Reveiw : Fall 2007 Semester

It's done, the first semester. We had reviews with the faculty on Monday. We each had 10 min. to present, then they commented for another 10 min. I chose to present a summary of what I learned from the semester.
Old Habits
When reflecting on my experience this semester I uncovered a few very specific instances that I want to share. These may seem simple, but they are pivotal in demonstrating how I have to break old habits and reconsider what being a designer means to me.

Instance #1: The first group discussion and hearing my peers talk. This experience was intimidating. I realized then that I had been out of touch and disconnected to the changing landscape of design. It was at this point that I confirmed that my decision to go to grad school was the right choice.

Instance #2: “Cliché” was used to describe something I had made in an investigation for Project 1…“literal” was used in the same sentence. My ego was offended when these two words were used to describe my work. These words have stuck with me and I have taken a conscious effort to avoid being either “cliché” or “literal” in my design thinking.

Instance #3: I used “lorem ipsum” in an investigation for Project 1. This is a common practice I was used to doing in professional practice, using “dummy text” to represent words. I was being a layout designer, designing the surface. What I was not doing was considering the content and what the words and images meant. I began to understand that in getting at this meaning it would inform my design decisions.

Instance #4: Creating a “web presence” and posting on my own blog for the first time. I used to think that blogging was a time waster, one of several preconceived notions I had about the Internet. Needless to say, I had not really embraced the space of the Internet. Now that I have read about it’s implications on culture it has opened my eyes to the role design plays in shaping it’s future.

Instance #5: Writing a narrative and then reading it aloud to the class. This was an experience that was out of my comfort zone, I could not recall writing anything personal since high school. Through the practice of writing a narrative I came to the realization that as a designer we create visual narratives.

Going forward.
Throughout this semester I have had to overcome several habits I had built up over the years as well as break prejudices and assumptions I had about design. I am still working through this; the main thing has been discovering this about myself and admitting it.

My experience in grad school, up to this point, has challenged me to think in the future, versus always thinking in the present, something I had grown accustomed too. So, looking towards next semester, I have outlined some interests and insights I would like to think through further.

Interests & insights
-Narratives, specifically what is a design narrative
and a design subtext
-The viewing, consumption, interpretation of images, the future of this
-Motivation as it relates to design and participatory culture
-Meaning of text and images
-Spaces and how advances in technology influence our interaction within them
what is a designers role in the creation virtual experiences
-Cultural practice of documenting our lives and viewing images of ourselves. The constant need to share our lives and view it.Is this documentary or memory keeping…or narcissism?

Bigger Questions
-What is the future of design education and the profession, how will I be teaching future designers? Teaching students nearly a decade younger than me last year
-What are the implications of not knowing the tools or programs? For instance when working through the future project I realized that to accurately show my idea and how a user would interact with it, it would require 3D and motion design. Am I prepared to shift my thinking and processes in this direction?
-Participatory culture and interaction will continue to increase, how do I work within this culture? We’ve only touched the surface of this topic; I think I spent most of it trying to understand what it means now I want to investigate it further.

Further development
-I need to learn how to “multi-research”. I felt through my process I could only handle researching one subject at a time.
-Need to look at Design...more.
-Think through meaning.
-Start making sooner and give myself more time to consider different options and perspectives.

Symposium : Photos

Kelly MK has most of the photos posted here from symposium...thanks Kelly.

Symposium : Futurecast : Lifeline Timeline

I presented this at the symposium. Here is the introduction...
Imagine yourself in a future where your image is captured at every step you take throughout your day. There will be cameras in the dashboard of your vehicle, throughout your home, and strategically positioned on the streets. These cameras are in addition to the currently existing ones in our grocery stores, banks, and gas stations. The images captured by surveillance cameras, personal cameras, and medical cameras will be the main contributor to plotting your life, generating a lifeline timeline. Each of us will have a timeline that is maintained automatically and accessed in cyberspace. This timeline serves as a means of documenting your actions, similar to the recordings captured in a black box of an airplane.
Poster Lifeline Timeline Presentation (without my notes)

Project 1 : Round 2 : JPG

Yet another investigation...I used it for the symposium session.

This approach still shows the back story of the photos that include details of the community (comments, favorites, bios, etc.) however, this time I show a few images from a person's favorite's page. By doing this it shows the community as curators as well as photographers, allowing the idea of being published to extend past just photography, publishing their participation.

