I am slowly beginning to see the connections between all the courses, even though they are all very different. I see the professors pushing us to shift our perspective in our assignments, wanting us to use these submissions as a way of working on our design interventions.
I’ve noticed that people around me are managing to do so through the fabacademy challenges: Many students who were focused on biomaterials are including them in their projects, and others interested in furniture design or waste management are also framing their fabacademy work around that too.
However, as of now, I have found it hard to include my Design intervention ideas in my fabacademy weekly + monthly challenges. So far, we’ve focused mainly on laser cutting small objects, which although I’ve had fun working with, it’s kind of irrelevant to my ideas around interactive installations and multimedia projections.
What I have also noticed is that even though I am not fully making the connection between Fabacademy and my Design Interventions (yet), I am definitely there with the branding course. People have struggled defining their brand, visual identity, messaging and mission, but I have very clear ideas. Maybe this is related to my background, which so far has involved more branding and graphic design as opposed to fabrication and woodwork.
The exercise I completed with Chris during Kate's branding lesson on Monday was very helpful in defining key components for our Design Intervention: the target audience and the content. Find a more in-depth summary of the exercise here.
My reverse Design Intervention
Recently, I've been seeing great value in what I like to call "Reverse Design Interventions". Instead of me actively organising and planning an intervention myself and inviting others to participate, I decide to participate in events organised by other people, which in a way is me engaging in other peoples' Design Interventions. By doing what I'm interested in, I can be inspired and learn new things, then reframe that into an intervention. I remember Oscar saying that it's important to realise in what ways Design Interventions come to us, even simply by walking around the city.
The Frida Kahlo Exhibition
I decided to go see this exhibition on Monday, as a way of getting inspiration, networking and seeing what is around the field of Interactive exhibitions. In a way, it felt like community engagement again, trying to scout what is going on in the field I am interested in.
Two key parts I noticed right at the beginning of the exhibition: Credits and sponsors. Often times, only the sponsors are mentioned at these kinds of exhibitions, but rarely do you see the names of the people who were directly involved or the creators of the audiovisuals.
Some familiar names popped up, like UPC, BAU and Elisava, but most names were unfamiliar. To further understand the community I want to put myself in, I will do more research on the unfamiliar names.
Multilayer video projection, resembling a hologram.
Immersion and Interaction
Two key elements I picked up from the Frida Kahlo exhibition. I really enjoyed the colors, the projections and visuals that IDEAL offered.
It also opened my eyes to the idea of interactivity: there were several rooms with each one having a different kind of interactivity or immersion. The big room had video projections everywhere, one had a multilayer projection, one VR headsets, and another had mirrors all around. The most surprising one was a space dedicated to colouring Frida Kahlo pictures, and then be able to project them on the wall. It was unusual for such a high-tech space, but I think kids and adults equally enjoyed it.
From a technical perspective, I was blown away by the the seamlessness of the video mapping in the big room. Despite having over 9 projectors around the room, there was no distinction between the borders from one to another. The video seamlessness was incredible, and I would love to learn more about video mapping.
A slightly dystopic view, seeing all these people hooked onto a VR headset. I had to put a protection on top of my mask to follow covid protocol.
From now on I will try to focus my future assignments and projects around my Design Intervention. I want my projects to be more cohesive and complementary, because as of now, they seem all over the place. I want to be able to add projects to my Miro board, like a string of events and various iterations within the same space.
I will try to work more closely with ideas in alignment with my bigger goal and use the weekly assignments we have as supporting frameworks for my broad vision.