I ultimately deduced that this site was a half public half commercial space set on making a profit. These 9 panels are the evidence that brought me to this conclusion.
Author: John Krupinski
The Noguchi Museum
For me, the whole museum seems to deliberately invoke a sense of obscurity, in an intriguing way. Obscurism, or the tendency to favor the obscurity of style and appearance, is heavily felt here. As it was said that he focused on the integrity of the interior more than any other part of the structure. His integration and focus with interior and exterior space is reminiscent of Wright and Khan, who also voiced such sentiments toward interior space. In addition to this, the emphasis on the usage of natural light invokes a blurred line between the garden/nature of the exterior as the formations of stone appear almost natural.
Noguchi as a whole:
The room I chose:
A Space From Memory
During our meditative exercise, one thing that was mentioned was the concept of “zooming out”. Specifically, starting with the room we inhabited, then progressively considering the space within larger areas, all the way to the span of the known universe. In addition to this, thinking about the contents of the room, or rather the space encapsulated by the walls. This made me think of chaotic but natural forms, such as light and sound, ricocheting off the walls and desks towards my perceptual awareness. This sort of experience reminded me of when I lived in the attic room of an older house. I had zoned out in my bed listening to music that droned on and on, almost to the point where the atmosphere it inhabited felt tangible. It was here when I really considered the fact that I had been taking my existence for granted, or rather never considered my place within a zoomed out scope.
Focusing on a region in NYC: Chelsea
For this project, we were instructed to choose an area within New York City, research its past, and create a composition that represents this past.
The first step was to research the history of Chelsea’s area:
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- This involved visits and sketches of the area
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- as well as background research
I noticed that a very prominent part of Chelsea location was the Highline, which provided transport for freight and other materials that progressed Chelsea’s industry in the past, but it is now a walkway and park. With this in mind I wanted to provide a window into the past of the Highline, and therefore Chelsea’s past.
This was the final product:
The white spot was intended to serve as an area I could later draw on top of, I unfortunately left my printed final in my portfolio at my dorm, but I can offer a description. The white space was filled in with pencil to be a modern person, looking back at the workers and labor that took place on the Highline (which were also added physically to the final print with pencil).
Mapping the Inferno
For this assignment, we were tasked with creating maps of an area from a work of literature. Specifically, the assignment was called a “map and a window”, as maps provided individuals with a frame of reference as to where they were, since it’s a fundamentally smaller piece of two dimensional space that represents a much larger area of three dimensional space, it forms this sort of view into an “escape”.
My process is largely explained in this slideshow:
Integrative Studio Final: Representing Our Hometowns
Due to the dis-satisfaction I felt from the previous project, I felt determined to produce something with better quality for this assignment. This assignment tasked us with creating a pop up book that incorporates memories of your hometown as well as some sort of historical/contextual background to the area. I’ve lived in several locations in New Jersey throughout my life, I could however center a large portion around this one town on the Jersey Shore known as Avon-By-The-Sea. I’ve spent approximately 15 years of my life out of the 19 I’ve currently lived, to say a large portion of my development occurred here would be an understatement. With this idea in mind, I knew I wanted to incorporate my experience with Avon as well as the history of its sort of “former glory” days.
and with that, I began to conceptualise the way this book would be constructed.
For one thing, I knew that I wanted the size to be square, so I sketched out the basic layout and fold machanic, this would later be changed to 8 inches instead of 9.
Additionally, I wanted to establish my personal experiences by using my several old houses as a symbol.
With that, I began to design the pages
Throughout my designing process, I wanted to achieve an abundance of mechanics that paper and tabs has to offer, such as the third page:
I however could not include such intricacies due to the limitations of the material I was using (bristol paper) as well as the lack of “pull” the pages had, since they would only open to a 90 degree angle. There was also an entire page I removed because of supposed time restraints (really I had a full extra week to do it), but when we came to this realization, the glue had already dried.
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- on the background there was going to be a cut out that said “STAY” to add an effect of nostalgia, or perhaps regret? the bottom part that folds down was going to depict a house I stayed in that was right next to the inlet in Avon
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- there was going to be an illustration of the inlet at night with one of the bonefires I had put together
Despite this, the final product looked like this:
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- when creating the cover, I applied a noise grain on top of the file, as well printing it on a grainier fabric to produce this sort of old post card look to it
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- This doesn’t have any pop up mechanics but it thought it provided good context
Overall, I was much happier with the way this turned in comparison to the assignment prior to this, as I feel I put much more effort into the layout and presentation of the subject matter, it is my home after all, I had to respect it.
Our Experiences in a section of NYC
In terms of all the projects we carried out during this course, I think this one was my least favorite. Not because of what we were assigned to do, but because of the group I was assigned to complete the project with. The project itself was a great idea, exploring an area I’ve never been to a transcribing the most interesting parts about it, I greatly regret not fully committing to that idea. The reason I didn’t particularly enjoy my group was because of the widespread lack of motivation, I didn’t want to be bossy and constantly tell them to work, it just didn’t seem like they felt enthusiastic about this assignment. When one is surrounded in this environment, getting work done yourself is difficult. There’s absolutely nothing unpleasant or wrong with the people within my group, it’s not that I think they’re bad people, as they demonstrated great work in the previous assignments. I suppose that’s what bothered me, the fact that I knew they could produce great work but didn’t share the same effort for this one. additionally, the visit to our location was a bit irksome because it felt so rushed, in terms of time we spent there we only spent approximately two hours walking around, when really we should’ve stayed a whole day taking in the atmosphere. It was difficult constructing a project out of so little experience and material. Am I guilty of not trying to stay longer? Absolutely, I suppose I was a bit afraid of being the one to take initiative, because they’re often thought to be the most pushy and annoying within a group. However, during this trip, I was able to capture some of the atmosphere in: Coney Island
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- This would later be used as the cover
In full honesty, I don’t have any pictures of the product, however, I do have some sketches pertaining to the dimensions of the book.
