Thesis Meetings: 2/25/14

In this week's thesis meeting Scott and I pretty much just went over the notes from my mid-term crit and discussed my next steps.

Comments from critique:
How do I connect the content of the piece with the content of the explorations?
3D printing and replicas. Be sure I understand the benefits and drawbacks.
What is the artist perspective? Meet with CCA faculty as planned but stay focused on what I'm doing.
Do I want to stick with Cézanne's apples or choose different work depending on the exploration?
How does this happen in the real world?

Thesis Meetings: 2/18/14

Most of this week's meeting with Scott was spent discussing my presentation for the critique this Saturday.

Here's a summary:

My shift in perspective is key.
The roots of my current investigation are in the way that people who are blind experience an art museum and how that experience could be improved. Originally, I wanted to create experiences through which people who were blind could access art from different pathways.

But, I realized that access is limited for a lot more people that I originally was considering. I shifted from designing something for a specific user group, to designing something for the general public. By representing works of art through different mediums, people can access them from new perspectives and are bound to see or learn something new.

Thesis Meetings: 2/11/14

This week I got feedback on my second RP, for now called Pixeled. This prototype, like the previous one, changes vision from a comprehensive process to an additive process, and asks the question, what will we notice when we deliberately slow down our vision?

In Pixeled, the user starts out by choosing a piece of art to look at. An image of the selected work is projected, but it is a distorted version of the user's selected piece. As long as the user is willing to spend the time, the image will slowly reveal itself.

I used Processing for this prototype. After the sketch is opened and a set amount of time passes, a prompt pops up, and the user can "click to reveal," which will decrease the size of the pixels. The sketch is currently set so the user has to go through 12 levels of de-pixelation before they see the clear image, but this is fully adjustable so I can made adjustments as needed!

Cézanne's Still Life with Apples distorted through 50x50 pixels

A few levels less distorted. The prompt "click to reveal" shows up after a set period of time.

Some clear shapes beginning to form

Thesis Meetings: 1/28/14

Last week resulted in a lot of reading and reading, and a bit more reading. With my new shift/focussing one of the big to-dos was to define new luminaries and get into the scholarship around multi-sensory exhibits.

As a result, I am adding these four to my list of luminaries.

Amanda Cachia: Curator from Sydney, Australia. Currently completing her PhD in Art History, Theory & Criticism at the UC San Diego. Former student at CCA.¹
Madeline Schwartzman: Author of See Yourself Sensing, a survey of artists and designers who explore relationships of the body, technology, and senses.
Georgina Kleege: Teaches creative writing and disability studies at UC Berkeley.
Juhani Pallasmaa: Finnish architect. Author of The Eyes of the Skin – Architecture and the Senses.

Last week I also made my list of CCA faculty I would like to reach out to for a discussion about what they think as artists or curators. So far I have met with one curator, and will reach out to others today.

Here are my discussion questions:

• What is the societal purpose of an art museum?
• Are art museums accessible to the general public? Should they be more or less accessible?
• What is the value of handling objects versus looking at objects?
• As a curator, how do you decide which stories to tell?
• As a historian, what do you do when you don't know the answer?
• In terms of displaying work and telling object stories, what are museums doing right?
• In terms of displaying work and telling object stories, where are museums falling short?

In terms of multi-sensory exhibits, there have been a number of them done and studies and luckily, the general feeling is that yes, they do indeed increase visitor enjoyment, retention, and understanding of the content of the exhibit. This was something that Scott and I spent a majority of our time discussing. If the multi-sensory museum exhibit is often done and accepted as  good, then why am I focusing on this? 

My work needs to be responding to something, or taking a stance; I need to define the motivation driving my experiments. 

Here is where my luminaries come in. In an article about her experience during a touch tour at MoMA, Georgina Kleege writes that vision is immediate and comprehensive, where as touch is additive and discovery happens a bit at a time.² This same point also came up during a discussion with my classmate, Tim Carpenter, and this is one of my driving forces. What would happen if vision were not comprehensive and immediate? A new way of seeing could make you slow down, notice new details, and come up with new questions. How might I make an experience that invites users to view art in an additive way?

Kleege also makes a point that "since everyone does not get to touch the art, as much as they might want to, there is a value in hearing what we—the privileged few—have to say about it.”³ This also feels like potential to become a driving force but I need to think on it for longer.

What else are my driving forces? Scott and I discussed a few options which sounded like there was potential. What does it mean to really experience something from a historical perspective? What about material or process immersion?

What is the experience I want people to walk away with? 

So far my language has been about seeing objects anew, in stages or layers, and finding nuance. I don't want my experiences to feel forced or contrived. This experience, like all museum experiences, should to be enticing. I also don't want to overwhelm people with views. I want increase access by means of creative multi-sensory views, but Scott cautioned against offering so many views that the visitor feels there is nothing left to discover.

