Develop a persona based on work that you have already done:
Do research and make this persona the main character in a scenario.
What is this person like? What does he/she need?

Scenario:  a situation where the main prototype or idea is used.
creating a real context for a user.

This helps the design team imagine the context inwhich the design will live.
This will help you explain to other members of the team, pitch to client, what the design is, what the features are,
and the needs that it will meet.

This is a story telling device, but not a subtitution for testing with real people.

Experience at Entry, During and Exit.

Ways to build a scenario:

1. Improvisation/ Bodystorming/ Play Acting
Design Research by Brenda Laurel
Example: Redesigning the Soft Serve Ice Cream Machine

2. Storyboarding/Image Sequence

Relevant Film: by Noam Toran

Desire Management

Develop Personas empathetically, to really understand these users as complex people.
http://noamtoran.com/NT2009/projects/desire-management

There is a part of me that finds the process of creating a work, almost more seductive that the actual work. This is never truer than in reading works of the Oulipo. The combination and recombination of words, makes a beauty in the assemblage that is not possible for me to see without knowing the ritualistic process behind it. In approaching my early projects in the 7 in 7 project, I was intrigued by the idea of cutting the project into small pieces. Unfortunately, all I was able to yield was two book cover designs. I could not reach the level of surreal beauty of the Oulipo in how almost obsessively they are dedicated to their process, almost like a machine or a computing algorithm.

I would almost say that my fixation when I was completing “Scribbling Speech” and “Mental Cross Section” in 2009 was a close approximation, but in the end, my efforts were too marred by human inconsistencies. For “Scribbling Speech” I sometimes marked off my height incorrectly, or forgot my exact turns of phrase. If I were to revisit these twin installations, I would enforce a stricter algorithm for completing these tasks.

In tackling this project, I considered multiple facets of my own practice and what sort of motivations that would propel me into the semester and hopefully stimulate my imagination.

The constraints that I have selected for this project are:

1. The project must have more than one source of media. Text + image, Video=text…etc

2. Borrow your sources! Video/images etc

3.  Don’t do the same themed project more than twice. (I don’t need 7 videos, k?)

I often feel somewhat conflicted about John Cage. I think to be more accurate, I feel conflicted about Artists in love with John Cage and seeking to emulate him, in appearance, and not process. There is much that can be learned from Cage, his thought process as well as how he generated experimental music. His treatment of sound can be a delightful breath of postmodernism, especially when you have a chance to listen to Steve Reich, Iannis Xenakis and Karlheinz Stockhausen  at the same time.

Cage’s  approach to process, can be slightly overwhelming at first for those unfamiliar with working in sound. Even for those more practiced, there is a weight to his words that can intimidate a practitioner. Once you work your way past the medium specific jargon, you find yourself lulled into a rolling cadence by the layout of the page. Is it possible to hear the words as you read them? Has Cage managed to make me hear a rhythm while reading?  In the silence of reading, I have a meta experience as the eyes move across the words and there is a mental echo as each section breaks, even if it is mid-thought.

What am I interested in?

Art at the intersection of multiple media, and social identities.

Video, Interactivity, Installations and Writing

What Artists do I think are working in a way that I find interesting?

I don’t think that I could make a meaningful list of all of the artists that I think are doing interesting work, but I think that many artists go through a time period where there are clear influences by other artists.

In the last year, when I was in Montreal, I was inspired by some work of the following artists:

Nelson Hendricks

Rafael Lozano Hemmer

Allyson Mitchell

Jenny Holzer In particular, I think “Please Change Beliefs” and Truisms is why I am an artist.

What Conference do I want to go to this year?

Ars Electronica

I actually should strongly consider:

CAA I jjst missed this years, but I will go to next year’s conference.

SxSW

Siggraph (maybe..for some reason, I just don’t think I fit in, maybe I’m too in love with being an outsider)

I got tickets to Pax East, although I would not call it terribly academically rigorous. Some of the Panels look promising.

I am on the committee that is organizing Critical Themes in Media

Much like staring at “magic eye” picture, once you read “Communities of Practice” you never look at the way you interact with other artists and designers the same way.

Lave and Wegner capture the problem of the technopile artist succinctly