Admittedly when we were given the readings sets for Design III, I felt overwhelmed by them. But perhaps that is something to be embraced. I mean I would a thousand times over choose to be overwhelmed by design then by say algebra or scientific writing. In each packet there were readings that really stuck with me whether in theme, as a whole, or in some cases even just a phrase or two.
Set 1: Thesis Writing
Danielle Aubert's Track Record stood out to me in theme. She discusses her interest in a person's traces that are not necessarily seen or even conscious. The line that most stood out to me came towards the end of her explanation when she writes: "When a person's traces are read as signs they can generate a fragmented portrait that is perhaps more telling then the color of their eyes or their skin, or the way they part their hair. The tracks a person leaves behind might reveal that the sole of their left shoe is held together by duct tape, or that they tend to be late with credit card payments, or that they favor a particular cereal." This is what interests me, although perhaps not in the same way. I am interested in the choices that people make and in that way how they design themselves. The overlap in Aubert's work, for me, is that sometimes the choices people make don't even seem like choices to them. They might not realize that they collect a certain item or how much a single element comes to define them to others. She goes on to dicuss process and carrying out her system to its logical end. This is less important to me at the moment, but maybe that is just because I don't have a system yet.
Seeing the Unseen followed Track Record nicely in my mind. Another project exploring things often not seen normally. Huy Vu discusses her thesis statement and interest in focusing on things at the periphery, the objects in our surroundings that tend to serve merely as background. As artists and designers I think alot of us share an impulse to focus on detail that many would overlook and I think Huy Vu very eloquently describes this desire to highlight the ordinarily overlooked. She has divided her focus into three strategies. They are all interesting, but the first two especially stayed with me. Discussing her joy in coming across a forgotten child support paper in a book Vu writes "we are left to imagine who they belong to [the scraps] and why they were left behind. We, as viewers, want to complete this incomplete story." Now perhaps the interest here for me was out of context, but in my work photographing interior spaces my goal is to create the same interest for viewers, for them to want to know something about the people that occupy the space they are looking at. Vu calls it "reducing our field of vision" and that is an apt description of why I crop alot of the time. I zero in on a particular detail and blow it up. In the second category Vu mentions the work of Uta Barth and her series Grounds "exploring the margins of interior spaces." I looked up the series and found some really compelling images.
The last reading in the packet that I felt strongly about was Mary Banas thesis essay I Read My Mind Through You. First and foremost she explains her reasoning for her title writing "because I comprehend my own inner working by understanding others." I really enjoyed this explanation and even more so this calling out to the fact that she only knew herself through other people and connections and interactions with those people. As social beings it is something that is important and relevant to all of us. Even the most independent people have interactions that shape them whether they are acknowledged or not. I also particularly liked the way that she spoke about communication through technology and its ability to "mystify our self awareness." Banas goes on to discuss her work and desire to explore what she "percieves as a gap in our understanding of our own psyches, a lack of self-awareness resulting from the passive consciousness of others." In thinking about thesis and in my other work, my interest has continually been other people. Recently I have tried to put more of myself into the work and I think that it is a longing to create a better sense of myself- so reading this was quite relate-able for me. Banas says she wants her work to make people feel comfortable and I think with a few specific projects that is an aim of mine as well although now I would like to accomplish this and at the same time push myself out of my own comfort zone.
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