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he wasn't even looking at me and he found me
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@jenniferschnell
Metamorphosis // MFA Design hosts NiteLife at California Academy of Sciences
This Thursday (11/14/13), CCA's MFA in Design is hosting NiteLife at the California Academy of Sciences! The theme is metamorphosis. My good friend, Carolyn Packer & I are collaborating on some posters for the event to be distributed throughout CCA and on display at the event as well as web graphics for the MFA Design CCA website. The project will wrap up by the end of the weekend and is shaping up to be fabulous... Process work & type experiments:
Communitas // Abstract & Work Surrounding Milestone 1
Communitas
abstract
Out of a deeply rooted empathetic curiosity, I am interested in the philosophy of ethics, the evolving role of media, technology and politics in our global society. We are all a part of a dynamic web of relations, and that concept grows increasingly clear to us with the rapid advancement of technology. As an artist and graphic designer, I wonder what power and ability I have within my practice to enact real change in the world around me or make something of an impact. Considering this challenge has spawned my curiosity in architecture as a mechanism to influence human behavior. I am curious about the implementation of a system that can address the dynamic, varying and complex needs of a society. Utopianism, according to Lyman Tower Sergeant is a form of social or communal dreaming. It is out of this type of dreaming that my thesis is taking shape and it is awareness of a dynamic interdependence amongst people that moves me to create. This project is not addressing an “answer” to any current social or political failings nor seeking to heal the wounds of society in any way, but rather exploring utopian possibilities within my own capabilities. Beginning with spatial and environmental studies through the means of collage, I am examining intentions and unexpected results while refining a visual language that will evolve through my project. I want to translate these visuals into responsive graphics that will exist in a three dimensional space through projected graphics and basic projection mapping studies.
First Things First Manifesto // Ken Garland
First Things First by Ken Garland, 1964.
Communitas // Workplan
Thesis R+D Workplan
Communitas
Mission
In the wake of disaster, communities unite in their desperation to restore.
Public transit offers opportunities to converse with strangers, and heightens our awareness of those around us. There are moments when commuters have contact at the shoulders or the knees on a crowded bus, or a child unwittingly crawls onto the lap of a fellow passenger much to the parent’s chagrin or embarrassment.
Sometimes members of a neighborhood know their the members of their community by name, greet one another on the streets and from their yards, closely look out for one another to ensure safety - sometimes their interest in those around them stems from fear, paranoia, or suspicion.
Sometimes we never even know our neighbors.
I am interested in exploring the concept of community. Along this journey, I am examining the powerful influence that architecture and urban planning design have on human behavior, and the potential for technology to be used as a tool to facilitate shared experiences in he physical world despite it’s power and propensity to isolate. My thesis combines speculative utopian futures with critical theory and design activism.
“I try to think about the kind of life I want to live rather than the kind of art I want to make” - Jay Nelson
The kind of life I want to live informs the work I make. This idealized life exists in some state of dreaming and it involves a strong sense of closeness within a community both on a local and global scale. Every day is an effort and opportunity to manifest this life. There are strong utopian underpinnings leading my exploration. Lyman Tower Sargeant describes utopianism as a kind of social or communal dreaming. Michel Foucault, in his writings on heterotopias, describes them as representations or approximations of a utopia and asserts that they are generated by people of all societies and cultures. These heterotopias are spaces of otherness, layered in meaning, that have relationships to many other spaces (both physical and mental) simultaneously.
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(initial mission statement) I am interested in facilitating meaningful shared experiences amongst people who would otherwise have no reason to interact with one another. This exploration looks at space in the built environment and the potential for community engagement. As this concept lends itself to being a sort of happening, there is inherently an element of performance at play. Rather than having a passive observing audience and an active performer, however, the audience can at once be both performer and observer. I am interested in using technology to assist in engaging a sense of play amongst the people engaged in such a space.
