>>FASTFORWARD>> Not-The-Schedule
JUNE 17-23, 2012
Vinalhaven, Maine
SUN EVENING (hello time)
PAST: Margo (brief context)
PRESENT: Emily (mission, the week)
FUTURE: Ben (journal); Gabrielle (food); Margo (interpreting NTS)
Ben Van Dyke – Intro: Exhibition
Gabrielle Esperdy – Intro: historian of the immediate future (documentation)
Sean Carnegie – Intro/process of documentation
Leanne Elias – Intro/Exhibition: losses and gains/digital photography
Denise Gonzales Crisp – Workshop: Drive-thru Taylorized design part 1
MONDAY a.m. (measuring & stretching time)
Margo Halverson w/Peter Hall in the future – Presentation/activity: Measuring Experiential Time
Gail Swanlund – Daily Practice League: Intro
Emily Luce – Intro: Visualizing Speed of Light
Jori Erdman – Quick intro: mapping sea-level rises
Amy Campos – Workshop: paper studies of impermanent space
Monday EVENING
Mark Jamra – Workshop: letter making (collaborate w/ Drive-thru design?)
TUESDAY a.m. (auto/apocalyptic time)
Rebecca Keyel – Workshop: weaving/DIY “lost and found time”
Morgan Walsh – Activity: post apocalyptic design
Peter Bain – Discussion: designing future transportation
Denise Gonzales Crisp – Workshop: Drive-thru Taylorized design part 2
TUESDAY EVENING
show and tell : everyone
WEDNESDAY a.m.(gifts for future times)
Patricio Davila – Presentation: Designing the future from the present/estrangement & familiarity/pleasure & critical distance
Teresa Engle Ilnicki – Introduction/workshop?: Time capsules (intro to Audra)
Audra Buck-Coleman (needs to leave on Wed eve) – Undefined: Monuments for the future
Lindsay Culpepper – Workshop: product line ideation using digital fabrication for re-manufacturing waste-stream materials
Charles Melcher – Workshop: Proprioceptive Warm-up
THURSDAY a.m.(reflective time)
Blake Almstead – Workshop: Why can’t an app be designed to take time, educate, engage?
Ann McDonald (leaves on Friday) – Workshop: rapid feedback cycles
Andrew Twigg – Presentation/ Is Faster better? Breakdown of civility
Anita Cooney – Presentation: the varying rhythms of creative labor
THURSDAY EVENING
Charles Melcher – Proprioceptive Writing
FRIDAY a.m. (camera time)
Giana Pilar González – Presentation/workshop: 120012 Fashion Code + Ready-to-Wear Bentos and the Fashion System
Ukpong Edet Ukpong – Presentation: concepts of African creative space as digital interfaces
Jori Erdman – Workshop: mapping sea-level rises
OPENINGS FOR UPDATES/SECOND CHAPTERS
EXHIBITIONEXHIBITIONEXHIBITION
FRIDAY EVENING
In the moment Lobster celebration
SATURDAY a.m.
>>FastForward>> Clean-up & Ferry
Leanne Elias
Assistant Professor, New Media
University of Lethbridge, Lethbridge , Ab, Canada
I teach in a New Media program that is housed within a Faculty of Fine Arts in a small Canadian University. The students are, for the most part, engaged and critical, and I love my job. My research interests lie in both design and technology: I am looking at how mobile technology can get students out of the computer lab and into the world to discover design through using QR codes and augmented reality.
Although I love working with technology, the lure of spending a week on an island, away from a computer and close to physical materials is almost too much to bear.
What would you contribute to DesignInquiry while you are here?
Fast Forward: Losses and Gains
Like many people, I resisted switching from film to digital photography. I felt un nerved by the immediacy, the lack of planning, and the sheer enormity of the
number of images that could be saved. At the time, I thought my resistance stemmed from not being ready to give up a darkroom practice – and perhaps I even felt a little protective of the practice I had developed, which would now be invaded by anyone with a camera.
When I finally allowed myself to try it though, I was surprised at how it changed my approach to photography, and how much quicker I was able to get to the heart of the image.
At first, this was kind of refreshing, and I embraced the immediacy. My photos became more related to the now and less about careful planning for the future. Photography became fun.
Within a short time, though, I came to realize that the compositional skills I had honed over years of careful planning were very quickly fading. With film photography, I would be framing the shot in my mind long before I reached for the camera. – but this was no longer necessary. The ability to frame and take a shot, review it, then take another (better) one – meant that I no longer had to consider how I composed each and every picture I took. With the instant review, I simply deleted shots I didn’t like and tried again.
To analyze this change, I set up a project that had me take a photo every 30 minutes for the period of 1 week – and the research showed surprising results.
It is this project that I would like to revisit for DesignInquiry’s Fast Forward. Considering how hardware/software revolutionized the world of photography, what other changes might take place with technological advances? After a presentation of my ideas on what we’ve lost and what we’ve gained with digital imaging, I’ll undertake to do the project again, with an invitation for others to join me.
Project II
I am currently authoring an interactive book – an encyclopedia of designer interviews and projects. I’d be eager to interview the DI participants throughout the week about their current projects, their working process and their use of software tools in their practice.
Giana Pilar González
User Experience Designer
LBi US
gianagonzalez.com, hackingcouture.com
I am a Panamanian interaction designer currently based of New York City. For the past 8 years I have been developing a diversity of interactive projects. After being trained as an architect and practicing for a short period, I decided to venture into technology given the slow nature of the current architectural practice. Currently I architect user experiences for websites, physical interfaces and participatory events.
Within my practice, I research, develop concept sketches and paper prototypes to make the idea come to life. This work is developed collaboratively with clients, programmers, art directors and strategists.
When not at work, I develop independent projects that manifest as performance, sculpture, product design, and/or participatory events. The focus of my projects is to find ways to make information accessible to others to empower audiences into further action. One of my current project is HACKING-Couture.com. This project applies the concept of open source to fashion, in which participants of the workshop make their own knock-off of name brands. These workshops aim to facilitate design literacy, self-empowerment and co-creation.
The opportunity to attend Design Inquiry is very exciting since it seem to be a perfect venue to explore, learn, and share new ideas, as well as being part of a very unique and exciting community.
The interest I present on this year’s topic, Fast/Forward is how our current design methods work today and how these knowledge will serve in the future. Is there a way to package it? Will this serve design processes in the future? Will design context be a critical aspect of the creative process?
