Final Exhibition: Saturday, April 29
Overview
Our class will create inflatable environments for an evening event held in collaboration with the Tuba Ensemble, and the Animation course. Our environments will create the spatial experience of the event. Our class will be divided into five teams and each team will create an inflatable spatial experience 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 at WQED. Each team will have a portion of space there to utilize. We will also need to conceptualize how the structures-environments-settings will work together in the space. Your group is to create a proposal of an idea to present to the class.
Theme
The theme for this final project is Landscape. A landscape is a space that you can visually and spacial traverse. Think about this theme expansively. A landscape does not need to look like a typical landscape: it can be abstract, it could be from outer-space, it could simply imply landscape because of having a tunnel people walk through or a harbor people can walk into, it can look like a garden, or something completely different. It will be up to your team to decide what makes your design a landscape.
Our class will create inflatable environments for an evening event held in collaboration with the Tuba Ensemble, the Animation course, and Kinetic Fabrics. Our environments will create the spatial experience of the event. Our class will be divided into five teams and each team will create an inflatable spatial experience 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 at WQED. Each team will have a portion of space there to utilize. We will also need to conceptualize how the structures-environments-settings will work together in the space. Your group is to create a proposal of an idea to present to the class.
Over the course of the next four weeks teams will collaboratively work to realize a large-scale inflatable based upon their proposed ideas. This large collaboration will require skills in listening, communication, time management, shared responsibility, planning, flexibility, as well as many more.
From here on out, class periods will be focused on working towards our final event: teams working on their sculptures, technical workshops to support the projects, or event planning as a group. Every week, teams will meet with their instructor (Olivia) for feedback. Each team will create a timeline and practical material plan. This timeline will be a tool for reaching our goal of realized sculptures for our final event.
We will have one full day of installation rehearsal and then one full evening of final installation. Team’s projects will need to keep an element of flexibility during installation because we are collaborating with the Animation class for the overall layout of the event. Each team will be responsible for installing and lighting their sculpture (with support from instructors). Teams will also be responsible for having team members at the event and to participate in the full strike of the show at the end of the event.
Assessment
Points for this project will be divided amongst the following criteria:
RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT: The project demonstrates the maker’s investment and effort in developing the initial idea into a realized work. Preliminary investigation of ideas through drawings & sketches, samples/prototypes, explorations with techniques and materials, and other forms of research to guide the maker’s process for their full-scale project. As challenges arise during the process of making the work, the maker accepts limitations as they surface, makes regular assessments of their work, and pivots to incorporate solutions to the challenges and limitations.
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 collaborators, contributes ideas to be considered for the project, open to suggestions, and follows through with what they have said they would do.
PRESENTATION / INSTALLATION: The project demonstrates the maker’s careful consideration of the ways in which the work is installed/presented (including site, location in space, relationship to the viewers). The maker understands how presentation and installation contribute to interpretation, understanding, and experience of a work.