In this assignment, we were instructed to go out in the world and look for anything that resembled something else. The stipulations included that it had the subjects had to be “created by wear, repair, time, decay, spillage, breakage, update, replacement, light, shadow, rain or snow.”
I believe, the point of this assignment was to push our imagination and creativity to a point where we could see images and then establish ideas, that otherwise would have been disregarded.
At first, I found it to be quite tedious as I could not find many examples for the assignment. However, once I started to relax and open my mind I was able to find a lot of hidden creatures and expressions in my surroundings. It was as if I just had to flip a switch to view things in this manner, and I realized that it is an acquirable skill. During my secondary attempt at this assignment, I took the opportunity to look beyond weird stains on the floor. By using different angles and points of perspective I was able to find more interesting images like the “Mother & Son Watching TV” (a shadow created by objects from the MET’s collection of Islamic art and heritage). Overall, this was a very informative assignment as I realize now that it was to open our minds and look at the world differently, to look at the world from the eyes of a designer.
