Bananarama

The “BANANARAMA” session was a brilliant teaching experience about the investigation from the primary and the secondary research, to help students who study in the Glasgow School of Art better understand the connection between human, things, and thinking.

The primary research about banana by John Nicol

In the first week of the pre-sessional course, we attended a quite interactive workshop: “BANANARAMA”. With the introduction and demonstration teaching of research by John Nicol and Kaitlyn DeBiasse, the studio tutors, we obtained two important steps of the study object: the primary and secondary research. The former requires us to focus on the things or item itself, colors or materials and we can use smell, touch, etc. to do so, and the latter is about investigating the information around it, related products, developments or brands etc. The strong connection between students and teachers is the thinking with and through things and asking questions.

The secondary research part during which everyone interacted with Kaitlyn DeBiasse, having fun and coming up with lots of ideas

During the session, every group got their own wonderful journey with all skills and methods, to observe, utilize, smell, take it into a painting experiment, etc. We applied multiple ways to feel and understand the item in front of us. Some of the processes and outcomes were quite valuable: the ‘Tea’ could be applied into the painting work with perfect changing effects, the history and development of the ‘Tampon’, the use of the Toilet Tissue, the word “PH” in the sauce’s brand name means “Parliament House” and the sauce’s color is very special as well, the experiment of using the ‘Rose Petal’ itself in the painting job. All people in the studio figured out their objects and raised questions, and shared opinions.

Doing primary research into 'Rose' - petals can be used to paint but the color you get on the paper is different from the color of the petal

Discussion of the HP sauce with John, Kaitlyn and classmates

Afterwards we were asked to use one word to describe our feelings about the Bananarama session. Our reactions included 'ice-breaker', 'unbelievable', 'amazing', etc.  Because almost all the students who took part in this workshop had never experienced such an activity before, they enjoyed the different class process and full interaction among people who are in the studio. The students may  have imagined how the PSE course would look like before, but the Bananarama session exceeded their imaginations. 

One group explaining their research into toilet paper with the tutors and rest of the group listening carefully

The existence of the studio offers us a good place and opportunity for thinking and exploring the relationship between people and things, the co-operation between humans, and the connections among things. Additionally, we have to learn to pose questions and think about them with critical thinking and logical thinking, and ask the questions freely and without limits. For instance, do the things affect our lives or do the human actions contribute to changes to objects or products?

This blog post was written jointly by Xiaoxin Wang and Han Qu, and edited by their classmates and tutors. The photos were taken by Ania Rolinska and are posted here with the permission of the persons photographed.

Xiaoxin is an illustrator & visual designer and her motto is 'I enjoy everything  that happened in my life and draw it down' and Han says 'If someone asks me about the attitude of my life, I will say: STAY HUNGRY AND STAY FOOLISH'.

We would like to thank our studio tutors, Kaitlyn and John, for the enthusiasm, dedication and passion with which they delivered the workshop!