After the installation review last week I am both more confident and confused. It is a tragic aftermath of creative editing. I have a much more positive idea of what I am not doing but have not quite focused on what it is I am doing. I do know that I am not doing a building that is just a box with my interests forced inside. I do know that I am not dealing explicitly with the suburbs any more. I do know that I am not necessarily focusing on just urban planning. I do know that I will be making.
The topic of this post is about "What forces acting upon my project?" What is acting on my project is what I feel is a need to return to a higher level of connection to the things we have. We have so much because it is so easy to get and seemingly to produce. I know that when I purchase things rarely is it that I take the time to consider how it was made, the intense process taken to create that thing. Because I don't consider the making I don't always see the value. It is so easy to just buy thing after thing and not really consider the time and effort taken into making it. If I were to have to make the things I owned I wouldn't own anything superfluous I would only have the necessities. But that is not the world I have lived in.
More and more I gain a need to reduce and improve my own collection of things but I know it is because I have had to go through the process of making, making imaginary buildings, making tiny building like things, making drawings, etc. I gained a level of consideration I'm not sure people generally have. I do think that this drives the suburb culture. Suburbs are at the core disconnected from the beating heart of cities and civilization. The main obstacle in my project will be to understanding how to make people care. Care enough that they forgo the ease of quickly produced products, buildings, and lifestyles and spend time and energy in making. I have to fight the ease of the lifestyle we have and make people care the way I have been to care which I think can only really come about through making. How can making be re-instituted into the fabric of our culture?
To me this pairs well with our reading from this week. Diagramming has always been the way we have been taught to communicate in our major. Diagrams hold a unique power that a paragraph does not. It is visual and immediate. There are layers of information piling over each other to reveal something beyond itself. Creating diagrams requires a knowledge of your subject and in some cases trust in your own instincts. To me one of the great examples are parti diagrams. After being a TA I can say that parti diagrams are hard for students to fully grasp because they are so precious with their work. They don't want to do anything wrong, but design is about failing and learning from that failing. Parti diagrams are a great tool to see those failings and fix them quickly. You can describe a great design all day but in order to get anywhere you need to just start making. The moment you stop trying to be perfect and you just start doing you can see your own progress as you refine your craft.
Moving forward I think I am going to put my own advice to use and stop worrying about being perfect with my work. I need to make, I need to make a lot. I need stop trying to force this project into being and just let it grow. Of course I still need to get work done, but I think I can do that without resorting to shoving my ideas in a box and calling it a thesis.
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