Final Project

For our final project, Arlando and I are going to make a space in which a performance will take place. We are going to incorporate loud music with the feeling of being in a completely different world than the world of Tockwotton. We will achieve this through our music, but also through the architecture, lighting and texture of the space. We've discussed different ideas for what to put on the walls, what to put on the floor, the ceiling, etc. and we've come to some conclusions that will completely estrange the space, and the audience, from the rest of the building. We've begun arranging the space (the room behind the equipment room) to be transformed and will continue to do so for the next couple of weeks. We also want to include a sense of passing time, which can be articulated both through the dynamics of performance (changing of lighting, music, gesture) and the dynamics of the space (entering/leaving, the hallway leading in, etc.).

We've been inspired by The Fringe Project (http://www.vibskovemenius.com/6.html), especially projects 4 and 6. The idea is to craft something that is clean and relatively simple, but drastically different and alien from the world that we are accustomed. The musical side of our project will include both of us performing as characters with our laptops or instruments, making loud music and creating an immersive sonic environment as well as an immersive visual, textual and aesthetic environment.

Materials List (may differ from Arlando's - we haven't finalized this):

White material from recycling center (in Tockwotton already)

White paint

Black paint

Paint brushes

Paper Cutter (large)

Four Speakers and necessary wiring for two stereo sources - mixer

Lights (to be determined)

Plywood - for speaker housing and furniture construction

Screws

Drills

Two chairs

Large Fan

Drywall - to cover window

Rough Timeline (also, to be finalized with Arlando)-

Class Wednesday April 7 - Clear our room, discuss first steps in terms of aesthetic, materials, shapes, color scheme.

Week of April 12 - Finalize timeline and materials list. Begin work painting, cutting material. Discuss musical performance ideas and finalize ideas for lights and architecture/furniture in room.

Week of April 19 - Get feedback and continue construction work. Begin making music and gathering materials for costumes. Zach's thesis first deadline is Monday, so after that he will have more time to work outside of class on this project.

Assignment for the Body - March 22

This post is a little late, but I figured I'd still reflect on the process of making the little shrine like room with Lisa. It was a fairly smooth process - Lisa and I got along well and were productive. I guess in the end though I was just a bit burnt out. I like large scale pieces, but maybe I'm realizing that I don't like making them. The whole process involved many different concentrated ideas, such as the coffin or the floor or the walls or the general shape and each of them took a considerable amount of thought and work. It ended up just being an exhausting piece to work on, so maybe that's what wasn't very enjoyable for me.

In the end, though, I'm pleased with the piece. I really liked people's comments, and it actually helped me a lot in thinking about it after the fact of making it. I particularly liked what people had to say about there being no center, no central icon or figure through which one can find some finite meaning or intention. It's like Christianity without Christ or something. As we were working on the room, I thought about how there really wasn't a center, but I never realized that it's we were engaging in an interesting way with things that signify an immersive, religious experience without any religion, without any iconography, without any symbols of an ideology. Sure, the black roses signify something, but I think that '8th grade goth' can easily be superseded or displaced by other parts of the space (the perspective created by the walls, the leather texture of the coffin, the shining floor, the lamp, etc).

I'm really, really excited to play with light. Today was really fun, and I'm realizing how much I love messing around with projectors and light in general. No doubt that I will want to incorporate this passion (coming from my filmmaking aspirations?) into my final project. Until then...

Skills?

1 = No skills

5 = Michael Jackson

All Adobe software - 1

Final Cut Pro - 4

Music Software (ProTools, Logic, MaxMSP) - 3

Cameras - 4

Sound/Lighting Equipment - 4

WOOD

Here's my box, in my room! Fully functional!

