October 25th- Meeting

October 25^th- Meeting

 

Today my partner and I met to discuss our new direction for our exhibit project. After going through our general idea of creating an exhibit that people can interpret the meaning for themselves, we then began to work on figuring out exactly what images we were going to have the public interpret. We searched on Google for images. We knew that one item we wanted to have the public interpret would be a Hmong story cloth. The problem is finding one that has a big enough picture so that when we blow it up, it won’t become pixelated. We also had to find one that had an accompanying description of what it was portraying.

            Once we found what we were looking for, we began searching for the second image. This was difficult because we didn’t really have any real direction as for what to use. We decided on a Native American creation story image that I am familiar with. Now that we had the images, and a general understanding of what we were going to do, it was time to begin dividing up the workload to suit each person’s strengths. My partner decided to research the Hmong story cloth, and I am going to research the Native American creation story. We wrote up a brief outline of what our intended project was so that we both could come back to it later in case we forgot something. Finally we divided up the portions of the proposal that each of us is going to do in regards to the pieces that we are researching. We also discussed who felt the most comfortable doing what as far as completing the other parts of the proposal paper, and we ended our meeting. Both of us agreed that we had a good feeling about the direction that our project was now heading, and are excited to see how it will turn out.

    This is the Native American Creation story that we have finally chosen to display. It was created by an Iroquois artist in the 1930's       

 

October 25th- Creativity walk

Today I went on my creative walk to get an understanding of how individuals use creativity to transform their own space in interesting and unique ways. The first house that caught my eye had done something very unique to their front yard. They had turned their entire yard into a garden space to grow crops. This is a very good idea to not only lessen the amount that you spend on groceries, but also is a great way to do something very different with the limited space that you may have. The creative ideas that I would take from this display would be that it is perfectly okay to have a unique idea and to implement it, even if it is incredibly different from everything else around you.

 

Another example that I found multiple different examples of was the use of natural shrubs and plants to form a living fence. I think that the use of natural plants to create dividers within a space is a great way to maintain your privacy, for a fraction of the cost that a traditional fence would cost to achieve the same results. The creative quality that I would extract from this idea is to always look at multiple different ways to solve a problem, instead of just the way that it is traditionally done. You never know whether thinking a bit outside the box will yield a better result.

 

 

The final things that I noticed during my creativity walk, were little embellishments that people made to their yards or homes to either add aesthetic beauty or functional art. There were many different examples if these. There were small benches made out of stones to sit and relax. There were pieces of ornamental glass arranged to filter colored light inside of the home. There was even a clothesline stand mounted on someone’s roof because they had a very small yard. The creativity and diversity within this small neighborhood helps me to realize that you don’t need to always use things in the ways that they were designed to be used. Find other functions for ordinary spaces and objects, and you can have an incredible array of results.

October 23rd

Today my partner and I met briefly after class period to discuss our project. During class several new ways of thinking about the project, and the criteria for the project popped into my head, and I wanted to get my partners feedback on it. During our discussion we decided to scrap the original exhibit idea, and head in a new direction. The switch came partly because of a better understanding of the criteria for the project, and partly because the new idea sounded a bit more fun to create and implement. We decided that instead of creating a “choose your own history exhibit,” we were going to create an exhibit where the public could test their own interpretive skills. We are going to be meeting again this Saturday to figure out more details.

October 18th

Today was the first meeting for my partner and I to begin brainstorming on our Interactive Exhibit Project. During this brainstorming session, we essentially attempted to get a better grasp of the assignment, as well as attempting to have a definitive direction to move on our project. We began by discussing possible exhibit ideas that we could do, deciding that we are going to attempt to create a “choose your own history adventure” exhibit. We will set up stations within a specific area and have multiple different pictures of historical events, with narratives below describing what is occurring in the picture. There will then be two covered cards underneath the description, which the patron can use to decide where they are going to go next. If they choose the correct event that happens next in the sequence, they will be able to continue on towards the end. If they are incorrect, they will either be redirected to the beginning, or on a path that has an incorrect outcome. The details of that part haven’t been figured out yet.

            Having a general idea of the kind of project that we would like to do, we then began to brainstorm ideas for the historical theme we could use. Two choices that we thought would work well were to incorporate major U.S. historical events, with Presidential Information. This way the exhibit should be able to be interacted with by the majority f people. A third choice we came up with but rejected was Hmong history. We rejected this idea because even knowledgeable participants may have no knowledge of many of the events. We are going to begin to gather information that we could use to create our plaques over the next couple of weeks, by first studying a timeline of U.S. historical events, and deciding which ones we feel that the general public would have knowledge of.

            We are undecided as of yet about the target audience. It will either be college students found on campus, or a more controlled setting such as a third grade class at Lakeshore Elementary School. Initially we had thought of performing the exhibit with my wife’s first grade class, but after speaking with her about it, she felt that the first graders wouldn’t be very good at this kind of activity. Whichever of our possible target audiences that we choose, we felt that having some form of incentive for a successful completion of the exhibit might be a good idea to help get people motivated. Something along the lines of a candy or treat.

            After about an hour of brainstorming, we walked over to Davies Center to look at a possible location to hold our exhibit. We then parted ways, and are going to continue meeting on Saturday afternoons, perhaps more often if needed.