rraym0ndiasportfolio

[rraym0ndiasportfolio]

A Production of A Lens

As an artist, the creation of an academic and innovative lens is pivotal to the creation of my work. My lens was best achieved via the development of both my creative thinking and critical thought, an important learning goal within the Interdisciplinary Art program at UW Bothell. The establishment of this lens comes from allowing myself to see beyond my understanding of the world, either by identifying my own assumption or assumptions of the world. Within my time in the Interdisciplinary Arts program, I grew my lens by beginning to unravel central questions surrounding my identity and influence on the world. In the end, by creating a lens through which I could filter my interpretations, analysis, argumentation, evaluation, reflection, etc through, I was able to push myself to dig deeper into my creative and critical thought. This can be seen via the production of two pieces, “epaR/erutluC Participatory Performance Game” and “Nude Descending”. 

Within “epaR/erutluC Partcipatory Performance Game” I first began to stretch my creative legs. Inspired by a prompt within an Interdiscplinary Art workshop course that utilized Speculative Design (a discipline that encourages the use of alternative histories), I set about to create a work surrounding an alternative future without rape culture. Inspired by Alexis Pauline Gumb’s piece “Evidence” in “Octavia’s Brood”, this piece forced me to contemplate deeply the different perspectives and reasons why rape culture exists. It forced me to think about creative ways of portraying my critical perspective of rape culture. This was important, as it helped me build my “lens” via learning to both critique and inspire my audience to evaluate their assumptions surrounding problematic subject matter. 

As I moved on in my educational career, I wanted to deepen my lens by exploring critical and creative thought as it related to abstract ideas. I had always struggled with this type of work as I couldn’t grasp how abstraction related to interpretation, analysis, evaluation, and reflection of art. In one of my Interactive Media Design courses, I was given an opportunity to face this challenge with my piece “Nude Descending”. Inspired by Doug Aitken’s use of motion, space, time, and sequence, I utilized these abstract concepts to be examined via a video of still images. These concepts inspired me to ask myself a lot of questions such as, “What is motion?” and “How is space different within a video?” These questions opened my mind to think of abstract concepts as tools rather than constraints, expanding my creative thinking.

To end, my time in University has provided me opportunities to deepen and probe my creative and critical thinking. I have grown and developed a lens in which I can not only use to filter works and experiences, by my own thoughts and ideas. This affords me a perspective to analyze, critique, evaluate and reflect on the world and myself, an essential aspect of an artist. I am able to take myself to the next level as an artist, learner, and person. Through this portfolio process, I have begun to see that these skills and this journey are life long items of iteration, rather than one-off skills.

Works Cited

Raymond, Rachel “epaR/erutluC Participatory Performance Game.” BISIA 383. Science Fiction and Social Change in Art, Dr. micha cardnas. Winter 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGck8BwkHLM&t=1s Raymond, Rachel “Nude Descending.” BIMD 352. Studio Elements II: Essentials, Professor Carrie Bodle. Winter 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGck8BwkHLM&t=1s

[rraym0ndiasportfolio]

A Continuing Conversation

When I started my journey at UW Bothell, I was intimidated by research and inquiry as learning goals. I felt like there wasn’t a bridge between the academic side of me, who was passionate about research questions, methods, and sources, and the creative side of me that loved organic exploration. But as I delved into research and inquiry via an interdisciplinary lens, I was opened to a world where research became more than long-form papers, but images, art, and design. Projects such as “Kaleidoscope of Abstraction”, a gif and flarf poetry piece surrounding remix art culture, and a Community-Based Learning and Research project involving the experience design of the Imagine Children’s Museum in Everett, were two major influences of this journey.