FAST/FORWARD closely relates to the work I have been doing with HACKING Couture by exploring fashion brands and documenting its source codes (DNA). Fashion looks backward, and current trends reflect a nostalgia for the past. On the other hand, fashion also looks at the future, always seeking what’s next. This dichotomy is what I explore in my work, since within this in-between there could be a potential for what is next.
The means of organizing the fashion codes, is to respond to the fluidity of fashion trends and the industry’s concept of uniqueness and originality. In the future will designers create without looking at each other’s work? What will drive their design approaches? Can we scape context?
Our current design processes enhance originality but they are deeply influenced by context. Within HACKING Couture I explore context as a design tool. In order for the workshops to have meaning to the fashion world, they must use codes of exciting brands, otherwise the knock-offs will be just another DIY, not fashion.
How will designers work in 10,000 years from now, is what I wonder….
I would like to contribute to DesignInquiry with a presentation named Fashion Code + Ready-to-Wear Bentos and the Fashion System
In 12,0012 how do we tell the story about what human’s wear? Will the fashion design profession exist? Will the human race be wearing clothes? This presentation is an attempt to communicate with the human race of 12,012 regarding of how we dressed was important to us and why. Through a small narrative I will show fashion codes of established and independent brands, how they are used in Ready-to-Wear / Ready-to-consume assemblies and their relationship to the existing fashion system. An archive of the processes of the fashion industry for the future.
Teresa Engle Ilnicki
Design Director
VCU School of the Arts
http://teresailnicki.com / http://arts.vcu.edu
Hi there. My name is Teresa and I am originally from upstate New York, and moved to Richmond, VA in 2003 to pursue my MFA in Graphic Design. Since 2005, life has sped up in many positive ways. Professionally, I have become a designer, educator, and mentor. Personally, I am a volunteer, friend, daughter, sister, wife and mother. Aspiringly, I am a runner, gardener, brilliant cook, bookworm and world traveler.
My personal/professional interest in Design Inquiry stems from the fact that, with each major life change, an inordinate amount of time is dedicated to making that new part of your life fit into the larger design problem. New degree, new job, new house, new marriage, new baby: these things deserve, and receive, central focus in our lives for months or even years at a time. My interest in DI stems from my simple desire to give Design a turn once again: an immersive experience, with like minded people, to experience true exploration and experimentation. What better topic than the future?
I suspect that many other adults don’t have as much time as we would like to focus on our creative futures. I view this as an opportunity to think about the future creatively, imaginatively – possibly even playfully. I love life, and living it right now – and I am enthralled by the opportunity to dedicate time to saving a piece of this for the future.
What would you contribute to DesignInquiry while you are here?
Like many other children in elementary school, I remember creating time capsules for future generations – maybe even 15-20 years in the future! (Who could think of such a large amount of time, at the age of 8?!) When I think of the future, I am not able to do so without, even slightly, attaching the notion of a time capsule – a way to document and preserve a slice of the present for someone to discover. Designers often are talented and thoughtful documentarians, and I am interested in what may evolve out of the following opportunities:
- A conversation about introductions. If we are “introducing” ourselves to someone 10 years, 50 years, or 500 years into the future of Earth, how can we imagine the perspective of those receiving our message? What if we are communicating to a species outside of earth? How do we define our duration? (ex. Carl Sagan’s ‘Pioneer plaque’.) Expecting that the Pioneer may be the first introduction to extraterrestrial life, the most basic elements of our planet and humanity were included in this pictogram. How would this change based on our anticipated audience in their time?
- A conversation about vehicles. The container for a time capsule has the potential to communicate as much about the builders as its contents. (ex. The Great Pyramids of Giza.) In the last 20 years there has been surge of rediscovery concerning these structures, which points to different meanings than we have previously been taught about why those structures were made. They are not simply mausoleums. They are markers in time and space, containing very advanced physical and geometric properties that say a lot more about who might have built them than previously thought, and are perhaps meant to communicate more than what we’re taught that they communicate. I consider these to be a crucial precedent in regard to preservation vehicle communicating to a future or perhaps foreign species.
- A conversation about content. If leaving a capsule for your family – or future design professionals – or future residents of Vinalhaven – or an extraterrestrial species millions of light years in the future – your capsule will certainly be designed around a certain theme. (ex. Jonathan Harris’ 2006 project Time Capsule.) Commissioned by Yahoo!, this piece was centered around ten universal themes: Love, Sorrow, Anger, Faith, Beauty, Fun, Hope, Now, and You. Each theme had an open-ended question (What do you Love? What makes you Sad? etc) and people were invited to respond with words, pictures, videos, sounds, and drawings. Harris’ work consistently forms brilliant connections between the digital age we live in, and the humanity behind the internet as a communications vehicle. This Time Capsule is closed until 2020.
- A conversation about documentation. Collecting objects, taking photographs, keeping sketchbooks, documenting process – I would go out on a limb and say that every creative person I know has a passion for at least one of these things (and I work in an art school.) How do we document our design decisions in a way that is meaningful to ourselves, and to the future we have in mind?
(Where I am not certain: is this a talk? discussion? presentation? project?) I would love to hear your feedback about whether these conversations may fit into the program you are already developing.
Rebecca Keyel
PhD Student
Design Studies – UW Madison
Please introduce yourself in a few lines.
I’m a first year PhD student working with DIY craft from a material culture and design standpoint. I started weaving recently and I’ve been really interested in the way that time both seems to stretch and pass instantly when involved in craft practice. You begin with a project in mind and once you start to work (in whatever engaging work it is) and let go of distractions, time becomes fluid. In thinking about time, I’ve also been really interested in the idea of planning and designing for the long term even while things are changing so rapidly. How do we design (or teach design) for a future that is so uncertain?
What would you contribute to DesignInquiry while you are here?
The phrase fast forward implies both rapid acceleration and an abrupt stop, but also has an element of in-between time. The time from pressing the button to hitting pause seems ephemeral and somehow gets lost, the picture speeds up and the viewer is stuck waiting until the end. While the viewer is looking forward to the end of the show/movie/story, it occurs to them that it might be better to watch it in real time in case something is lost to speed.
This workshop involves groups of people getting together to make a simple project; small weavings, paintings, sculptures, etc… that reflect this sense of lost and found time and to play with with the experience of real time. This type of activity would also combine the idea of working toward a collective goal, the thing we get when we stop. Ideally participants would work with recycled/upcycled/found materials (to look at that ephemerality of that lost time), and then share their works with the other participants.
