ion with in conversat anita ju d n a y le y a h

W: Do you remember when this rst started? J: You emailed us and told us to write a prompt. W: And... J: And we did. W: Did you know what you were getting yourself into? J: A little bit. H: Juanita had told me that you e-mailed me, cause I never check my email. I thought about what prompt I should do. I didnt design it very well and everyone else seemed to have. Then I did the easiest one, because I suck. I gave it to you. Thats it. W: Can you talk about the process of coming up with that idea? J: It was hard. I think I came up with two other ideas, before I settled on that one. That idea wasnt even completely my own ideaI pretty much stole Hayleys idea of something she had done before... H: Which one? J: The one with the receipts...But then I just reworded it and made it sound pretentious. I came up with other ideas that were just variations of that idea, but they were to complex to do or boring. I made it simple and interesting I guess. W: How did you feel when you felt like you were stealing someones idea? J: Well...Not bad. I wasnt stealing the idea. And Hayley borrowed that idea from other people. I think its more about seeing how you can elaborate on them or how you can change them. For example, when I was thinking about what people would turn in...When Lauren did mine it was different than what I thought it would be. She thought about the prompt differently or saw it differently. W: In what way? J: Her stuff was like objects...It was nicer. It wasnt just collecting stuff, it was collecting specic things that t together. It was a lot more organized, than what I thought it was going to be in my head. W: Did you think it was more successful or did you think that mattered? J: No, I dont think it mattered. I liked the stuff she had. I guess I was surprised by how she interpreted the prompt. W: Talk about the experience of getting all the different ideas. What stood out to you? Why did you pick what you did or why did you not pick certain ones? J: I thought a lot of the prompts were similar; At least with Hayley, Flo, and I. We all do similar stuff; We all influence each other and it draws from experiences with each other. I picked the prompts that I could make about myself. That sounds bad, but not in a bad way.

It reflected the way I work or the way I like to make work which is putting things that are personal in it. The one that I didnt want to do at all was Miles prompt. I didnt know how I could do it and make it something that was meaningful or tangible or anything you know? W: Meaningful and tangible to you? J: To me...Like, I see this in Flo and Hayleys work and maybe other peoples workwork that is personal, but that you can relate to. W: Do you think Miles making those images was an impersonal act? J: No, I think it was personal. I think it was about not wanting to ruin something he made. They were nished pieces. That was his work. It felt weird, because he was asking to us to manipulate something he had already made. I didnt want to do that. W: What about the idea of using somebody else ideas? J: I dont know. I guess its like the same thing. H: Hm? J: How I used your idea, you used somebody elses idea, and that person influenced other people, but I didnt want to use Miles idea. H: I think because, he presented work that was at a nished state. It was hard to jump in. He obviously brought it to some state of completion. It feels unapproachable. J: Yea, they were all approachable and you could make them personal and relateable to other people. It wasnt the same with that one. W: There was a moment when you were talking about how you wanted to make work about yourself and then for a second you were like but not in a bad way. Can you talk about that? Because in design youre not suppose to do that...so that was something I was trying to raise questions about. J: I guess its about making it about yourself and only for yourself. Like I dont want to make something and then be the only person that looks at it or relates to it. Hayley and I make a lot of stuff about each other, but I feel like if other people looked at it they would be able to relate it back to themselves or their relationships. When I say make work about myself and that I dont mean it in a bad way, is that I dont mean that Im keeping it for myself. I want to share it with other people and hopefully they nd something they relate too. I think you can relate that back to design. H: It goes back to the unapproachability issue. If you make work that only exists for yourself or only makes sense to you, then its unapproachable. There is no point of access. J: Thats the opposite of design. Design has to be approachable. You have to invest a lot of yourself in it and I think people forget that.

