Lines of Enquiry - Distorting Images

In my group of 3, we all realised very quickly that we were all interested in the architectural structure of the Roller Coasters and the use of line. So we played upon this in our first session together and when we were asked to create paintings or drawings from an image we took at thePleasure Beach, we focused on this. Each of our images were colourful and bold so we decided we would use this colour scheme in our print and garment. The distortion of the images reminds me of the 60's era. This is because the 60's were very colourful and had a strong hippy style, which we have tried to represent in these prints.  

 

We were then asked to create a new image, deconstructing each of our pictures and then reconstructing new ones. We wanted to do quite distorted images so we decided, after we made our own collages, that we would put them into the printer and move it around whilst it was being scanned.

Using the original and the distorted images, I put together these compositions, trying to continue the use of line in each one. As we wanted to add some structure to our garment, I tried to manipulate simple block patterns to further our research. These images were a strong starting point and will made a very interesting print.

     

       

Belle Vue

Opening in 1836, Belle Vue Zoo started as a small private collection of everyday animals like rabbits and squirrels. However as the zoo got more and more popular it started to get more 'exotic' animals, and they advertised this as well, show casing every penny Jennison had spent. The zoo was huge, there were thousands of people visiting it every year. However it was not the entrance fee they made their money on, it was food and drinks. The zoo sold 20,000 pieces of food each day, 40,000 pints of beer and people even had to pay for hot water. This being the case, the zoo wasn't for the lower class, it was an extremely civilised place. Working men would go in suits and there would be no standing on the grass. As the years went on they needed to keep the attraction up and did things like worked out when the working mens holidays were and targeted them, they had a large range of animals, although animals only lasted weeks or months due to being in a smoggy city and also lost them quite frequently! There was also many performances that attracted a huge crowd even though some of the performances were disturbing, using death as entertainment. In 1920's it was sold to a company which turned it into an American attraction, basically turning into the pleasure beach with animals, it had the highest and fastest rollercoaster at that time and had The Palace of Strange Girls this included short, fat, weird and wonderful women in there who people came to see. In the 1930's and 1940's the park was in great decline. 

Pleasure Beach

The Pleasure Beach was originally founded in 1896 by William G Bean, he bought 42 acres of land which the Pleasure Beach has been developed on. He wanted to create and bring an amusement park into Britain, rather than have another fairground, the first ride that was introduced was the Hutchkiss Bicycle. This ride was a huge hit and brought thousands of workers every year to Blackpool. In 1904 the Rockets were built and are still there to this day, although they have had a bit of a re-build due to modernisation. In 1930 Leonard Thompson, William Bean's son-in-law took over the park. This saw many new rides like The Grand National, The Rollercoaster (now Nickelodeon Streak) and The Pleasure Beach Express however during his time as Managing Director there was also another huge new 1st purpose built ice theatre. This ice rink was the first one in Europe which saw the huge show, Hot Ice, perform on there in 1937 and is still performing there to this day. In 1976 Geoffory Thompson took over and introduced the Revolution, Ice Blast, Valhalla and the Pepsi Max(Big One). Thompson also built The Paradise Room and The Big Blue Hotel. In 2004 the current managing director took control, Amanda Thompson, she rebranded the whole park and built the Infusion and Nickelodeon Land. Throughout the years The Pleasure Beach has a few managing directors put everything into this amusement park that they can, they have made it a fascinating place for people to have fun, to do projects on and world records!