Due: Wed., Jan. 23

Create five improvised, unusually shaped inflatables, each at least the size of your head. You are supplied with colorful plastic and tape for this project. You are also welcome to use your own plastic and tape. You are also supplied with straws in order to blow up the completed forms.

Allow the inflatables to be quirky, unusual, even strange. Experiment with the materials without knowing what the shape will become. Cut random shapes out of the plastic and then tape them together in a new order to see what happens. Cut the plastic into strips and curves, and then reassemble them in a new order to find a new shape.  What forms are created when you put a round shape and a straight shape together? What character or characteristics does the form begin to take on? Is there a verb for what the shape is doing? As you are making these intuitive shapes look for what amuses you or seems quirky, weird or unexpected.

At the core of this assignment is creating a form that is unusual and unexpected. Aim to surprise us next week in class with your shapes and discoveries. 

Come prepared to share your inflatables with the class.

Documentation

• Documentation is due within one week after the assignment due date above.
• Upload your documentation to the Gallery section of the class website. Here are instructions on How to Submit Your Project to the Gallery.
• Your documentation should include:
  • a paragraph outlining your explorations: your process, discoveries, successes, challenges.
  • photographs or short videos of your objects (Please embed the video so it can be directly viewed; you may either upload an MP4 file to our server or use supported third-party hosting, such as Vimeo or Youtube, etc.)

Assessment

Points for this project will be divided amongst the following criteria:

EXPERIMENTATION/ RISK-TAKING/ INVENTIVENESS: The maker’s willingness to take risks (in composition, formal choices, materials, ideas, and content) is evident. Also important is the maker’s openness to new ideas, chance occurrences, and feedback throughout the creative process.

EXECUTION: Decisions about materials used and the manner in which the work is constructed, fabricated, and composed are deliberate. The maker’s choices indicate an awareness of how formal issues, materials and processes contribute to the interpretation or experience of the work.

DOCUMENTATION: Documentation well represents the works. It is clear, focused, and without extra elements that distract from experiencing the work. It includes both written reflection and photographic or video elements. Photographs are large enough for us to easily view the works.

Create a written list of 50 different ways you can transform a sewn sphere to create something new.

Bring a paper copy of your list to turn in.

Basic primary forms can transform into expressive and complex shapes through a wide variety of physical manipulations. For our purposes, primary forms include spheres, cubes, cones, and cylinders. By exerting forces on the interior and/or exterior of the skin of the form, a whole world of new shapes, textures, and expressions open up: pushing, pulling, stretching, contracting, tucking, bursting, poking, creating tension and compression….

For this assignment, create three sewn primary forms that you will then transform into unusual, expressive, new forms. Begin by sewing the forms from the patterns given to you in class. Then experiment with manipulating each shape until you arrive at something you find interesting, expressive, and unexpected. Some ways of manipulating the form include, but are not limited to: binding with string, pinching with string and buttons, stretching with exterior strings, filling with unusual materials, piercing the shape, and so many more methods you will invent. You could also make extra primary forms and graft them together to create a new more complex shape. You should experiment until you find an expressive, interesting, and unexpected new form.

Come prepared to share your Push/Pull Objects with the class.

Documentation

• Documentation is due within one week after the assignment due date above.
• Upload your documentation to the Gallery section of the class website. Here are instructions on How to Submit Your Project to the Gallery.
• Your documentation should include:
  • a paragraph outlining your explorations: your process, discoveries, successes, challenges.
  • photographs or short videos of your objects (Please embed the video so it can be directly viewed; you may either upload an MP4 file to our server or use supported third-party hosting, such as Vimeo or Youtube, etc.)

Assessment

Points for this project will be divided amongst the following criteria:

EXPERIMENTATION/ RISK-TAKING/ INVENTIVENESS: The maker’s willingness to take risks (in composition, formal choices, materials, ideas, and content) is evident. Also important is the maker’s openness to new ideas, chance occurrences, and feedback throughout the creative process.

EXECUTION: Decisions about materials used and the manner in which the work is constructed, fabricated, and composed are deliberate. The maker’s choices indicate an awareness of how formal issues, materials and processes contribute to the interpretation or experience of the work.

DOCUMENTATION: Documentation well represents the works. It is clear, focused, and without extra elements that distract from experiencing the work. It includes both written reflection and photographic or video elements. Photographs are large enough for us to easily view the works.

Due: Mon., Feb. 25

For this assignment you will work with a partner to create an inflatable that alters our experience of a space within the library. You and your partner will use your objects from Part 1 of the Push/Pull assignment as studies for creating an inflatable sculpture and installation. Your sculpture will be based upon combining two or more of you and your partner’s Push/Pull objects and enlarging them.