Symposium : Motivation Session

Exploring Motivation in Participatory Culture
This session addresses how designers can respond to motivation within four different participatory cultures centered around: an online Lomographic community, collective publishing, virtual and physical town commons, and substandard living conditions. These projects will serve as a springboard to generate dialogue about motivation within other collaborative environments.
--Marty Lane, Matt Muñoz, Alberto Rigau & Rebecca Tegtmeyer

MAIN QUESTIONS ASKED:

Need to get these from Marty

TALKING POINTS:
Introduction to JPG Community:
• JPG is for photographers who share their work online
and would like to see it in print.
• The community participates online and votes on photos to be
published in the next magazine issue that is published by JPG
• Participants are professional and amateur, various levels of experience
• Participants contribute content and critique online, creating content
for the magazine which is printed 6 times a year

My Perspective:
• The magazine felt like it did not represent the community online
• It focuses on photos as if it were a stock book, not interesting

My Approach to What if motivation was wanting to be published?:
• My approach shows the back story of the photos that include details
of the community (comments, favorites, bios, etc.)
• By showing the collections of photos from a person’s favorites page, I am allowing the idea of being published to extend past just photography, publishing their participation.
• Showing community as photographers and curators

These are my questions relating to JPG and motivation:
• Does the difference in design and content of the magazine influence
more people to participate
(comparing mine with the original)?


• What motivates the community of JPG to vote on other individuals photos?


• Would inclusion of the photos "back stories" increase the
motivation to participate?


• What causes individuals to not participate in this culture?
(like myself?) (what would others say?)

QUESTIONS:
• What motivates interaction within a particular object, community, event?

• Are there levels of motivation (as it relates to an individual, community)?

• What obstacles inhibit motivation? (time, tools, knowledge?)

• What charges motivation?

• Does motivation lead to participation in various activities,
if your participating in one, are you more likely to participate in several?
• How much time do we participate in something online? In a given day? How much time do we participate in something in RL? What correlations can we draw on motivation from this discussion?



Poster for Presentation

Symposium : OPTION SHIFT CONTROL

This weekend was our graduate symposium (Nov. 30 and Dec 1). We had been planning it all semester and working hard at the preparations. I am happy to say that it was a great success as our attendance was full of participating people from various backgrounds and places. There were design grad students from CalArts, MICA, Art Center, Eastern Michigan, and Cranbrook present at OUR symposium. Total attendance hit around 60 (I need to do final tallies). My peers worked so hard at what they had to present, they gave it their all, I was proud to be a part of the group.

My responsibilities included doing the communications (I always get that job for some reason...KC A+C) and registration. I presented my future cast project, Lifeline Timeline, and did a working session on motivation with Marty, Matt, and Alberto. See other post

Here is the link to our symposium site and blog...
OPTION SHIFT CONTROL

Project 4 : Round 2

For the symposium some of us are presenting our Future-casting projects (Project 4). I am going to revisit mine with the future of surveillance images in mind. Here are a few (scary) articles speculating the future of surveillance.
Little Brother's Watching You
Spy planes, clothes scanners and secret cameras: Britain's surveillance future
Big Brother is watching us all
Looking out for data surveillance predictions for 2020

Project 4 : Feedback

Notes from final crit on 11/8:
gr: on top, is comparison used to show? could you compare people … two streams at once?
kc: could you look at other methods other than comparison?
sh: could the images be from your perspective and not the image of you taken from outside? could you position a viewpoint in proximity to subjects in the photos
kmmk: search parameters change the size of the "rings"?
dg: what can the rings show as a visual other than volume? what other information can a ring do/say/mean?
mwkf: date only method of search? or purpose of demonstration?
ah: the visualization is about specific times, dates, etc. the verbal presentation was through
dg: right now w/the subject being all you, does it inspire narcissism? navel gazing?
dg: iphoto remembers/organizes by dates, which doesn't work for her b/c its all numerical. what are other ways of looking?
gr: data must be organized by something concrete
kc: consider removing date as MOST important data, shift priority
ml: the two DO intersect
rr: what about surveilance photos, like at atm? pics taken of you that are not from personal perspective
dg: as time goes on there will be different kinds of photos in future … paper, digital still, video to where?... love the idea of introducing images that are from "surveillance", not taken

Project 4 : The Final

Let me welcome you to my future (as it relates to participatory culture). It's circa 2020, we are all networked via the scannable chips that are inserted under our skin. This chip allows us to be continuously connected to others, to cyberspace, and to ourselves. At this same time in the future, photography has taken a new spin. Any image that is taken of you or around you becomes a part of you, creating a timeline in cyberspace of your life that will exist forever, long after you have passed. How do we see and interact with our timelines, with other's timelines? What is past the typical contact sheet and preview of photos? The participatory culture will have grown into one that expects instant gratification with minimal steps, however, their desire for interactive experiences will increase. Cyberspace, as we now know it, will have taken on new meaning by this point in the future. The space will be vast and the way we will move through it will take on new behaviors. Welcome to my visualization of the future....

