Using Resources
I have been hammering this into my students’ heads to the point where they all look at each other and grin as soon as I get started on the subject. And now, I think I want to also write about it.
OK folks – as far as I am concerned, the age for painstakingly crafting stuff by hand is over. Finito! Done with! Passe! Fuddy-duddy! And to actually teach people to think of creative activity in terms of doing that? To laud the merits of “craft”? Of toil? Of “no pain no gain”? Not only is this mindset passe, but in terms of creativity I believe that it is also misplaced. “Finding stuff,” looking for “ready-mades,” at least in my experience, will actually enhance creativity, will give you new ideas. Get you to make new connections. Make you do things you weren’t thinking of doing before you stumbled across whatever it is that you stumbled across.
So, we should no longer be teaching our students how to “make stuff,” but instead one of the things that we desperately need to teach them is how to “find stuff.” Learning how to use resources. And not just with a particular objective in mind either. Total free fall, if anything. Get them to wander (ostensibly) aimlessly around stock photography and clip-art sites, check out samples in audio places, hang around download sites to install software that does all kinds of strange stuff. Not because their current project “needs” a specific image or a sound or whatever, but in the spirit of a flaneur wandering around a market. What they find will generate new ideas. New projects. I guarantee it!
But, the idea of “using resources” involves considerably more than wandering around and being a flaneur. It is actually about re-thinking design learning (and for that matter quite a bit of learning in general, I guess) not in terms of making things from scratch, but rather in terms of “modding” existent things. Or (and this one is very important, I think, for the whole future of the graphic design profession) – in terms of making things that others can “mod.”
I just started to make a website for this year’s student work with this wix HTML5 editor that they now have: http://elifayiter.wix.com/suvacd2014. I started out with one of their templates. And ended up with what is in the image above. The point remains however that I did not do this from a blank canvas. I built on someone else’s work. So, it seems to me that, at this stage, in a web design course (for example) we can realistically teach people only one of two things: We can either teach them how to make the actual templates. Or we can teach them how to use already existent templates. But, I honestly do not think that we can justify teaching people to make unique, one of a kind web sites any longer. That ship has sailed… › Continue reading
Kikas, Marmaduke and Arthur Koestler…
It is already a few years ago now when one day Bettina Tizzy came rushing over, raving about a couple who she said were creating some very cool content in Second Life. Me – I am usually dubious. Obnoxiously picky picky in what I like, to say the very least. However, once I saw them in action I was hooked as well: Kikas Babenco and Marmaduke Arado.
And then last winter Kikas and Marmaduke came to me with an irresistible offer: To create a benefit art performance for alpha.tribe that would help publicize the store and the sim. As I have written previously; these days, like a lot of other metaverse businesses, the alpha.tribe store is in trouble financially. Meaning that by extension the alpha.tribe sim is so as well, since the earnings of the store pay for the land tier. While a lot of people tell me how much they like alpha.tribe stuff, very few of them actually show their appreciation by making a purchase. Currently the sim is funded through past earnings, which were very good for a very long time, and I have left most of the money from those days in-world. So, I have a nest egg. How much longer – not very…
So, Kikas and Marmaduke’s extremely generous offer came as a God-send indeed.
alpha.tribe 3rd Life party: Kikas plays the harp. Where? On a hippopotamus of course! I mean, where else does one normally play harps?
Right around that time I had made a group gift avatar called “Bowie,” which I knew that Kikas liked a lot – I saw her wearing it in a lot of photos that she was taking. So, I suggested making a “bowie garden” for them in which they could perform. They liked the idea, and the garden was made in such a way that they would actually perform in it. I then left them to it, although I did of course peek from time to time and saw that the garden was actually growing, if not indeed metamorphosing, in their hands.
Last night, after many postponements due to very busy lives on both ends, we did finally have the performance – attended by about 60 avatars, who spread themselves over two simulators. It was a great event, with lots of very nice guests who appeared to be in a gregariously festive mood throughout and so the party went on for quite a few hours. › Continue reading
The Lorem Ipsum Travel Agency
This year I have the sort of class that makes me want to go the extra mile for these kids. They are great! Not that there hasn’t always been a sprinkling of really lovely students in every class, of course, but what makes this year’s 3rd year extraordinary is that they are great as a group. And here they are!
The third year graphic design project studio class (the way I teach it) is actually one long project that stretches itself over both semesters and what the kids do is learn how to develop a visual system, in other words a visual identity, that is then applied to many products of an imaginary company – everything from a full stationary set, to commercial packages and promotional items, even a multi-page magazine at the end of the year. And amongst all this stuff are also large scale 3D objects: They “paint” the visual identity on a company car or truck, and they also apply the system to a building. In past years what we did for this last one was usually a store-front design and usually we did this by applying the visual system onto a creative commons blueprint of some store or other.
And here are all the other screenshots that I took of my little kiosk.
This year, I am now trying to do something which I have always wanted to do – to get them to actually build something in 3D – think of graphic systems directly in 3D. And not just a store-front but something more ambitious – a real walk-through commercial space, such as a fair stand, or a promotional kiosk. I figured if ever there was a class that I could pull this off with, this would be the one, since one of the coolest attributes of the group is that they are very enthusiastic. (Hmm – there are a couple of scaredy-puss types, but even they are of the kind that can be talked into going out on a limb with a tiny push and a shove ;-). › Continue reading
Decapoda goes to the forest…
From the very first time that I heard it as a child I have had strong (almost gut) feelings concerning the tale of Little Red Riding Hood: I was horrified by the killing of the wolf. Inconsolable, in fact – to the point where my father had to invent a whole new ending to the story so that I would stop the tantrum that the actual tale had provoked.
So, when storyteller Heidi Dahlsveen, with whom I have collaborated on wonderful projects before, asked me to work on “the other side of the tale” of LRRH I said yes immediately*** since I saw a way of laying my old childhood demons to rest by doing so. The Companion, Heidi’s island upon which my landscape is displayed together with Soror Nishi and Cherry Manga‘s gorgeous interpretations of “the other side of the story” will open to the public in a few more days.
I am not very good with stories, and I am especially not good with ending stories, so my tale of the other side of LRRH is also without an end. (Although, I have been toying around with some kind of ending which I may yet do at the end of the show in April, if Heidi will be able to give me the extra time for that since it will mean a lot of re-building).
My problem with ending stories is that unfortunately my mind seems to only work through absurd connections that inevitably lead to further complexities; and absurd connections and complexities usually do not wrap things up, but instead leave them hanging in a most unsatisfactory manner.
My “other side of the story” favors the wolf. And here things already get quite complicated since the story starts with the wolf killing the grandmother. And then LRRH kills the wolf (or has the hunter help her do it – but the hunter is not really a major figure here, I don’t think). So, why is LRRH a monster for me – and always has been? And why isn’t the wolf so, even though he started it all by killing grandma? The wolf kills to eat, and that is what wolves do. For him grandma is “meat.” LRRH however kills for a vendetta – to mete punishment upon a creature for following his need for nourishment. Which, in my book, makes her a murderess par excellence. Whereas the wolf is just like the rest of us – merrily sitting down to his juicy steak… And I am fairly certain that I saw this distinction even when I was a small child. › Continue reading