The Kusudama Experiment

Check out the details about my TDS: Beautiful Networks project based on the Kusudama, a traditional modular Japanese origami design. I wanted a way to visualize a complex system using origami to explorepaper with old map graphics printed on the blank side.

What Do You Notice? What Do You Care to Notice?

Yesterday, I presented my Communication Design 2 experiential space. The assignment was to translate one medium into another – I was asked to translate an interactive website (tenbyten.org) into an exhibit/experiential space. The twist was that I also had to convey my point of view as how this pertains to me as a Media Designer.

Getting to the presentation seemed like quite a journey. Sketches, exhibit space investigations, more sketches, mini mock-ups, writing and rewriting my process and ambitions, scanning, reading, searching, editing, designing, printing, cutting, wrapping…And through this all I rehearsed in my mind what this whole process meant to me, and I had to take note of the changes emerging in my understanding of the entire experience.

About the Exhibit
The exhibit was titled “What Do You Notice? What Do You Care to Notice?” I wanted people to see how the affordances of a 3-D space could allow people to feel more engaged about the news. I attempted to translate the flat space of the news (particularly in newsprint and web-based news) into an actual space. I also attempted to convey how the physical engagement with the news articles could assist in developing a closer, more personal experience with context that often seems so distant from many of our own lives. The exhibit was meant to also redefine the intentions of traditional headlines. If a headine’s purpose is to catch a reader’s attention, how can scale, context and tactility do the same, or better? The experiential space opened up opportunities to think about other ways to push this idea further. What if these cubes were digital? What if every side changed out every hour? What if you could sit on these cubes? E-paper? OLED screens perhaps? And where would a space such as this exist successfully? And can we, as designers, compel people to interact with them? How would such a space change conversations around current events, or change social interactions with one another and with objects in space? The questions are endless, but that only means there are more possibilities to push this further so it might one day (cross my fingers) exist in the real world.

How might one enable the viewer to continue to explore the message beyond the experiential space?…by giving away takeaway cards!

These were printed on newsprint and mounted on cardstock. The flipside said: “We are captured by the provocative. Our ambitions and interests allow us to delve deeper, beyond our curious first impressions. We seek to know how the world is evolving around us. But how do we seek for answers?”

This side of the box focused on significant words pulled from the headlines.

People were free to move the cubes around in order to configure and display their own point of view

An Abstraction of LA

business cards of restaurants around L.A. Hmm, where to eat, where to eat…

Today our Beautiful Networks class worked outdoors on an abstraction of Los Angeles. Last week, each of us scoured a part of Los Angeles on foot that we considered unfamiliar. People visited places such as MacArthur Park, Altadena, West Los Angeles, and Eagle Rock. We documented and collected artifacts of our areas and presented visualizations in the form of film, photography, sound and even rubbings.

We took our experiences and decided to push our visualizations into something more cohesive for the class. Each of us contributed materials – some of brought found artifacts from our walks, some brought basic supplies, some brought found objects from around campus, while others brought their own models, illustrations and photographs. We worked from about 8am until noon and utilized an outdoor space behind the school to construct our interpretation of L.A.

There were several interesting phenomenas that occurred amidst the building and making. We all started off working on separate parts of the construct. As time passed, we started to naturally merge all the various aspects of the project to form a more networked and relative form. It was interesting to see how the cohesiveness of the project emerged in a natural and almost unspoken way. Some things were formed with intention while other things emerged from mistakes, ah-ha moments and serendipitous discussions.

When we came together to discuss the results of our work, we realized that as abstract as our materials and formations seemed, we were interacting in a subconscious and metaphoric way to represent our experiences of L.A. It wasn’t just the end results that revealed our understanding of this place, but also the act of having to build together that helped us realize the complicated and self-emergent networks of this metropolis.

We will be attempting to further our interpretations of this project and have already begun to brainstorm how we can push this project further over the course of the next few weeks. Keep checking out our blog for our latest updates. If you are interested in seeing more photos of today’s work, visit my Flickr site.

the set up has begun! a network made of pipe cleaners.

smog being represented by found garbage bags

plastic bags representing LA smog juxtaposing the nature around us

The City of Angels…big city of dreams. “Everyday in LA ain’t always what it seems.”

Beautiful Networks

This term, I’m taking a transdisciplinary (TDS) studio course called “Beautiful Networks.” The aim of the course is to bring students up to date in their respective creative practices by introducing the new models and strategies of observation and problem solving used by “systems” thinkers across fields and throughout the globe. It’s a timey course in that I believe we are at a stage where issues of sustainability and systems thinking is coming to the forefront and is necessary in our endeavors to strengthen and preserve our global society.

We are currently in the midst of compiling our research on tract homes and wildfires. Over the next few weeks, we will be making connections between our research work as well as brainstorming how we intend to create a coherent endpoint around the issue.

Check out the blog: http://beautifulnetworks.wordpress.com/

My main role in the course right now is to research and visualize the socio-cultural aspects of a tract home community. My group is brainstorming not only ideal (but of course very possible) ways of transforming tract homes to be more sustainable (in the context of wildfires), but also pressing the need to have a strong socio-cultural network in a community.