Steps for this assignment, you and your partner will:

1. share your objects with each other and talk about what is exciting about the potential in combining some of your objects.
2. select a space in the library where you will install your sculpture for our critique. *
3. select two or more of your objects to combine to create an inflatable sculptural installation. This new inflatable sculpture should be customized to the space you have selected.
4. create your inflatable by enlarging the pattern pieces and sewing them together. Your enlargement needs to be at least a scale of 1 inch to 6 inches.
5. add an air tube to your inflatable so that a fan can inflate your new shape. Where is the best location on your inflatable to place the air tube? Remember to also find out where the nearest outlet is at your installation location so you can plan where the fan will need to be.
6. modify your inflatable so that it is customized to the space you have selected by trying it out in the space, observing it, and making changes that you think will enhance our experience of the space. The inflatable will behave differently than the original stuffed object. Once you have made the inflatable ask yourself, “what is interesting to me/us about the inflatable version? what alterations can I/we make to emphasize these new elements?”
7. prepare to share it with the class by rehearsing your setup. Each team will set up their inflatable right before we see it for critique. To make this go smoothly, each team needs to practice setting up their installation in a short amount of time.

* Notes about selecting a space in the library:

• Your inflatable cannot impede exits or entrances of the library. Nor should your inflatable block elevators and/or stairwells. Passersby need safe and accessible ways through the library. You can, though, alter a space that is away from main hallways, exits, entrances, stairs or elevators.
• Please be quiet when you are testing out your inflatable piece so as not to disturb people studying.
• Make sure your inflatable does not damage any books, structures, artworks, furniture, people(!) etc. in the library.
• Test out your inflatable in our classroom before testing it out in another space.
• When in doubt, ask Olivia or Miranda.

Materials

You will be provided with ripstop nylon to use for this assignment. Please be cognizant of not wasting material as you cut out your pattern pieces – it is our shared resource and will also be used for future assignments.

Some ideas to consider:

• How does the change in scale affect your choices in color or surface pattern?>
• How will the installation your inflatable affect our experience of of the shape and also of the space?
• Are there changes to the patterns that you envision for the larger version?
• Lighting can also be a fun element to play with for the inflatables.

Design Parameters:

• Use mainly the black and white ripstop nylon.
• Use up to 1 yard of 1 other color (not black or white), but no more.

Come prepared to share your inflatables with the class for critique.

Documentation

• Documentation is due within one week after the assignment due date above.
• Upload your documentation to the Gallery section of the class website. Here are instructions on How to Submit Your Project to the Gallery.
• Your documentation should include:
  • a paragraph outlining your explorations: your process, discoveries, successes, challenges.
  • photographs or short videos of your objects (Please embed the video so it can be directly viewed; you may either upload an MP4 file to our server or use supported third-party hosting, such as Vimeo or Youtube, etc.)

Assessment

Points for this project will be divided amongst the following criteria:

PRESENTATION / INSTALLATION: The project demonstrates the maker’s careful consideration of the ways in which the work is installed/presented for critique (including site, location in space, relationship to the viewers).

EXPERIMENTATION/ RISK-TAKING/ INVENTIVENESS: The maker’s willingness to take risks (in composition, formal choices, materials, ideas, and content) is evident. Also important is the maker’s openness to new ideas, chance occurrences, and feedback throughout the creative process.

EXECUTION: Decisions about materials used and the manner in which the work is constructed, fabricated, and composed are deliberate. The maker’s choices indicate an awareness of how formal issues, materials and processes contribute to the interpretation or experience of the work.

COLLABORATION: The maker is an active collaborator in the project throughout the process. This includes, but is not limited to: responsive and open communication with collaborator, sharing in the tasks related to the project, actively listening and open to the ideas of their collaborator, contributes ideas to be considered for the project, open to suggestions, and follows through with what they have said they would do.

DOCUMENTATION: Documentation well represents the works. It is clear, focused, and without extra elements that distract from experiencing the work. It includes both written reflection and photographic or video elements. Photographs are large enough for us to easily view the works.

“Doppelgänger: (German “double walker”) is a paranormal double of a living person, typically representing evil or misfortune. In modern vernacular, the word has come to refer to any double or look-alike of a person.” (Wikipedia.org)

Recreating an everyday object out of new materials, such as fabric, changes our experience of that object. In this assignment we are going to explore this potential. How does the new weight or texture change our understanding of the object? How does the particular fabric change it? How does our interaction change?

Select an object from your life that you will replicate in cloth. Using the pattern-making skills and sewing construction techniques we’ve learned in class, make a textile doppelgänger of your object. We will use time in class to begin the patterning work. Choose an item that is not too simple (a piece of chalk) and not too complex (an inline skate).

