Here's another test scene from my political satire-in-progress, "Liberty's Secret: The National Security Musical."

http://www.libertysecretmovie.com/2012/01/26/music/opening-sequence-demo/

Hope you enjoy it.  I'm going to be reshooting the crowd scenes the first week of March, so if anybody would like to be an extra (in exchange for whole wheat pizza), please let me know.  You'll get to dress up as a political delegate and make lots of noise.

        So the fact of the matter is that as artists and designers, exhibiting work is part of the game. The other fact of the matter is that as an undergraduate artist or designer it’s really hard to exhibit work because all of your time is dedicated to making the work. Showing it off is inconvenient while you’re in school. 

        Well, Ryan Herberholz (senior in A&D) decided to do something about that. After spending a few years hitting the ground looking for viable gallery space to use, he realized something had to be done about giving undergrads the opportunity to show work without needing to fill an entire gallery by themselves – something that most of us don’t have enough work to do yet.

        With that (and the thoughtful support of Rebekah Modrak) the new student group A.D.E.O. was born (Art and Design Exhibition Organization).

        A.D.E.O. works with the existing student government in the Art and Design School to give student curators space to propose their own exhibitions curate these shows and get first hand experience hanging them.

        Right now the fledgling group has taken over the Slusser Lounge to show student work and installations on a weekly rotating basis in the Egress 11 shows. This way students can have a quick turn around (and all the learning experience that goes along with that) without proposing a show months out.

        The current show was proposed by myself and fellow Furniture friend Dylan Box to throw down in true furniture style posing the age-old question, 

Table or Chair?

        I think it’s pretty clear that my allegiance will always be to Chair (The superior competitor…) but you should go see the show yourself. 

        Come check out the contenders, strap on your boxing gloves and place your bets for TABLE vs CHAIR. 

Note: No Chairs or Tables were harmed in the curation of this show.

VIVA FURNITURE! 

In defense of my ‘obsessed with wood veneer’ reputation,

Veneer really is very cool.

This week I worked on some professional things (I hope John Luther reads this) for the Annual A&D Portfolio Expo happening on February 9^th.

In preparation for the expo, and hopefully an eventual career someday, I did a test run of some veneer business cards I plan to make. Hopefully I can give to important people who might pay me lots and lots of money or accept me into their graduate schools.

Here are the results, laser cut out of maple burl veneer! 

        I really think one of the best things that Michigan has to offer is the TEDxUofM conference (we can be honest - I'm little biased).  TEDxUofM is great not only because it brings the amazing people in the Michigan network to share their experiences for a one day celebration of inspiring Technology, Entertainment and Design, but because it also is a complete labor of love for the volunteer students who put on the show. Counting myself among those students – I can say for a fact, they are some of the most interesting, talented and intelligent peers I can ever hope to encounter.  The theme this year is 'Inform / Transform' and will prove to be the most elaborate event to date. 

        As it happens, instead of waxing philosophical about the amazing work that TEDx does, I can show you the beginning of what we have been working on. 

        This past weekend the new TEDxUofM site was unveiled and includes TEDtalks from the past few years. 

Click Photo to View Website

        If youre still not sold here is my personal favorite talk from 2011, featuring AJ Holmes, Alie Gordon and Carlos Valdes,

        Check it out and stay turned for more updates from TEDx!

In an effort to spread the good design blogging of the world, I thought I would share a few of my favorite reads. Perhaps they will be a new favorite for you or provide a little inspiration for the New Year. Plus, if you have a great design project and some good photos - many of them accept student submissions to be considered for posting! 

Here are my top picks (Click to view blog and thanks to Matt Kenyon for the idea!)

Freshome is an excellent site for quick browsing of furniture and interior design projects. 

Core77 is the MUST read design blog and resource for all designers. Great articles and my personal favorite for reviews of new design books.

Design Milk is source for short articles on interior design as well as sections of fashion and fine arts. Also a side blog Dog Milk entirely on design for dogs. 

Aesthetics of Joy is and soon-to-be book written by Ingrid Fetell, researcher for IDEO. It showcases projects focused on design and positivity. 

