final

Our final project was a book report of sorts. A compilation of all the work we had done throughout the term. In a way to try and sum up what we had accomplished and what we still have to work on. Much of the text in the book, is text that I used in my blogs or text from the projects themselves. Seeing this text over and over again really made me think about the projects themselves and how I felt about them. Overall I am pretty pleased with the projects produced from this term. Being confined to a very specific topic was definitely something that I struggled with throughout the entire term. But I think it was a good practice for me because we can't always produce things that we want to make. Sometimes we just have to create things under an established theme or topic, and that's all fine and well. But it is something I most definitely fought with. These projects, in theory, did not come easily to me. Here are a couple of spreads from the final book.

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For our third project, Jess and I wanted to focus on the idea of community and what that is exactly. In trying to figure this out, we decided that community is made up of two things, the structures that people inhabit and the people that inhabit them. We went around to 6 consumer stores with a tape recorder and recorded conversations people were having. We got as close to them as possible under the guise of looking at a scarf, or some DVDs, disguising ourselves as consumers as well. After we finished doing this, we then went back to our studio and listened to the recordings we had accumulated. While listening to them, we wrote down the words and sounds that we heard, as a practice of giving the intangible idea of "community" a tangible counter part. The next two posts contain a picture and the introductory paragraph from the books that we compiled from the images we created of community.

spaces

When first trying to investigate how we can define community, what it really is, we first thought of the structures in which we live, work and go to school. We were very attracted to looking at these spaces without any people in them. Like that eerie feeling you get, when you are driving down the road early in the morning, and you are the only one around. It just doesn’t feel right, and why is that? We weren’t sure and that’s why we embarked on this project. We wanted to find out what attracted us to these spaces that exist even when people are not around. Empty parking lots, stores, buildings, all these structures that make up our society and are always there. No matter the time of night or day, they are always there, concrete. And by investigating our initial and gut attraction to these spaces, we began to really think about what makes up community. We realized that while these structures are inherently important, they are not what community is. Even though it may have been a little backwards, by looking into our initial idea a little further, we actually came out with something more tangible. It’s the idea that people are what make up community, but that these structures, which we inhabit, are also important and viable. The structures are what bring us together as a community; they are what allow for a community to exist, even if they are not, by themselves, the community.

community

We set up a task for ourselves, a game really, to try and come to terms with what community exactly is. We went to six different consumer stores and walked around, with a tape recorder. One of the fascinating parts to this process was trying to rediscover our own sense of awareness to our surroundings. We had to force our brains to stop censoring all the auxiliary noise that we usually leave for our subconscious, and actually focus on it so that we could find those sounds and record them. Even through this process our brains really only found the sounds that were most blatant: babies crying, children screaming, people who have very loud indoor voice. But on occasion, we would happen across a personal conversation between two people or an interaction between a sales associate and a customer. The recorder also picked up a lot of sounds the store makes on its own, the beeping sound of the check out line, the ringing of a telephone gone unanswered, the announcements over the intercom. And in an attempt to discover what makes up community, we actually figured out what community feels like, what community actually is. As a non-tangible entity, community exists not because of the spaces, the architecture in which we inhabit; it exists as the people who live in these spaces. As a way to understand the place in which we live, we first need to understand the people with whom we share our space. The following pages are our interpretations of these people, who ultimately are community.

group installation

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Our second project, in response to the first project, I teamed up with Sean Kesterson, Karlin Johnson, Daniel Sexton and Jess Andrews. We screen printed 800 small postcards that had our team logo on it, designed by Jess. We decided that this logo would be our "brand" and the focal point in our community outreach. We had over 1,000 logos vinyl cut in a bright cyan that we agreed as a group would be the most eye catching. But just having a logo EVERYWHERE around campus was just not going to be enough. So we also designed posters to be put up as well. And in typical democracy fashion, we voted on the three that we thought would work best for our concept. The ones we used were designed by Daniel, Karlin and Jess. For the small postcards that we printed, we strung them on twine and hung them from the trees on campus. And while campus security did not let them stay there for long, they were absolutely beautiful while they were up. The following paragraph is something I wrote immediately after the installation of the project. After staying up all night installing everything, I wrote about how I felt the project went.

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Overall, I would say that our initiative was successful. It wasn’t as viral as I think most of us hoped it would be, but I truly believe that this is what makes the project that much better. Whenever a group of like minds is trying to spread an idea, or a product to a wide range of people, being subtle actually works better than being over conspicuous. Everyday, we are bombarded by media that tells us what to wear, where to eat, what kind of people we should be through our consumerism, to the point that most just block the majority out of their conscience. And this, at that point, is where subtly comes in and clever branding thrives. Seeing a logo somewhere when you are all by yourself, you stop and actually take the time to for your brain to process it. You see the logo in places where you least expect it, bathroom stalls, stairwells, doorways, drinking fountains…etc. And you recognize this logo, because you have seen it somewhere else before. And your brain starts thinking. Where have I seen that? When was that? What was that for? Maybe you don’t figure it out for a couple of days, but it drives you crazy. And when you finally remember that it was for a campaign to get people to vote, you actually take time out of your day and you think. You think about whether you voted this year or not, maybe you regret not voting and convince yourself that next time you will, maybe you reaffirm that you were right in voting and you know that every time you have the opportunity you will vote. Or, maybe you think about how irritating it was to see all those logos everywhere, but, you are still thinking about voting. And at the very subconscious level, your brain thinks about voting. And maybe next time, this logo will pop up in your mind when an election happens. Maybe you will think about the people who put that campaign together and spent their time to make people more socially aware. And maybe, it will work and if you didn’t vote that year, you will. Or maybe, it won’t work and you still won’t vote, but you are still thinking about the process of voting. And maybe, just maybe, someday, after thinking about it long enough, you will change your mind and realize the tremendous importance to voting.