Playfulness is a key element in this exploration. Engaging a non-competitive sense of play amongst a group of people tends to result in a positive emotional experience. Though likely fleeting and somewhat inconsequential, I hope that these positive emotional experiences can actually have a butterfly effect on an individual and a community at large, transforming feelings of indifference, fearfulness, and suspicion into openness, outreach, and camaraderie. There is a utopian goal at the root of this project that facilitating these types of experiences in people’s regular routines can actually unite people under a greater sense of community. I hope for these positive emotional experiences to be infectious.
Where I’ve been
I began this exploration clinging tightly to Michel Foucault’s ideas on heterotopias. As expressions of utopia existing in reality, heterotopias are representations or approximations of a utopia generated by people of all societies and cultures. These are spaces of otherness, layered in meaning, that have relationships to many other spaces (both physical and mental) simultaneously.
My initial explorations manifested themselves in two small books using collage and creative writing methods to digest my research and output something of my own. In the first book, I rolled my research up into a short speculative fiction about the remains of a temporary community that were discovered in the Caribbean Sea and the community’s manifesto in conjunction with a collaborative collage exercise using found and gifted 2D objects that I have collected over many years. These exercises drew inspiration from the existing Uros islands on Lake Titicaca, WHIM Architecture’s Recycled Island project, publications like the Whole Earth Catalog and Esopus Magazine, architectural collages by Superstudio, Archigram, and Archizoom, Ebenezer Howard’s Garden Cities for Tomorrow, Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic dome studies, Jorge Luis Borges’s Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius, Luigi Serafini’s Codex Seraphinianus, and 1960‘s communes like Drop City and Morningstar Ranch.
Where I am Now
Stepping back and examining what I really want to achieve with this project in terms of community, which in and of itself has very utopic undertones, led me to the notion of play. With this, I am beginning to imagine a space, perhaps an interactive installation, that invites people to dérive (in the Situationist sense) from their projected path and engage in playful interactions with others at least just for a moment.
Moving out of research digestion and into a fresh creation space, I am now beginning to focus on the visual and technological aspects of my exploration. I am continuing with the collage exercises as a means of conceptualizing spaces using found imagery that relates to landscape, architecture, and human activity, and transforming the collages into time-based media, first in the form of animated gif’s.
With an X-box Kinect and Processing, I am exploring motion tracking possibilities and responsive graphics. This alone is a big learning curve for me as I have very little experience with Processing and Arduino, and no previous experience with Kinect. (I’ve totally got this!)
I also launched a survey that I spread through social media networks asking people questions about their regular routines, leisure activities, and their feelings about play and community in general. I have gotten responses from people of a wide range of ages all over the world, and am currently working out how to visualize and metabolize the collected responses to appropriately inform my work.
Where I am headed
I would very much like to see this project to function in a real space. For this semester, I would like to get a handle on the visual and technological complexities. The form of the visual elements and how the technology is used will ultimately be a function of designing for the experiential outcome I wish this project to have. This will be determined in a process of modeling for the experience and the emotional reward I seek. In a recent conversation with Jeremy Mende, the potential for meaning to be lost in technological complexity came to light. My ongoing process and studies will have to consider these consequences and address the question of how to use the technology in such a way that its complexity is secondary or perhaps unnoticed relative to the emotional response and reward that I wish to achieve.
As I continue to fine tune the visual and technological elements of this project, I will eventually need to consider the spatial/architectural possibilities. This could mean designing a space to build or perhaps adopting existing spaces that are vacant, abandoned, or without a function in their communities. Additionally, I will need to consider the lifespan and location of this project. Will it be long-term/permanent or short-term/temporary? Will it travel or be site specific? Are the latter two mutually exclusive?
I see my thesis as a combination of a speculative futures, critical theory, and activism design projects. Potential possibilities beyond this course and even beyond the final exhibition could include applying for grants to manifest this project on a large scale in a public space.
Milestone Project 1
I need to hone in on the visual/making elements of my work thus far. I am interested in continuing the collage work that I have working with to this point by translating it into other media - particularly time based media, spatially based media, and responsive graphics using the Kinect. In the image-making process itself, I would like to focus on creating imagery around Foucault’s six principles of heterotopias and understanding how the applications of collage are relevant to both my personal thesis trajectory as well as a commentary on contemporary culture.
