porfolioyori2

The last 10 weeks of the minor felt like the biggest struggle I had in my time on the academy. This came about in a number of ways, first and maybe most importent to me is the leaving of Julia from our group. The first 10 week I and actually all of us really invested in each other, I learned a lot about our common interests and personal life. This lead to a very good understanding of each other life and each others roles within the group. During this minor we defined the roles we all had in our collaboration. And I found out that Tosca, Juliet and me all resemble each other whilst Julia is a different kind of person. She produces new content for us to react on, unfortunately I found this out pretty late in the process. So every time the three of us came together, I wasn’t quite able to produce new information or ideas to continue with or react upon because I got used to the role I had taken in the previous weeks.

In the third week I wanted to try something to take the campfire further, and brought up some previous ideas that weren’t continued in the first weeks. One of those ideas was the drifter, the wanderer, the voyager. We would take the campfire and take it with us on a journey through the city. I wanted to gather new perspectives and sought to let others contribute to the “conturbative” campfire “on the move”. Why this idea didn’t go into production is still a bit unclear to me, but I think it has something to do with the high expectations we set for ourselves. I got some replies from Juliet that it wouldn’t be as good or not even relevant. For me this was a real show stopper, I felt I had the excitement and motivation to take things in a continued direction but now I too experienced the weight and power of the first project we created. For me this was a kind of paralysing blow, that continued until the moment of stalling too far in the program that we had to create something.

The paralysis also continued at home, I really hoped to work on my self formulated competence. In this competence I ordered myself to portrait my inner feeling and narrate this at the end as a reflection upon the minor. Now in hindsight I recognise I actually did complete this competence. The installation we created is a self reflection on the minor. To elaborate on the portrayed reflection, I was looking for something, because I missed an input to reflect upon, I missed Julia. That something is represented in the simulation I am living, but piece by piece it is falling apart. Suddenly a bottle of wine appears, why do we go this direction what does this have to do with our project, keep focusing. I’ll keep on searching up until it fully breaks down, everything holds everything’s on a break. Yet in the end I recognise what I already have gathered and pack my things and work with that. To keep creating new work; Bag of Brains.

The urge to do something was always there, I feel like this was the case for everyone not only in my group but also in the other groups. But we all where kind of stuck, still processing what we had done and trying to come up with something better or improved. Within our group a moment of action came just before the Christmas break. We wanted to have fun again and reboot our creativity. So I came up with a plan to create a movie, in which we would do what ever we want, but still adhering to the topics we had in the previous installation, like the movie shouldn’t be a single narrative. I think this plan succeeded because of the opportunities and of course time pressure. So this was the second time I took the role of creating new ideas, and upon Tosca and Juliet could react, which in turn I could react on. It became a snowball effect of new ideas based on each other to further the project. I really enjoyed this time, creating new underlying links to previous works and subtle techniques to explore and elaborate our work. It was hard to start again but after some reorganisation the group worked well again. I personally feel that I did a good job sparking the group and keeping the momentum going by expressing my excitement and showing my work ethic.

The final installation is a representation of the struggles that came up with new work, like the previous “campfire” is a representation of the difficulty to untangle wicked issues. There are multiple links to our previous work including broadening the point of view, multiple perspectives, representations of objects, and the carrier bag which is the most prominent and important concept we took further. The carrier bag is now instead represented in a campfire, represented as an actual bag. This bag is seen in every short movie and used a a tool to entangle our project intensions. I really strive to embed all these layers of meaning, it enriches the work, however I am aware that somethings will be missed, what does it for me is that every individual remarks something else and that is what I was aiming for, by using all these metaphors.

The installation “Bag of Brains” is instead outward “seen from out to in”, now inward “seen from in to out” in relation to the previous work “the Campfire”. The work it self shown in the installation is also personal but more focused from within. It is a embodiment of the personal processes from the previous weeks. All the objects correlate to a time, activity or topic we came across during the entire minor. We wanted to create an entanglement by shifting objects through the carrier bag.

Overall the collaboration went wel, I just felt lost at some point and so did the others I guess, which was unfortunate because that meant we had to work our asses off the final week and a half. And I think we killed it that week, we came up with a organised table in which the entire script was worked out including which scenes to shoot wat to do and with what object. We worked through the weekend shooting at multiples locations, when we knew what should be done, we got them done. Though there are some things I didn’t like about our collaboration and they mostly link to the difficulty of creating motivation to begin creating again. Like we gave each other some assignments to start the creativity process again, but they and I too failed to do this and thus blocking our creativity. So this is something I would approach differently in the next period, keeping myself in a creative vibe to not get stuck or lost. On the other hand what I really liked about our collaboration is the hard working ethic we had during the final week.

Shortly reflecting on the minor overall, I really feel like I learned a lot, like being more sensitive towards difficult wicked problems, understanding that some things aren’t as plain as they seem to be. And working together with so many people, not only in my group, but also in the minor with my fellow students. I learned how to better communicate and how to plan and organise things and to trust the other that they will do their part. I think I can’t go back to how things where before, as a product designer I have completely let go of the discipline product design. I feel and I hope I have transcended this narrow field and have become transdisciplinary, while yet I still find it hard to really pin point what transdisciplinary entails. The tutor team was great but I wish we had maybe more input or guidance after the first period. I understand it is a tryout, some things are uncertain and not yet tested, but I really enjoyed the input and collaboration we had with the tutors, their knowledge is greatly divers and impactful. When I continue with my graduation I plan to involve a lot of strategies we learned during this minor, and try to push the boundaries of my major, product design.

Just like in the first weeks of the minor, working with Yori was great. Even if we were all blocked, he tried the best he could to reignite his own and our fire. For example by analysing the situation and breaking it down into smaller steps, like giving us short assignments to get back in the creative flow. He was always prepared to work hard and kept a positive attitude, despite the struggles we faced. I’m not sure if this is his personality or if it’s something that comes with age, but Yori created an inspiring professional environment while also staying my friend. He has a good analytical mind and his creative ability gets him through complex professional situations. What was great in working with Yori was also his willingness to independently pick up tasks. When he sees something needs to be done, he does it without having to be told to do it. This caused for a productive fruitful collaboration. The biggest advice or constructive feedback I can give him is to not lose the pleasure in your projects. Yori tends to give it his all to get to the best result he could get, but this seriousness also has a tendency to go overboard and lose the joy of creating. As I am the same, this characteristic would strengthen when we were together and we could at times expect too much from ourselves. Your work is amazing, so allow yourself to enjoy the process as well!

- Juliet

“From a single perspective we move outwards to multiple, horizontal perspectives. The carrier bag theory shifts the way we look at humanity's foundations from a narrative of domination to one of gathering, holding, and sharing. The carrier bag holds things, but it’s also messy and sometimes conflicted. As well as its meandering narrative, a carrier bag story also contains no heroes. There are, instead, many different protagonists with equal importance to the plot.”

Ursula K. Le Guin

Try to play all scenes at the same time

Yori is a hard worker and he shoed that again in the second part of the minor. He thinks about a lot of things and keeps his watch on the things that matter. A tip for him to continue his collaboration projects is to let go a bit of that supervision and control. He needs to trust that others will do their part, and they will do it on with their methods sometimes that could lead to surprising results.Therefor let go and have faith, I mean with this is that sometimes I feel being supervised, creating an unnecessary pressure. Nevertheless you have original thought and ideas and very sweet and nice to work with. I can only say that we noticed each other during our collaboration and we completed each other, sometimes to the extend that it got weird, in a good way. Entangled

- Tosca