What happens when I inevitably cannot display a masterpiece in the design MFA exhibition?
1) Too early to worry about this.

2) There is also the philosophical case to be made that the masterpieces we see today aren't the "original" anyway. There are countless mediation factors; the obvious factors (lighting, glass, museum crowds, velvet ropes) and the less obvious factors (discoloration, canvas modification, restoration, curator and museum perspective, forgeries).

With this in mind, perhaps there really is no genuine experience, in which case it doesn't matter whether the "original" is present. It is a big, bold point to make, but I like it.

To do

Start a running list of all the multi-sensory art exhibitions and related studies

Look into the Pilara Foundation Collection at the photography museum at Pier 24 in relation to the no genuine experience concept.

Come up with +/- six  "driving forces"
Contact more curators and artists
Finish my work plan and keep working

---

1. Cachia, Amanda. “Talking Blind: Disability, Access, and the Discursive Turn.” Disability Studies Quarterly 33.3 (2013): n. pag. Web. 23 Jan. 2013.
2. Kleege, Georgina. "Some Touching Thoughts and Wishful Thinking" Disability Studies Quarterly 33.3 (2013): n. pag. Web. 6 Oct. 2013.
3. Ibid.

Thesis meetings: 1/21/14

The new semester is here (gulp) along with a narrowing and slight shift in my thesis direction.

In the most concise explanation, I am exploring visual art beyond the visual.

Basically, I mean that I am looking at the meaning of accessibility in art museums and using tactile and multi-sensory experiments to amplify and expose non-visual information. I want to create probes that explore tangible elements such as scale, weight, materiality, and less tangible elements such as process, and context.

Here are the notes from my first meeting with adviser Scott Minneman.

I could make the case that a lot of visual art is "inaccessible." 
Art on a wall of a museum, perhaps, is just a statement. Contextualization and interpretation is very limited.
What about audio tours and docents? Those are great! But they take planning and/or extra money; docents aren't always available and both audio tour and docent tour usually cost extra. With most audio tours, there is little room for interpretation.

Your original thesis topic was to improve the museum experience for visitors who are blind. What happened?
What I learned from my conversations and museum experiences with people who are blind is still guiding my direction. However, I realized that I wanted to look at "accessibility" in a broader sense. Rather than make a tool for one user group, I want to make a tool that will increase accessibility for anyone who uses it. Museum visitors who are blind are still an important user group for me, but are no longer the only user group.

Are multi-sensory art exhibits too extreme/unrealistic/impractical?
Well, museum are already weird and extreme. For example, historical pieces that were never meant to be seen in white walled rooms are seen in white walled rooms. Museums could be thought of as a particular historical "accident."
In the words of Thomas Thwaites from The Toaster Project*, "there’s not much point in imagining futures that are the same as the present. For one, it’s not very interesting, but it’s also not very useful, and can be dangerous" (176).
So there.

When a piece is sold, the owner gets to touch it as much as s/he wants.
But in public institutions, obviously this can't be done.

What do artists think? What stories, if any, do they want told?
Also, what do curators and historians thing? What do they want told? A multi-sensory exhibit also opens the door for a multi-story exhibit. It will vary from person to person, but I need to get some data points in terms of what artists and historians think about multiple object perspectives.

To do
Come up with new luminaries
Read scholarship around multi-sensory exhibits
Contact curators and artists to learn about sacred cows
Look at the Gardener museum in Boston
Read up on current language of Universal Design
Watch Understanding Art: Hidden Lives of Masterpieces

To answer
What are my guiding principles?
How do I qualify successful experiments?
Who am I in service of?
Whose story am I telling and will it be historically accurate?
How do curators deal with unanswered questions?


* Based on Thwaites's MFA design thesis project, very, very, very inspired and inspiring.

Explorations in Perception

I started reading See Yourself Sensing: Redefining Human Perception by Madeline Schwartzman, and boy, is it a trip. The book is a survey of projects and works that explore human perception, senses, and the body. The projects are visceral, often disturbing, provoking, and thoughtfully curated.

Hyungkoo Lee, The Objectuals

Erik Hobijn and self-immolation

Lawrence Malstaf, Shrink

Thesis: manifesto-ish

It's about time I update this with my thesis work so far. I won't lie, I've had some hiccups. Or, perhaps, I have some hiccups.

The Hardest Part: A I have had difficulty in wrenching my head out of the theory and the research to just do. There are so many rabbit holes to peer into -- which I do not think is all bad. The Hardest Part: B I am having trouble connecting with people who are blind. I have been reaching out to groups left and right, but understandably so, it's been difficult. I imagine that many people who are blind receive numerous calls or emails from students wanting to involve them in a project, and I am sure this is tiresome to say the least. I hope, however, that my project is one that truly makes people think about human perception, the meaning of experience, story, and culture. Plus, I think that involvement will be interesting and fun for participants, hell, it might even make a real difference. I have started to make some progress through Lighthouse for the Blind in SF and possibly with a student group, so fingers crossed.