This will be done using analog assemblage and techniques then translating the pieces into Photoshop, SketchUp/Rhino, and Processing. In terms of Processing and the Kinect, if appropriately coded, the imagery that I generate and specify will be the imagery that is projected on the screen, responding to motion in front of the Kinect’s camera. This should be developed enough to test out on people in a relatively empty space (probably a classroom or any available blank wall) with the imagery projected onto that surface.
The purpose for this is first to test out the code I have written in Processing and to make sure that it carries out the functions that I am trying to achieve - basically to make graphics respond to motion.
The other purpose of this is to understand the work I am creating. What are the unintended consequences of my creations? How, what, and why do they communicate? How and why is the work I create relevant to the social commentary I am making and contemporary culture?
Milestone Project 2
(Ultimately to be determined by Milestone Project 1...)
Roughly...
To generate new kinds of imagery (perhaps abstract) to be put in motion with the Kinect. Test it relative to people’s responses. What kinds of responses does the project as a whole elicit? What about the imagery? Do people respond differently to representational versus abstract imagery in this context?
To make the responsive imagery inspire people to interact with one another by having a visual “reward”.
→ In other words, one person’s movements can generate something graphically interesting, but when two or more people are moving in a space, something different and more exciting should happen, then when multiple people are interacting (dancing, talking together perhaps?) something even cooler happens.
Communitas // Conceptualized Spaces --> Time Based Media
Communitas // Conceptualizing Spaces
"...collage provides a medium that captivates sensory, spatial, perception: collage as a tool for analysis encourages the evaluation of a built artifact from the perspective of the inhabitant, as well as a tool within a design methodology that pursues a multivalent experience in a work of architecture. Considering collage as an instrument for analysis and design, drawing on decades of relevance in art and architecture, offers a diverse set of material, technical, and conceptual precedent from which to draw inspiration. Collage, as it has evolved, brings with it a number of dialectics, including representational/abstract, gestural/precise, texture/image, surface/depth, and literal/metaphorical, all of which are considered within the methodologies of art and architecture. The variety of methods can be hybridized and tailored to suit the conceptual framework within which a work of architecture (existing or proposed) resides. The multivalence and synthesis of spatial and material conditions inherent in collage-making creates the potential for a multiplicity of interpretations and experiences in the design process and the resultant work of architecture."
from Collage and Architecture
Communitas // Design Research Survey
To supplement my research for thesis, I have produced a questionnaire seeking input on how people respond to, interact with, and perceive art in public spaces and the people in their communities. Please participate! All input is valuable! Here is a link to the survey: Community + Play
Communitas // Thesis Exercise III
The next phase of Thesis R&D had us produce a map of our research territory. The map can be viewed as an extension of my website: jennschnell.com/communitas/map.html Note: Bibliography and image source credits to come soon!
Communitas // Thesis Exercise II
The second thesis exercise for this semester invited us to imagine parachuting down onto a small parcel of our area of exploration/research as if it were a landscape stretching across a vast plane. Focusing on that small parcel, create and present. We were to choose a topic related to our thesis that we knew relatively well already. Utopianism has generally become a large portion of my topic, and I find it relevant to the concept of community in a very big way. Lyman Tower Sargent has called utopianism a form of social or communal dreaming. I chose to hone in on Michel Foucault's writings on "heterotopias" as a parcel of my research, especially since it was such a large part of my concept last week and is quickly becoming a cornerstone of my thesis concept. Picking apart Foucault's six principles of heterotopias, I used each of those points to draft a short manifesto for the community I imagined last week. In beginning to create visual work, I turned to the work of Superstudio from the 1970's for inspiration- more specifically, their series of collages created on the terms that design and architecture were superfluous, and even dangerous; a mechanism to perpetuate commodity fetishism. They stated that because of this, design must be stripped away, and before it can be reintroduced, all of the fundamental needs of man must be met. Additionally, the collages are a fantastic example of how the worlds of architecture and graphic design can blend. So without further ado: Manifesto...
