Cross Course Reflection

Cross Course Reflection

Intro

  • My name is Kaiyao Li, who majored in fashion design, and I am from China. I used to work on product design due to my enthusiasm for sneakers design and now more interested in garment design. I got a wide range of hobbies, including playing basketball, playing guitar, singing, watching movies and drawing, some of them played a vital role in the past first year of college. Fashion, as my major, to me is a wearable form of artwork following certain patterns but definitely innovative in print, materiality, and the media that carries fashion work. It has a long enough history to trace back on and the historical context incentives me more to transfer to this legendary major. I want to be remembered, not only my friends, family but way more than that. A historical discipline provides me connotation and I am more than glad to bring it into my work. I want to be known and recognized in fashion history.

Summary

  • In different courses, I formed a pattern for the post: listing the professor’s instruction first, analyzing the theme and thesis, describing the process, making mock-ups, and then product shots and styling shots with reflection. This pattern really helped me to form a unified, concise learning portfolio post.
  • Space as a course taught me the most. The manipulation of aluminum wire, the materiality of cardboard, aluminum sheet, different types of woods; the use of the wood shop, laser lab, wet lab, and 3D modeling. These experiences definitely helped me in the second half of the first year in making garments, cutting materials for video making, and even materiality for using materials in a sustainable way.
  • Academic studies can definitely enhance studio making, deepening the meaning behind the pieces. When you are conducting academic studies, you would acquire the historical contexts, understand the process of innovation, and obtain the implication behind details and designs, which would definitely enrich the pieces, bring repercussion to the target audience.
  • I personally love group works, those group work can definitely enrich the relationship between classmates and help accumulate the talents and thoughts together for a better output. For instance, in my studio class, four of our group members are good at different things, coincidentally, Blasian is good at making, I am good at ideation, Cecily is good at digital drawing and software while Hermione is good at writing. We four made a fantastic group that every single one of us is so proud of, which later turns out great.
  • I would say writing definitely helps to set an aim for the studio making. It felt like a long voyage where navigation plays a vital role. Writing helps to clarify the plot of the reasons behind why we are making things as well as help the audience understand the implication behind what we designed.

