The Last Post of The Year

This post will wrap up my final project and the exhibition it was showcased in.

This is the final layout of the tracks with the bamboo skewers glued in place. As an additional precaution, long bumper skewers have been placed horizontally on both open-faced sides of each track. They bounce the marble back on course if it has skipped out of position, which is a fairly common occurrence. 

Here it is on its fancy sheet-covered podium, ready for the show! The dream that inspired it was taped to the floor directly in front of it so that viewers could get a sense of where my thought process came from.

Thanks to those who have followed my rigorous first semester at the Kansas City Art Institute! I will likely continue this blog in the future, but a similar posting frequency and thoroughness may not accompany my return. Class begins in mid January so be on the lookout for fresh material some time near then. 

The Creation of the Maze

After working with Evan in Central Shop to get usable designs for the CNC router, I was able to render my tracks in 3/4" MDF. The process went quite smoothly and the tracks all worked fairly well individually. Each track is designed to be positioned on a level surface. This is possible because the tracks themselves are designed to be sloping downward from the beginning of the path. 

This is the last section in the set of tracks. It is a simple catching dish designed to hold the marbles after they fall through the maze. It was turned on a lathe, pictured below.

Snazzy lathe.

 Here the CNC router is shown. The first track has already been completed at this point and the second is underway. 

 All tracks have been completed here and are sitting on top of the router. 

Track number 6

Track number 5

Track number 4

Track number 3

 Track number 2

Here are a couple views of the structure I created to hold the tracks in place being glued together and held tight with a ton of clamps. 

This is a shot of the end result with some bamboo skewers stuck in haphazardly. The plan is to use the skewers to guide the marbles from track to track smoothly so that they don't go flying out. This is a temporary solution though and may not be present in the final design. Everything hinges on the group's opinion of this aesthetic change.

Closeups of the skewers.

Reaction to the Creative Writing Symposium

The final symposium of the year was over the topics of prose and poetry, the two key subsections of the creative writing department. These two subjects are very closely related and have a large amount of overlap. Both are means of conveying ideas and both involve the written word. These two factors are some of the only concrete descriptors of the medium. There is expansive leeway involved in what counts as either prose or poetry, but there are a couple differences here and there. Poetry, for instance, tends to rely on the appreciation of sound and rhythm, whereas prose tends to focus on ideas and content. Both can work interchangeably, but for the most part, poems are shorter than prose, and prose is less rhythmic than poetry. 

Poetry is typically thought of as a set of sentences that follow a definite pattern and rhyme structure, but this is no longer true of all poetry. Many new poets experiment with poems that follow no rhyme scheme, have little to no structure, and sometimes do not even have correct spellings. This is important because current poets are challenging the status quo of hundreds of years of repetition and tradition. They are beginning to be more open minded in what it means to convey experience and emotion through the written word. There are some who are even trying to change what poems can be in the form of the spoken word. Tracie Morris recited her poem "It All Started" in a way that was more music than poem, putting unique tonal emphasis on different sections of her 12 word poem. She repeated some sections for long periods of time, and others she skipped quickly over, and the result was a performance that could not be conveyed through text alone. The poem transcended the limitations of the written word. This was a relatively small message however, and did not feel particularly fleshed out. 
Prose does not have this difficulty.

Where poetry is decisive and clean cut, prose is drawn out and detailed. Prose offers the opportunity to deeply explore ideas, characters, and settings that might be overly distilled in poetry. It allows for the lengthy examination of things that would be quickly skipped over in a poem. A short story can spend ten pages discussing the drudgery of someone's morning routine, but a poem could only capture short snippets, and as a result, lose the sense of boredom inherent in such a long description. Poetry is not worse off for its brevity though, and generally benefits from its punchy delivery. But when a minute or two of reading is just not enough to accurately and completely describe a situation, prose is where it's at. This being said, if I were to endeavor to become a writer, I would almost certainly become a poet instead of a novelist. My style caters to the creation of short and condensed lines with the ability to jump quickly from idea to idea. I do not care to dwell for too long on any particular concept or story if I can help it. 

Evolution of the Maze

After extensive experimentation with cardboard, I have isolated a set of designs I feel comfortable recreating in a more refined medium. The following are vector graphic layouts that will be used as blueprints for the final product. The images act as guidelines for a machine known as a CNC router, which is capable of accurately recreating almost any three dimensional design in wood. The design process is fairly simple because each line can be created with a single pass by a large drill bit. The thickness of the lines is a visual aid I included, not a part of the blueprint. Only the paths and curves will be noted by the machine. Likewise, the colors are only an aid in the layout process, not a part of the actual final product. Though I am planning on painting the entirety of the wood that is carved out.