In “Kaleidoscope of Abstraction” I explored research, inquiry, and conversation via Remix Culture. Remix culture is built on the work of others, and its core method is to iterate work via transformation into a new medium or form. I wanted to add more to the conversation but struggled with the question I wanted to ask. Speaking with my Professor, they suggested I research other artists, such as Christian Marclay and his piece “The Clock” and Aaron Valdez and his piece “Dissolve” as a means of inspiration. As I looked into these pieces, I found my creativity kick into overdrive. It was the first moment I saw myself as an artist with the ability to further the legacies that the artist that inspired me had started. It forced me to ask questions surrounding ownership, contributing to the debates surrounding ownership and intellectual property. I saw that the more I participated in these conversations, the more I began to position my work and think of its legacy.

Reflecting on the impact that research could have on inspiration, I saw an opportunity to go beyond normal design research within my Community-Based Learning and Research course surrounding design. On top of conducting ethnographic research, (conducting surveys, taking notes, and coding) I pushed my practice as a human-centered designer and used co-design to facilitate ideas for my design from the museum staff. This allowed me to position my work within the literature of human-centered design, and add to the conversation around the participation of the people within the design process. I saw our work as an extension of not only our relationship with our community partner but an extension of interdisciplinary research. The resulting report created an experience of our research, rather than a static presentation. It left the museum feeling inspired by where they could take their visitor experience, and left me feeling like I had an impact on my community and the field of design.

In the end, my journey through my coursework has allowed me to see research and inquiry beyond stagnant papers. Being able to see research as part of a journey, and not a destination within a project has allowed me to breathe life into the interdisciplinary nature of my perspective. The questions that began as starting points for projects, became pivotal ideas within my creative process, pushing me to see my work not only as extending research but the conversation of art and design.

Works Cited

Raymond, Rachel “Imagine Children’s Museum, IMD Research Team.” BIMD 481 Researching Design Contexts, Dr. Mark Chen. Autumn 2019.

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/14b8WaL8UQjlCugxLbxJkvz48hgf3LB5ms6yFiqO88Dg/edit#slide=id.p

Raymond, Rachel “Kaleidoscope of Abstraction Gif Tumblr.” BISIA 340. The Art of the Remix. Joe Mitilus. Autumn 2018.

https://kaleidoscopeofabstraction.tumblr.com/

[rraym0ndiasportfolio]

Communication as Art + Skill

Communication is an art form, as well as a form of learning. Whether it’s related to feelings, or ideas and concepts, artists and learners deal with communication as a medium in which to work. As I developed myself as an artist and learner, I found that the concept of communication could be broken down into reflective and explanatory means. This realization was insightful, as it helped me to look at my art and learning as either acts of reflection or attempts to illustrate ideas. Within my journey as a learner and artist, I found my piece “Crescendo” a collaborative literary journal, and “From Hermione Granger to Albus Dumbledore: from a consumer of knowledge to a facilitator thereof”, a reflective essay on my learning, to be indicative of these traits.

Writing takes recognition of audience, context, and diversity while being able to blend evidence, claims, and reflection in a way that is not only engaging but knowledgeable. In my reflective essay “From Hermione Granger to Albus Dumbledore: from a consumer of knowledge to a facilitator thereof”, I explored this skill, utilizing my own work as both qualitative and quantitative evidence of my claims of learning. In order to make use of this evidence, I needed to identify the audience of my essay, and develop a context in which to create a consistent narrative. This forced me to imagine who was reading my essay, why they were reading it, and how to make the reading experience something they felt inspired by. Once I had done this, I began to see the importance of reflective writing. Reflecting on my pieces of work and how I wanted others to understand them assisted in me delivering my personal narrative, allowing me to take my reflective essay and turn it explanatory.

I continued this reflective to explanatory cycle in my piece “Crescendo”. “Crescendo” is within a google drive with labeled folders, all relating to multimodal art. Contributors submit their pieces via instructions found in each folder. This means that the documentation within the piece becomes crucial to be able to interact and understand with the pieces. Therefore how we as a team were able to convey how to use the drive as a journal and submit content was incredibly important. Working with my team, I began to examine how writing should be structured to assist in identifying the audience of our journal. This examination bolstered me to think about how our multimodal pieces allowed us to communicate with a wide range of diverse audiences, as we encouraged pieces that didn’t depend on a specific language or written form. It helped me see communication beyond writing and evidence. While these forms are important but are not the barometers in which I should only measure my skills. 