W: Designers investing themselves emotionally or in a work sense like they are just doing these things? J: Both. Its easier to do projects when youre emotionally invested in it and youre passionate about it. That could be in a work sense or if you just feel a connection to a project. W: Were there things that I could have done better in facilitating this project? J: You need to kick our butts. Call me every day and be like Are you doing your work? Are you getting stuff done? Or are you falling asleep and taking a ten hour nap? But I dont know, I think you did a good job. All of the things were pretty open and thats nice. W: Wasnt that harder though? J: No, I think you get a lot of interesting and funny results. Thats cool, because its not limited to a small group of people. Its broad and you can do whatever you want with the stuff you receive. In a way, that gives you more control of your project. Awkward silence. W: After looking at all of these things, did you see any connections across it or did you imagine what the end state would be of this at all? J: I dont know what I see, but I like the results so far and people were really willing to give a part of themselves in this project. W: I guess I dont have anymore questions. Any last comments? H: What are you doing? W: Oh gosh....Well last night I was up really late, cause Ive been putting it off, but I was going to write like a statement about my project. So I wrote six pages so far of me talking about it and incorporating my research because that was a huge component. I probably did to much research and not enough actual things. So I thought I might try to emphasize that. H: What were you researching? W: I have like this huge stack of books from the library, but so I was reading about...Moments in history that Ive learned about. Things that have stuck with me and that also have ideals that are inherent in this project. So the Fluxus artists and the arts and craft movement. I was reading about participatory design and how it requires user content for completion. Theres this group of Dutch designers that wrote this manifesto for artists and designers called Conditional Design talking about this way of working. I was also reading about socially engaged art and social practice, stuff that my Community Arts and Service Learning classes exposed me to.

That was more about like advocating for this thing or helping this community, but my project wasnt really about that. It was still kind of relevant I guess. I was also reading this book that was really good called The Everyday. I dont know how to explain this, but it should just make sense. Its just about the obvious or the mundane things that people dont notice...I dont know...I havent gotten to this part in my six page document so I dont know how to talk about it yet. H: I was gonna say that it seems like you were trying to do a project thats pushing against design and trying to make that design. But it seems like you are not pushing against design. I think you are trying to prove that art is design, because it is. It seems like that is what you are doing. I mean like what we talked about, they would like to think of design as not art and something that does not involve the artist. You are not even called an artist, you are called a designer. But good design has an access point. I mean its essential. An access point for humans is another human, which is something we all share. It seems like you are trying to draw parallels between art and design that are already inherent and already exist, but people would not like to acknowledge for whatever reason. Maybe because of the pretentiousness of high art, but you are doing it in a very unpretentious way by asking people for input and not relying on your own divine creative spirit, but like other people and its guiding what youre doing. And you are inviting people into the process. And you dont really know what you are doing. W: Why did you think in the beginning that I was arguing against design? H: Well everything you are doing sounds like everything that they taught you not to think about design. I was like this just sounds like right before you leave you are going Fuck you. W: No, but I do think that people do that! H: Obviously, you realize the art side of design, which is why I think it exists here at an art school. I think there are glaringly obvious things about design thats art that people dont want to acknowledge. The line is very clearly drawn. Mostly where you see it, is where you are not suppose to let yourself be in the work. But I dont know, I think that is what make successful design, Again because of the entry point. If you make design that only makes sense to you or makes sense to the rules of design, nobody is interested in it. Nobody can identify with it. W: I denitely value what I learned here and I wasnt trying to be like Fuck you! But something else I was thinking about was that Ive been thought to think and concept so much, that I kind of lost sight of just being able to make things which is also important.

H: Process is what brings meaning to work. I think they want you to have it all planned out before you do it. A lot of things that Ive learned from doing work, just doing it without thinking about it to much, is that you inject meaning into it without planning too and thats often the best kind. At least the most genuine, which I think is important. W: You reminded of this book I was reading called How to Think Like A Great Designer and it was funny because Michael Bierut said, I dont work in a sort of methodical way. A lot of your questions are about creativity, and I dont think design involves that much creativity. It involves creativity in the way of doing a crossword puzzle involves creativity. You need some imagination and knowledge. I think of artists as creative because they have to invent something out of nothing. I think designers design because they cant invent something out of nothing. Or at least thats why I design. I related to that, because I think pull ideas,or things from various facets and reorient it. Sometimes I feel like I didnt event something new. H: Do you want to invent something new? W: Yeah, I think I do. I think I have a huge desire to create stuff. Another thing I think about is how I am not able to understand myself or the world without having to make my way into understanding it and design lets me do that. H: So clarity is important to you? Is that what you mean? Its a language that is clear and dened? W: Well I wouldnt say I go into a project like that. I value the idea of being able to give someone something they have to make sense of and eventually it gets clear and they nd where they can draw meaning from. Or value from. H: But what about design lets you understand yourself or the world more than any other medium? W: Well I dont know if thats true. I guess I feel like I havent been able to explore other mediums. Which is why I was interested in having different kinds of people in different departments work on this. Where was I going? What was the question? H: Why design? If what you want to do is communicate, whats the problem with any other way of communicating? W: Any other way of communicating as in like artistic mediums? H: What are you trying to communicate? W:....Me. [Laughs] H: Yeah. W: I think that is what you guys are doing to. I dont think that Im unique. I think there are other things and people who are the same. This is also why I also talked about things historically, because what