I was really happy with the outcome of this last project. Even though I had some trouble dealing with basic math, I enjoyed working with wood and putting this thing together. I think this was one of my most direct and clear (idea-wise) projects that I've ever done. I set out to build something that I wanted to use in my room immediately after putting it together. I didn't want to make something that would require a lot of conceptual or stylistic considerations, so I just went for something that would be functional for me. In other words, I let the design be something simple. What I was happiest about is how the diagonal piece contributes to the whole of the piece. It serves no proper structural purpose, but I think it adds a little bit of character or style to the piece (but takes nothing away from the functionality of it). If it were all straight and square lines, I think it would read differently - more bare-bones functional considerations and less stylistic ones.

Of course, this raises the question of why or how is there any difference between function and style, utility and aesthetic, work and art? Personally, I don't think this debate is one that bears many fruit. The two ideological camps are so closely intertwined that it doesn't make much sense to pull them apart. So, when I say that my piece is very functional, this is precisely what I mean - that it has a function beyond (or before) being a 'sculptural piece of art.' When I say it has a certain style or aesthetic quality, this is precisely what I mean - that it is also aesthetically pleasing. Nowhere does there need to be a line drawn between these two qualities of the piece - they can exist together without one infringing on the other.

Shiny

Boilin' it

The tin foil project ended up going really well. It was fun and easygoing to work with Sara, and I think we both got a lot out of it in addition to a few huge sheets of tin foil honeycomb. What was best was our ability to communicate and plan in the beginning stages. We went through a couple ideas together and worked them through on our own to find out that we didn't really want to realize them. Then Sara came up with this great pattern and we both discussed different ways to go about displaying them. For me, this was the most important part of the project - we worked through our creative process together, and we were able to communicate to each other our ideas the whole time. I think good communication is key for any collaboration.

The final product is pretty nice, though it could use a couple things here and there. Perhaps if we had more time, we could have checked out a couple different ways of hanging and spacing the sheets. Even in the short amount of time though, we produced something that I'm happy with.

Now onto furniture. I'm really psyched for this. I want to make something simple so I can get used to working with wood, the different saws and geometry again. I think this project will give me some aspirations for what I might do later with wood. I'm excited to get back down there tomorrow at 1.

Today's class was really helpful. Hearing about and seeing what the TAs are up to was pretty inspiring and it gave me ideas for things that I'd like to get out of this course. One is just to work with wood. I've always wanted to build things with wood, and I've only done a few things with it (a while ago), so it'd be nice to try and explore that material at some point. I'm particularly interested in building furniture, and I know there's a lot of experienced people in this class between the TAs and the professors, so I think this semester would be a good place to start.

So I definitely want the class to keep going on the building block trail. I think doing anything too ambitious (and I like how Pete called it ambiguous, because collaborative things I've done too early in the semester end up being ambiguous and too loose) wouldn't really help me toward realizing my many goals in this class (ie. to work with new materials - namely wood, among others, to push myself in understanding my own creative process, to collaborate in this process.... many others). And the trajectory of the semester just sounds good - moving from material to material, getting deeper conceptually and more challenging and perhaps more experimental as we go. I'm getting more and more excited for what this class has to offer this semester...

It was hard to think of new ways to deal with aluminum foil...
I decided first to try and make tin foil copies of certain household objects. I used a bowl, and I thought it was interesting how you can use tin foil to steal the shape of another object, to form the foil according to another objects form, and then do what you want to with the rest of the foil. What happened was that I just let the foil flare out from the edges of the bowl shape. I thought this was interesting as a way of extrapolating from the form of a household object.
But this got a little boring. And I decided to just do textural things from then on. I lay the tin foil on a brick wall and made imprints, or rolled the tin foil out with an edge to flatten it. I also tried crumpling the foil and then stretching it back out over and over again until it became much more malleable and less delicate than it is in its original state. The textures that came out are pretty cool, even though they were a sort of last resort.
Arlando gave me more ideas about cutting the foil in new ways. He offered me a razor blade, and that came in handy for my last little experiment where I made a wrist band sort of thing with different horizontal cuts.
I'm excited to see what other people brought in, and if any other people had the same trouble I had with the material .