Distance of the Moon: A Graphic Design Workshop with Zach Gibson
Zach Gibson of Google (CCA MFA Design Alum '12) and Liam Devowski of Mekanism graciously led a graphic design workshop for our MFA Design program here at CCA on Saturday. The workshop was centered around Liev Schreiber's reading of Italo Calvino's Distance of the Moon. The brief for the project required that the final output was to be a tabloid size (11"x17") poster, we must include the date and location of a fictional reading here at CCA, and we were limited by the following palette/fonts:
The result was a series of posters inspired by the imagery in Calvino's story (created in 2 short hours). Here was mine:
What a fun/lovely way to spend a Saturday morning! See what Zach Gibson has to say about the workshop.
Communitas // Thesis in a week exercise
My explorations for my Master's thesis, at the moment named Communitas, hit the ground running with a "thesis in a week" exercise led by Brett MacFadden and Scott Thorpe. Beginning with the concept of community, which has very utopian attributes, I attempted to digest my research and related areas of interest into some sort of output. Considering the utopian element at play, I returned to Michel Foucault's writings on "heterotopias". With inspiration from Jorge Luis Borges's Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius and Luigi Serafini's Codex Serafiniaus, I began to imagine rolling up all of my research into something of a short story that might help me develop a visual direction and an output. Foucault describes the boat as the ultimate heterotopia (that passage is quoted in my work below), so naturally I began imagining a location at sea. A handful of existing communities and projects related to Foucault's description of heterotopia came to mind:
Epehmerisle (a festival/temporary seasteading community on the Sacramento River Delta) The Uru people/the Uros floating islands on Lake Titicaca (I had the pleasure of visiting several years ago while traveling from Peru to Bolivia)
WHIM Architecture's Recycled Island project
Some other formerly existing communities/projects also came to mind:
The Diggers and Morningstar Ranch
The Situationists and Constant Nieuwenhuys's New Babylon
The Whole Earth Catalog
The short story naturally lent itself to a book format. The final output of the story as object was a hand bound, saddle-stitched book.
The imagery I generated came from a collection of found or gifted 2D objects (photos, letters, art, etc) which I scanned and assigned a set of numbers and rules. I had other people create the collages with me by asking them choose the combination of images and their placement (without looking) according to the assigned numbers and rules. I named these images "artifacts" and joined them with the short story.
Communitas // Thesis Beginnings: Initial Abstract + Annotated Bibliography
Communitas
Thesis R+D // Venezky, MacFadden, Thorpe
I am interested in exploring the concept of community through the means of interactive and participatory art in the built environment. 2D work will be the basis of my exploration.
Aldersey-Williams, Hugh, Lorraine Wild, and Daralice Boles. Cranbrook Design: The New Discourse. New York: Rizzoli, 1990.
This has become a crucial resource in my library of design books. As the visual elements of my thesis explorations will be rooted in 2D work, I hope that the Cranbrook Discourse can offer inspiration and suggestions for new modes of making. Above all, it serves as a reminder not to become self-conscious of the work I create based on what is “current” or trendy, but to create work that is fresh, exploratory, and informative.
Andersen, Paul, and David Salomon. The Architecture of Patterns. New York: W. W. Norton & Company Inc. , 2010.
From a visual standpoint, I am interested in how pattern-making and geometry influence a viewer’s behavior and response. There are some fascinating insights in this book regarding pattern as it relates to the natural and built environments as well as marketing.
Bowditch, Rachel. On the Edge of Utopia: Performance and Ritual at Burning Man. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008.
This book explores the festival, Burning Man, as a rehersal of utopia from the standpoints of politics, religion, economics, sociology, architecture, and art. The concept of utopia is important in understanding my interest in community and my desire to generate a sense of community within my thesis explorations. Art is at the root of my explorations, and this book examines the impact art has had on the festival.