Project 4 : The Visualization

After much thought and reading, I chose a somewhat unclear path to begin visualizing...the future space of social networks on the internet.
I began to think about the future internet as a space that is not contained by a screen and window, but a space we move through. This starts to visualize how one would find their contacts and friends, in the future everyone will be linked, profiled, and identified in cyberspace. I started to sketch the visuals before finding the images of galaxies. I have found that it isn't a new approach to think of the future internet as representing a galaxy...I must have seen or read about it at some point and visually went there.

CRITIQUE:
-Point of view is singular and "god-like"
-people are represented by dots, look at other ways
-look at other networks and what is currently happening
-the future of the internet may already move this direction
-like the organic quality
-narrow the focus

Project 4 : The Future of Participatory Culture

ASSIGNMENT:
Speculate (wildly) the future of participatory culture,
as it relates to DESIGN.
What will be made?
What cultural factors will influence the evolution of design?
What kind of aesthetic values will emerge?
The final work IS TO BE THE THING: a designed artifact which would exist in the future you have imagined, not an explanation of that future.

SUGGESTED READINGS:
Social networks: after privacy, beyond friendship
Convergence Culture by Henry Jenkins
Shaping Things by Bruce Sterling

Project 3 : Learning through Investigating

For this project we had one week to investigate two terms from the book Convergence Culture by Henry Jenkins.

The two terms I had were:
AFFINITIY SPACES-According to James Gee, a space where informal learning takes place, characterized by, among other things, the sharing of knowledge and expertise based on voluntary affiliations. I found this term interesting because it is a space you can move in and out of freely (no defined entry point), it's a space to engage participation, and it pushes participants closer to the works that inspire them. COLLABORATIVE AUTHORSHIP-Term coined in this book to refer to situations in which the central author of a franchise opens it to participation from other artists to shape it in ways consistent with its overall coherence but allowing new themes to emerge or new elements to be introduced. This term brought up questions of authorship and copyrights in my research (reading).

I chose to explore these terms through investigating how literary history can influence storytelling. The Adventures of Alice in Wonderland was the text (franchise) I used. The stories of Alice were of interest to me in this project because I found that after the Bible and Shakespeare it has been rewritten the most. This brings me to question collaborative authorship that is "un-authorized" bringing into question the legality of intellectual properties within media, and aspects of control. Alice also has a huge fan following that creates several affinity spaces online.

Investigation Details (see PDF):
-This first image study captures the original inspiration for Alice and the original illustrations. The next images show how Disney has appropriated Alice into one of their characters, then the next set of images show other representations of Alice.
-In my experience of researching the stories of Alice, I found that the original text has several expanded meanings offering studies in subtext around characters, themes, meaning. This interface is a solution (not what we were to create at this point). It invites the user to participate in writing while have access to all the context related to the story they are inspired by.
-This chart gets back to the investigating, it takes a look at mapping the major characters throughout the story.
-These last two investigations create a space to be built on as an affinity space.View these pages at %150 to get a feeling for the effect I was trying to create. When one approaches this site online, they are entering at no particular point. They are encouraged to move about the space, finding something new at every corner. These investigations layout the story in a linear and scanable format, a different approach to hypertext.
Project 3 : An Investigation

Project 2 : 3D Model #2 : Observe

After the critique of our first 3D models, we had to create a second in 1 hour. This one was much easier as the idea came to me the moment we were asked to do a second. However, my first visuals of it (in my head) were red straws, more interactive, and more "crazy". Given the parameter of time and the lack of red straws at the grocery store, my model visual turned a slight corner.

MATERIALS USED: Straws, clear "monofliament" thread, Scotch tape, foam core board
TIME: 1 hour and 10 minutes (this includes the the time it took me to untangle my cats from the thread and clean up the water that spilled in the process of untangling them, a video of me making this would have been more interesting)

Photos courtesy Gretchen Rinnert, Valentina Miosuro, and Michele Wong Kung Fong.

Project 2 : 3D Model #1 : Observe

BACKGROUND: As a class, we had an interactive brainstorm via iChat, it proved to be an interesting and fun experience. We each selected a word, mine was observe (hence the written narrative on "Observe"). During the brainstorm, we did a "What if..." scenario for each word, creating quite obscure lists. We then had to chose one of our "What if's" and build a 3D model of it in 2 hours.

