Rehearsal Log 2.13.10
3 hours of catch up and playing on the idea of memory and how can a memory ever be pure. Even our rehearsals rely on memory and the present is just a rendition of the memories of movement/context. To be able to share the space with people who are dear friends tha create a safe place to play and explore. These older bodies and minds need to time to and attention to move and prepare but what a luxury to be able to listen to your body and the people around you.
This idea of memory is bringing up the notion of Samskara, Sanskrit for “imprints left on the subconscious mind by experience”.
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7. yellow : gluttony
What else would I do when I pulled gluttony out of the envelope? OBVIOUSLY BAKE!!!!!!!!! yum yum yum yum.
So I wanted to make something that was so delicious and over the top and totally absurd, so that as I ate it I would feel like a disgusting fat slob. Now I havent eaten it yet, but I imagine that I will feel this way in about 15 minutes.
I decided to make rice crispy treats. But no ordinary treats. When I was at the store I bought 4 different kinds of “yellow” cereal: Captain Crunch, Golden Grams, Corn Pops, and Honey Nut Cheerios.
Making them was intense. There was so much that I had to use two pots at once…..now if that isn’t gluttonous I don’t know what is. I’ll bring them to class tomorrow, so everyone can partake in the deliciousness.
Reading Response to 02.10.10 : Buxton and Moggridge
Buxton
My reaction to the excerpts that I read from Buxton, was that although the many examples that he provided about a variety of prototyping techniques were interesting, I was more interested in learning more about the theories and methodologies that put those specific examples into practice. I found myself becoming quickly bored, trying to find the core concepts within the details of all the provided examples/experiences.
He ideas behind the importance of sketching I found to be very useful. He says, “we need to adopt increasingly formal or explicit criteria for evaluating what stays, and where we invest our resources.” Right off the bat, the importance of generating ideas and filtering through them is stated. This single element is crucial to the design process, as it allows a massive amount of ideas to come through. The trick to this is not allowing judgement hinder this process. Another very valid point that Buxton raises, early on, is the value in “being able to articulate the reason for your decisions.” The choices that we make as designers cannot be arbitrary. It’s possible that we may arrive to certain conclusions by accident, or through a non-linear path, but every element must serve a purpose. It is our job to explain our choices.
Buxton goes into great detail describe all the different methods that one can go about in order to sketch initial designs. Personally, the most interesting idea raised for me, was the notion that while sketching the design must become like “the wizard of Oz”. When creating sketches it is not about the design being functional, but appearing functional. “Fake it before you build it.” How genius of a concept. By following such an example, we can be assured that we are saving time, money, and energy, by not investing them in ideas that don’t work!
Another very important point that Buxton raises, is the role of “play” within our process. This crucial element, allows free thinking, experimentation, and most importantly fun into the design environment. We tend to take ourselves so seriously, and I feel that comes across in the designs. It is imperative that play integrate with the process to ensure fresh lively ideas.
Overall, I did enjoy the sections I read from the book. Despite the fact that I felt that some of the examples were cumbersome to get through, I understood and appreciated their relevance to the topics at hand.
Moggridge
I really enjoyed reading excerpts from the book. The fact that different portions of the book were written my different professionals in the design field, gave a variety of insightful perspectives on the design process. This reading was also an excellent compliment to the Buxton reading, because it offered specifics in both best practices and process.
One of the first ideas raised, and something I had never thought of before, was the three stages of technology use. Consumers fall under one of three categories when purchasing and/or using new technologies: the enthusiast, the professional, and the consumer. I, along with most of my colleagues fall into the enthusiast category. Many times I am inclined to purchase a new technology or try out new software because it’s something “new”. Even if it is expensive or challenging, I want to get my hands on it. Just in reading this, I really identified.
Another interesting concept was the comparison of interactive design and early cinema. Due to the infancy of the design field, its unique language is still being developed. In order to codify a series of terms and practices it is easiest to borrow from pre-existing disciplines that share certain similarities. Both cinema and interaction design, are both time based mediums, thus they share many similarities. However, I believe there is one huge difference. Cinema explores time in a very linear fashion, being comprised of a narrative with a clear beginning, middle and end. Interaction design is not experienced in a linear fashion. Yes, there is a progression throughout a users experience, but generally there are an infinite number of “pathways” that a user can navigate through.
In the discussion about “what design is”, the consensus is, is that good design is centered around constraints. While reading this I was in the middle of my 7 in 7 project, and I agreed that without guidelines or “restrictions”, the process of design would be much more challenging. Charles Eames says, “Here is one of the few effective jets to the design problem – the ability of the designer to recognize as many of the constraints as possible – his willingness and enthusiasm for working within these constraints–the constraints of price, of size, of strength, balance, of surface, of time, etc.; each problem has its own peculiar list.”
For me, the most important section of the reading, was the breakdown of the different components of the Design Process. I think it is imperative as a design to be exposed to as many methods and processes as possible, in order to best shape my own practice. Having each step explained and explored gave me insight into my own work, as a very often leave out crucial parts. Constraints, synthesis, framing, ideation, envisioning, uncertainty, selection, visualization, prototyping, and evaluation. I think I need to put these up along my wall above my desk. It is interesting to me that prototyping is towards the end of the process. I am so quick to just jump in and make, without spending the time to really think about my ideas and where they are coming from. But an important point is made, although all of these elements are crucial to the process they do not always need to be made in the same order.
