Obsessively looking at brands of technology and media Alice Ray created her project on researching corporate branding and its aesthetic qualities. How a brand can seem seductive and artistic but have such a corporate ownership, Alice’s film ‘Softcore Eternal’ looked at the layers used within advertising ‘and the creative urge to want to own the qualities that these layers represent.’ Research and provocatively driven to continue this project theme, Alice intends to develop her work from the allure of commercial branding into a collaborative project ‘World Service Unite’.
Here is Alice’s interview and a link to her video exhibiting at Mixed Special.
What is your favorite book?
I mostly read non-fiction books like The brand handbook by Wally Olins or Culture in the communication age by James Lull. I enjoy reading about subjects where there’s new thought being contributed. At the moment I’m enjoying discussions on Post Internet.
What, if anything, do you listen to/watch when working?
I don’t have particular rules for that but I often get my ideas when I’m working out; I have to keep stopping to write stuff down; and then get back to doing starjumps or something again. I think it’s the adrenaline
What would you do if you knew you could not fail?
Maybe I wouldn’t try so hard.
What is completely unique about your work on the course?
I focus on looking outwards rather than inwards. What I create may be biographical at times but I wouldn’t say it’s psychoanalytic. It’s that interest in culture that seems to always be present in my work.
How many sketchbooks have you filled each year?
I have to have at least 5 different sketchbooks going at a time; one is for raw concepts and ideas in written form, which goes with me everywhere; another is for designs and sketches of how ideas can manifest themselves physically; another is for organisation and management; another is for treatments or storyboards, and others consist of research and various studies.
What is the most important thing that you get right in your work?
Being able to communicate is the most important thing for me. I think that passion comes from me never being very good at communicating from a young age. When something in my work is considered and articulated, somebody looking at it can be spoken to through a visual language we are all fluent in. That is what makes my work meaningful; it becoming used as language.
What do you find the most interesting?
Being able to identify what’s going on socially
To see more of Alice’s work click here to go to her gallery page.