APB, that’s just uncanny… I think we came about it in different ways, but nonetheless, I’ve been thinking through the concepts of narrative and relationships — and how to create experiments with one to craft the other (i.e., through the iterative nature of experimentation, relationships that are discovered will yield a narrative, but also, potentially, fragment and explode the narratives we had preconceived and taken for granted).
So there’s that, that type of thought that could lead me (and wants to) in many tangential directions… But then there’s just the practical nature of it, the fact that, as APB says
the brain only functions if it is exposed to other brains. The relationships one builds with other humans allows the brain to grow, change, and mature. Without that interaction it is stagnant.
And there’s the rub — of late, I’m in great need of community, of other brains to just BE IN PRESENCE with. So another goal, or perhaps the same but more particular, is to craft the space needed, the dialogue, to build a narrative of relationships into our lives — especially when we are taken out of the *ideal* environs to achieve such things (i.e., proximity).
In not so laborious language, I like working in a communal studio… where when I stretch out the fronds of my making, they touch gently with someone next to me, and when a breeze comes through, it sifts some seed from your brain over into mine, and growth spreads our roots to reach into each other’s soil, creating a shared plenty.
In reality, my studio is a one bedroom apartment and a computer lab at Columbia College Chicago. How can my studio expand — without expanding in space? How can it start to hear whispers — while the doors are still shut? How can technology build a narrative space for relationships in which our identity as artists and designers feel bolstered? How can we *USE* technology to optimize its service to our goals?
…and, the biggest question, is how can we either
(a) find folks who want this community badly enough that they’ll make the time to experiment with us here at design playground to find it? or
(b) make design playground easy, intuitive, and addictive enough on its own for even the busiest of you amazing brains out there to take part?
