June 2010
1 post
Wrap-up
Well the spring term is over and done, and my thesis is printed, bound and turned in. Over all I’m quite pleased with how it turned out, especially since this is the most personal project I’ve tackled with design yet. At first I was very nervous about the subject- I wasn’t sure how much of myself I wanted to expose. I also have very little experience writing about inter-racial...
May 2010
2 posts
Fort Port
Today the guys over at Fort Port posted my submission to their ongoing series From Where We Stand. Check it out and while youre at it, why don’t you write one too?
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The goal of From Where We Stand is to seek out buildings and spaces that strike a transcendent chord, that touch a beauty that is beyond their aesthetics; the beauty of experience. This beauty can be found in a...
HTBAGDWLYS
Listening: supposedly a simple thing to do, but really it can be oh so difficult. We should know how to do this by the time we graduate kindergarten, but few of us really have. It really is tricky stuff because so often we don’t even think about it. Personally, I know I have conversations where I’m guilty of listening to the person, but not actually hearing them: maybe my own ideas...
April 2010
17 posts
Super bad
Sagmeister gives us a list of things that he thinks can give a piece of work heart; then he cautions that following such a checklist will not automatically give your work deeper meaning. Some types of worth can’t be created with a recipe. Maybe soul depends on a certain amount of chance. How could the Chinese criminal possibly have known that he was going to be dangled out of an 18th floor...
Directed storytelling
I liked this approach of recording anecdotes and finding the common ground between each individual’s personal experience. It’s an interesting method of researching, and I especially liked the way they would record separate ideas (emphasized by both the teller and listener) on sticky notes. Sounded like a good way to find patterns and shuffle ideas around.
I just read an article that...
Cultural Probes
“To encourage a provocative dialogue about design, we tried to reject stereotypes of older people as “needy” or “nice.” This freed us, in turn, to challenge the elder groups, both through the probes and our eventual designs.”
It can be pretty tough to get stereotypical notions out of your head, because they can be so ingrained in your thought process. But if you are going to go...
Audience as Co-designer
“Clear transmittance of information occurs when the encoder shares the same culture as the decoder.” I think this sentence was my favorite of the entire article because it states so plainly a truth which seems so obvious, but actually can very difficult to practice when designing. This doesn’t just apply to international situations because within any community there are numerous...
Mister, I get da plan fo my tesis.
In my thesis I want to explore how speaking Hawaiian Pidgin works as a type of code to signify a person’s Localness. In Hawaii, speaking Pidgin is a fundamental display of identity and it functions almost like a secret handshake. Knowing and using it helps you identify those like you, try to fake it and you are immediately recognized as an impostor. There are varying degrees of Pidgin, which can...
Pidgin: a list of my personal favorites
I’m having a hard time figuring out exactly what I want to do for this project, so in the mean time I’ve made a list of words that I enjoy using the most.
bumbye: later, after (Try bring me some coffee, bumbye / Be careful bumbye you slip and fall.)
cockroach: to steal (She when cockroach my last soda.)
hanabudda: boogers (Hey there’s some hanabudda coming out your nose.)
...
Termlong Projects
2) Neighborhood Watershed Education
In my senior capstone this term I am in charge of re-designing a series of posters, educating the community about watershed programs in and around Portland. These posters will be on display during the 15th anniversary celebrations of the program. We are also working on an information booth to go in the middle of the urban plaza (by the bookstore, between...
Termlong Projects
1) An explanation of Hawaiian pidgin
Eh, brah, I like try teach dis kine stuff to da haoles, li’dat.
Yesterday I bought a book. I didn’t need my receipt so I handed it back, asking the girl at the counter if she “had a rubbish.” I meant a garbage can. She laughed at my words and replied that she had all kinds of rubbish. Sometimes I forget how my speech hints an accent...
Situationists
This movement began in 1957 and was essentially groups of people getting together to create situations or environments which brought social and political issues to surface. It was a very politically charged movement, and at its core was a strong anti-capitalist sentiment. They sought to comment on the empty illusions of consumer culture. Buying new nail polish or a couch might not make you happy...
Sneaky paths and scenic routes (on bikes!)
So here is how my shortcut / scenic route idea has evolved:
This is an event intended to get people to think about altering their daily routines, switching up their patterns and finding ways to get out of a rut that they might not even realize they are stuck in. It is also about getting the participant to think more critically about the environment that they live and move about in.
Our target...
Improvisation
A solution that works in one situation wont work for another, which is why we must improvise. Design, music and other experience based disciplines are not as black and while as math or science, there are no right or wrong answers. I think its very true that successful work is a collaboration between the creator and the audience. Without any feedback a monster can be created and we all know that...
Loving Laura
I really love the idea of creating a community of people who all tackle the same projects and then share the results online. Its amazing how the same challenge can produce such a variety of results (equally amazing are situations when your work find yourself shockingly similar to another person’s. It can be creepy.)
Especially being able to find a medium (the screening of Assignment 22)...
Working with Limitations
Limitations force you to condense the creativity put into a project into a smaller enclosed space, where it bounces off the walls, picks up speed and is able to travel in more and different angles. They can even help to get the ball rolling in the first place, because standing in the middle of a big, echoing room can be intimidating.
I experience a good mini exercise of limitation nearly every...
Détournement
My actual reading responses will follow soon, but in all the preliminary background reading about social practice I’ve been doing I came across a relevant term term that got me thinking: Détournement. This is the practice of directly referencing an earlier artwork, political item or other piece of media in a new creation. Using mimicry enables the creator to target a specific audience and...