leahhopkinson - Tumblr blog

[leahhopkinson]

Workbook submisison

This week our group has been focused on putting together our final workbook for submission. This has been difficult for us as we had at first wanted to give in a video which would show a version of our projection screen in use using video editing skills. It would also help incorporate our storyboard and background story idea. We had also toyed with the idea of creating a physical version of our ‘projection grenade’ device to had in as a physical artefact. However with everything going on it isn’t possible to get together to formulate these ideas. With the submission being changed to a handover of a 500 word piece, we have struggled to put the last 10 weeks of work into just 500 words. We have felt that if we include enough information of our creative process we are not putting enough words into showing our critical approach, and vice versa. We have decided instead to try to give enough time to both, and to give an annotated appendix of our images we have created throughout the module in order to give a physical idea of our creative process and also how we have been critical in ourselves in order to develop our thinking and therefore our project. We have tried to focus the 500 words on the functionality, aesthetics, practicality and motivation and socio-political concerns of our design. We have tried to show this in how it works, images of what it looks like when it works and before it is used, what it is made out of, what world we believe it could be used in and why we think it would be necessary within this world. These are all picked out as important aspects with design as mentioned on page 43 of Bill Gaver and John Bowers’ 2012 article ‘Annotated portfolios’. For our team we believe this may be the best way to present our workbook to show our creative process as well as that we have thought critically about the concept as a whole and our process of design.

[leahhopkinson]

Videomaking with my puppy

I decided this week to try to experiment with video and creativity within video. As we are in lockdown I wasn’t entirely sure what I wanted to do, as I wanted to do something more real world than sketching and animation may be a bit too far of a stretch. I decided instead to involve the help of my puppy and my boyfriend. My puppy Thor became the subject of the video and we decided to try to do one of the challenges we had seen on youtube. My boyfriend then taught me how to edit the video using Sony Vegas Pro. Although this video wasn’t exactly a design video, I tried to work on the skills of filming and editing that were spoken about as being one of the learning outcomes of the videomaking lecture. It allowed me to think of many creative aspects of filming such as lighting and camera position as well as the process of editing. I wanted to do something a little more fun and enjoyable rather than something serious, as one of the main points I have learned throughout this module is mainly to just have fun with it. I feel the more fun and free we feel during a creative process, the better the outcome and the more original the ideas are. If we try to be too serious or too constrained, the creative flow tends to be subdued or just comes to a halt. Making this video just as something fun to do during a very serious and anxious time actually made me realise how fun videomaking can be. It gave me a lot of ideas for other videos that we could make with Thor and led me on to a lot of research within this kind of genre of videos on Youtube. I learnt a lot on how people target audience with thumbnails and titles and what really seems to attract viewers. There is a possibility we may continue making these videos in the future with Thor, as a creative outlet and hopefully to bring a smile to people faces. The video file is too large to upload, but it can be found here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1u7yALfNy46ZaNe32IQGw_kYuw68sQDfa/view

[leahhopkinson]

Creative thinking changes

The final design crit of our Smart City projects occurred this afternoon. The group project has been difficult but also rewarding in some ways. In our previous crits it was mentioned to us that we were thinking too widely, not critically enough and also too commercial. We had multiple calls after the first design crit to try to expand our thinking. We were forced to take a step back and to start to think purely in a more creative way of what our design could do or could be, focusing on the ‘what if’s’. It was good for our group to take this step back from our design, to forget what we had previously thought and broaden our minds fully. We found it difficult at first but as soon as one slightly wacky idea was mentioned, we all seemed to gain the confidence to build on it and add more. We came to the point where we built a background story of our smart city. For us, it was easier for us to be creative if we created a world in which our technology could be used. A world for us of A.I and activism. Within this created world we could think of more original ideas of how our basic technology of a projection could be used. By moving away from the known and the ‘boring’ to a completely new world, we allowed ourselves the room for more creativity and more critical thinking and reflection on our previous designs. Thinking back to our first few sessions, it was clear that I had restrained my thinking to what is currently technologically possible, or is currently available, rather than expanding my thinking into a whole world of new and unique possibilities. By opening up a new kind of smart city world I realised it is possible to create something innovative that was not previously thought of as necessary or possible. It is possible to expand creativity past the idea of ‘useful’ as long as you widen the world in which it may be considered ‘usable’.

[leahhopkinson]

Creativity within times of need

With the Coronavirus situation I have been finding it very hard to put my mind into a place where I am thinking creatively. My mind, as pretty much everyone’s on the planet, is more focused on how I can protect my family, my parents and grandparents. How I can make sure I put food on the table when everybody has panic bought the store, or how I can pay the bills when work is running dry. I think in the current scenario, creativity is coming in a very different way. Creativity can be sketching, photography and videography yes, but I think if you think on a different level, and you really reflect on creativity, this can happen in every genre of life. And right now we are all using our creativity in very different ways. Yes, we may not be sketching new smart city ideas every day, but we are thinking of how to make entertaining games for our newly home-schooled children, how to find ways to communicate with elderly grandparents that can’t use technology, how to think of new recipe ideas that don’t require any kind of carbohydrate or canned good. And as someone that lived on pasta and rice dishes for 3 years of undergrad, that one I have to emphasise really does require an extra level of creativity. In times of need I think a person’s creativity really comes to the forefront. We are pushed into situations where we have to think differently and to find new ways of doing every day things. I understand this module is Creativity in design, but in some way, isn’t our whole lives a design of our own creation? Are we not reflecting and creating every moment? Creativity I believe can take any form, it is a state of mind, not a product. And it would certainly be against a creative mindset to put creativity itself into a box, and not to think about its use in the wider worldwide, real life sense.