Im bringing up in this project isnt necessarily new. H: Well there is nothing new. W: I think there was a part of your question I didnt answer...Like why I design? H: I guess the question were trying to answer is why you are doing this, because if you gure out why you are doing it, you can gure out how you want to communicate it. Isnt that what you are having trouble with? How to show what youve done? Its helpful to me to know why Im doing what Im doing. W: I guess I was trying to gure out like the relationship between art, design, and its audience. Im also thinking about just being able to play and letting things that dont mean anything become meaningful somehow. Just the process of that. And just like collecting information over time. Thats how Kate Bingaman-Burt works right? She just started documenting all of this stuff and it turned into this huge thing. Obviously, my project is denitely very small in scope though. H: That is what you are doing. You are bringing together artists, and designers and ultimately viewers. And what you do as the designer is facilitate. Without you there would be no-one to view this art. It wouldnt exist. Even if it did exist, no one would know, because you are the one telling them. They are not even artists anymore, they are just people fucking around with shit. Without the designer, nothing exists. In this situation. And in that way you are also an artist in the grand sense. W: To level the playing eld...I guess when I was talking about the everyday, everyone has that and thats where everything meets. Maybe another aspect was commenting on high art or the idea that everyone is an artist. I think one part of my project that is weak is that I still have it in this art setting and not somewhere else. I dont really think I can help that. At this point. H: So you are doing this because you want to be an artist and a designer? Or that you want to show that designers are artists? J: Is every designer an artist? H: Every designer is an artist, and everyone is an artist, but not every artist is a designer. J: Thats real. W: Thats true. When you said that, I was like shit. Oh. H: Thats the critical distinction and its something you could emphasize in this. I understand the feeling of loss when you are a designer, but I think you can gain that sense that you are creating things if you do it right. If you do feel like an artist, then I think you are doing really good design. If you feel things about it, emotions, than other people will too. Cause design is art. And thats the same

rule for art, pretty much. Like if you feel really great about your drawing of the sonic hedgehog. J: I dont know about that. H: Theres an audience for everyone. W: Another reason I wanted to do it, was because I like the idea of being a curator. But I was reading a lot of things about how the curator has become this authoritative gure and also the idea that essentially everyone is curating now. Thinking about tumblr specically. I guess, because of the position I am in and how I feel...I think in the future I would be interested in being a designer, but working with artists to visualize whatever we wanted. H: I was thinking about this, what the role of the designer is to an artist. All designers are artists, but not every artist is a designer. A designers goal is to communicate something clearly, but that is not necessarily an artists goal. W: Should they want to? H: I think they should want to. If they are making work that is political, which most all work is. Artists have really grand ideas and the way they portray these ideas are not always clear. If they are able to communicate what they want through a designer, the designer can communicate to everyone else what it means. Specically, I was thinking about The Tyranny of Good Taste show. It was important in terms of how political it was and the message the artists were trying to get across, but they didnt get it across through their art. If I would have walked in there, I would have been like what is this? You as the designer made it accessible through that pamphlet. W: Do you think that pamphlet was enough for that experience? H: Yeah. If you just went in there, you would have been like This is literally piles of shit. W: It was pretty shit. H: It was nice. And it was cool. The artist made it with something in mind; this is political and this means things to me and it means things to you. Abstract imagery isnt always able to convey a message universally and especially not with clarity, but that is what design is for. W: I was also interested of the idea of passive engagement. I love going to those things, but lll go in there and see everything and leave. I was there for like 5 minutes and thats kind of sad I think. H: I mean you give it context. You have to make it matter to those people. You are doing the same thing, you got all this shit and now you have to make it all make sense. You in particular have an advantage, because you understand the connection between art and design. And here you are with art and design, so you are set.

