The Shrine

In New Yorican culture, the accessories of organized religion are often appropriated to create a personal meaning and spiritual connection. Taking this conceptual tactic as our starting point, Ashley and I were interested in how given materials become meaningful in the context of the shrine or memorial.

We decided to work with recycled materials, and settled on secondhand furniture: together, we approached the material from a combined product design/sculpture perspective. Using a secondhand bedside cabinet, we applied an evocative combination of blankets, wax and hair to elevate the object somewhere beyond its everyday appearance.

Rather than performing an 'action' separately, we let the actions direct our use of the material. The result incorporates "cutting, splitting, spilling, enclosing, wrapping, opening" and the idea "of context."

Hands-Free Magazine

Material: Magazine
Tactic: Beer hat
The beer hat tactic was created so people could drink beer without using their hands. Therefore, we created a magazine that could be looked at without using your hands; a blanket made out of magazine pages.

Hands Free

The tactic that we chose to go with was found in the beer hat. We wanted to create something where we are able to utilize the hands free aspect. The materials that we chose were scrapes of fabrics and magazines. Posting up magazine articles and pictures from your favorite magazine on the wall next to your bed is one way of the hands free concept. Whenever you are in your bed, you are able to read the articles and view pictures without having to actually hold the magazine itself. Another idea of the hands free aspect is creating multiple ways of wearing scrapes of fabric you have collected. Without having to collect and hold different pieces of fabric and misplace it, you can put all the scrapes of fabric together and create different ways of putting it on your body, for instance as a hair band or a bracelet. 

All Tied Up In (Virtual) Knots! [Kevin and Jill]

*keep in mind the above image is only a mock up

Following a very in-depth discussion regarding the philosophy or 'ethos' behind SL 'camping' we came to the conclusion that 'camping' was truly about brining people together; for ease of understanding we related more to the owner of the SL location who pays 'campers' in order to bring in more traffic to his/her venue. We see 'camping' as an invisible fabric that ties members of Second Life together, bringing them to central locations. 

Our medium to preform this tactic is fabric, although, our piece has performative aspects and sort of needs to be experienced in order to be fully understood. (As with Second Life, it is not really real until you are a part of it.) So for this Sunday-night-blog-posting we decided to make a quick mock up of what our performance piece will look like. Above you can see little paper people being united/bound by way of fabric (it is literally binding them together, as it will bind all of you- our lovely participants- on Tuesday.)

Fabric Collage - Megan + Dilhan

The second time experimenting with our chosen material (fabric) we chose to apply a workaround that our culture uses to deal with the cluttered small space that have to arrange their products as well how they are able to distinguish themselves as a private, innovative entity when compared to the other designers and public space that surrounds them. Whether it be by putting chairs in between booths to segregate where one designers "section" begins and where ones ends, using a sheet as a backdrop folded over a garment rack to differentiate ones space, or having a colored overhead umbrella, etc. By interconnecting various swatches of fabric that have been dyed, cut, woven, sewed, etc. we we wanted to capture and conceptualize the differences and lengths that handicraft designers must go through to establish a presence and a personal aesthetic when clustered together in a space with many other talented individuals. By also applying a very hand oriented aesthetic to our fabric collage we wanted to be representative of the ideals and values the designers that we have been observing and studying include in their own work.

raw food culture: variety

one of raw foodist tactics is to take the foundation foods they eat, and create a variety of taste, and meals with them. we have chosen organic fabric as our material and have made a variety of textures, colors, and looks with the restrictions of using only one very simple fabric. the simplicity of the fabric relates to their simplistic ingredients (nuts, seeds, fruits, vegetables) and the complexity of our design represent their finished meals in the sense that they are both strong and beautiful. the finished piece is meant to hang as a piece of organic raw art.

Layer For Comfort

As I presented in class, fishnets are relatively uncomfortable to wear. A tactic we found that Goths usually do is layering. For example they may layer clothes under fishnets or stockings on top of stockings. This may or may not be a style to wear fishnets, but it is a good tactic to make it more comfortable.

This is a picture of Moira modeling the original shirt we made.



Since the idea of layering for comfort is pretty common in the fashion sense, we decided to layer for mental comfort instead of the physical comfort.




Whether one is pro choice or not, this is probably not something that is relatively comfortable to look at. Having the original fabric layered over the picture of the fetus, it provides a mental comfort to the viewer.