Introduction

This section of the report will be mainly dealing with my personal exploration and manufacturing of my work.

"I walk on my belly, trying to understand my life; I crawl on my belly trying to understand life. I shed, this skin, trying to meet my own skin... who am I, but a girl; a girl trying to find the women in me"

The introductory poem is one I had written several years and had included it as part of my then B.Tech proposal. I have however found that my current report exploration may be somewhat associated with this poem; I have decided to include a short video that further expresses this. 

Due to the narrative nature of my work; the signs and symbols I have used have been an important part to my design process.  The reason being that the usage of a specific image would either enhance the message I hope to express with a piece of jewellery or it will make the piece unsuccessful. 

I will therefore be discussing and justifying the design choices made in this section of the report, in terms of the choice in techniques, colours, symbols and materials. 

Beat Bobby Flay

I drafted this post on Monday, Today while watching "Beat Bobby Flay", with my sister. As we were conversing about just how many cooking competitions that he had part taken in (such as Iron Chef), I began to realise that you can only raise your own personal standed by constantly competing with the world. As much as you must run your own race, however  when taken in a positive way competitions can force you to dig deep and bring out your best, above that grow in your field.

This man has gone against the best of best, constantly pushing himself out of his comfort zone. The video below is an episode of Beat Bobby Flay so you can see him in action.

My plan

This report has adopted the Action research methodology, which is a form of interactive research primarily obtained through literal engagement with the specific research matter. this form of research involve a continuous cycle of four step which are: planning, acting, observing and reflecting. (Sagor, 2000)

Figure 1: Nelson (2014). Action Research Cycle. [ONLINE]

Once a direction had been chosen the planning phase began which included a Reason, counterargument, reason, counterargument thought process included in the picture below. This process was vital as it helped shape my thoughts into a more directed manner, although it was not simply a process of writing thoughts down; but involved the steps found within action research. Once the initial phase of planning, action, observation and reflection had been concluded, I then went on to the second stage of this cycle and so forth.

Figure 2: Ndongeni, S (2018). Reasoning, counterargument, reason, counterargument thought process.

The general actions which were undertaken by this report involved interviews (these were conducted via emails,  telephone and face to face engagements), researching and gathering existing information such as documentaries. The observation process included dissecting what was gathered in the previous step through the process seen in figure 2, while also trying to design and write poetry which simultaneously overlapped with the reflection step.

This allowed me capture what was most relevant for this specific report both ion theory and  in practice; as the plan was to interpret narratives in poetry and jewellery, while at the same time trying to make them reflect each other. I therefore needed to use  other artist, poets and contemporary jewellery designers as figurative sounding boards for my own process; looking at how they had looked, interpreted and ultimately created their narratives. Looking at specifically how they used symbols, materials, colours and words were applicable in order to create.

This methodology was therefore the most effective for this report, as each step was crucial to the final outcome.