Basic art supplies will be provided (paper, markers, pencils) but feel free to bring whatever you’re most comfortable working with. This activity works best when you’re working with your favorite medium.
Ukpong Edet Ukpong
Graphic Design Lecturer
TI Education Group | Midrand Graduate Institute
CTI | MGI Bedfordview Campus
ukpongu@cti.co.za | ukpongjr@yahoo.co.uk
I am Ukpong Edet Ukpong, a Johannesburg, South Africa based design lecturer (and interdisciplinary design research enthusiast) from Nigeria with career/academic backgrounds in graphic design, urban planning and interactive media design. My body of work are in the areas of visual communication and application of (digital) new media technologies in the design of elearning products/tools; while my design research interests revolve around conceptual representations of space as digital/virtual, abstract, or physical environments embodied through visual interfaces that ease our socio-cultural perceptions and navigation through our spaces. In this regard, I am continuously seeking new opportunities and platforms to sharpen my understanding of the unique impact/role of technology in the rise of indigenous African creative spaces.
My intention to participate is based on my appreciation that through initiatives like DesignInquiry, the notion of the world as a global village continues to be reinforced via meeting of design minds of diverse socio-cultural persuasions and professional leanings, employing design as the common language for global problem solving. In a nutshell, the intention is to explore external opportunities that programmes like DesignInquiry provide — to learn and expand my research precepts via (in)formal design interactions and collaborations.
Interest in the topic >>FastForward>> relates to the apparent informal structure of the under-explored (yet, over-exploited)Nollywood film industry and its rapid rise to global acclaim as a major film industry albeit run on shoestring budgets, impossible timframes, cheap production technologies and informal distribution channels. This profit driven industry indeed embodies everything that the topic >>FastForward>> seeks to interrogate.
What would you contribute to DesignInquiry while you are here?
I intend to have a talk/presentation/discussion on my concepts of space and to highlight brief examples of how new media technologies have inspired reinvention of African creative spaces. Overall, I hope to elicit constructive foreign views and material for my research evolving work on the impacts of digital new media on the rise of indigenous African film industries.
Patricio Davila
Assistant Professor
OCAD University
pdavila@faculty.ocadu.ca & patricio.davila.ca@gmail.com
I’m a designer, artist, educator and researcher. I am currently completing a PhD in Communications and Culture at York University where I am investigating the shifts between critical and post-critical approaches in design with a special focus on how information visualization plays a key role. This doctoral research also pIays into my teaching and design practice. In terms of theory, this spans critical theory, medium theory, post-structuralism, actor-network theory, non-representational theory among other themes. In terms of practice, this spans the work done in critical design, design fiction, speculative design as well as tactical media, critical cartography and DIY culture. I have worked as a designer, art director and creative director in visual and new media design industry. More recently I have been focusing on installation projects that bring together community involvement, new media literacy, archives, interactivity and visualization.
I would like to attend Design Inquiry this year because, from what I have heard and read, there seems to be a very convivial atmosphere that is promoted by the organizers in which designers and/or scholars can work and play intensively around specific themes important to the design field. I would very much like to get to know others with similar interests so that I could learn from their presentations. I am hoping that many discussions will emerge and last several days where more thoughtful responses can be made and built upon.
With a particular focus on the idea of FastForward I would like to dig deeper into how we may devise, imagine and experience possible futures. Specifically, how can design through representation or embodiment conjure concepts or affects that speak to a possible future? More importantly, how can designer’s bring stakeholders into this activity such that multiple perspectives can be represented? These are some of the questions I would like to work through with other participants at DesignInquiry.
What would you contribute to DesignInquiry while you are here?
Designing Futures for Critical Engagement – workshop proposal
Can design support the ways that we imagine the future? Can it foster a viewer/user’s awareness that goes beyond recognizing something as new but rather can it help us look at how we got there — for instance, what are the conditions and steps that may lead to a potential future?
There are precedents for this kind of imagining in science fiction (e.g. near-future science fiction, Bruce Sterling, Margaret Atwood). Works in this genre, whether it be in the form of a novel, a film or a tv show, provide the illusion of grasping a moment or artifact from a fully realized future.
How can that experience be enhanced through a design approach? Can a user/reader float between a sense of estrangement and familiarity with an object or an experience such that he or she may be able to trace the network of environments, objects and humans that bring about the existence of an object or scenario? Encouraging both pleasure and critical distance may play a significant role in helping users make sense of how a variety of conditions or events may lead to a particular scenario. Aesthetic considerations and the range of emotional responses that design can elicit also provide the means by which designers may attract and engage users. The manner in which a thing functions (or fails to function) can, on the other hand, provide ways by which the user sees the object as a sum of parts.
This workshop aims to discuss the potential of design to create these experiences and build methods for designers to use in their practice including, but not limited to, estrangement and pleasure.
Preliminary sources for inspiration/discussion
Terms:
Martin Heidegger’s terms: “ready-at-hand” and “present-at-hand”
Bertolt Brecht’s term: “alienation effect”
Harold Garfinkel’ term: “breaching experiments”
Articles:
Paul Dourish & Genevieve Bell: “Resistance is Futile: Reading Science Fiction Alongside
Ubiquitous Computing”
Julian Bleecker: “Design Fiction: A short essay on design, science, fact and fiction”
Carl Disalvo: “Design and the Construction of Publics”
Practices:
Superstudio
Archigram
Dunne & Raby
Auger & Loizeau
Krzysztof Wodiczko
Videos:
Corning: “A Day Made of Glass”
Google: “Project Glass”
Apple Computer 1987: “Knowledge Navigator”
Lindsey Culpepper
I am originally from El Paso, Texas. I like cats, the desert and old things. I have just finished my MFA in Design at the University of Texas at Austin. My background is industrial design, I’ve been studying craft and entrepreneurism as a method for sustainable, post-industrial production. While I appreciate the tradition of craft, I look forward to the future of craft, too. I think the future of making things will look a lot like the past: small scale and materials-centric with meaningful ties to the local community.
My research has focused on integrating traditional and digital craft techniques into models for remanufacturing that utilize existing and waste-stream materials. The result of my research is functional furniture and lamps that sprout from standardized, mass-produced components found in multiples in resale stores. By working from standardized pieces, it is possible to generate lots of concepts. I will introduce my research to the group, discuss the realm of open design and present a prompt for concept ideation. We will basically explore, as a group, the development of a product line based on a few simple elements.
