bring a spare speaker on the day we had to display our sculptures, in case the original speaker wouldn't work. There were more personal challenges that also had to face during the creation of the sculpture. Examples of these were if you had an idea but the group didn't like it and thought it was bad, then you had to deal with it and forget about it. This could hurt certain people's feelings, even though we tried to be really nice when rejecting an idea. Another one was that when we started assembling the peacock, some the parts weren't sticking or staying in their place. As this occurred several times, especially for me, I got really frustrated and angry but I had to be positive and logical solve the problem.
Improvements
There are a few things that we could improve on our project if we were to do it again. For instance, the head of the peacock, kind of looked like a swan, with the white neck and the orange beak. Next time, we would certainly make the neck and head smaller, maybe paint them a different colour and make the beak smaller and more petite. Instead of using the grey material we used for the body, I would be curious to see if using a Styrofoam ball would give the same effect and would still work. Lastly I would probably change the way the body was made, maybe make it more round, rather than an oval shape and what I really didn't like about the peacock was the ugly extra material and excessive flowers below the neck. So I would certainly find a way to fix that.
Art & Music
I think this term, Art and Music collaborated really well. Even though it was a challenging project to make something functional, we managed to achieve that goal. We made a good decision when choosing our group as we had a girl and a boy from music and a girl and a boy from art. Not only that, but each of us had skills that we could share and use in creating the project. For example Aria is really creative and can draw really well, so she did the sketches and came up with most of the solutions. I am quite bossy and like to be in control of things so I took control of the team and told each of them what to do and managed the group. Michail is really good with electronics and technology, that's why he created the music using garage band on his iPad. Whilst ATM is really good at physically building things, so a lot of the time, he was in charge of sticking things on or spray painting. We had a good balance between art and music in our project, as we had 3 musical elements in the peacock - the music coming out of the box, the strings in the box and the wind chime tail. Even though our peacock may not have looked exactly like a peacock and wasn't perfect, we made it abstract and very colourful. We got several compliments from different students stating how they loved our peacock and thought it was a really creative way having built it like that. In addition the story that goes with our sculpture is really sweet and especially an inspirational message for anyone around the world.
I thoroughly enjoyed creating this peacock, I worked with the people I had never worked with before and created new memories with friends. It was an interesting and enjoyable task.
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