Jalese-Ayana
Feb, 9th, 2015
Deconstruction
Int. Seminar Comm Engagement

For my studio class in my first semester, we had to create our own museum, to display artifacts found in the Bowery neighborhood in Manhattan. Our artifacts had to be easily visible but presented in a way that would reflect a certain view. Our team quickly came up in these main questions. What are we trying to display? How will we display it? What materials will we use? Will it be multi-functional? We decided to go with a realistic approach by creating a museum, that the viewer will be able to physically place themselves into. We also began to question, will it be durable? A decision on size, was quickly made when we realized it would have to be big enough in order for the viewer to at least stick their head inside.
Cardboard, and foam core were suggested because of their inexpensive qualities, we also chose to use recycled materials along the street in order to preserve our budget and add on to the theme, which was based on the 1970s club CBGB . To also go along with the theme we chose artifacts found on the street such as cigarettes, condoms, razor blades, money, “Dime piece”, “Cocaine” and other things you would find in a hardcore punk rock club, which was infamously known for its bathroom. Other materials such as spray paint and glow sticks would also add to the ambience for our “museum”.
Since we were basing our project on a real life place, we needed to gather enough information about it, to properly represent it. We found out the names of bands that were prominent during that time. We also research sayings that were “hip”, that we could include on the walls of the bathroom (which we chose would be the background for our “museum”). In order to match the ideas that were highly advocated in the club we included drugs, and the rebellious art form of graffiti, we also chose to play a punk rock song during our presentation.
I was very satisfied by our use of design strategies in order to translate our ideas into a physical thing. We started by asking questions and realized possible issues if we chose the wrong material, or if we didn’t do enough research our methods would not reflect the topic well. We also had to properly organize our ideas, so that each artifact would be visible and defined within the same. Since we making something the viewer would lean into, it had to be well lit, so we also put glow sticks around the walls to act as a source of light but to also add to the them and could also serve as artifacts themselves! Last but not least we printed out old posters of punk rock bands, and taped them up in our museum, we even designed our signage to recreate a similar look to the posters. With strategy and hard work we were able to create the exact project we wanted and I couldn’t have been more proud of it.