Peter Bain
Assistant Professor, Graphic Design
Mississippi State University; College of Architecture, Art, and Design; Department of Art
Principal, Peter Bain Design
www.caad.msstate.edu/wpmu/pbain
I am now living in a small college town in Mississippi, but spent 20 years in Park Slope, Brooklyn. As a graphic designer and teacher working with letterforms and culture, I am also actively involved in big, complicated, long time-horizon human systems through advocacy of cycling, walking, and transit. I’m coming to DesignInquiry to investigate design futures with a diverse group, and contribute to the conviviality of that group in a unique setting. The future is always undecided, so when we have the opportunity we should reflect on our actions and aspirations.
What would you contribute to DesignInquiry while you are here?
I have in mind a short presentation and responsive workshop that will introduce the following:
City and town development before the automobile created desirable places for business and living; walkable neighborhoods that are human-scaled, at varying levels of density. How might driverless cars (yes, they are coming) affect our landscape? How might decisions about transportation and land use influence our lives in the future? How are public spaces and public resources now directed? What is a parking minimum, and what might explain why streetcars and passenger railroads were privately owned in their 20th century heyday? What about climate change and transportation energy consumption?
Following the short presentation of themes above, participants will divide into two or three small groups to share information and discussion; extrapolate future scenarios and create their choice of responses to be shared with everyone afterwards. Groups could explore topics such as social media vs. physical media, how these media influence views of land use and transportation; multiple perspectives on private vs. public provision of transportation; the idea of the rural/frontier and the idea of the city, how these affect our conceptions, opportunities for, and limitations to reconfiguring our neighborhoods and towns.
Morgan Walsh
Assistant Coordinator, Architecture & Design Society, AIC
Graduate student, SAIC
AIC/SAIC
Come May, I will graduate from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago with an MA in Arts Administration and Policy and an MA in Modern and Contemporary Art history, Theory and Criticism with a focus in Design History. For the past two years I have also been employed at the Art Institute of Chicago in the Architecture and Design Department. I am very interested in design, in the ways we interact with it everyday – via products, city systems, buildings and in the ways that it forces us to interact with each other. However, design is often overlooked, perhaps due to it’s inclusion in almost everything, it becomes taken for granted – especially as a field of study. My graduate thesis (which has been consuming the majority of my time as of late) looks into the ways interior design, specifically textiles used as upholstery and drapery, helped assuage American Cold War fears by creating an exterior environment indoors. Surrounded by designs inspired from nature inhabitants were kept safe from the possibilities of nuclear desserts – at least figuratively – while motifs derived from atomic and scientific images made otherwise threatening technologies safe and comforting. Because this project has been so consuming for the past few months I am excited to start researching new ideas, working with new people and taking on new projects….
I am working on an exhibition proposal that centers on PA (post-apocalyptic) design. The idea of post-apocalyptic design is meant to be tongue-in-cheek, playing into current public fascinations with pandemics, dystopian futures, zombies and natural disasters.. Rather than search for themes such as sustainable, green, reused and recycled that are often co-opted to promote consumerism, the work featured in this sort of exhibition will look at how a society can thrive with limited resources, adjusting previously-established systems to serve new needs, using objects that have been discarded or left behind, rather than creating new ones. Open sourced design would also be prominently featured, as the sharing of knowledge is vital to progress. I am not interested in designers who make products simply to make products and believe there is some truth to the idea that the best thing designers can do is simply stop designing. Adhocism, as defined by Charles Jencks is an idea I would like to explore within this exhibition.
I believe that my interest in design that could be used in a PA world fits in well with the ideas >>FastForward>>, especially in terms of “cutting corners, thinking on our feet, and flying by the seat of our pants.”
What would you contribute to DesignInquiry while you are here?
My goals in attending FastForward at Vinalhaven are to put into place the plans to go forward with an exhibition based on “post-apocalyptic” design. I would like to meet and possibly join forces, collaborate on projects with those who are interested in similar ideas and projects. I anticipate these projects to include curating and exhibitions, writing, interviews and research with new-found colleagues and coworkers.
I also bring three years of graduate studies in design history and theory and look forward to further examining these ideas, introducing others to new theorists and initiatives. My Master’s thesis uses the method put forth by Roland Barthes in The Fashion System, a project I would be more than happy to share and present as I believe it provides a strong methodology for the study of design history.
Denise Gonzales Crisp
Professor of Graphic Design, College of Design, NCState
I am a graphic designer/writer/educator. I live in Raleigh during the academic year, and in summer I live in Los Angeles. I have participated in three Design Inquiries: two at Vinalhaven, Fail Again and Design Less; and Design City: Montreal. This year I joined the DI board.
In 2011 I co-curated and mounted an exhibition entitled Deep Surface: Contemporary Ornament and Pattern, at CAM Raleigh. In the first half of 2012 I finished writing, illustrating, and designing a typography textbook: Graphic Design in Context: Typography. Seeing both through to completion, within 12 month’s time, was the most excessive “fast forward” experience I have ever had — one I hope never to repeat. The experiences certainly proved, though, that “we are often forced to cut corners, think on our feet, fly by the seat of our pants.” O, I have stories.
With these projects behind me, I now look forward (leisurely) to those that have been simmering (slowly). One of them, “Tools That Make Type,” informs my proposal for Design Inquiry. This emerging body of work investigates how contemporary design tools, conventions, and processes affect communication, constrain design practice, and possibly obstruct the evolution of the graphic design profession.
Drive-Thru Graphic Design®
I want Vinalhaven inquirers to collaborate on a prototype design for a Taylorized system that produces well-designed, printed artifacts, somewhat quickly, for drive-thru customers.
ACTIVITY
Session 1: Proposal Generation (Workshop: 1.5 hours)
- Small groups will propose the drive-thru system’s discrete process and production tasks (nodes).
- From these proposals, inquirers will select a set of nodes, (the system), to develop further.
Session 2: Proposal Implementation (Workshop: 2 hours; + individual time):
- Small group teams will each select, develop, and visualize the inner workings of one node. Teams will sketch and model production flows, personnel profiles, system maps, scenarios, machines and tools, and/or etc., to demonstrate how node tasks might be accomplished.
- Teams will pin-up node schemes in the order specified by the proposal.
- All participants can add material to all nodes as the week progresses.
OUTCOME
- I want to integrate the visualizations into an annotated, Drive-Thru Graphic Design proposal (sans business plan), in the form of a book, perhaps, or maybe an architecture RFP for the drive-thru building.
MATERIALS
Butcher paper, tracing paper, sharpies, colored pencils/pens, scissors, pins, string,etc.
