1-1 Meeting #1

I am writing a reflection of the first 1-1 meeting I had with Sarah for thesis.

I came out of the first class and into the 1-1 really anxious because I had no real thoughts or hunches about what I might want to make or research. As a really goal/scope oriented person, I’ve never really given myself the opportunity to think through personal projects or delving much deeper into what I’m interested in. A lot of the work I do and honestly work that I’m proud of has a lot of professional purpose, so I feel a little eager (maybe overeager?) for this thesis to maybe take a step outside of that.

Sarah and I had a great conversation where I basically just rambled about my journey towards my current professional role, my enrollment with NYU IMA, the projects I’ve done so far, and what I might want to do in the near future.

Professionally, I have a Literature and History degree from University of Michigan, an Entertainment Design degree from Art Center College of Design, I’ve worked at Disney Imagineering as a concept artist, at an ad agency/design studio doing movie poster designs, and currently (and most happily), as a designer turned strategic planner for NASA’s JPL.

I enrolled with NYU because I wanted some hands on learning with programming languages and physical computing, as a large part of my work can be understanding technical workflow and environments and I felt like it would help me be better at my job without straying too far from my background in design and art.

The projects I’ve done so far in NYU that we talked about are my “make yourself as you find yourself” using sounds for Interface Lab, the Connections Lab “build your bouquet,” and the “we are a school of wandering fish” project for Radical Connections (blog post incoming).

Some connections Sarah made about all my projects was the act of “composing” or bringing things together.

Sarah assigned some loose assignments to trigger thinking:

Assignment 1: Write a blurb about a fake talk you’re giving, or a fake review of a nonexistent project you made.

Assignment 2: Using some of the references we talked through, what do you like/dislike about these projects?

Assignment 3: Imagine/find other projects that do something similar to projects you did, like “make yourself as you find yourself,” “arranging things,” or “wandering things.” If your project is a series, what is a more refined version of it?

Assignment 4: Think about whether what you want to make is a parallel practice to what you do professionally, or if it’s directly related to the work, or if it’s something that people in that field might be interested in learning something from my work, even tangentially.

Some other key words we talked through/I thought of later:

visible puns, planned obsolescence, systems design, purpose/process/progress, subversive wearables, utilitarian and tactical, strategic to tactical, connection, digging deeper, the “how” and the “why” instead of the “what”, examination/deconstruction/subversion, composition and arrangement.