Brand, Stewart. Whole Earth Catalog. Fall, 1968.
The Whole Earth Catalog is an excellent example of sharing tools and resources within a larger community. One of the catalog’s goals was to empower individuals by providing these tools and resources to facilitate sustainable D.I.Y. building and education among other things. In empowering individuals, there is a direct effect on a larger community. Brand’s emphasis on sustainability and general human awareness in the publications generates a sense of community through shared goals.
Dalrymple, Theodore. “The Architect as Totalitarian.” City Journal. 19.4 (Autumn 2009): n. page. Web. 20 Feb. 2013. .
Design has an incredible power to influence behavior. This article examines Le Corbusier’s Plan Voisin as an example of how design can produce an outcome different from the intentions from which it was concieved. I want to be fully aware of this in my research and making. Even with the purest of intentions, expressions of utopia risk homogenous and even totalitarian outcomes.
Daly, Matt, dir. Visualizing ISAM. Dir. Jason White, and Prod. Chad Hutson. Leviathan, 2011. Web. 25 Sept 2012. .
I am not exactly sure how the visual portion of my thesis will manifest itself in terms of a medium, but I am certainly inspired by this piece and curious about projection mapping. This video was created by one of the design firms behind Amon Tobin’s recent performance piece, ISAM. The piece was comprised of sound responsive visuals sympathetically mapped onto a dynamic surface. I could see my 2D explorations being translated into this form to create an interactive enviroment that fosters participation.
Debord, Guy. Society of the Spectacle. New York: Zone Books, 1994. (accessed September 8, 2013).
As a group that sought alternative life experiences to consumer culture, Guy Debord and Situationist International’s ideas and expressions serve as one of the bases from which my visual and theoretical explorations can grow. I would like to incorporate some of their methods including derive, psychogeography, and detournement in my visual and written making processes.
Joselit, David. After Art. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013.
Understanding imagery and iconography with relation to technology and communication is helpful in directing my visual explorations and making processes. As technology and the internet advance, the dissemination of visual information speeds up exponentially. I am interested in how I might be able to use this to my advantage, especially in terms of the concept of community.
Kaplan, Geoff. Power to the People: The Graphic Design of the Radical Press and the Rise of the Counter-Culture, 1964-1974. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013.
Power to the People is an excellent resource in terms of how graphic design has been used in recent history to inspire change, make powerful statements, and ilicit responses outside of branding and advertising. In terms of my thesis, this is one of the challenges I am exploring as a graphic designer seeking to make a positive impact on the world around me.
Kehoe, Kara Leeann. “‘Burning Man was Better Next Year:’ A Phenomenology of Community Identity in the Black Rock Counterculture,” (Master’s Thesis, California State University, Sacramento, 2008). .
This Master’s Thesis examines the psychology of community in the context of a counter cultural movement. Kehoe’s focus on psychology in terms of community, especially within a context with which I am familiar, is what makes this resource valuable for my thesis explorations. Her bibliography also contains sources which will likely be useful for my research.
Krausse, Joachim, and Claude Lichtenstein. Your Private Sky: R. Buckminster Fuller: The Art of Design Science. Zurich: Lars Muller Publishers, 1999.
Buckminster Fuller’s designs and ideas have been profoundly influential in terms of design, architecture, science, sustainability, and technology. This book is a catalog of his works and journals with additional editorials by friends and colleagues of Fuller. I am interested in gleaning insights from Fuller’s revolutionary ideas and applying them to my thesis explorations when and where relevant.
Nichols, Bill. Ideology and the Image. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1981.
The question of how imagery and media can liberate or manipilate viewers is seminal as an artist and graphic designer. Often I question what real power a graphic designer can posess in terms of making a positive impact in the world, especially in a day and age when we are overly saturated on a daily basis with imagery and information. As I attempt to explore how to draw people together in shared experiences, I must understand what types of challenges and decisions might present themselves to me.
The Cacophony Society, “How To Primer.” Last modified Jan 17, 2012. Accessed April 11, 2013. .