Amy Campos
Principal of ACA – Amy Campos Architect
Tenure-track Assistant Professor of Interior Design, Architecture, Visual & Critical
Studies – California College of the Arts
www.cca.edu/academics/faculty/acampos
Positioned in multiple related disciplines and modes of working (interior design, architecture and critical studies), issues of excess, durability and impermanence frame the primary interests in my practical, scholarly and pedagogical pursuits. My work operates at the scale of inhabited environments and objects, interior installations, and critical writing.
I’m a native Californian with a European family (Britain, France) who spent most of my adult life on the East Coast (Boston, New York) and am now living back in San Francisco. I’m a happy hybrid, personally and professionally.
Fast Forward. If the 19th and 20th centuries were characterized by mass culture, mass growth, mass industry, massive monumentality – where do our spatial values lie in a world of mass landfill, mass excess, mass vacancy? My work questions the monumentalizing, reusing, reconstructing, erasing of sites as a way of rethinking space, place and visual culture moving into the 21st century and beyond. What roles do artists and designers play in framing the conversation around new monuments of contemporary society? What properties of material (durability, construction, evolution, inherent cultural value and embodied knowledge) would we deem critical in the context of a 10,000-year timeline? Our values in relation to what lasts, what is left behind and what disappears over time would shift. I am fascinated by the question of permanence/impermanence and durability in relation to the design and construction of the built environment. What do we value now and how do the material durabilities of those objects reflect our values in a future scenario (think Styrofoam cups lasting over 1 million years in our environment)? What are we designing to leave behind as vestiges of our current culture? Perhaps we should design with the archaeologists of the future in mind. What would they find?
What would you contribute to DesignInquiry while you are here?
I propose a presentation of research on this topic (abstract below) as a prompt for a workshop. The workshop will be specifically focused on the design of the interior built environment and ways of living now that can imply what should last in the future. The workshop will ask participants to built paper studies of a temporal tailored space – to design for extreme impermanence. Addressing the potential of both specificity and impermanence in design forces us to question what really should last.
Abstract: Transformative material processes (planned obsolescence, disposability, and biodegradation) can provide a new model for reconciling cultural desires for more with a sustainable mandate for less. Rather than viewing the design of the built environment as means to a single, complete “finished product”, transformative material processes can be applied as opportunistic and systematic strategies for designed environments that can productively evolve over time.
Current sustainable strategies in the architectural field are dominated by a conservative approach to use less, make less and consume less, epitomized by the ubiquitous attitude of “Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle”. This austere sentiment for ‘less’ is accommodated by building for long-term durability. There is an abundance of underutilized built space in the world today, particularly in areas with drastically shifting industrial resources like Flint and Detroit in the US. As housing in these areas are abandoned, scavengers increasingly strip the structures of recyclable materials (aluminum siding, copper pipes, etc.) leaving the bulk of the building material left unprotected and exposed to accelerated decay. Ultimately, the ability to recycle proportionately small amounts of the building material renders a large portion of the material unusable again, producing a huge amount of unnecessary waste. These blighted urban areas are the physical embodiment of the result of the material inefficiencies inherent in our current building systems. Because we design for a building’s durability in terms of total assembly, we overlook opportunities to think of the built environment in terms of replaceable assemblies of varying durabilities.
Jori Erdman
Director and Professor
Louisiana State University School of Architecture
I am the Director of the School of Architecture at Louisiana State University and have just finished 4+ years as the Design Editor for the Journal of Architectural Education. LSU has recently initiated an effort call the Coastal Sustainability Studio that focuses on research related to climate change and the deltaic environment, particularly as it relates to the coast of Louisiana. My interest in the topic >>FastForward>> stem from my work as an architect, designer and design critic as well as my role within the Coastal Sustainability Studio.
The majority of human inhabitation globally is in coastal conditions. With climate change, designers can play an instrumental role in imagining and projecting how humans can continue to occupy coastal regions by adapting to a changing environment rather than simply retreating. My interest in >>Fast Forward>> is to look at the changing environment on the coast and explore different options for inhabitation in a watery landscape.
I look forward to working with the group assembled at Vinalhaven as a way to fast forward my own thinking on the topic and set a design research agenda for the coming years.
What would you contribute to DesignInquiry while you are here?
Vinalhaven’s location on the coast makes it a probable site for some exploration on the topic of climate change impact for the site itself. I would like to use Vinalhaven as a case study for how I can productively and creatively investigate and imagine occupation in a changing landscape. Prior to coming to Vinalhaven I will prepare maps and research the projections for sea level rise in the area for the next 100 years. I have a colleague who works for NOAA and is an expert on this topic. She has also worked extensively along the New England coast and can help me prepare the information needed. So one thing I think I could do is present a case for climate change and the impact on Vinalhaven. I can also present recent work in this area by architects and landscape architects.
On the creative side, I would like to work with the group to draw, model and possibly construct studies of occupation (installations). While the science of climate change is shaped by data and information, the response must be formed from a poetic sensibility and impulse to create. By being immersed in the place of Vinalhaven, informed by research, I hope to develop some potential scenarios to respond to continued sea level rise in new and provocative ways.
Gabrielle Esperdy
Associate Professor of Architecture
New Jersey Institute of Technology
(professional) Brick City; that’s Jersey–gotta problem with that?; (personal): NYC [not Brooklyn]
there is no reception on Vinalhaven; you don’t need my phone number
gabrielleesperdy@designinquiry.net
INTRODUCING MYSELF: I’m an architectural historian and critic based in New York whose work examines the intersection of architecture, consumerism, and modernism in urban and suburban landscapes, especially in the U.S. in the 20th and 21st centuries. My two biggest projects at present are: (1) Architecture and Autopia, a book in progress that studies attitudes towards the commercial landscape and their influence on architectural discourse since WWII, and (2) the SAH Archipedia, a media-rich, fully-searchable online encyclopedia of the built world that will launch later this year. I’ve also got a blog, American Road Trip, on which I ruminate about places, buildings, and food. My work has appeared here and there; you can find it on the “hard copy” page of my website. I am coming to Vinalhaven because I am a board member of DesignInquiry, and because I support its mission to contribute to the interdisciplinary discourse of design, and because there aren’t too many mosquitoes in June, at least not in daylight hours, and because my dog likes Maine.
INTEREST IN THE TOPIC: I have three distinct interests in the topic >>FastForward>>.