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- this was the dimensions of the cover
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- this was how i intended to attach the first page to the inside of the cover
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- another basic layout
Overall, I definitely regret not putting enough effort into this assignment.
An Interview to Explore Our Masks
After our masks were constructed, we were partnered with someone in our class to inquire about their masks, such as their design choices or perhaps more information into certain details. I was partnered with student Sofia Morett, I jumped right into the creation of the final product shortly after the interview.
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- I’ve also noticed that the way I structured the conversation was a little hard to read, mostly because I didn’t label who was saying what
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- these questions were completely arbitrary
The Many Masks of Many Selves
For this assignment we were tasked with creating a faux-visage that symbolically represented one of the many identities we put up in the different times of our lives.
the first phase of this assignment was to come up with five designs that you felt represented a facet of yourself:
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- this was the first design, something aggressive
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- the second was still aggressive, but with a tinge of regret
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- this was the third design, which i originally wanted to construct, but would later find it too demanding, meant to portray vanity
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- this was the fourth design, which displayed tunnel vision and toxicity
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- the final was meant to display insecurity and self deception
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- the initial design for mask design no.2
As mentioned, I found it difficult to construct the first design I had in mind, so I shifted my focus to my fifth design. The image here displays the mask in the middle of construction:
I decided to take some liberties in the middle of the mask making process, such as the writing and illustrations on it, which were taken from things I had written for the integrative seminar course. I also added horns for a more visually striking effect.
The Finished Product:
I didn’t intend for the design to come off as too on the nose or preachy, however in terms of construction I’m happy with the outcome.
Week 9: Interstice Embodied
The final assignment for this course was titled “Interstice Embodied”, which tasked us with defining the tangible nature of negative space, or the empty space that seems to surround the area around things that occupy real space. Within this subject, we were additionally tasked with exploring how individuals place relationships within this space, or how they’re existing relationship is demonstrated through interaction and what is implied within this negative space.
Thinking of an example of this sort of interaction was difficult, although I did know that I wanted a project that would explore the dependence we have on insecurities as well as the reliance on trust. I tried exploring this idea on paper in this train of thought the nature of sPACE-1bi00zy
My first idea was to create this sort of tunnel vision effect, which is shown here Untitled Extract Pages-1by074s
The basic idea behind was this system of question-and-reveal mechanics that would first obstruct the visage of a person, but slowly reveal them with the removal of tabs for each question answered. However, I felt this didn’t necessarily communicate the idea of negative space, as the view of what’s really going on is restricted within a tunnel, the idea was not very good in terms of execution. It occurred to me that I wasn’t thinking specific enough, as this idea only focused on the general idea of establishing familiarity with someone, what I needed was something more specific. With that in mind I looked inward to my own experiences and found that this idea of establishing trust was displayed within my friendship with someone from high school who also goes to college in New York City.
With this in mind, I began to think of how I could represent this specific kind of friendship, that is, a friendship that was pretty strong in high school, but growing more distant after graduation. I wanted a design that would demonstrate the reliance that we still have on one another despite the distance while still incorporating our past. with these parameters in mind, I came up with the first design initial idea-1k3406k which was originally going to have the people facing the same way with a tightening mechanism. However I felt this design didn’t incorporate the increasing distance between us, so with some revisions I thought of something like this introductary idea-1le54eg
With this concept established I was able to piece together a contraption that could hold two people in that position, I decided to construct a harness of sorts.
Construction process:
the harness prototype
There was some mental banter over how I’d attach the two harnesses
(suggestions from professor)
eventually the design came to this:
more of the construction process:
The finished product:
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- I decided to use double looped chain to insinuate the idea of two experiences creating a single connection
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- this was the initial design
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- but I explored different configurations
In conclusion:
I decided to call my project “Divide Your Infinites” because of the complexity of human awareness, as in the awareness of our immediate occupation within space as well as the contextualization of another individuals intent that we pick up on. This idea was largely brought to fruition from a statement made by Stephen Kern in “The Culture of Time and Space”, which was, “knowledge is essentially dialectual […] and [ideas] have a basic polemic nature” It was this idea that human knowledge, and therefore awareness of their surroundings, has this binary dialogue of whats negative space and positive space. a process that works like a radar, constantly evaluating the area. This then brought up the idea of the personal bubble, which I believed was the closest proximity in this radius of awareness. How is it that we get uncomfortable when things enter our radius but let people in at the same time? This led me to believe that they don’t really interfere with it, rather they meet at points that are agreeable to each individual’s personality, as I don’t think people are entirely compatible with another person, which is why they must “divide” themselves when relating to another person, as both infinite arrays of complexities could not entirely cooperate with the other.