1-1 Meeting #2

Had another great 1-1 with Sarah on Feb 10th.

A starter bibliography is due Feb 14th on this site. 

A thesis draft proposal is due Feb 21st on this site. 

Sarah proposed a few more assignments to engage with before reading the thesis proposal document to try to have some fresh experimentation without trying to fulfill the assignment too much. We also discussed my previous “Assignments from Sarah I” post quite a bit.

A few common themes we talked about were things like, series-based, bite-sized “things” that were easy to share and spread (social media?) and offered a kind of punchy or shocking realization or revelation. A lot of those things were based on juxtaposition elements that were somehow reconciled together to form a thought, or were somehow “clever.” (We also briefly talked about the pros and cons of being “clever”). I ended up looking up the definition of “clever” and I still liked it: skillful or adroit, nimble, mentally quick and resourceful, marked by wit or ingenuity. Some other words in the definition I liked included resourceful (able to meet situations, capable of devising ways and means*), wit (the ability to relate seemingly disparate things so as to illuminate or amuse, imaginatively perceptive and articulate), and ingenuity (skill or cleverness in devising or combining).

We also talked about the “extra layer of meaning” which goes beyond the thing or the making of the thing itself, and into the wider, larger conversation. For instance, Yehwan asks questions about usability and the internet, and purposely makes experiences that are frustrating to demonstrate this (very simplified); Nicole asks questions about waste and sustainability by making useless clothing items from discarded materials from luxury technical brands. For both Yehwan and Nicole, the “material” that they are using/manipulating is the thing they are asking about themselves, but done in a way that adds an extra layer of meaning.

We discussed that Yehwan and Nicole’s work was closely related to what I would like to do.

A few assignments/questions from Sarah, the bolded ones are the ones I will focus on the most:

1. Crit X approach: pick any topic that has any richness for you, and do something/practice something to get a repeatable practice/lens.
2. Are topics things like: science, engineering, space travel?
3. What are we preparing for? Tactical gear for climate change? Tactical gear for space travel?
4. What is something kind of weird you could make tactical gear for?
5. What about “anti” tactical gear? Useless things?
6. Maybe find a randomizer and just practice “(anti)tactical gear for _____” and insert a random topic
7. Is there a specific topic you land on or like?
8. What level of meta category will you live in?
9. Probably will do a “big, series oriented” project, rather than one big thing.
10. Look into speculative design/design fiction/critical design/critical making and write down some thoughts
11. What is the context for exploring?
12. Look into history of fashion and the rise of “technical” gear, camping stuff, etc. 

These things should help scaffold a proposal for a project.

*it doesn’t matter but “ways and means” is a lyrics that stands out for me in a couple songs, interested in breaking down this phrase more as well; also a government committee (methods and resources for accomplishing something and especially for defraying expenses, a legislative committee concerned with this function).

After talking with Sarah, I actually received a book from a coworker about decision making tactics, and I started feeling a connection between that and what I’m thinking about for class. Some things I wrote down from there were tactics/strategy, decision making/options, intuition/paranoia, tangible/non tangible, feeling/knowing, internet, experience/experiences.

Experience/experiences: The book (so far) hinges on good decision making in high risk/high pressure environments as something that comes with experience, which allows experts to make decisions based on metaphor (something they’ve seen before in a different context), intuition (expectations fulfilled/not fulfilled and judgment in a feeling), mental simulation (playing out possible scenarios in an instant in your mind), and storytelling (consolidation of experiences). The idea that we need experience in order to make good decisions made we think about how most of digital/experiential design today focuses on streamlined, easy, fast, immersive, etc. and how it kind of inherently takes away the moments of experiencing a need to make a decision, even in a very small way. Just a thought.

Maybe another blog post for the actual assignments.