- Pedagogy: Among the courses I teach at NJIT is a four semester sequence of required undergraduate surveys of the history of architecture. As part of a larger effort to integrate course content across the core curriculum, and to make historical material more obviously and legibly relevant to contemporary practice, I have introduced a new component to every lecture called “fast forward.” Little more than one or two powerpoint slides, these “fast forwards” are a way of concluding each lecture with a glimpse into the future. A lecture on ancient Roman architecture fast forwards to Lou Kahn’s work in the 1960s. A lecture on the gothic cathedral fast forwards to the Bauhaus. A lecture on the early Christian basilica fast forwards to Richard Meier’s Jubilee Church. And so on. The goal is to point towards various moments in the future when architects and designers will reference architecture and design from the past. While it is stimulating to think about these great leaps forward, and kind of fun to make the connections, these fast forwards also give me pause pedagogically–because they risk presentism and instrumentalism. As a historian teaching in an architecture these are no small matters.
- Historical Research: the book I’m working on explores the ways in which architects, critics, and other thinkers came to grips with the impact of the automobile on the designed/built environment. One of the things that was apparent by the middle of the 20th century was that the car was transforming perception by intensifying the apprehension of space and mobilizing the gaze. The driver, in control of his or her movements and traveling at high speeds, became newly goal oriented, seeking out immediate landmarks or distant destinations. This can be understood–and was theorized by the 60s–as a kind of fast forward, a mental projection to a future time in which the driver would occupy a different physical space. I’m trying to sort out the impact this had on roadside design (highways, buildings, billboards, etc.), though, to be honest, it is only tangential to the book’s larger argument.
- DesignInquiry as subject: Last fall I submitted a paper about DesignInquiry as “collaborative praxis and integrated design pedagogy” (these were session themes) to the annual meeting of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture. Though the paper was not accepted for the conference, it received extremely useful feedback that raised a number of important issues regarding program outcomes and impact. Because that DesignInquiry has struggled with exactly these issues in the years that I have been involved with the organization (as an attendee and a board member), I am keen to revisit them. While I firmly believe that DI makes a serious contribute to the interdisciplinary discourse of design, it needs help capturing the diverse ways this occurs. That’s where >>FastForward>> comes in.
PROPOSED CONTRIBUTION: For this DesignInquiry gathering I will act as a “historian of the immediate future” (borrowing Nigel Whiteley’s apt description of Reyner Banham) and attempt to describe, document, interpret, analyze, and anticipate the way that gathering participants will contribute to design discourse and “the work” of DI through their ongoing >>FastFoward>> research. Following a brief presentation explaining my agenda, my work for the week will be to gather data and collect evidence of work in progress and ideas in gestation. My goal is to help participants begin to think about how they might articulate the short term/long term impact of DesignInquiry on their practice and production, their pedagogy and philosophy. While this may turn into an exercise in absurd prognostication, it has the potential to be–in itself–a productive exploration of the topic as I prompt participants to fast forward in their thinking about fast forward.
Andrew Twigg
Owner/Adjunct
Andrew Twigg Design Studio, LTD/Canegie Mellon University
I’m from Pittsburgh. I sit on the board of DesignInquiry.
I had a business implode last year. I think it was mostly due to pushing it too hard to grow before it was ready, though there were other factors.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about rushing. Sometimes i feel like the FedEx kinkos of graphic design, a fast food joint in human form, turning out design artifacts harder/better/faster/stronger. Oh, and cheaper.
I hear that design comes in any two of these: fast, good or cheap. I guess I’m ok with fast and good but I haven’t totally figured out what “cheap” means anyway.
I’ve also been thinking a lot about the breakdown of civility in society in the way we deal with each other. I think this is rooted in a lot of different things, but I wonder how much the emergence of “faster” has lead to us forgetting our manners.
Technology enables us to respond more quickly, but as we become less human we also become less _human_.
What would you contribute to DesignInquiry while you are here?
A talk: based on the idea of faster and the breakdown of civility and how this is related to design. As I think about it today:
- faster is better?
- faster removes humanity
- we forget we’re dealing with people
- we forget what it means to to deal with people
- we are rude, we are inhumane, we are machines, we are monsters
I don’t have this idea fully worked out. Its connection to design is a challenge, but I think we can see evidence of this even in design discourse.
Margo Halverson (and Peter Hall)
Margo Halverson
Alice Design Communication
Professor, Maine College of Art
margohalverson@designinquiry.net
Please introduce yourself in a few lines.
Where you come from, what kind of work you do, why you are coming, what are your interests in the topic >>FastForward>>:
Margo: I teach graphic design and 2D foundation at an art school. I’ve been there a long time and I still love it. I design books and whatever comes my way. I love this too. Either alone, I doubt I’d love. I’m coming because DesignInquiry feeds my head, heart, and stomach of which I’ve been to everyone because I helped found it. Before, after, and during allows me to wallow, play, and poke a topic that introduces new ways of thinking and working which always translates back into my other lives.
Peter: I just moved to Brisbane to develop a new “Design Futures” undergraduate degree at Griffith University, where I’m the program leader. I usually teach design history and theory in a studio context; my research interest is in mapping as a process used across disciplines to make sense of increasingly complex design problems. As a writer and critic I use mapping methods to unpack and challenge limited ideas of objects and artefacts, or “things”. I helped Margo found DesignInquiry and I can’t bear the idea of missing one, so I’m sort of “being there” virtually.
What would you contribute to DesignInquiry while you are here?
Together with Peter Hall, who will be in 14 hours in the future, we are proposing a collaboration on mapping time.
Peter will introduce, via a movie, some of the perplexing and intriguing problems around measuring time, contrasting scientific with experiential concepts of time. This is an invitation to think of measured time as a relatively recent invention (it was only standardized in the 19th century) and to try to imagine the future not as some distant, utopic, remote thing, but something we are creating now. I am somewhat ambitiously imagining that this talk will mention Babylonian water clocks, sundials, incense clocks and the angel of history. But I haven’t written it yet.
Margo will conduct a week-long workshop, weaving various time-made-physical installations throughout the farm and further that will encourage the FF participants to work with found island materials. We challenge participants to progress into the future of the island time-telling.
Margo and Peter will GooglePlus regularly at the Vinalhaven Library, bringing reports from the future to the Sparrow Farm as well as Peter’s inspired narrative as to the participant mapping time work as it happens.
Sean Carnegie
Designer
Please introduce yourself in a few lines.
