Monthly Archives: May 2015

Cooper Hewitt

    Going into the Cooper Hewitt Museum I know I wanted to make some sort of weapon for my tool. I did not want my weapon to be functional, but rather metaphorical. I wanted it to express how I felt about weapons rather than function as a weapon. I want to make an Anti-weapon weapon.

    When I was finally able to stop playing with the machines they had there, I was able to view the weapons on display. The throwing knives caught my eye. What I found most interesting about them was their shapes. Now these were beautifully unsymmetrical and organic shapes. Couldn’t a weapon just be an I’m sure this weapon surveyed it’s people more purpose than just being an object on display, but that’s the only person I’m intrigued by.

    One weapon, I did not see at the Museum was a gun, which I found very strange, as this one tool did in fact change the course of history so many times. Guns frighten people; guns frighten me. They hold too much power. I want to make a gun, a gun that only serves one purpose; to remind people that they are killing part of themselves when they trigger the gun. I’m making a two faced gun!

Throwing Knife Throwing Knife.

Inspirational Kit

One of the first assignments we did this year involved quite a lot of reading. We were asked to read four texts that seemed completely discounted at first, but then we were asked to create mind maps and list connecting the texts. Only when I was required to right down summaries of the texts side by side did I find connections. It is a technique I will take with me.

One of the four texts we read particularly stuck with me. The New York Times article called In Protest, the power of Place resonated the most with me. The content of this article stuck with me throughout the semester. It got me to think a lot about the importance of physical space, and how we associate major events with the spaces they occurred at.

A technique I used often this semester was the use of mind maps, which helped organize my scattered thoughts. I also discovered that mind maps weren’t enough when it came to organizing my thoughts for assignments such as essay writing. They helped when it came to outlining, but didn’t get me far.

I discovered that ethnography is my favorite form of research. After of countless trips to Union Square. I learnt that experiencing an atmosphere or space brings something extra to one’s research. There is always a lot to talk about even in the least interactive of spaces. I had not thought about how interactions and spaces were connected before this semester. A trip I found memorable was our Union Square trip were we were asked to categorize the different groups interactions on Union Square.

 Organic Outlining is officially my favorite type of outlining. What I love most about this technique is the fluidity of it. One is not stuck with one structure and physically moving different thoughts almost brings the paper to life. It gives you the ability to picture your paper going in varying directions. With our big research paper, my ideas were really all over the place, even though this technique helped me I was not able to completely organize my thought, but it made a huge difference for me.