Post midterm review I have taken the critiques to heart and I am trying to write a manifesto of sorts which I hope will keep me focussed. Here is the working document.

When sighted visitors go to a museum they have many options in terms of how they shape their experience (fast, slow, deep, shallow, permanent collection, special show). Blind museum visitors, however, have far fewer options. Most museums offer special accessibility tours once a month, but these tours often fill up weeks in advance and are scheduled during the work day. My hypothesis is that these top down experiences, while valuable, do not meet the needs of most blind visitors. I am exploring ways improve the museum experience for blind or low vision visitors by pushing on the content and creating multi-faceted object stories that go beyond what is expected in order to create rich experiences through our non-visual senses.

I am doing this because I think museums are unique and special and because I think they should be designed for everyone who is interested. (And on a tangent, I think they are in danger of becoming more known for their Thursday evening parties than for their collections if they are not willing to change and embrace technology). The theories of universal design tell us that when you improve a design for the edge users, the experience will improve for all users. When I first learned about universal design I was struck by the story of the OXO brand. I know, I know, the OXO example is tired and overused, but it resonates with me. I have rheumatoid arthritis, and I can assure you that there are many “simple” actions that are nearly impossible for me to perform. I constantly make adaptations to accommodate limited mobility in my wrists and for the most part things are manageable. But regardless of how many times I have heard the OXO story in my years as a design student, I love it. It is pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty good that design can be used to make such a difference in our lives. I have experience adapting products to fit my own unique needs, and I enjoy learning about the myriad of ways that other people adapt products or situations to fit their unique needs. We are so accustomed to products and experiences that are not designed to meet our needs that we go through the modification without any thought to design as a practice. 

My specific interest in museum visitors who are blind was sparked by a slender, gem of a book I found in one of the libraries at the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum. The book, Finding the way by ear, hand and foot, was written by the Danish Design Center and describes the development process of creating better tools and surroundings for persons who are blind or partially sighted. As the book's back flap says, “tools developed for a particular user group become better tools, not just for those users, but for everybody.” From there, Katie Shelly and I started to think about what the experience would be for blind visitors at the Cooper-Hewitt when it opens in October 2014. We started by doing a competitive survey of the museum experiences for blind people at a number of different museums in New York City....

to be continued.

I end this post with a really nice screenshot of Antarctica via Google Street View.

Consonance

This is a project I made for Christopher Willits' Sound and Image Resonance class. The intent of this exercise was to explore how sound shapes and changes our understanding and expectations of visual elements.

All GIF credit goes to Matthew DiVito of mrdiv.tumblr.com. 

Best with headphones!

Thesis beginnings

Thesis R&D is in full swing. After some research in museum accessibility over the summer at the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in NYC, I've decided to focus my thesis investigations on the the museum experience for blind and low vision visitors.

There are still a lot of things I need to get my brain around...

Am I more interested in improving museum experiences, or improving an experience for a blind or low vision person?

Well, neither strictly.

I think what I'm most interested in (at least today) is in how people see things differently and how one sense can be translated to another.

People who are blind because they experience the world in a different way. Museums because they are where all this stuff is collected and where people have dedicated and focussed moments.

There are a few of tools out there, like Touch Graphic's Talking Tactile Exhibit Panels that narrate an object according to where you are touching it. Pretty awesome. But, the content is all tell and no show.

Since I am still in the testing the waters phase, I think I'll spend some time exploring unexpected ways that visuals can be expressed. What does a painting feel like? What does a painting sound like? How can we translate visual art in an way that creates rich experiences for experience all of the senses?

[IxD Studio] The Water Project

The last project in IxD studio was to envision the future of water and to share that vision.

My group (Shaili Das, Ramune Rastonis, and Vida Riahi) decided to look at the future of the oceans. We wanted to create a space that would cause people to consider the way their choices impact the environment, without being judgmental or preachy.

'Oceans' is a pretty vast subject; given the scope of the project, we needed to keep a narrow our focus and create something simple. We wanted to create a sensory space where people could take a minute to sit, contemplate, relax, escape, and be mesmerized. Our inspirations were, not surprisingly, mostly aquariums.

[IxD Theory] Reflections

Reflect on how this course has affected your perspective as a designer. What has changed? What has stayed the same? In what ways are you more confident and what gaps do you still feel you have?

Hi Arna,

Thank you. Interaction theory has been one of my favorite courses this first year in the grad design program at CCA; it has been instrumental in helping me define where I want to go and why I came back to school in the first place.

[IxD Theory] Frontiers

What is the next frontier for connectivity? What will make it stick?