Hello. My name is Sean Carnegie. I live and work in Austin Texas. I graduated from The Maine College of Art in 1995 with a degree in Design. Currently, I own a small studio, LewisCarnegie, with my wife, Wendy who is also a Designer. We work in a wide range of mediums that range but not limited to Identity, Way Finding, Print, Branding, New Media and Packaging. I am interested in attending Design Inquiry because I enjoy the opportunity to prepare for and present a design solution that is personal and objective to myself, my interests and core values as a designer and an individual. It would allow me to further my work in a very direct and impactful way.
Fast Forward as a idea interests me in the sense that, to be successful, you need direction. You need a road map that you can see, touch and anticipate. This requires planning, courage and confidence. I would do my best to convey these qualities within my talk and to the team.
What would you contribute to DesignInquiry while you are here?
I am anticipating developing a process of documentation that would allow us to plan for how the week would eventually come together. Idea generation, action and risk taking would all be expected from the team.
Audra Buck-Coleman
Assistant Professor
University of Maryland
Please introduce yourself in a few lines.
I live in Silver Spring, Maryland and teach design at the University of Maryland. Areas of interest include social engagement and social activism, collaboration, design’s role in society, and design education. After a 5 year hiatus (5 years??!!) I’m looking forward to returning to DesignInquiry. The great conversations, making and new perspectives have been missed.
What would you contribute to DesignInquiry while you are here?
Here is my idea for content. The form is still in progress. I can update you as it becomes clearer:
I’ve been investigating/researching about monuments and the idea of memorializing history, events, issues. I’m currently reading The Art of Forgetting and Memory and The Impact of Political Transformation in Public Space. Monuments serve as a way of remembering and can construct false/skewed/rosy pictures of their subject matter. As we FastForward, what is the history and legacy of what we leave behind? How do we or can we construct an accurate story of what has transpired?
Emily Luce
Asst Professor, artist + designer
University of Lethbridge and DesignInquiry
Out-of-date Website: emilyluce.net
Please introduce yourself in a few lines.
I’m an artist and designer; I live and work in British Columbia and Alberta, and teach new media at the University of Lethbridge. Currently, I’m building an 8 x 16 inhabitable replica of an infamous art house in Lethbridge exploring domesticity in the art world, sustainability, and the concept of mobile. Nothing about this project is fast. (It might be nice to think about ways to speed things up a little.)
This will be my 6th DesignInquiry; it is my pleasure and my honour to serve on the Board.
What would you contribute to DesignInquiry while you are here?
//warp speed//
I would like to share some images and videos involving conceptual, graphical representations of the speed of light, and maybe-possibly some other speeds. In these images, space is warped due to the rate of speed. The graphical notion of this seems to me to be an opportunity for representational approaches I hadn’t previously considered and would like to explore further with the group. Using these conceptual models of speed as a visual jumping-off point, I would like to bring a prompt that can either stand as its own project or merge with another project:
How do we understand and represent a rate of speed that is X times faster or slower than our own rate(s) of speed? How can a conceptual model of distance over time relate to the physical world in a meaningful way?
Mark Jamra
Type Designer
TypeCulture
Please introduce yourself in a few lines.
I live in Portland, Maine where I am a type designer and small business owner (TypeCulture), an educator (Maine College of Art), an occasional graphic designer, and amateur videographer. I’m coming to DesignInquiry as I do almost every year because it’s fun and educational, and the food is good – especially the bread. I am not particularly interested in the topic >>FastForward>>, but I’ll see what I can make of it. I’ll be coming to see how other people have understood it – that’s the educational part.
What would you contribute to DesignInquiry while you are here?
A letter creating workshop.
Ann McDonald
Associate Professor
Northeastern University
http://www.northeastern.edu/camd/artdesign/facultystaff/ann-mcdonald/
I am a designer and educator
I value working in collaborative teams
I embrace fluidity and value an iterative, open-ended design process
>>FastForward
design as a set of instructions/opportunities
design for misuse and reuse
I will make a brief presentation exploring instructions opportunities misuse and reuse in the context of the ever present ‘feedback’ button
I will offer a workshop where we will respond to rapid (or extended) feedback cycles
I am a former attendee who has fond memories of past DI Maine conferences but worries that I fast forwarded through them too much
I hope to slow down and enjoy the unknown dynamics of this summer’s DI
Blake Almstead
Creative Director
Compuware/MECA GD Alum/DI Marfa Alum/Studio Couture Detroit
Hello, I a writing you from beautiful downtown Detroit. I have been working and living in michigan for the last 5 years. I moved out here for my MFA in graphic design from Cranbrook and stayed here to teach, open a gallery, and help revitalize the city. My professional work and gallery work in Detroit have provided me an environment that is truly unique. I work in a city that exists on it’s own timeline. It’s own history sometimes pauses the present and yet allows us to plan it’s future. In the 3 years living and working downtown I have seen time pause, rewind, skip, and fast forward.
What would you contribute to DesignInquiry while you are here?
My 9-5 at Compuware is focused on Mobile app design and usability, We normally don’t create “fluff” apps, we attempt to take the life of a employee/individual and truly improve their way of life or job. Recently I created an app for Dole Foods, the app replaces the task of inspecting bananas, normally consisting of filling out forms, taking photographs and then after many days/hours the employee creates a report to send to farms in south America. The normal time from fruit inspection to feedback for a farm could have been a month. By understanding the users and the task at hand the time from inspection to farm is now an hour thanks to the app design and technology.
I propose a mobile app workshop, thinking about our future and our interaction with our surroundings I propose we take one daily task (simple or complex) and reverse it, design an app that makes the simple difficult and the difficult simple. We are designing for a future in which our audience does not want to wait or take the complicated route. What if setting an alarm clock required 18 steps and a riddle? Though making something more complex might be funny or fun to see someone really try hard, justify it. What if your task required you to learn something or show you something. Design is getting simplified in order to get the job done quicker, but why can’t an app be designed to take time, educate, engage?
Anita Cooney
Chair, Interior Design
Pratt Institute
I am chair of the interior design department at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY. We have both an undergraduate and graduate program. There are a lot of students and a lot of faculty (NYC is the land of adjuncts) and it occupies most of my time. Having just completed seven years in this position, I would say that it has been an interesting ride where the creative act is the cultivation of culture. Designing opportunities for engaged education to occur that hopefully produces interesting and sometimes innovative work has been a compelling project. However, it has taken my attention away from direct engagement with creative practice as an architect and designer. DesignInquiry is a way to reconnect to that type of creative activity, and has been a tremendous charge to my system for five years now that I would like to continue by participating in FastForward.
What would you contribute to Design Inquiry while you are here?