Similar to Situationist International, the Cacophony Society is a group of randomly gathered individuals seeking alternative life expereinces to “mainstream consumer culture”. This page of their website lays out the group’s tenents and objectives. This is interesting reference material as some of the group’s objectives are in line with how I desire to design around the concept of community.
Turkle, Sherry. Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other. New York: Basic Books, 2011. Print.
The powerful impact of social media and new advancements in technology give us the ability to be more connected than ever. Turkle argues that the consequence of this kind of connectivity is that we are more isolated than ever before, reaching out to others and networking in solitude behind various screens rather than sharing real human moments. Thus this technology merely provides a guise of connectivity. I am interested in how we might be able to use technology to promote and influence real human experiences.
Business of Design: Social Networks
Assignment: Blog on which social network you currently find most engaging and why
I will have to go with Facebook as the most engaging social network I use. I have been on Facebook since 2004/2005 (I can't remember exactly). Though I prefer to connect with people personally, I feel that Facebook has evolved into an important tool for me to keep in touch and check in with family and friends where I grew up (in the Chicago area) and in other parts of the country. After a 7 month long adventure through South America and an amazing experience volunteering in Peru with people from all over the world, Facebook has been an excellent way to keep in touch, share memories and stories, and arrange for visits. I share similar concerns to those that Sherry Turkle raises in her book, Alone Together, about the potential for degrading personal relationships in exchange for the guise of having relationships virtually. Having awareness of this fact though is enough for me personally to understand for myself what the balance is in connecting with someone virtually versus personally. It is no question that Facebook has incredible power as a social tool - take the revolution in Egypt for example. Without Facebook and Twitter the success of that pursuit would not have been nearly as effective if at all.
Also, Facebook allowed this to happen in response to my last blog post for this class:
That's pretty awesome.
Psychogeographic Mapping
Works in progress. Lino cut, pressure print, transfer process printed on a Heidelberg.
Business of Design: Kittinhawk
Blog on a brand you admire (not just the product or service). Explain what elements of the brand “speak” to you and what they say.
When I think of brands, I think first of something ubiquitous. But ubiquitous or not, brands are meant to represent a story and inspire a connection. A brand that does this for me is Kittinhawk. Kittinhawk is a one-woman jewelry and clothing designer that began in San Francisco in 2007. Now located in Los Angeles, Kittinhawk is still relatively small and young, but gaining momentum and beginning to make her presence known in the fashion world.
There are several things that I connect to in her brand:
First off, it was the admiration of the product that put me in touch with the brand. The product combined with her story had such a profound impact on me that it inspired me to pursue my own path in jewelry design. That said, the imagery used in her brand language is hip, edgy, and kitchy - a reflection of it's handmade, slow fashion quality. It's interesting to consider her visual brand language because, as a (graphic) designer, there are things about it that I am adverse to - like the heavy use of Copperplate, and the roughly photoshopped graphics. But I suppose that's what makes her brand so strong to me though is the fact that I am able and willing to look past that and see her story in it, then visually connect with only what appeals to me. Beyond her brand's aesthetic, her system for naming, the collections of inspiration she posts on her blog, and her photo-shoots are all appealing to my tastes (as representations of alternative lifestyle as they are edgy, slightly macabre and evocative) and I connect with those elements on a personal level.
When I see her logo, images from one of her photo-shoots, her lines, website, I think of a strong woman who started from humble beginnings, and with an endless cache of inspiration and boundless motivation, manifested her passion into something tangible. She maintains humility in her work and still makes all of it by hand (now with a small amount of help as she is growing). I would even go so far as to say that in 2011, when Free People included some of her pieces in their collection, I was thrilled and proud. To me, Kittinhawk represents the success of the hip, driven artist, and the positive, outward manifestation of alternative lifestyle that I seek to embody in myself.
Here are several links to Kittinhawk:
http://www.kittinhawk.com
http://kittinhawk.myshopify.com
https://www.facebook.com/KITTINHAWK