My chosen "What if" was: "What if OBSERVATION was seven dimensions of experience."

These cubes represent this phrase. I found that there are scientific and mathematical theories supporting the notion that we actually live in 7 dimensions rather than 3. Those dimension are (if your curious) the 3 spacial dimensions of length, height, width, the concept of time and then 3 non-physical dimensions which can be defined several ways depending on what you are reading, but I found mass-energy, knowledge, and spirituality to be the most convincing. The seven cubes represent the different dimensions, the various sizes of cubes represent the dimensions dependent on the given experience.

MATERIALS USED: Glue, String, Wax Paper, Clear packing tape
TIME: The collective time of drying, thinking and building accumulates to more than 2 hours. Building took at least 3...I guess I broke the rules.

Photos courtesy Alberto Rigau.

Project 2 : Narrative 2 : Observe

They only came out at night that summer. Once the sun had set and the neighborhood kids went inside, the sound of the garage door opening indicated their departure from the depths of the house next door. What they did inside all day was an unsolved mystery to my friend Tira and I, but at night we had an opportunity to fulfill our curiosities and watch the neighbor boy and his friends partake in a nightly ritual of basketball.

These boys were the highlight of our day, watching them seemed to enlighten some unknown insights of an unruly tribe. Of course we went to school with boys, but they were the ones we watched grow into gross beings that ate glue and made fart noises with their arm pits. The boys playing basketball in the driveway next door were nearly a year or two older and they went to the public school, these characteristics alone made us want to know more about this particular breed of boy.

We had a few almost perfect spots in my house for sneaking peeks at our subjects of interest as our house merely sat feet away from their driveway. If we arranged ourselves in a certain way, we could get a decent view out of my sister’s bedroom. After negotiating with her to go do something better, we would shut out the lights and go to the far end of the windows and peer through the mini-blinds. Being the taller of the two, I would awkwardly stand and Tira would take the lower tier, kneeling just above the edge of the windowsill. We would carefully pry open the blinds just enough to catch the boys’ shadows, if we moved further to the right we had a full view of the scene before us. Occasionally one of them would come even closer to retrieve the ball that went into the yard, we would then quietly snort and giggle at the near risk of losing our cover.

In this position we were able to accurately study the boys in their activity of play. We recognized right away that they were not the best of basketball players; they even lowered the basketball goal to get a better success rate at their slam dunk shots. This didn’t matter to us as we found this to be a humbling factor. Every once in awhile they would bring out the round single trampoline and prop it up slightly to create a perfect angle allowing them to get a better jump in on their dunks. They would call each other “Jordan” and high-five after a good 5 minutes of consistent rotations of dunks. They had this play down to a science.

After several summer nights of risking our cover to satisfy our obsessive inquiry, Tira and I began to cut back on the number of nights we viewed the boys from behind the blinds. Ironically, their nightly practice of basketball tricks came to a halt. We wondered then if this was just a clever production put on for our amusement.

Project 2 : Narrative 1 : Rules

Dots should work just fine. This thought occurred to me as I prepared the new bottle of Elmer’s glue for my first Kindergarten project. Sitting in front of me was a poem about flowers that had just been cut into a circle with my butter-knife sharp scissors. The poem was to be glued to the center of a bright red piece of construction paper that had been cut into the shape of a flower.

My classmates and I all sat patiently with our newly cut circles and glue bottles in hand, awaiting the rules for the gluing step. My past experiences with gluing projects proved to make me an expert and I required no such rules. I decided to proceed with this next task in the project. Very carefully I flipped over the piece of paper with the poem and began to put little subtle dots of glue over the surface. I didn’t want to create too much of a mess because some of my other projects ended with a gooey disaster.

“What do you think you are doing?” snapped Ms Boxterman looming high above me. She startled me so much that it caused me to squeeze a little too hard on the bottle and suddenly my paper circle had a pool of glue covering it. My classmates oooed with excitement over someone getting in trouble.

“Becky, I did not tell you to begin, you were supposed to wait for the rules. Dots are not how you use glue. You were to create lines on the red flower and then smooth them out. Now you have created a mess.” I was then told to clean up my mess and go wait in the corner while the others finished their floral masterpieces. Sitting alone in the bright red chair facing the wall, tears ran down my face having learned my first rule of design. Lines, not dots, is how glue is to be used.