I will contribute a talk on aging, time and the creative process. Looking at our culture from the plus side of 50, it is easy to remark on the slippery speed of our technology-driven world, but I am obsessed with the fact that aging is a fast forward phenomenon. Each day is a smaller percentage of life lived than the day before. When you are 5, one year is 1/5 of your life, at 10, a year is 1/10; at my ripe age, 1 year is less than 1/50 of my life. Or to put it another way, at 5, 1% of my lifetime was 18 days, at 10 it was 36 days, and now it is over 182 days or six months of time. My fantasies about time and speed these days are all about slowing time down and finding space – mental space – to doodle wander and make. I would like to talk about the struggle between the to-do list, the e-mails, and the reality of what one can and cannot do in a day. This will be a personal riff on the impasse in creative production with an aim to fast forward to a more fulfilling attitude and daily habit. Why would the rest of you care to listen to these ruminations? In the course of the presentation I will be looking at the ways in which our environments and our habits can foster or frustrate a sense of time that allows for things to happen. Sashaying from task driven, time measured charette mode to the aimless wanderlust of the meander seems to describe the varying rhythms of creative labor that we all engage in.
There is no technology, no time-saving device that can alter the rhythms of creative labor. When the worth of labor is expressed in terms of exchange value, therefore, creativity is automatically devalued every time there is an advance in the technology of work.
Lewis Hyde, The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World
If you are late, you might as well take your time…
Harold Humes, author of Men Die
Charles Melcher
Associate Professor, Graphic Design, Maine College of Art
Designer, Co-owner, Alice Design Communication Portland, Maine
I am co-owner of Alice Design Communication 1998–present with Margo Halverson. I received a BFA in photography from Mass Art and a decade later followed with an MFA in graphic design from Yale University school of Art. I am currently an Associate Professor of
Graphic Design at Maine College of Art. I grew up sailing on Cape Cod working in the summer community of my family’s co-ed sailing camp, I learned to bake bread from my mom. This experience of community still influences my life.
I will introduce (part 1) then lead an evening workshop (part 2) in Proprioceptive Writing®, a meditational discipline. It is a method of listening to thoughts and feelings, a method of reflection. In this process, we can slow down, notice details, and give ourselves permission to experience emotions as they arise. Over time, the writer is able to reflect more clearly. As chatter dissipates, stories emerge and the relationship with the inner self becomes more familiar and more intimate.
Ben Van Dyke
Associate Professor, Program Head
Communication Design
Dept of Visual Studies, Univ at Buffalo
Please introduce yourself in a few lines.
I love exhibitions. I’ve always thought of galleries as the only space in the world where people arrive optimistic and ready to see something they didn’t expect and don’t understand. In that space, I have found great support for untangling my deepest secrets. Over the past five years, I’ve had over 40 type-related exhibitions in North America, Europe, Asia and the Middle East. FastForward is my sixth DesignInquiry since 2008 (Fail Again). I am deeply loyal to the radical framework of DesignInquiry and its invaluable reach into the international design community. I give back by serving on the DesignInquiry Board of Directors.
In my free time, you would most likely find me riding around Buffalo on my longboard looking for a pick-up game of basketball or trying to finish rebuilding the engine on my vintage motorcycle, Lola. That would be if I had free time. It’s much more likely that you would see me driving to or from a baseball, softball, swimming or soccer match with a car full of tiny people.
What would you contribute to DesignInquiry while you are here?
Fast forward to Friday, 5:00pm, June 22, 2012. Where will we be? I predict we will be standing amongst brilliant moments of thought and contemplation, clinking paper cups full of cheap red wine in a yet-to-be-found exhibition space on the island of Vinalhaven. I propose that we mount a FastForward exhibition in downtown Vinalhaven on Friday night, June 22. Using sketches, sculptures, themes and memes, we will gather the week’s artifacts and invite the residents of the island to celebrate this time of collaboration and collective time/space continuum that is DesignInquiry. In four short days, we will go from empty barn to messy studio space. And in that short time, we will gather and curate the inspired makings of FastForward as a grand finale to DesignInquiry 2012. After the last ferry arrives on Sunday night, the clock is ticking…Think forward, act fast.
Gail Swanlund
designer, artist and CalArts design faculty
gailswanlund@designinquiry.net
Please introduce yourself in a few lines.
I live and work in Los Angeles and commute 40 miles to teach graphic design at a visual and performing arts college in a planned suburb on the very edge of L.A. county.
Like many people who live here, I spend a lot of time in transit. In order to help make my considerable time in the car more meaningful, I listen to audio books. Currently, it’s James Joyce’s stream-of-consciousness, Ulysses (it happens that many DIers will be traveling toward Vinalhaven on Bloomsday, Saturday, June 16th). As a collector and maker of wildlife films, I am an enthusiast of the very long take and realtime narrative structure.
This is my first year serving on the Design Inquiry Board, which has been an honor, and an experience that has lead to a shift in the way I consider daily practice, experimentation and teaching.
I attended DI’s Design City: Montreal last year and am especially looking forward to collaborating and participating in my first Vinalhaven DesignInquiry.
—Gail joined the DI Board of Directors in 2011.
What would you contribute to DesignInquiry while you are here?
- I would like to be a part of a Daily Practice League that might meet for 20 minute early mornings to make something in response to the DI topic FastForward. I’d like to think that reading Joyce’s Ulysses is influencing an interpretation of FastForward — maybe it’s simply “Forward,” sans “Fast”. The session might be best regarded as a 20 minute “long take” based on the experience of wildlife filmmaking, which could be noting what (quite possibly nothing at all) transpires, walking as real time drawing, or diagramming sound.
- Last Fall, the CalArts undergraduate seniors agreed to deploy DesignInquiry’s “Not-the-Schedule” model for exploration as their studio practice for the term.
DI’s “Not-the-Schedule” was presented as a loose, changeable, collaboratively refined structure for the course, and included field trips, presentations, visitors, shared dining, other disciplines and expertises, a flurry of making-as-thinking, and time for disorientation and reflection. The participants self-identified areas of interest and research around the umbrella topic, determined their best working methodologies and moved toward creating a variety of forms and outcomes. Accustomed to strict deadlines, delineated briefs and a level of professionalism and skills, the students were happy to launch into a highly collaborative, sustained, non-hierarchal, in-flux happening of sorts.
In collaboration with other DesignInquirers, I would like to talk with, elaborate and sketch out some sort of report to describe this experience as a possible practical outcome based on the DI mission.