[leahhopkinson]

Image-making and design

he plan for the group project this week was to come up with an idea each for two factors for our area, 1. How can pavements be used as a safe space and 2. How can they interact with Mother Nature. As I missed the meeting they had during the strikes due to work, I tried to throw myself into this design work as much as I could to trust the process. For me thinking of ideas is the easy part, it is putting them onto paper that I struggle with. My ideas were very visual and so it was hard for me to sketch these on pen and paper. I did a test run before submitting them to our jamboard and also tried to do a variation of them in a more professional visual design. Visual design I do not think is my forte and I did resort to finding images on google that can work. However I’m proud of the fact that I at least gave it a try. My second idea was a lot easier as I took inspiration from an art instalment I saw years ago. I delved through my old photos to see if I still had them around and used those as my inspiration. I tried when making these designs to test as many image making techniques as I could that were mentioned in the image making lecture. I tried sketching, I tried image manipulation using online tools, I used pre-existing photographs and I used my own photography as well. For me I have discovered that using just one of these alone is not right for me and I cannot get the desired outcome of design from one alone. Perhaps it is from a lack of natural artistic talent but I find I can create a more creative design that shows the idea I have in my head better if I combine a variety of image making tools to create my final design. I think this is a good thing, as I am not limiting myself to just one creative outlet, but am gaining insight and taking the aspects I need from many different places. Creativity for me is a lot about gaining inspiration from wherever you can and using that however you can, which I think is what I have done with these ideas.

[leahhopkinson]

Trust in the process

The group project is starting to cause me a lot of anxiety for this module. With the strikes, work and a few personal issues I am not able to make it to some of the meetings. With the strikes last week my group decided that they were going to meet after the lecture on Wednesday. This is okay for them as 3 of the 4 do that lecture and the other is a full-time student that lives in London anyway. This means they can all easily meet. However, I live 2 hours form London, my lectures are all on Thursdays and I work the rest of the week. I promised I would skype in if they changed the day of the meeting but with my own work meetings all day this is impossible to do. I am worried I am not being able to contribute as much as I should. We have a slack group and a jamboard where I post my ideas and ask for updates but most of the communication seems to happen at these meetings. I am hoping that what I can contribute is enough, and the fact that I work is not going to let me down. I am trying to think back to the first lecture when we were told that this module will likely bring a good deal of anxiety and panic at points but the point was to work through it and grow from it. I am trying therefore to do as much design contribution as I can and ask as many questions to my group and have hope that this period of anxiety will not last long or cause much issue. I am trying to ‘have faith in the design process’, which I believe we should, but sometimes this aspect is easier than others to do.

[leahhopkinson]

Anthropomorphic robots?

Our first group meeting was before the lecture today. This one went a lot better than the last have been. When we first formed as a group nobody really wanted to say anything or come forth with any ideas or anything really at all, myself included. I am quite shy and usually prefer taking a back seat and listening mostly. However with the thought still in my head about stepping out of my comfort zone, I decided to try to take a more active role and try to lead the discussion in a few directions. I think his worked well and gave me a little confidence in my group. During the lecture in Week 2 we were meant to join together in class to talk through our ‘What the City could become’ ideas. It was only Araceli and I that joined together, but we had a very productive talk. Our ideas were not similar at all, with mine being transport based and hers more human. However, we were thinking more about anthropomorphism and came up with a lot of good idea. Both of us took some inspiration from recent things we had been watching, Araceli with Black Mirror and myself with His Dark Materials. Within that series, every human has something called a Daemon, a representation of their character and soul in physical animal form. In Black Mirror, the character had a clone of herself as a robot. We were trying to think of ideas to try in some way to give our Smart city residents an object like this. During the group meeting today we went through a lot of ideas we had added on the group chat during the week, and ultimately decided Anthropomorphism wasn’t the one. We decided however to do some more research into paths and walkways, as we really think this is a large empty space with really only one use that a lot could be done with. We will see where this idea takes us.

[leahhopkinson]

Turning History Into The Future?

The lecture today was on Fabulation. For me there were really two main things to focus on from this lecture; a. storytelling and b. we have to look at the past to create the future. For me this lecture helped my creative thinking a lot. I love stories, and having a degree in Classical Civilisation, I clearly love history. I was thinking first about whether I could bring in my background as a platform to think of a smart city idea, can I use my past, and the past, to create the future? My interest has always been the Romans, and perhaps I can use some part of their city building techniques to reinvent the current city, perhaps in old roman roads or aqueducts. The idea of story telling combined with history was quite different for me. I am used to using historical facts to recreate an idea of a civilisation. However, the idea that we can try to design to fill in gaps in stories seemed problematic. If I had reimagined the viewpoint of a historical figure and based current political actions off of their previous political actions, I could really cause some harm. Could reimagining stories and designing off of that create a future we don’t want? A smart city (a smart world) but in the wrong hands? It was mentioned that the ‘past is inert and not given’, which obviously contradicts a lot with what the last 3 years of education taught me. I think what I need to start doing is thinking not in straight lines, definitive facts and what I can prove occurred, but to imagine a little more what might have happened. I have done this of course, in mythology or in epics like The Aeneid or The Odyssey, but it was always in a context of analysing and evaluating and picking aspects that spoke of how the society was. I need to start thinking perhaps in how people imagined their society, how they created it, designed their art, rather than how that art proved concrete facts.