Each image is connected to the one prior. Whenever a line is terminated in one image, the next has a line that begins in that position. This is to ensure a precise flow from one maze to the next. The progression moves from black to red to blue and so on. There will be seven stages in total, with one stage acting as a container for the fallen marbles. It will not be emptied during the entirety of the exhibition so it will need to be fairly large and sturdy to withstand the weight and consistent impact. 

This is a crude diagram depicting the structure that will support the mazes. The actual final product will not have four separate supports, but instead two walls that hold the edges of the boards. Two sides will be left open for the viewing of the action. 

Development of Tangible Mazes AKA Playin' With Cardboard

After getting some potential designs together, I began construction. This meant the careful cutting, taping, and gluing of cardboard. 

This was my rendition of the landscape maze. Fairly simple in design, I will add details of interest if it is utilized in the final product.

Here is my track for the office building design. Slightly more interesting than the landscape as it can be viewed in the round. 

Angled view

The first wall of the building. This was just to confirm that the windows were located in the correct spot for the marble to seen as it went down the track.

The first finished wall of the building.

Interior view of one of the floors of the maze from the side. I find this shot intriguing and may experiment with other photos of cardboard interior spaces.

The second wall in place.

Three walls up now. I did not make a fourth because I enjoyed watching the marble roll down the track from this many angles. I may add the fourth, but I will ask around before moving forward.

Opposite side.

First attempt at the more organic version of the maze. It was generally a failure and did not allow the marble to roll all the way down due to differences in the width of the track, but it was still an interesting experiment. 

My second attempt at an organic design was far more successful and had few hitches. For its design I was sure to make the track wider than the marble at every section.

Planning

Before I rushed into designing my final piece, I began by sketching a number of potential ideas. The following are the doodles and proposed designs that I composed during the first two studio days. 

Initial plans included simple compositions representing stagnation and motivation and materials that emphasize those qualities.

Soon after I came up with ideas that ranged from photo manipulation to sculptures of strange blind figures to a rotating device designed to keep a marble in a continuous rotation around a circular track. 

After some thought I moved forward with the marble track idea and developed some designs that could work with rubber tubing.

The next day I scrapped the marble idea and went on to a design for costumes that would emphasize stagnation.

My costume ideas were boring me so I returned to the marble maze. This time, I decided to complicate the housing of the actual track.

Here I continued to complicate the track and ended up with an idea for tracks that represent different life choices. This is seen in the idyllic landscape and the cold office building.

Most recently I started to return to more organic representations of choice and its integration with the dream, which suggested that no "choice" truly existed. 

Reaction to the Printmaking Symposium

The printmaking symposium was one of the less innovative of the bunch, but still displayed some interesting commercial and artistic applications for this ancient medium. Printmaking has been around since ancient China began making wood block prints. Since then this art form has expanded into the realm of lithography, etching, screen printing, inkjet prints, and even prints made from elements found in nature. Printing is most notable for its ability to manufacture the same image numerous times quickly and efficiently. This has made it extremely useful for advertising, posters and flyers, newspapers, etc. Printmaking still exists in its more primitive forms, but they now exist primarily to add texture and intrigue to standard inkjet or laser prints. For instance, when asked to design labels for Beck's brand beer, Tim Head chose to make wood block prints and scan the resulting images. The outcome was a set of images that could never have been created through purely digital means, painting, drawing, or any other medium. They had a handmade feel that was simultaneously clean and earthy. This technique is currently quite popular in the world of design when a more organic vibe is desired. Printmaking still exists in its original form as well however.

A recent trend is the sale of posters, cards, stationary, and other paper goods that have been handprinted. Shops such as Hammerpress, Tugboat Printshop, and Cannonball Press to name a few. Paper prints such as these are fairly traditional however, and printmaking can also show up in the form of more formal artistic formats such as installations. One example of this is the project by SEMEFO which took unclaimed bodies and made prints with them. It took the prints and hung them in a public location along a long wall, emphasizing the large number present. This is a morose example, but it demonstrates the growth that printmaking has seen since the days of Chinese block printing. This medium does not have quite the same room for innovation as others we have learned about recently, but it does have the same potential for unique and impactful image design. I appreciate the fact that prints can only be made up of positive and negative space with no room for shades of gray and their textural qualities are quite interesting. I intend to look deeper into the possibilities present in this ancient medium and explore the types of images I could create, but I do not think I will try to make a career out of it.

