Katherine Park

I recently met with Sarah H. to discuss Thesis topics and potential. I have chatted with Sarah before about other projects and appreciate her thoughts a lot, so I thought it would be nice to run through some of the things I’ve talked with Sarah R and Nun about with her.

I shared some project ideas with her, with the caveat that these might not be actual project ideas, but more just random “things” I could do that had to do with the topics I was thinking through. I don’t have an idea how to execute them or what they mean, they are just ideas that popped up in my head in the last few weeks.

• Technical gear paper dolls
• Barbie dream stuff // american girl doll?
• Poetry or haikus about how networks work
• Luxury hockey stuff
• Government issued survivor gear (super shitty and propaganda-y)
• Am I going to be okay?? Machine (magic 8 ball)
• a choreographed dance of org structure, business dealings, handshaking
• a manifesto
• fake sensor to find/uncover your true interests and passions on the internet?
• powerpoints that prove a point
• org chart chess (ceramics?)
• nerdy jocks *technical documents for sports…luxury?
• Get ready with me for the apocalypse
  • how i made this toothbrush
  • I made this network from old raspberry pis for my bf and I
  • Scavenging haul

We discussed some common themes of the ideas:

are you ready??? (overarching question)

• tactical
• decision making
• vigilance
• control
• protection
• choreography
• control

Sarah also suggested that I write out a do’s and don’ts list for my thesis because I had very strong opinions about how and in what conditions I wanted to use technology and what kind of tone I wanted to set with whatever the thesis was.

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.

Working backwards to get to know yourself and find out what you are drawn to.

Ask myself how I feel about things.

Absurd, combining 2 things that make sense alone but not together. Sporks?

50 Days of Absurdity

Fractals

References:

https://www.instagram.com/shoshibuya/?hl=en

https://github.com/juxtapix/DesigningTheAbsurd/wiki

https://maggiecoblentz.com/Stories

https://www.instagram.com/maxbittker/

http://www.jillmagid.com/projects/out-game-flowers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUVgGxS4u7M 

https://www.audemarspiguet.com/com/en/news/art/phoebe-hui-the-moon-is-leaving-us.html

https://leoneckert.com/

https://teenage.engineering/designs

https://hempuli.com/baba/

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.

Hello World.

I am excited to finally think about something other than work or class assignments, and more about what I am interested in as an independent individual.