Scan it in. W: I did! H: Put it in your presentation. Do the dissolve.

q+a with flor

entino

q+a with laur

en

1. Do you remember how this project started? Did you know what you were getting yourself into? I went on a trip to the River Market antique store with Wendy. I had a very vague idea of what I was doing. We had about thirty minutes before the store closed and I didnt want to miss an opportunity so I darted down every isle until coming across a postcard. On the front was a black and white rendered drawing of a motel and on the back were different sized white squares. I thought Hey, Im bad at sending postcards and mail in-general so why not have someone else give it a try? I wanted them to take this very bare prompt and really just do anything with it.

4. What were your thoughts on ownership, sharing creative ideas, collaboration, and/or participation? After getting everything to a close nish I thought about this sort of question. I eventually decided that the whole process of making things were done without really thinking about those ideas. It allowed someone to create a body of work that wasnt really all that concerned with ownership, it was all about the act and the results of this exchange of bizarre and complicated ideas. I think we represent things that are bare, that dont really hide around something. Theyre there, the message is direct. 5. After seeing the work that was turned in, were there any

1. Do you remember how this project started? Did you know what you were getting yourself into? Yes I remember. I had an idea of what I was getting into, because my creative practice has a collaborative/participatory element. 2. How was the process of coming up with a prompt? Coming up with a prompt wasnt an issue, because I use prompts as a tool for collecting information. 3. How did you feel upon receiving all of the prompts? What stood out to you? Why did you pick what you did? Why did you not do certain ones? I felt a bit overwhelmed with the prompts I received. I think we all had very different ideas of what you were asking of us. I chose Juanita and Jordans prompts. Juanitas was my rst choice because I am a collector by nature, so I had various notes, written material, scraps, tiny objects to work with. I chose Jordans prompt because I did not know what the end result would look like. I knew the nal result would give specic results based on the constraints she gave us, which I liked. The others I didnt choose because I could not understand what the prompter was asking of me.

2. How was the process of coming up with a prompt? It was easy. Since the whole structure of the prompt was based on works Ive done in the past, pulling something together was a quick process. Initially I was just trying to come up with an idea that was loose enough for there to be different ways of interpretating it. The words were a little mixed up, but I managed. My ideas are usually very grandiose and so layered that they sort of become impossible to me so I have to improvise and cut things which in the end I feel pretty condent about. Plus, everything I do is very last minute and maybe I shouldnt be this good at it, but I am? 3. How did you feel upon receiving all of the prompts? What stood out to you? Why did you pick what you did? Why did you not do certain ones? Again, it was driven by the way I worked. Some asked more of you than others but I could quickly pick out the ones that offered an equal amount of simplicity but still had room for exploration. And the majority of them t that criteria. I chose Patricias because it was the best t for how I work with things. It asked me to make something, anything I wanted, something that felt concrete and very personal. So I borrowed by roommates collage materials (magazines, old french editorials on art and nature books), my other roommates glue and threw together these poetry/collage hybrids in the form of a small foldout booklet. On the front of every booklet are the words open me, take me, love me scribbled in blue ink. And some point I had twelve and could stop. I took each one, sealed it a piece of scotch tape and pinned them to boards in coffee shops, grocery stores and art supply stores. They were sappy and romantic and I loved it.

surprises? If your prompt was completed, did it turn out how you expected? Im particularly excited about the work that had been created under my prompt. A junior in sculpture, Courtney Dozier picked my project with much enthusiasm. Her work extended the idea of the postcard as a platform to communicate something, a gesture and infuses it with this ambiguous imagery and its relationship to the writings on the back. 6. Were there things that I could have done better in facilitating this project? Did you need more or less restrictions? Did you learn or gain anything in the process? I think it would have helped to have the artists initially together, sharing idea possibilities, suggestions, and other things. To sort of get acquainted with each others aesthetics and opinions since the group seemed to be curated for specic reason. Even if that means its just the curators friends, I think that can say a lot about the work coming out of the whole experience. This whole project helped me understand the way that I work and being comfortable with that and these sort of haphazardly formed ideas.

4. What were your thoughts on ownership, sharing creative ideas, collaboration, and/or participation? I dont think there is any such thing as ownership. I think that life is a process of participation, collaboration, and sharing of creative ideas. My artistic practice mirrors the way that I live my life. 5. After seeing the work that was turned in, were there any surprises? If your prompt was completed, did it turn out how you expected? It was all a surprise because I had barely any contact with the other participants. 6. Were there things that I could have done better in facilitating this project? Did you need more or less restrictions? Did you learn or gain anything in the process? I dont think its a matter of restricting, I think the prompts could have articulated its purpose better.