Monday night we spent a couple hours working over some new ideas with some new friends. Mostly, these ideas have been in the “meaning to do that” category, mostly opening up new collaborations in which new projects will unfold.
Two main project frameworks came out of our brainstorm session—a floating sculpture project with the Green Corridor and a documentary video project with a local filmmaker. Both are ambitious in their own right, but thankfully operate at completely different timescales, allowing us a lot more time where we need it.
On top of being really productive and inspiring, we got to use a rainbow of sharpies to take notes—how much better can creative collaborative work get???
Josh, Cristina, Danielle and I met with Rosina, Eric and Diana. We spent the first bit of the evening working out details for the documentary video project with Eric.
Having worked with Eric over the summer on another film, this idea came out of an earlier conversation about how we might start to document and understand people in the community with whom we might not otherwise have the opportunity to interact.
We settled on a series of 5 or 6 documentaries about 3 minutes long each that would, generally speaking, highlight personal stories of people we know. To add a level of experimentation to the process of making the documentaries, we decided to introduce obstructions (labelled on our papers as Decisions), having recently watched The Five Obstructions.
These are a couple of the decisions we made, with Decision 3 being especially important. Eric’s interview subjects will be chosen by each of us who were at the meeting, and Eric cannot already know who he is interviewing. We’ll facilitate the interview with the person we know, but we will each also act as the sound recordist for one of the other interviews. This way, we’ll each be involved in two of the interviews, with the role of sound recordist being perhaps the most interesting to be able to take in the entire experience. Eric will film and edit each interview.
Next, we started the brainstorming for the floating sculpture project we’re hoping to undertake with the Green Corridor class.
Josh, Eric, and Diane discussing potential materials for the floating sculpture—as always, we’re trying to identify things that would be free or extremely cheap with which we can build the sculpture.
Cristina editing photos, Rosina, and Josh listening to Danielle.
One of the 200 something photos taken last Saturday night.
The floating sculpture project is just in its beginning stages, but we tried to identify some of the potential locations, materials, and generally things we’d like it to “do.”
Taking notes.
Danielle suggests some potential uses for the floating sculpture. After an initial overview of some of the pragmatics of the project, we started to imagine other things that the sculpture could do—maybe it can filter a tiny amount of water, report that data through the Internet, or maybe it could act as a floating tourist booth or currency exchange?
Some of our notes on plants that can clean water and / or grow in polluted conditions, certainly not an exhaustive list yet, but a great starting point.
Rosina and Josh.
Eric and Diana.
Cristina editing many, many, many photos.
Danielle thinking.
Taking a quick break to look at some of the amazing photos from our 100 Ways to Save the City projection performance.
Josh thinking about materials for the floating sculpture.
The notes / mind maps at the end of the evening for the floating sculpture.
Some potential ideas for some of the more impossible outcomes of the floating sculpture project.
It was awesome to get some new ideas flowing and start thinking about projects of various scales that will help introduce some new collaborative partners. Working like this is going to allow us to continue to expand our own research, but also help to get some new things off the ground that might not otherwise happen given our usual schedules. We’re very much looking forward to the next time we can do this.
Related Posts: Eric Boucher Micro-Residency Iteration 6/6 Math, Markers, and Measurements + Eric’s micro-documentary Eric Boucher Micro-Residency Iteration 3/5
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This was quite the productive session!