6. purple : greed : typography
Well I really had no idea what to do for this one. I was really really stumped, and slightly discouraged thinking I would never make it past project 6. So i decided to do when I normally don’t know what to do for something, and that is google it. Who knew that googling “purple greed” would come up with anything?
Apparently there is a 14 year old girl in Southern Florida with the pen name “Purple Greed” who posts her poetry online. Well, how about that for some inspiration! I decided to take the first line of her four poems online and make a typographic poster. I can’t say I’m super happy about the way it turned out. It looks rather crappy, but regardless, using Illustrator (a program I had yet to use for this assignment) I made this poster.
The poem I derived from her poems was:
“My feelings wander through the sky
I watch the sky
My only friend
Today my dreams have wings”
And this is the poster:
Purple Greed’s work can be seen here
Rehearsal and combining two strong media
This week I started attending the rehearsals of the dance performance. At this point, the rehearsals are mainly exercises to come up with strings of movement to explore and use as a framework for the full piece, when its [narrative] structure is determined.
Adam and I had conceptualized last week that it is truly important that, for the piece to work as a whole, we consider the dancers performers AS WELL AS the video. The piece itself would be a “performance” of sorts, not dance nor video/film. We had seen Chunky Move and some other video/dance pieces over the past few weeks and my biggest complaint was that I could remove one part of the performance (dance or video) and the opposite would seem to really not be effected by its disappearance. This meant that neither performance had been woven into each other, both im medium and in narrative/plot. In my opinion, this probably happened at the earliest stages of conception. One of the media was used as a tool,crutch, or vehicle for the other medium (like the saltine – the cracker is just a vehicle for the taste of salt). The piece could still be effective as a narrative or emotional piece, however one of the performances was being eclipsed by the others.
In an effort to head this off at the pass, I am determined to create two simultaneous, intertwining paths of development for both the dance and the video. The dance and video need to be created, simultaneously, around the theme and narrative – they have to come from one another.
I decided that I would come to the rehearsal with a flashlight and use the “beam” of light as a stand in for the video piece. Video and film, at its core, is an image based medium that is meant to effect the audience by light. Since I know no dance (and nor is that my job), I wanted to interject myself into the dance exercises as an simplistic version of any sort of projection, media, or image, in order to get a grasp on what its like to interact with a performer through 2 dimensional light.
The typical exercise for the dancers is to dance, eyes shut, for a few minutes, displaying any emotion or feeling. Then, the next dancer, calls “time” and takes the place of the previous dancer. They then respond to the dancer, eyes shut, introducing new movement and emotion to the piece. This improvisation goes back and forth several times. I jumped in at one point with my flash light, and started to see how much I could interact with the dancers and how much they would interact with the light. After the exercise, we discussed that there was a feeling of “invasion” about the flash light as well as a physical feeling of heat. The dancers could tell when the light was flashed on their face and could also gleam emotion from it.
Become Displaced – Rehearsal 02.08.10 Playing With Light from Adam Scher on Vimeo.
5. green : wrath : playdough
When I picked green and wrath out of the envelope there was only one thing that came to mind. Obviously being literal is not always the best way to go….but come on….THE INCREDIBLE HULK!!!!!!!!! DUH!
So I was thinking about the best way to go about recreating one of my favorite childhood characters. I thought about animating his picture, or doing a painting of him. Then I realized that I had about 50 mini tubs of playdough sitting in my closet. A friend had given it to me 4 years ago for my birthday and I had yet to find an appropriate use for it…until today. So for my fifth project, I was to create a sculpture of the HULK out of a favorite childhood material….
4. blue : lust : rss aggregator
So today’s inspiration was blue lust. Instantly I thought of craigslist missed connections ads. There is something about them that I find so sad, people wanting so badly to connect with these strangers.
So I set up to compile all of the missed connections ads, from 5 major cities: New York, Los Angeles, Miami, Chicago and San Francisco. I created an RSS aggregator that shows only the ads with the word “blue” in them. I then stylized the feed so that it was in a blue color pallet and put it online!
Here is a snapshot of the feed. Click on it to be taken to the actual page.
3. orange : sloth : photo montage
So today’s pick was orange and sloth. I thought a lot about what it means to be lazy and non productive. Part of me identifies with this “sin”, as right now I would love nothing more than just sleeping for days. I started thinking about all the other things I would rather be doing, and it got me to thinking about how nice it would to be on the beach right now. It has just been so cold here!
So alas, my train of thinking brought me to tanning. How I love a nice bronzed glow. But you know what some people love even more than that? An orange one!
I decided to scour the internet for photos of extremely tan individuals and put together this montage using iPhoto. And I have to give some credit to Kenny Chesney, for his amazing song “All I Want For Christmas Is A Real Good Tan”. Without, this project would never have been realized.
real good tan from Adam Scher on Vimeo.
2. red : pride : digital composite
Today I picked red and pride. I had to think for a while about this one. I feel like vanity is very much a manifestation of pride, and vain and vein are homonyms (just trying to explain my train of thought here). So this lead me to think about this project as an exploration of a word “veinity”. I drew my arm and hand with pencil and glued that onto a piece of paper painted black and gold. I then scanned everything in and started to create a digital composite in photoshop.
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