Project 2 : Writing Assignment

Write a narrative, a story, about one of the terms, buzz words, etc. we've identified, i.e. Design-It-Yourself, peer production, co-creation, etc. (you've got plenty to choose from).

What will be compelling for someone to read.
What would you like to read?

Definitions of story from google:define:
• narrative: a message that tells the particulars of an act or occurrence or course of events; presented in writing or drama or cinema or as a radio ...
• a piece of fiction that narrates a chain of related events; "he writes stories for the magazines"
• history: a record or narrative description of past events; "a history of France"; "he gave an inaccurate account of the plot to kill the president"; "the story of exposure to lead"
• report: a short account of the news; "the report of his speech"; "the story was on the 11 o'clock news"; "the account of his
• speech that was given on the evening news made the governor furious"
• fib: a trivial lie; "he told a fib about eating his spinach"; "how can I stop my child from telling stories?

Project 1 : FINAL

It's done! Well at least for my presentation and final critique with my peers and faculty. For my final I chose to focus on one collection of 14 images I titled it "Observing Relationships". These images capture different relationships and emotions, intending to give the viewers different ways of looking at their own images and stories. I took all the content from online, the titles, descriptions, comments, who made it a favorite, etc. I then brought a system back into it, when viewing it horizontal you get the story copy (title, description, comments) then when you rotate it this type drops away to make the photo be the focus along with the additional information copy. I wanted to create a piece that involves the viewer and giving them something to look more than once.

Critiqued with Denise, class and faculty
FEEDBACK/COMMENTS that I took from the critique:
• This is a response to the online community that already exists, encourages people to participate online (Gretchen)
• Bring interpretative process to the foreground for example, in this, you selected print format with a sequence. look at pacing of book to see what the reading of image is ex: shelley evanson & and "deskilling" project could apply. this could be something that TEACHES people how to read images (Meredith)
• Blogosphere is a surface relationship—that is one of the issues that is tough to address; meaning and reading images deeper (Denise)
• Look into new typographic studies, last 20 year history, help inform your visual—now your intervention is very designerly; how does this figure into your journey from hands off to hands on throughout the process of this project (Denise)
• what is the relationship between new artifact and magazine? (Amber)
(bring recognition to photographers)
• Nice work. came along way from where you were (Kelly MK)
• Have to be able to position your piece within the system. It started there, with the conventions of magazine (Santiago)
• Interesting relationship between magazines and their web site (Amber)

SIDE NOTE: I am happy with my process in this first project, I feel I learned about my design values, where I have been the last 8 years and where I want to go. It's great to look back at my investigations here in this format and already have the thoughts of "what was I thinking" and know I wasn't thinking, I was a "producing machine" as I have conditioned myself to be.

NEXT STEPS (if there is a chance): How can it grow to have more diverse collections, add more transitions and sequence, work with type expressions.







Download this PDf to see all 14 spreads:
Project 1 : Final Presentation

Project 1 : Investigation 5

In these investigation I begin to work with expressing the stories further. First I looked at using type only to tell the stories of the individual photos (all content pulled from online). Then I layered in the photo and looked at how that changed the story and composition. Working with the orientation of the photos I found it added interest to the meaning. The vertical photos are intended to involve the viewer in rotating the piece, making the type drop away and give them a “new way of looking” at the photo and the story.

Critiqued with Denise, Matt & Robert
FEEDBACK/COMMENTS that I took from the critique:
• Interesting way to involve the viewer (rotating the piece)
• Now that I have gone this far, look at bringing
a practical system back into it.
• What is the motivation behind my design decisions?
• The design is taking away from the photos
• Why am I choosing the typefaces I am? Make it intentional.













Investigation 5

Project 1 : Investigation 4

After my last few round of critques, I came to the realization that I was tackling the whole community, the whole magazine, and not really focusing on the photos as separate from this community. I chose to step away from the format and community for awhile and investigate individual images. These investigations explore how to tell the stories behind the photographs and the photographers that took them.

Critiqued with Denise
FEEDBACK/COMMENTS that I took from the critique:
• What is the relationship between showing the image twice?
(I was hanging onto the idea that if I crop it, I still should show it as the photographer intended for it to be shown)
• Why is the copy treated like copy, not data?
• Very brochure/magazine-like.
• Everything is "just right", still creating consistency, working with white space, balance, clean lines, etc. Explore messing it up.
• How to bring forward the backstories even more.
• How do you make something not read as a headline?
• Think about what "designerly" means.
• The design is disallowing the behind the scenes to surface.







Investigation 4