Five Projects in Five Days - Major Studio 1

Giuseppe Arcimboldo

Complete five projects in five days.

The Goal of this project is to create and complete one project each day, for five consecutive days. There are no rules or proscriptions for the projects that you undertake, but they must be built, and documented each day in entirety. The project will begin with each student defining a set of constraints for the week, then working with those constraints, following through and creating something, each day of the week.

Since beginning school, feeding myself has become a negative experience. I would like to change that so I am using food, both as a constraint for the project and as a constraint on my continued existence.

1) Determine your creative constraint. Constraints are always present in the design process. In this case, you define the constraint you will work with. Use this as an opportunity to explore a topic or theme you are interested in. Do not spend too much time belaboring over this part of the project, but give your constraints the consideration they deserve. (Your constraints are the outlying parameters you will establish for this experiment and will drive the results of this assignment.) Use your experience from the previous week mapping your interests and environment as inspiration to select your constraints. It can be as simple as a spectrum of colors, a set of words, or favorite quotes. Most important is that the constraints reflect your personality and outlook, and reflect an internal logic that you can explain when asked. Will your constraints be random, or will they reflect a question upon which you build upon to finally answer? The choice is up to you.

If you have difficulty with developing your own constraint, use a set of “chance operations”. John Cage, The Situationists, the Surrealists and many more have used chance operations to create synergistic constraints for their creative work or to break out of a creative blockage. Here are a couple ideas:

- Use the first verb in today’s newspaper to develop your work around; - Look at the words buzzing on twitter at this moment to inspire your work; - use this random set of 1-minute stories by John Cage to make a piece to: http://www.lcdf.org/indeterminacy/

or use Tristan Tzara’s advice: from Tzara’s “Dada Manifesto on Feeble & Bitter Love”: Take a newspaper.
Take some scissors.
Choose from this paper an article the length you want to make your poem.
Cut out the article.
Next carefully cut out each of the words that make up this article and put them all in a bag.
Shake gently.
Next take out each cutting one after the other.
Copy conscientiously in the order in which they left the bag.
The poem will resemble you.
 And there you are–an infinitely original author of charming sensibility, even though unappreciated by the vulgar herd.”

2) Execute and document your projects You are allowed to complete each project in any form or medium you like, but it must be finished and documented in one day. (Do not allow your discipline to waver on this point.) Starting and finishing is a necessary part of completing this assignment, and if you are diligent you should conclude the week with seven complete projects which exhibit conceptual and material integrity. Though the development cycle is short, the creative potential is very, high. In your documentation be sure to present your work consistently across the week and to visually develop a unifying presence for the work.

3) You cannot do this assignment incorrectly. There is no “wrong” way to do this assignment, but you can still do it badly if you do not commit fully. Put everything you can into each day’s project. Consider all aspects of what you create. Be cognizant of what you can start and finish. Go the extra step.

4) Read the accompanying assigned texts and write a one page paper which analyzes and reflects on your experience. Be sure to relate concepts and terminology introduced in the readings into your work.

Guiding Questions:

• When is a project fully complete? How do you know you are “finished” with a project?

• How does the framing of a project, its context, scope, and parameters, determine the content created? What is the relationship between concept and execution?

• After completing your projects what do you think could have been improved? If you were to do another iteration of the project what would you change or refine?

Reading:

• Excerpts from “Silence“, John Cage

• “What Do Prototypes Prototype?” Stephen Houde and Charles Hill

• “Experience Prototyping” Marion Buchenau and Jane Fulton Suri