You can make your doppelgänger the same size, smaller or larger. Shifts in scale must be attended to—if you are re-creating an object in at a tiny scale, you must hand-sew in the small details. On the other hand, if you are going large, remember to scale up all materials—thread might become rope when sewing a large sculpture.

Come prepared to share your Doppelgänger with the class.

Documentation

• Documentation is due within one week after the assignment due date above.
• Upload your documentation to the Gallery section of the class website. Here are instructions on How to Submit Your Project to the Gallery.
• Your documentation should include:
  • a paragraph outlining your explorations: your process, discoveries, successes, challenges.
  • photographs or short videos of your objects (Please embed the video so it can be directly viewed; you may either upload an MP4 file to our server or use supported third-party hosting, such as Vimeo or Youtube, etc.)

Assessment

Points for this project will be divided amongst the following criteria:

CONCEPTUAL RIGOR/ CONTENT: The maker develops works that pose questions, are informed by deliberate content, and critically engage viewers beyond the aesthetic realm. Maker demonstrates awareness of their work’s existence within the contexts of culture, history of the field, and critical theory.

EXPERIMENTATION/ RISK-TAKING/ INVENTIVENESS: The maker’s willingness to take risks (in composition, formal choices, materials, ideas, and content) is evident. Also important is the maker’s openness to new ideas, chance occurrences, and feedback throughout the creative process.

EXECUTION: Decisions about materials used and the manner in which the work is constructed, fabricated, and composed are deliberate. The maker’s choices indicate an awareness of how formal issues, materials and processes contribute to the interpretation or experience of the work.

DOCUMENTATION: Documentation well represents the works. It is clear, focused, and without extra elements that distract from experiencing the work. It includes both written reflection and photographic or video elements. Photographs are large enough for us to easily view the works.

Our class will create inflatable environments for an evening concert held in collaboration with the Exploded Ensemble on Sat., May 4. Our environments will be the visual, spatial, and textural experience of the concert. Our class will be divided into four teams and each team will create a spatial environment for the audience. This can be a structure, a sculpture, or a collection of sculptures to create the space.  The concert event will take place in the ACH (Alumni Concert Hall) in the CFA Building. Each team will have ¼ of the ACH to utilize. We will also need to conceptualize how the four structures-environments-settings will work together in the space. Over the next three weeks, your group is to create a proposal and physical mock-up/model of an idea to present to the class.

Elements of your proposal:

1. Organized Google Folder of all drawings, sketches, research, brainstorming, and notes from your team meetings. Take turns being a note-taker at all of your team meetings.
2. Drawn (by-hand and/or on computer) image(s) of proposed environment.
3. Written description of idea and concept (1-3 paragraphs).
4. Birds-eye-view drawing of where fans, outlets, audience, and environmental elements will be located.
5. Physical mock-up of your proposed piece(s)
6. Draft of pattern and estimate of materials needed.

Timeline to follow:

• Feb. 28 – collect contact info for all members of your group. Schedule a time to meet just before Spring Break.
• Feb. 28-Mar. 7 – Before you go to your group’s first meeting, find an hour to go the ACH to sketch and each sketch ideas for your project. ACH schedule url: http://bit.ly/CFA-ACH
• Mar. 5-Mar. 12 – Meet with your group to share your sketched ideas and brainstorm new ones. Decide on how you want to share and/or distribute the tasks and next steps.
• Mar. 12-Mar. 18 – Meet with your group to continue working.
• Mar. 18 & 20 – In-class proposal check-in with Olivia.
• Mar. 18-25 – Meet again, or multiple times, with group to finalize proposal and elements.
• Present Proposal Mar. 25

When brainstorming the design for the environment, keep the following in mind:

• The working theme for the event is cycles
• There will need to be a place for the musicians to set-up equipment with access to nearby outlets and perform (note plan on reverse)
• The environment should be wheelchair accessible
• Up to 75 people will be staying for the entire concert
• Another 100 people may come and go during the event
• Color-changing lights can be used and should be considered.
• We can use all the ripstop we have already, plus could buy another 100 yards of two different colors. If other materials are also needed, we may be able to purchase those too.

Some questions to think about:

• • What would you like people to see as they are looking up when lying down or lounging?
  • How should people to flow through the space?
  • How will people enter and exit?
  • What is the overall feeling you imagine for the event? Does it change over time?
  • Where will the fans go?
  • What is a minimal sculptural gesture to alter the space?
  • What is a maximal sculptural gesture to alter the space?

Examples of Music:

• • Recording of Exploded Ensemble concert Fall 2018
  • Dawn of Midi performance
  • Einstein on the Beach
  • the above examples are not the exact music for the May 4 concert, but they are good references of the types of music the Exploded Ensemble will perform at the concert

Come prepared to share your proposals with the class for discussion. Upload your proposals to the class website by due date, March 25.

ACH Basic Layout

ACH Map with dimensions