HUMAN FORM

i was so excited when i saw the assignment description for creating a piece that would interact with the human form. As a concept I had originally thought of making furniture that would need the body for structural support, however upon talking to Arlando and hearing his idea of making bags i thought it would be interesting to synthesize those two thoughts. The result was a concept for a bag that would unfold into a chair/ rest for busy people on the go ( avid travelers in airports!). Then i began to think of rebozos and how they are completely streamlined and simple vessels that interact with two bodies, they need the weight of the baby to pull on the mother to create a friction that will keep the baby inside and distribute his weight. I loved this idea and felt that using that as a point of reference for the chairbag was a good idea. However, I really had a difficult time trying to communicate with Arlando, and similarly he had a difficult time trying to communicate with me. I felt that what was important to me for this assignment, and that what had driven me to want to take the class, was my initial impression that this class selected it's members with the idea in mind of gathering people from different disciplines so that IDEAS could hold as much importance as the PROCESS. However it seemed to me that i was more about the idea, the concept the symbolic while Arlando wanted to start building right away- to explore materials to get ideas. I think our styles of learning in terms of this project were criss-crossed. However, he was extremely patient and ultimately we found that we could best communicate using video and image references than by directly talking. I think I have begun to learn new ways to communicate ideas, but I am still unsure about how much Ideas are a part of this class. I like philosophy, I like poetry, I like anthropology, I thought we would have had more of a discussion about these things and how they could relate to the projects more than we currently do. However i think i may have misinterpreted the emphasis of the class.

SKILLS

photoshop ::3

corel painter ::4.75

imovie::5

final cut::2

word::0

pages::5

FURNITURE ( concept)

oh, power tools! this project was quite a challenge in that the material was very unfamiliar to me and it took me until just about the end of the build to learn how to properly screw wood together ( pilot holes are important!) however, I really liked my concept of a moving bookcase and think that the iteration was a step in a good direction. It was also a process where i learned a lot as i went along and was able to really explore things that i had not originally intended to explore. I was however frustrated by the prospect of having an unfinished, unrefined piece but i was relieved to find that a good concept and a willingness to experiment and maybe fail a little bit is okay. I really admire the technical ability of the BILT guys and even of people like guillome who were able to build things that, well, work. haha however i am hopeful that skill will come with practice!

FOILED AGAIN

this was my first collaboration and i must say, i really enjoyed working with elijah. we were able to communicate well and brainstormed/ worked just about every day of the week the project was assigned. we both had similar aesthetic goals ( clean, simple) so that really helped us narrow down what we wanted to do. ( no crumpled foil!) . the end result was very satisfying despite the critique that it didnt have enough concept behind it. I felt that the assignment was to transform foil into non foil, and so i thought that the elegance of our piece was a fair fulfillment of that goal.