My Proposed Schedule for the Last Project of the Year

The dreams discussed in "Einstein's Dreams" are to be the subject matter for the final project of the year. Luckily, there are a ton of interesting, deep ideas to work with. Furthermore, we have been given the freedom to choose to design our final piece with whichever medium we desire. This freedom does come at the cost of being able to quickly and efficiently decide on a direction to move in however. There will not be enough time to run through many different media, studies, and experiments due to the two and a half week time constraint. This being said, I have compiled a loose schedule for the way in which I should divide my time between the various challenges of this assignment. 

Nov. 12 - Explore concepts and potential symbolism 
Nov. 13 - Finalize concepts
Nov. 14 - Experiment with and explore potential media for proper execution
Nov. 15-17 - Make at least two small scale proofs of concept 
Nov. 18 - Select most successful model and create a layout/confirm design and composition
Nov. 19 - Begin work on final piece
Nov. 20 - Continue work
Nov. 21 - Troubleshoot and determine if the current direction is working, or if it needs to be reconsidered. This is the point of no return.
Nov. 22-24 - Complete the piece
Nov. 25 - Polish piece and design or manufacture display method
Nov. 26 - Display and present

This schedule is of course very loose at this stage since I do not know what I will be creating over the course of the next two weeks and change, so this model will likely be updated. 

Einstein's Dreams

Recently, my studio class was told to read the novel "Einstein's Dreams" by Alan Lightman, a collection of fictional realities that are loosely based on Albert Einstein's concepts of relativity. Many of the worlds described in these stories are allegorical in nature and discuss issues that have influenced society. Though the stories differ from one another in many ways, they are all connected by the central theme of time. Each and every proposed universe is dominated by a different set of rules for the way in which time affects and interacts with the human race. This could include time moving backwards, moving at different speeds in different places, and even not moving at all. Of the numerous and varied worlds however, I am most interested by the world described on May 22 in the novel. 

In this world, time is not fully linear. It moves sporadically and shakily, and as a result, the inhabitants of this universe are occasionally given a brief vision of their future. This leads to a world that is simultaneously efficient and chaotic. Because some are given visions of future events and conditions, they are able to plan accordingly and take advantage of their new foresight. Construction workers might  abruptly alter the course of roads to fit more concisely with the placement of future buildings, individuals might move in order to be available for a job they have seen themselves performing in the future, and so on. Not everyone gets a vision at the same time, or even ever at all, and this results in an intriguing dichotomy: those who have seen future events and those who have not. Those who have seen their future are capable of making decisions to bring that vision to fruition, whereas those who have not remain idle and paralyzed by uncertainty. They refuse to make choices that could result in the wasting of time, effort, or money. A sort of third group exists however, as those who have received their vision occasionally refute it. Of course this is futile, as the future is set and inescapable, but members of this group still hold onto a hope for change and freedom from the future.

Though this type of existence seems strange and foreign, it is largely applicable to modern life. Ours is a world of opportunity, and in it, we must react to everyday stimulus in the best way we know how. We have a sense for the future and attempt to achieve a vision of success or a method of living that suits our desires. People who believe that they can see where they would like to be in life are often the ones who are driven, while those who see nothing beyond the moment remain in the present and do not strive toward any particular goal. Though happy individuals can exist within both categories of living, more often than not, those who have a goal to work toward are more contented than those who have no sense of their future desires or objectives. Those who coast through life uncertain of which paths they should take or how they should move forward often feel paralyzed and nervous about the progress of their peers. This existence leads to mindsets that question the need for motivation and the need for societal participation. Why work toward getting an education if one day you might realize you love nothing more than collecting garbage? People without direction wait for opportunity to fall into their lap that will give them something to achieve. However, if the individual is truly stagnated, they will often remain ignorant to the presence of opportunities they could have taken advantage of, had they been more attentive to the world around them. This is not to say that those without direction are alone in their difficulties however.

There are others who may be coerced into certain occupations, relationships, or other activities which they do not wish to accept, despite being a clear objective. Many wish to have the freedom to make their own choices and choose their own paths. People deny entry into family businesses, arranged marriages, and other futures on a regular basis. The set destinies of the novel are not applicable here except perhaps as a satirical jab at the belief that we are slaves to the future. 

This chapter is widely applicable to the concepts of choice and motivation, and it is intriguing to consider some of the potential causes behind such prevalent factors in the human condition.

Second to Last Value Project Post

Below are a couple images of me modeling the better of the two shirts I printed for the assignment. I will be modeling again tomorrow in a more formal setting, but these shots were taken with context in mind. They are a little more abstract than applicable to real life due to the big present on my head. I wanted to convey generosity in a way that did not involve the interaction of multiple people because such an image would detract from the focal point of my shirt. The box is a big part of the image but I feel that it is not so overpowering as to make the shirt irrelevant. All photos were taken by Carly Haight.