SKULL DEBATE...

The skull debate is one of the big talking points during the concept stages of our design. It first came around when Depa, our director come up with the idea that we should somehow incorporate skulls into some of the props within the church, for example on the candle sticks and on the altar. This split the group in terms of choice. Me and guy and Steve were probably the most opposed to it, and we had our reasons, where as Depa was probably most for the idea. Personally, I didn’t like the idea as soon as I heard it plain and simply because I wanted to keep the church realistic looking and ‘fresh’, and I knew from past experience and research that skulls weren’t generally used in the religion of Christianity inside the church. However saying that, my decision was not at all based on religious views, in fact none of us in our group are particularly religious which is quite strange as we are making a church, however I look upon that as a positive as it can be advantageous that none of us are going to have any tinted views on certain aspects of the design process, and we aren’t vulnerable to letting our beliefs interfere with what we decide upon during any stage of the production. it was purely down to the fact that I wanted the church to be realistic. I had the strong opinion that if we had decided that we weren’t going down the route of having a gothic church, we shouldn’t have skulls anywhere as there would be no point of having one feature related to that style of design, and no others, and it would just look out of place and awkward within the overall design of the church. This was the same opinion raised by Guy. On the other hand Depa had the opinion that they would look good on the altar, I think she was coming from a purely aesthetic view point rather than contextual viewpoint, and this is why she wanted to incorporate them, and to be fair to her, she did extensive research on them, and I could see her point of view, and she very nearly won me over as she showed me lots of pictures of skulls within churches, and they didn’t necessarily look out of place in all cases, and one church in particular was made entirely of bones. We eventually come round to a decision that we weren’t going to use skulls within the church, but a week or so later, Jared called us over and spoke to us about how we were getting on, and the skulls were again mentioned, and he got in on the debate, saying that he only suggested the idea of the skulls to Depa in the first place, as a way of broadening our horizons and giving us another viewpoint of how the design concept process can happen. I respect the way he did that, as it definitely gave us something to think about. Reflecting back, maybe we were all looking too narrowly minded, and seeing a church and trying to copy it as best we could, rather than take inspiration from other people and other viewpoints. I think this definitely gave me personally a wake up call in terms of research and development of ideas…