For many of us in developed nations, technology constantly demands our attention. It's hard to imagine being much more connected that we already are, but increased connectivity seems unavoidable. Since our dependence and desire for connected devices will only increase, maybe the answer is to change the manner in which we connect. I hope that the next frontier for connectivity will be ubiquitous computing. One definition of ubiquitous computing that resonates with me is "machines that fit the human environment instead of forcing humans to enter theirs."

[Business of Design] Reflections and wrap-up

If you were teaching this course next year, what one thing would you add and what one thing would you subtract? Please explain why you would do these things.

I would take away the Indigogo campaign. It is great to know how to manage a fundraising campaign like this, but I'm not convinced that the experience was as beneficial enough to make it worth the time spent on it. The fundraising campaign doesn't take cultural differences into account (Indiegogo had trouble with international credit cards, for one) and it's not clear to me why all of our fundraising went to Architecture for Humanity. It may be a great organization, but it would be nice if we had some say in what we were raising money for rather than being told top-down who we were raising money for.

[business of design] Company Culture

Blog on what your ideal company culture would be like by describing what an average day on the job would for like you. What would it look like, feel like, be like?

I start off my day by entering the bright and well lit office. Two of my favorite things about this office are the open spaces and the huge windows which allow natural light to flood in. I share my brightly painted and decorated office with two other team members. Throughout the morning we work separately on our projects but are always available to discuss ideas and provide feedback. For lunch, I head over to the on-site cafe for the soup de jour and a grilled cheese. After lunch are project meetings, check-ins, and my bi-annual performance review. During my review I have the opportunity to discuss my goals within the company and my progress towards those goals. My supervisor and I also review my project specific struggles and success, leadership, and areas to improve.

I have been super efficient today, and there were no client emergencies, so I am headed home at 6.00 pm. I leave the office and walk to catch the commuter train; I'm feeling confident, valued, and proud of the work I do.

[Business of Design] Social Networks

Blog on which social network you currently find most engaging and why

Yelp, hands down.

I use Facebook, sure, but I wouldn't say I enjoy it. Most times I log into Facebook it's because someone has tagged me in a photo, or because I'm procrastinating on homework. I get sucked in and an hour later, when I log off, I feel guilty for spending that hour reading my Facebook feed when I should have been reading my homework.

[IxD Theory] Parking app

What’s your pet app idea? Based on the tools and processes that Aaron shared, discuss the minimum essential features, as well as elements that are not essential that you would want to add after launch. 

The first two things that came to mind in response to this prompt were a drinking fountain finding app and a public restroom finding app. Buuuuut, they already exist. So here's one that doesn't exist: an app to prevent you from getting parking tickets.

[IxD Theory] Cognition

Discuss a product via the lens of human cognition. How do we process the product? Consider perception, attention, memory, learning, etc. What did the designers do to help simplify the cognitive processes required to use the product? What’s the mental model and how rigorously is it preserved?

I'm going to look at iTunes because it is a product we process through multiple kinds of cognition -- learning, listening, attention, and memory.

The function which lets you sort by album cover is great because it takes advantage of our ability to quickly scan images. I have over 1000 albums in my library, and while I often cannot remember the name of the album, I can often picture the album cover in my head. Scanning through the music by cover view helps me to find the correct album much faster than reading through the list, and trying to remember what I'm looking for.

[business of design] Brands

Blog on a brand you admire (not just the product or service). Explain what elements of the brand “speak” to you and what they say. 

I am loyal to two brands, Levi's and Patagonia. I am loyal to Levi's because I hate shopping for jeans and Levi's sizing is consistent so I never have to try them on. My loyalty stems out of convenience, but I don't know much about their history or their motivations as a company. Patagonia, on the other hand, has my loyalty because of how and why their company exists; their mission statement is to mission statement is to "build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis."

[business of design] Midpoint

Blog on what you think your midpoint grade should be in this class. Be specific about what you’ve done or not done to earn that grade.

A difficult task for this week's business of design blog. Regardless of my midpoint grade, I know I would want to have me on my team!

My teamwork: I played a significant role in our start-up, Matchbox, earning the most funding on Pitch Day (woo hoo!). Our team is lucky in that we have team members with complementary skills and we all work well together. As project manager I have been responsible for keeping our team organized, motivated, and focused during our meetings; our level of preparation played a major role in our success on Pitch Day. I also believe I have been a solid resource for other teams. I have spent time listening to pitches, offering feedback, and talking through potential problem areas.

[IxD Studio] Collections, 2

The collections project continues.

I found that most of the letters in my collection report everything to be “fine.” Knowing a bit about the history, it is pretty safe to say that everything was not fine. This week I tried to focus the display on the idea of contrasting what people write or say versus what they actually mean. I think reporting that things are just “fine” is a knee-jerk reaction because, generally, people don’t want to burden others with their personal struggles.