critical conversation #3: 10 "mind-bombs" each

our third of five critical conversations was wednesday and was fantastic. everyone's research and work was outstanding and the conversations were all around great and gave us all a good boost of momentum to ride next semester.

the primary question which we all need to now focus on going forward is 'what's next?' our pieces have been set and its time to make some major moves.

the master of science in design research curriculum has certainly allowed the 10 project to grow faster than any of us could have expected. there is a steep learning curve which we all seem to have latched on to and the work is really beginning to move.

while there are many overlapping themes among the projects, each project seems to follow different and singular idea. this aspect is great because it allows us to relate to one another's projects, as well as help one another and build on each other's personalized and singular ideas.

our advisors (jason young and etienne turpin) have been unbelievably helpful thus far in helping us steer our work in a direction that is allowing us to maximize potential and begin to spatialize these sets of social, political, and economic bodies of research.

Digital/Manual: Crossings

the final drawing for Perry Kulper's Drawn Forth was digital/manual: crossings.
the project was a combination between digital work and manual work. not so much to represent something specific or have a clear-set agenda, but rather to gain a new tool set and way of working.



using my own digital files i put together a section of an undergraduate project, along with a collage of multiple photos, plans, and other digital images ghosted in the background.

for the manual, i wanted to really blur the definition of what constitutes manual. thus, much of the manual was hand drawn and scanned in. the spills, also from another past project, were actual spills of paint then placed into the background. the fence-like structures were hand-drawn and scanned in. the lines of flight above the building were a little more interesting in that they confuse the definition of digital/manual. for those, the section was printed up, transferred to drawing paper with acetone, the lines of flight then drawn on top of it, then scanned, and then superimposed onto the original digital scan, acetone transfer and all.

the final manual work was done with the placing of newspaper clippings to fit into the gaps of the lines of flight. while there was no specific reason for this since i was simply exploring new techniques, multiple reads were taken from the project which, while unintentional, was quite accurate.

the readings of this were that there was a theme of water and fishing in this drawing. having not presented it that way i found that interesting for multiple reasons. one was the fact that this base drawing of the section was a fishery project in sault ste marie, michigan. perhaps that led me to the placing of the underlying pattern of hand drawn fish skin onto the section, but the unintended reads were with the lines of flight and newspaper. the lines of flight reminding people of fishing line while the newspaper clippings reminded people of wrapping fish in a paper.

interesting takes on it. while it wasnt my intent, i suppose people will see what they want to see.
i enjoyed this project. it has always been fun for me personally going from manual to digital and back and forth again. definitely something i'll be incorporating in my future works.

relational thinking (perry kulper's pencil)

perry uses this analogy often (i have now heard it multiple times, most recently in the MS_DR conversation earlier this week) to describe the meaning behind relational thinking and representational methodologies...

(paraphrasing)

"the pencil, when held up, can being to represent much more than what is seen in front of you. it represents education, industrialization, writing, penmanship, and creativity. but also at another level, i like to think what sorts of things make it possible? deforestation; history of writing; objects that dismantle and desegregate through time; the creation of the pencil through engineering and fabrication processes; educational and political hierarchies;temporalities through wear and use; ergonomics and aesthetics; the eraser represents modes of censorship and controlled culture. those things belong to me as systems and modes of thinking. the pencil is never hollowed out of attachments. when i re-situate it, that exuberance comes to the surface."

these ideas are concepts that many of the professors attempt to get us (especially in MS_DR) to think about and integrate into our work. so that the work begins to take on analogous thinking and approaches in finding new fields where are projects and ideas begin to situate themselves. they become new institutions, subjects, and territories for the work to place itself into.

temporal morphology

project 2 for perry kulper's drawing course was temporal morphology. the project took an event or competitive video and formed a spatialization through drawing movements and aspects of the video.

my video was the overtime sequence of a collegiate wrestling match between the university of michigan and the university of minnesota. the takedown was the motion and process in focus (seen here).

the drawing, which is still in progress, takes into account, time, score, relational thinking and spacing, foot and head movement, control of match, forces and pressures, and even secondary components or actors within the scene such as the referees or spectators in the stands. i have approached this drawing as a construction document for the spatialization of the overtime period of a wrestling match. it carries loads of information and it's safe to say that this is a drawing that could always be pushed further.

(approximately half done)

this is a new technique and way of drawing that i have never been exposed to but i have found a deep love for it already. it has a steep learning curve and you begin to sense that every component of the drawing is as important as the last. the drawing has already become completely relational in the sense that it is thought out from the grid, to the structure of the forms, to the mapping of poche and graphics. it really has become a construction document for the structure of the takedown.

MS_DR and Thoughts

gonna try this one more time..getting the blog up and going

we've got MS_DR on the table.

competition possibly with a former colleague.

looking for jobs to apply to for graduation.

following other blogs.

and just trying to get by...

here it goes