Studio Brief 2: Tell an Untold Story - Research Trip

For my research trip, me and some friends went to Ottley for the day where we were going to be visiting 3 locations; A garden center, a pet shop, and a forest. I was very unsure about what my book was going to be about so I wanted to see all 3 places before I decided.

Overall I chose the pet shop because I just felt that it had more potential for a story. Some notes I made whilst there:

• very cluttered environment
• very colorful, lots of toys and decorative ornaments for fish tanks etc (alot of neon colors)
• dog toys are weird concepts, random shapes and textures?
• alot of pointless items? pet accessories etc

Photographs: I found photography to be really useful, because of the scarce cluttered nature of the pet shop, I would not have been able to record everything manually. I tried to capture the colorful craziness that I experienced whilst there, and also various typologies that were there. 

Drawings - when drawing, I wanted to focus more on the environment on the pet shop, rather than the actual animals, recording things like wet floor signs, and cluttered shelves.  I think that using drawing as a research tool was really helpful, because it helped me make sense of the cluttered environment that I was in. I found that because of all the colors and objects that it was quite a warm welcoming place (not sure why), which creates an interesting contrast to the negative idea of animals living in cages. 

Unfortunately there was no one in the pet shop to have a conversation with, however being with my friends was quite interesting as they had some comments about pet shops that stuck with me;

"Imagine being a glass box all the time, it'd be horrible"

"I can't believe anyone would buy this shit"

There was also a miserable lady behind the counter who told me I couldn't take pictures, but that's it. 

Overall I found my trip to the pet shop to be really effective in terms of research. I think that being inside the pet shop really helped me to understand the environment of the shop, which I would not have found just looking at pictures. Some possible ideas I have gained from this visit:

• creating images that show clutter and intensity of pet shop, the insane variety of accessories available for pets.
• Things that pets will not appreciate, yet owners buy them anyway. Pets opinions towards these? 
• The irrationality of the pet shop industry. 
• The lengths that pet owners will go to to make their animals happy