Artist talk #6 - Dominic Wilcox
Dominic Wilcox is a local success story. As a previous Sunderland Art and Design Foundation student, Dominic has presented his inventions all over the world, even taking him to the United Nations. He has worked to inspire children both locally and in other countries across the globe, encouraging them to believe that things are possible and provide them with unlimited ambition.
It is this philosophy and teaching that makes Dominic's work inspiring. It very easy to feel downtrodden and unmotivated with current job markets and I myself have experienced changes to this effect in the last few years after being made redundant. Despite this, it is important not to let this filter down to the youth of today. Technology is improving all the time and with the advent of Raspberry Pi's and digital technology such as 3D printing, this is an area that if encouraged, the UK could have a real future in. Dominic realises this and has championed an Inventor Project with Cultural Spring to try and encourage the next generation of inventors. He has worked with local primary school children and asked them to design some inventions. He then encouraged local businesses including Sunderland's Fab Lab to produce the children's inventions for real. These were then exhibited in an empty high street shop in Sunderland's city centre on Fawcett Street and displayed for the public.
In Dominic's talk, he referred back to his own Foundation tutor Charlie Holmes who first inspired him in his work to express his creativity through drawing. One such example is drawing a line and giving it a personality, 'a line that couldn't make two ends meet.'
This encouragement of idea generation, sense of humour, and the ideas of giving inanimate objects a life can clearly be seen throughout his work. He was commissioned by Goodyear Tyres to come up with 30 inventions that could be used across seasons, later publishing a book entitled 'Variations on Normal'.
After attending Edinburgh College of Art, he set up a partnership with a fellow student Steve Mosely. They worked with a music producer photographer Nick Rock and produced objects through material exploration. One of the images he showed was a light shade that was produced from many overlapping guitar plectrums that when lit up showed the individual plectrums.
From here Dominic travelled to japan and taught English for a year. He then produced a project more in-line with his current work on inventions, 'The Lost & Found Office of Oddities' as part of the Hull 2017 City of Culture Bid. Here he created a tent that members of the public could visit and try and identify some random objects that he had put together. This was based upon Victorians' cabinets of curiosity. Though these objects were not made to be anything in particular, they encouraged idea generation and participation of people of all ages. A favourite of mine and my friend's was a crank handle operated tea bag dipper.
He has worked with people who specialise in their field such as James Rutherford to create Binaudios, a mix between binoculars and speakers. When positioned at certain angles from The Sage in Gateshead they relayed sounds of the city into earphones for the operator. This made use of the place, as The Sage is an international music space known for its perfect acoustics.
I wouldn't typically describe myself as a typical artist, (if there is in fact such a thing). If anything I am a mix between a designer, craftsman, and artist, depending upon the project at hand. Having taken graphic design at high school (a precursor to product design, and technical drawing and modelling) this can be seen in the technical three-dimensional way in which I draw, planning out how I am going to make something. I do also enjoy artistic drawing which strongly concentrates on observation to produce visual qualities required but that isn't the initial way in which I think. The same can be said of Dominic, his drawings being very similar and showing the breakdown of a design into components. He has designed and produced works that communicate between the different disciplines of art, design, craft and technology, merging all to create STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, & Maths), as opposed to typical government initiatives in STEM, often bypassing The Arts and cutting funding.
Examples of this include his crafted 'Stained Glass Driverless Sleeper Car of the Future', his Little Inventors Project merging design and technology which has now become a global project that is accessible online, and he has created art galleries for dogs.
Like Dominic, when I was young (and less young) I used to design wacky inventions, developed through imagination, often with the thought of improving or solving problems of everyday life. The difference is that whenever I design such things now, or even looking back to previous designs, I find myself thinking how small and singular these ideas must be, and despite essentially thinking that I can make anything I put my mind towards, often don't end up doing this. My mind tells me to be realistic and I think back to TV programmes like Dragon's Den and all the inventions that haven't made it past the Dragon's. It is not to say that these are failures as such, but that for the investors involved, there is not a big enough return that is guaranteed not to lose them money that means it is worth taking the risk. These ideas that are designed to solve problems, often end up creating more problems themselves, or account to laziness with the current view on children being obese. Therefore, I find myself having mixed feelings about design in the current climate. This way of designing inventions may not be so much for real-world-life implications, but may instead be used in entertainment. Films like the Wallace & Gromit have grown in vast popularity since 'A Grand Day Out' in 1989, yet without the inventions, this series would have never been so popular.
I do believe however, that when taught to think outside the box, alongside supported degree programmes such as product design, with the support and access to technology, the limitless imagination taught by Dominic can be of benefit. The sheer willpower of some design students has led to breakthroughs mainly in helping developing countries afford vital equipment that is making a real difference to people's lives. One such example is Will Broadway's 'Isobar' - a portable fridge designed to keep vaccines at the ideal temperature while in transit. These inventions are produced using modern materials, that are easy and cheaper to construct than those produced by large companies marketing to developed countries. Student's product designs often meet a purpose, rather than being made for solely for profit and as such they are priceless inventions that show what can be achieved by bringing together multiple fields of specialism.