In conclusion, my journey through myself as an artist and learner has helped me understand communication. I realized reflective communication was introspective and was the visualization of my own thoughts, feelings, and ideas to myself as well as the outside world. This contrasted with explanatory communication, which is my attempt to offer my understanding around a subject, or offer up my reflective thoughts to an audience. 

Works Cited

Raymond, Rachel “Crescendo.” BISIA 207. Introduction to Creative Writing, Professor Chelsea Grimmer. Winter 2019. https://drive.google.com/open?id=1nKjDzkjXK4I8Cjznxyv2t0dkRCL__nBd Raymond, Rachel “From Hermione Granger to Albus Dumbledore: from a consumer of knowledge to a facilitator thereof. Final Portfolio Reflection Paper.” BIS 300. Interdisciplinary Inquiry. Dr. Keith Nita. Autumn 2017. https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1XOsWdW-8ev9KtXy2w-lc9mNY-0ITU72s

[rraym0ndiasportfolio]

Collaboration as Evidence of Leadership

In my life, I have been working in management for nearly a decade. From retail to digital products, such as video games, leadership has been a part of how I function within a team. When I started at UW Bothell, I was no stranger to working in a team. However, as I started to navigate my work, I began to see that there was a difference between managing and collaboration and shared leadership. I found that management was about my expectations being placed on others, while collaboration and shared leadership was a process in which the group cultivates ideas, develops expectations, and sets deliverables. To further examine the growth of my process surrounding the subject, I look back to the first group piece, “Woodland Wintering” a board game surrounding the hibernation habits of PNW animals, and my last, a presentation on my group IMD capstone exploring light, color and sound and how they connect to human emotion.

The “Woodland Wintering” board game began as a twist on the board game “One Night Ultimate Werewolf”. As a group, we had played One Night Ultimate Werewolf in class, and had enjoyed it immensely. When we dissected the gameplay, we began to see that the fun of the game revolved around one’s use or misuse of collaboration to find the werewolf character in the game. Collaboration became an important aspect of anything we did within the game or our process in creating our game. As we continued forward in our project, I began to see that this shared value of collaboration allowed us to easily integrate the skills and ideas of every member of the group. When we finished creating the game and wrote a post mortem surrounding our experience, we all wrote about the importance of our collaboration and how it allowed for each of us to be authentic to our abilities and perspective. It taught me as a manager that I am only as good a leader as I am a listener and collaborator, an integral lesson to both student and professional life moving forward.

As I am now at the end of my time at university, I decided to reflect on how that lesson has unfolded in my current IMD capstone. My group is a diverse composition of students with a wider range of perspectives. As we began conceptualizing our project, I felt myself returning to how I understood collaboration, utilizing it as a tool that not only steered our thinking but lifted us up. By focusing on the collaboration of our ideas, I was able to share leadership with the group, allowing each one of us to have our fingerprints on the concept presented in our pitch presentation. We came together to make decisions and set milestones, understanding each other’s time constraints as items to be worked around, and not used as roadblocks. Our collaboration is what made the presentation and resulting project successful. As I look at the presentation now, I can see the fruits of the seeds planted from the “Woodland Wintering” game nearly three years ago.

Ultimately, it feels as if I have been able to uncover the secret of leadership via collaboration and gain an understanding that collaboration is not an act, it’s a mindset. My projects have shown me that collaboration is not a constraint, but an effort to include and utilize all viewpoints to create something greater as a group. It has taught me to see shared leadership as a means of partnership and allowed me to add this insight to my creative process. 

Works Cited

Raymond, Rachel “Capstone Pitch.” BIMD 491 Integrative Studio II: Practicum, Dr. Arnie Lund. Autumn 2019.

Raymond, Rachel “Woodland Wintering Board Game Documentation.” BIMD 250. Introduction to Interaction Design, Dr. Mark Chen. Autumn 2017.