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Topic 1 Form Analysis

Topic 1 Form Analysis

I’m going to do a “How-to” guide in the form of a “Landfills for Dummies”. I think its a way to poke fun at a serious and pressing topics – overconsumption, waste, ecology, environmental impact – which still providing some of the facts about landfills and how they are constructed. 

If I tried a different form, I would probably do something similar to an infomercial advertising landfills. I could go a lot of different ways with it like a satirical sales infomercial marketing the landfill or I could do a serious PSA style announcement. 

I think the “How-to” is well-suited because there is a step-by-step to making a landfill and so using that as a foundation makes sense. 

Form for Gardens Project

I will be making a map of sorts for exploring my topic, and an accompanying exploration kit.

I will be focusing on the plant life — wildflowers, trees, etc — that are found in and around Chicago. A map helps people navigate, explore, find things, locate themselves and other things, orient oneself, and capture a moment in time. Some maps include transportation routes, trade routes, and points of interest. Mappe mundi, a form of medieval map, also include history, mythology, different animals/species/peoples, and are not terribly focused on literal locating of things.

I will be leaning into the navigating, exploration, and orientation aspect. I want to make a map that might help someone orient themselves in the world of the diverse plant species that surround them. I’d like to help them explore these plants, become interested in them in order to build appreciation, and ultimately care enough to help protect them.

In making this map, I will be  subverting the focus on precise location and finding things. I don’t want people to be able to use it to specifically locate anything, I would like them to be exploring instead. Instead of focusing on the more typical built environment or on humans’ points of interest, I want to focus on non-human elements. I am not sure yet what metaphors I will be employing.

In making this map, I will need to do some exploring myself. I will put together a “kit” for this exploration and will document that as part of my project.

SKIN: Fenestra Form Analysis

The form: Pop-up books

Why this form? What are its features (stylistic, experiential)

  • The pop-up book is a non-tech 3-D form of the book that is usually used to show some structures and buildings. I chose this form because my topic, “fenestra,” is about a kind of structure. Part of my goal is to show the structure to everyone directly with no age limitations, language limitations, or knowledge reserved. This pop-up book can perfectly fit my needs. What’s more, I still have the possibility to make it colorful and informative since it still follows the form of a book.

How is this form typically used, and what do you plan to subvert/imitate/utilize?

  • This form is typically used for children and educational functions. Also, it’s mainly used for storytelling or showcasing. I plan to focus on its storytelling part, but I want to tell a story about fenestra that can interest both the children and the adults.

What would change if you tried a different form? What critical lens does the form you’re applying emphasize?

  • I’ve thought about a single-page website, a digital interactive game, or a kind of creative re-use. However, for the first two digital forms, there are hidden age limitations behind it since small kids and elders may don’t know how to surf the Internet. Ecocriticism or the moral lens would be the lens the form I am applying emphasize. However, I am still thinking about this part.

Is there a metaphor well-suited to your form (i.e. cooking with code)? Or, are there other metaphors you might employ?

  • Metaogors might be used:
  1. Underground water system (geology)
  2. emotion regulation (how one individual faces and deals with his/her pressure and other negative emotion)
  3. Reservoirs, Dams, and Flood Releases

Form Analysis/Brainstorming

My first thought was to tell a story focused on polymorphic colonial organisms, which are organisms that are made up of individuals units, or zooids that have different specialities. For example, zooids may be responsible for feeding, defense, navigation or reproduction. In order for the larger organism to survive, the individuals need to all exists, and work together. Another classification of colonial organisms are chimera colonies, which are many sub-colonies of closely-related, but not genetically identical. There are theories that the diversity in the chimera colonies has advantages in being more resilient to environmental threats.

I haven’t been sure about what metaphor to use, because a lot of my ideas have been pretty literal. I was thinking of presenting an organism with different jobs. And in this way, I was hoping that the form I chose to have some movement. My first thought was to create a guide that takes inspiration from Parable of the Polygons by Vi Hart and Nicky Case, and to create a website that allows the user to move components around the screen. But then I realized that I spent so much time in front a computer, and maybe it would be a useful exercise to create something more tangible, and less technical. During the summer session, I noticed that I sometimes struggled to be creative at my computer. Since I write code for work, it’s sometimes challenging to turn my analytical, work-focused brain off, and be creative when writing code.

When brainstorming about analog ways to tell a story of movement, I came to the idea of creating a pop up book. This seemed like a good way to show movement in a paper form. After doing a bit of preliminary research, I realized that this is also a very technical skill, that will require my analytical mind. But, it’s away from a screen, and doesn’t require my fingers to be on a keyboard, so I think that it may be a good choice for my own creativity.

Now I am thinking a bit more critically about the metaphor I want to use, and how a pop up book may enhance that narrative. To sum up the metaphor that I keep coming back to, in the style that Lakoff and Johnson use in Metaphors to Live By, it would be “diversity is good”. I also keep realizing that though my form and the specific narrative will be different, the over all theme and metaphor is very similar to Parable of the Polygons. I like the idea of using Hart and Case’s general premise, but doing it in a different form. I think that the pop up form will be a bit limiting, mostly because it is new to me, and I will likely not be able to tell such a full story due to time limitations and lack of skill. But, I think if I focus on reimagining this first interaction of Parable of the Polygons, I can still create an effective guide.

 

It would be interesting to show different elements (zooids?) that when they get closer together, they become “happy”, and when they’re further apart they are sad. Maybe something like this:

 

 

I wonder if this is too similar to Parable of the Polygons, and if there is something different I can do to bring the narrative a bit more closely tied to colonial organism, and biology, and kinship. Potentially, I could borrow the ideas I learned from Margaret about slime mold, and their potential self-sacrificing behavior.

I also wanted to add a couple images of my first pop up experiments. These were created by following the Duncan Birmingham’s first two tutorials in The Popup Channel on youtube.