IN THE STUDIO WITH LUCY HARDCASTLE: SEEN UNSEEN
Lucy Hardcastle is the founder and creative director of her self-named studio specialising in sensual storytelling for the digital age. As a designer and image maker she is best known for her sensuous and textural aesthetics in digital animation and physical installation and is at the forefront of her discipline, combining her tactile and ambiguous aesthetics with technological storytelling and brand narrative. We were lucky enough to have her lead a workshop with outgoing DPS students exploring and experimenting with new forms of storytelling.
As Lucy introduced us to her expansive portfolio, we were given a clear sense of how she approaches narrative generation in a new way. Her form of sensorial story telling is often about translating abstract feelings and emotions (as in the case of perfume advertising etc) as well as bringing to life the ‘unseen’; be that the microscopic, the visceral or the cosmic. It is these intangible stories that she wants to bring to life and does so by expressing them at a human scale.
“THE GOAL IS TO SOLICIT AN EMOTIONAL RESPONSE AND REACTION FROM THE VIEWER, TO ENGAGE A SENSE MEMORY THAT MIGHT BE LINKED TO EMOTIONS OR STATES OF BEING”
The goal is to solicit an emotional response and reaction from the viewer, to engage a sense memory that might be linked to emotions or states of being.
Lucy gave the students an opportunity to develop their own sensorial storytelling by literally getting our hands dirty with buckets of jelly, food colouring, flour and shaving foam.
Despite the kindergarten levels of mess, students got entirely stuck in, developing image-lead narratives around ideas as varied as electromagnetism, climate change and the scent of Mars.
It was a fantastic opportunity for the outgoing students, about to embark on a year in industry-based learning, to experiment and challenge their own discipline and approach. The course encourages risk taking and disciplinary innovation and for the students this was an opportunity to push the tools of their trade in an exciting new direction.
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Words: Laura Vent