Lecture notes
Torsten
Take a detour and identify new areas. The way we approach things, personal preference — or the other way around to develop consciousness regarding aspects.
Matt Jones & Michelle “bring the projects to life from starting through to the end“
Eden spiekermann — Luke Veerman
- Find a problem that you want to solve
- Something you can actually solve and matches your skill set
A note on one of the resources: Jessica Hische doesn’t think there is any sexism in design… because she has not personally experienced it? Ok. That is great for her. I had no idea that it was even possible when being the public figure she is, at this time, to even entertain that sort of reasoning? And saying that she is “bored” of other women’s academic work to analyze this non-existent sexism? Why bother verbalizing that in a public context. Could her experience be a question of privilege? Race? Class?
Briefs:
- Creative Conscience
- open both in subject and possible execution of idea
- for good, with kindness, which might help when “enduring” the rough patches in the process 🙂
- The two levels answer to each other and is quite helpful when considering possible ideas in terms of problem–solution.
- Perhaps ambiguous, will require some initial research to narrow it down and find a direction before researching for an idea.
- It seems some terms are a bit shattered, I find it hard to understand what exactly they are looking for. Could be a way to underline the broadness of the brief and encourage an allowing approach? Anyway the wording makes me a bit insecure of what they want.
- D&AD New Blood
- Really a creative opportunity.
- Allows for a fun approach connected to locality and a young target audience.
- Using capitalism for “change”, I don’t know.
- Sports is really hard for me to… grasp.
- Collaboration
- The opportunity to find a suitable direction for me in this project.
- Engaging as I would be working with someone and would have to run the project with continuity.
- Establishing contact, finding common ground etc.
- A lot of time working on constructing a brief.
Science Museum - Creative and fun!
- An opportunity for a historic approach, which I like.
- Requires some digital skills which I lack
Competing projects
I went for the Science Museum brief after some kind encouragement from the ideas wall. Looking at competing projects the common factor seems to be creative ways of curating objects, art etc, but even more so letting the audience curate themselves and participate.
KB National Library of the Netherlands
The strengths for this approach is that this is an effective way to not only make the collection available, but also encourage use and spread of the collection. One thing that is very beneficial with making history available like this is lowering the threshold, making the history accessible without having to consume all the heavy books. This is also a way to find community outside of academia, as a person who is interested in history. In the best scenario this playful approach and inviting way of engaging in history can get someone curious who normally would not be. Or make someone feel like history can also belong to them, it does not alway have to be told through the hegemonic truth of professors.
The Weaknesses of an idea like this is you can’t really control in what contexts the collection will appear or what texts will go on these extracts from their collection. Another possible weakness is that this is not really the collection but rather smaller cut-outs from manuscripts, so they are already lacking in context. However, this is probably a risk they have calculated as harmless in favor of activating these medieval images in a contemporary context.
Cooper Hewitt Interaction Lab:
https://www.cooperhewitt.org/activating-smithsonian-open-access/
I really appreciated two of the projects from them:
ButtARfly
Writing with Open Acess
When looking at ButtARfly and Writing with open access, the strength is definitely that it is the personal preferences that dictate the curation of objects. However the possibilities and usage of that curation is a bit unclear. So the benefits of using these prototypes are not clear.
The ButtARfly project does not really invite repeated visits as the original collection of butterflies is quite small and once you have done a board of your own there is really nothing more to discover.
The Writing with Open Access however is a bit more dynamic and there is an encouragement to discover more in that sort of set-up as the material changes depending on what you write. This approach encourages browsing and in a way that can display unexpected items, or items that might rarely be viewed. Therefore it is a good attempt at even out that L-shape curve.
The weakness with this is that it requires some ability of initiative from the recipient, it is a tool for discovery through text. The platform does offer four texts to use as foundation for your search and even writing prompts, but the purpose is still a bit unclear. The only context is the written text so every item is randomized and has no connection to each other, which deems the items a bit futile.
Rijksmuseum’s Rijksstudio
The strength with this approach is having control of the material, it is quite a “standard” way of curating. They do offer the opportunity to dive deeper, into much more curated contexts with included narratives, for example “Stories about portraiture in the Renaissance” or “Operation Night Watch”. Something that can really vitalize parts of the collection. It is also possible to curate your own studio and they seem to be visible for everyone. The possible weaknesses is that some people create “bad” collections, which will then lie visible, but on the opposite sides are the people who make the effort of creating really lovely collections.
The museum’s own curated collections are quite expected, such as Vermeer, Biblical Messengers etc. That curation surely depends on the audience’s expectations and reasons for visiting the studio. Even the deeper dives offer an expected journey of historical repetition, perhaps a curation of collection around less expected narratives without losing any of its authenticity could have provided some more nerve to the idea of the studio? Probably that is part of the drive behind the possibility of making your own collection.
Further research
Louisiana Channel
I found this and thought of how providing a narrative, anchoring these objects in a context: practical, emotional, something relatable can make them seem more alive. It does not necessarily have to be video.
Here is a link to one example from that website, an interview with Ursula Reuter Christiansen on Joseph Beuys. She makes this icon, unattainable artist feel alive through the stories, anecdotes.
https://channel.louisiana.dk/video/ursula-reuter-christiansen-on-joseph-beuys-as-teacher
Byggstudio
https://www.byggstudio.com/
They are so good at connecting the physical, spatial world to people, their target audiences, but also making it digital.
Notes: Tell a story. How? Not just curate, look at class, gender, coloniality, mental health?