When looking back upon my development throughout the year and how it was influenced by the course theme ‘shift’, one thing which immediately springs to mind, for me, was working on poetry. (In particular haikus). The subtle structure, combined with a sense of shift truly opened my eyes to how one can create impact in just very view words. Furthermore, I feel a sense of shift is easily noticeable within my final project. For my final piece, I gather several dress shirts, then reassembling them into a gown. This represented the first stage of a shift. The next process was to alter the environment of the piece of clothing and how doing so would transform the garments surface.

Moreover, leading up to the final project, I focused on a sense of shift within a function and within physical manner, for example, a sense of distortion or metamorphosis to transitioning from one point to the other to serve a multi-purpose. Throughout the course, these were the two most prominent ways the idea of shift spoke to me, especially when reminiscing over past memories regarding a matter of physical shift,  function or transformation of an object.

Furthermore, regarding my experience with a sense of mental shift, when observing memory, I chose to write some of my pieces rather aloofly, almost comparable to a person being awake within a dream. However yet using a rather analytical tone, as if one was analyzing one’s own dream, stumbling upon memory.  A piece of writing from this course, which determined the analyzation of a mannerism of some kind, in my case, my father’s constant whistle, portrayed this way of writing. Yet within the writing, the mannerism was the main protagonist, so to speak, rather than the person executing it. This fact itself created a sense of shift within me, as it seems bizarre to me how an object would be associated with the ‘main character’ of a passage. Yet I found myself pleasantly surprised by this sensation of a mental shift, I experienced when writing the mentioned piece, due to this state of shifted awareness.

However, when addressing any sort of physical shift, one must notice the difference within a physical and mental shift. The later most commonly take place singularly within the brain, yet a sense of physical shift necessitates a process of transformation to be completed. Therefore this sense of shift was especially relevant to my final piece.

I felt this type of shift was highly evident throughout the course. I recall in particular an example within the studio classes, as for plenty of my projects, I would use materials which were once intended for another purpose and yet ended up being re-used for creative purposes. An example would be a large styrofoam ball, usually used for storage purposes, which shifted into a representation of a ‘map of emotional resonance’ of various places upon the planet earth. The objective was to work alongside four other peers and create a personalized topic, which however had to include an aspect of mapping. Therefore, I chose to brainstorm together with my group and ultimately came up with the idea of tracing one’s travels, then creating an accustomed coding system, which would represent mental/emotional, physical and works related shift within the person at the time of being present at the destination. Furthermore, as this project was held within a group, I felt the very exercise itself was an example of being influenced by a sense of shift, as oftentimes the main objective was to work on one’s final projects by oneself, ye this projects necessitated a shift of perspective when working, as is was a team setting, rather than a ‘solo mission’.

Overall, the sense of shift was strongly noticeable throughout the course and has definitely influenced my work. If I was to create further pieces of work based upon this subject matter, I would most definitely revisit the idea of shift within poetry, particularly haikus and try to incorporate this element within a physical shift. For example, one could print haiku texts onto fabric or other surfaces, which would then be used for multipurpose objects. This way the object would portray two types of shifts, mental shift via the writing and sense of shift within a function.