Highlights

  • Personal Exoskeleton
  • This project is to research the exoskeleton concept (the external skeleton that supports and protects an animal’s body, in contrast to the internal skeleton), state the inspiration from it and then make a project by three stages. The first stage is mainly about research and background investigation to obtain primary ideas and combine them into rough model ideas through sketching while the second is to practically make rough models based on the research and ideas step by step. Ultimately, phase three is to take materials into consideration, combine and finalize all the ideas, and, without glue, conduct experiments and finally make a practical product from the theme “a wearable exoskeleton”. Basically, what I have made is a glove-like, movable handpiece with a shape of an exoskeleton of insects, that can function as frightening and supporting.
  • Phase-one-written-research-1ar2t6d
  • Above is the mindmap of my ideation and below is a mood board that visualizes my mind map including factors, ideas, concepts, and materials.
  • Material-wise, I explored straws as support, wood as triggers, and aluminum pipe as the main body while aluminum wire as the connection between every single joint.
  • Also, I did 6 mock-ups until I got what I want it to be, experimenting with the materiality of wood, metal, metal wire, and the functioning of the connecting joints.
  • Besides, to help finalize my idea, I also applied thumbnail drawing that my professor recommends to narrow down the choice of my final project
  • I spent such a long time experimenting with new materials and new tools. I learned how to handle a drill and the machines in the woodshop, and further, I also learned about the materiality of them, which undoubtedly can help me in my exploration in my major.
  • This project taught me quite a few from different perspectives: knowledge, experience, skill, and personality. First, I gained knowledge during the process of my research conducted on. Vocabulary, as an international student I learned tons of new words related to this project: exoskeleton, clamp, pliers, driller, drilling bits and so on. Then along with my deeper investigation on the concept exoskeleton, I figured out a way that can most directly lay out my whole mind and thoughts about the word exoskeleton–mindmap–and I was also amazed how far my idea can go and how long it can last to help build on my half-finished product. I basically learned a way of how to subjectively think or associatively think. Besides, during the time of project one, I was introduced to the wood shop and the making center. I got acquainted with this whole place including all kinds of machines and explored what can be borrowed in the tools room. That was my first time trying to use a driller and I also tried plaster in the wet lab and based on my experiment I figured out the ratio of plaster powder and water by which the plaster can freeze (although it was not used at the end). The most important challenge is the no-glue policy of this project’s product. I have to figure out ways to solve the mechanical connection and made it with my own hands. I tried yarns, iron wires and so on. To make my project unique, I experimented different ways to make an on-track and smooth movable installation. As mentioned above, I tried rubber bands, metal pipe as a latch, pipe-to-pipe rotation, and canon-like rotation.I am now quite a skilled worker with a hand driller. As you can see in the picture, I often drill a hole right in the middle of an aluminum pipe without compressing and destroying its circular structure. You have to push hard on the opposite direction of the drill so that it can concentrate on one point on such a slippery arc surface. Besides, I also learned how to sand. To make the ring, I cut a large wood piece and drill a large hole that is large enough for my finger to fit in and sand it with the circular sander to make it a perfect hexagon shape.For personality, I really harvest a lot from this project. At the first time when I show my professor my phase 2 rough models, she said it was not artistic enough and is totally undersized. I was crushed then since I spent several afternoons to do that model and it was just undersized. All my mind was screwed up and the only sound in my mind that guided me was “carry on”. After that trauma, I started to try my best to communicate with my professor which rewarded me heavily. I figured out the right materials and figured out what to do. All the blurring and perplexing just vanished. With her suggestion and guidance, I gradually developed my independent thinking ability and ultimately designed and made this piece with my thought. Due to its time range, it was a large project which needs the tenacity to keep doing and communication ability to calm down and carry on. Most importantly, I have been exercising the weakest point on mine–independent thinking. My professor always says:” you are the designer, you decide.” From her saying,  I gradually figured out the boundary between guidance and offering the idea.If I have a chance to do it again, I may try to use wood sticks and make cut them at the ends of each stick so that they can be mechanically connected by putting the corresponding shape together and I may try a new weapon–the air gun. I watched a demo of how to use an air gun, which was fabulous, unfortunately, I did not have a chance to use it in my project this time. To conclude, it is such a meaningful project that taught me pretty much. Looking forward to seeing more projects like this from Space class.
  • Group Work-Light
  • This project instructs us to make a light installation or a chandelier made of several independent components that each group member is responsible for. For this project, we are allowed to use an artificial light source or to depend on natural light and the project should be modular and collapsible using materials that fit the “cradle-to-cradle” standard. Besides, we will select an existing or imagery location that will be the inspiration for the installation. For our group, we would use the properties of light as our theme and people picking up the different properties of light to work as an individual theme and mine is projection.
  • Project-3-1j72kq6(research document)
  • Mind map as a clear plot
  • This time we, as a group, worked on sketching a lot to figure out the main idea in a cohesive collection form.
  • After that, I started to do mockups, testing with cardboard, chipboard and different types of wood for my final since I decided to use the laser-cutting technique to achieve the projection property. Laser cutting also taught me quite a lot about the Adobe Illustrator and how to operate the machine, how to reserve machines through Web Checkout.
  • Above is my mockups and the final structure of my work, I used the engraving and cutting-through function of the laser cutting machine for the final product; besides, I also cut the connection joint so that it fits the concept of the mechanical connector not using glues at all.
  • This is the most challenging piece ever in my space course. I have to cooperate with my teammates, to communicate, to give up my own thoughts after 3 hours of brainstorming and sketching just because one of my teammates is stubborn and not happy with that. This is also a really helpful process, since, as my professor said, we have to face communication, compromise, cooperate, and sacrifice part of our own in the future. We had a really struggling time deciding what to do since Anshuman was thinking of doing a product for the people in extreme poverty while Neve was thinking of doing things like a fairy tale and clouds; However, I was thinking of the geometric shapes of collapsible structures with 4 of our pieces assembled together and function differently when being separated. This was really a struggling process. We did not figure out what to do until the end of November, which left us only almost 3 weeks to do our own piece.The other thing I figured that is quite hard is to remain patient. I was out of emotion several times doing this group project since the stress to make it perfect engulfed me. The first time it was when we cannot figure out an idea and people were just sitting, staring at laptop screens. I felt pressured since the time was urging and if we do not figure our any idea, we could never finish with the pressure of other courses’ finals. I started to stress out and thanks to my teammate, they gave me encouragement and reassured me to calm me down. Finally, we figured out what to do at the end of that class. The second time I remember was during the assembling process of my final piece. The wood board should be 1/4 inch thick, however, home depot’s wood board is so under quality that I cannot assemble them with 1/4 inch opening using my joints. I have to redo the joints using laser cut and when I did, I found it hard to insert the piece into joints. Especially when I tried to insert it to fit 3 other pieces. I was mentally crushed and started thinking I can never finish the piece. My professor came and told me not to worry, she started to try to connect the poor-quality plywood. I was really moved and when she told me if I leave some of the planes open, it can still be beautiful, I saw hope, and also got inspired. I improvised a little to make the shape seems random but not interfering the integral beauty; then I painted it so that the color can fit the other 3 pieces of my teammates. I finally made it with the support of teammates and my professor. Moreover, I learned how to operate the laser cutting machine and why do we need to plan things ahead. In the beginning, my professor asked us to do a timeline so that we can stick to it. Looking back to the timeline, give or take, our group had a little delay according to the plan. Therefore, our time to do the project is limited, resulting in huge stress on everybody. Learning from the timeline, I scheduled more than enough time for laser cutting to cut more than enough pentagons and joints just in case I would be short in materials. Therefore, with that laser cutting planned ahead, I was able to finish my work without going to the lab again and over again. All in all, this is a fun process working cooperatively and this is the last project of my favorite class, I want to thank my teammates and definitely my professor as well.

Conclusion

  •  I am really a history guy so for the future question, I might want to explore the historical-contextualized field, like how can people reflect the history by doing a monumental installation or garment. I have focused on sustainable quite a lot in this semester in studio 2, sustainable system, time, and last semester space.
  • I actually did a mix-up between my time final and sustainable system final. Sustainable final instructs us to make a project in any media to reflect sustainable issue and offer a solution. For time, the theme I chose was nature and overurbanization. Therefore, my time project, editing a movie enlightened my sustainable system final, and ultimately I made a promotional commercial using part of my time project with re-edition and adding voiceover and data for the Million Tree Project NYC, a non-profit organization striving for environment protection and solving deforestation problems. Therefore, it sounds coincidental, even absurd, but different courses can be inter-related and inter-enlightening.
  • For me, the skills that I need to learn is about garment making due to my major. My skills in different sewing machines are not mature enough and I would definitely train myself more during the summer vacation. Besides, I want to explore my own culture more. I want to learn Chinese traditional drawing during the summer vacation, to feel the sense of Yin-Yang and tranquility brought by the ink drawing, the color black and white; I think they are part of me and I would like to demonstrate them to my audience.

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