Swissmiss is a design blog (and studio) run by Tina Roth Eisenberg who also runs a lecture series called creative mornings (think Penny Stamps Lecture Series or TEDTalks but with more coffee) and a temporary tattoo shop!

Hope this carries you into January and a fresh semester with some inspiration,

And please share your favorites with me!

HAPPY 2012!

I've been noticing some strange things popping up around the school lately – little huts in corners, odd signs on doorways, large bulletin boards with markers and duct tape attached.

Students in Rebekah Modrak's CFC: Culture class are the culprits. They have been studying us – ie. the culture of A&D – all semester and now they have made their move to affect this culture in some way.

During her weeks of studying the school, its building and its people, Marla Jones noticed that, despite this being a school of "art and design," the actual architecture of the building was very traditional, devoid of color, with hard edges and bland surfaces. She decided to alter the environment for us by adding splashes of surprise and warmth, wrapping surfaces in wools and other materials which she knit herself.

Allison Knoll, on the other hand, noticed all the inner beauty of the building: the anonymous doodles of former students inscribed permanently on desks and walls, the soft wear of the stairs from so many shoes passing through...

She decided to make a tour map of the building's hidden treasures, which she then left at the coffee stand and other places for people to discover. She has no idea whether anyone actually took the tour.

While studying the school with this new intense focus,  Ji-Woo Won began to notice all the signs – the constant instruction, the voice of authority that prescribed a way of behaving. She decided to gently poke at this cultural norm by offering playful alternatives to the signs.

Ji-Woo told me that part of the fun for her was playing with logos and fonts and figuring out a way to mimic the typographic feel of the sign. The signs are done so skillfully that, for a moment, we can imagine what it would be like to live in Ji-Woo's version of A&D.

Ji-Woo was thrilled to find that her sign had indeed affected at least one person in the school. One day she came across a student pulling out papers from one of her altered recycle bins for his project.

Other students noticed the relationships among people as they moved through the school. Melissa Weisberg noticed that her fellow students often tuned each other out as the listened to their separate songs on their ipods. She decided to organize a silent rave where students were invited to send in their favorite songs and all listen to the same songs simultaneously after a Penny Stamps talk one day.

While at this same Michigan Theater, listening to a Penny Stamps speaker, Anya Klapischak had a longing to see the work of her fellow students on that very same stage.  "I came out of the research phase [of the class] completely struck by the level of work being done by the students of the school, " she says. "It’s amazing and inspiring and provocative- and somehow under-celebrated."

Anya decided to organize a 'coming-out party', asking students to donate $2 each to help rent that same Michigan Theater stage to show their work, one slide at a time. Anya wore a uniform every day for the whole semester as a commitment to her project and so students who wanted to donate would recognize her in the hallway.

[And, by the way, if you'd like to attend: the event will be held on Thursday, December 15th at 5pm at the Michigan Theater.   You can read a great interview with Anya here.]

Mary Clare Harrington observed that critiques were sometimes stressful events for most students here at A&D. She devised a friendly persona, "The Booth Lady", to offer a sympathetic ear. She noticed though, that the chair ultimately became a place to express secret desires, fears and philosophical musings – "anything really."  Mary Clare told me that one student sat down and told her that he had always had a desire to run and slide on the tables lined up along the hallway. The booth lady encouraged him to live his dream and he survived with only a minor injury.

Dean Rogers sat down at the booth lady's chair too. "I didn't actually know he was the Dean when he sat down," she admits. "The first thing he asked me was "do you believe in life after death?",  which kind of surprised me, but I went with it. We had a good conversation after that."

Sang Hyun Lee noticed that students around him don't always have a forum to articulate their goals and wishes for the future. He wanted to invite the students to think about their aspirations and create a collective place to share them with one another. So he built the "Wishing Tree" out of aluminum vent hose. The tree comes out of the wall, as if growing out of the school itself, holding the individual wishes of the students.

The students wrote out their wishes on ribbons and attached them to the tree. Sang wasn't sure what to do with the wishes once the tree had to come down. "I'm storing them in my room for now," he says. "I need to respect the thoughts that went into them."

On the quieter side, Isabel Cohen created this cocoon, a small dark cushiony place where students could find a moment of quietude or just darkness, to help them refuel during their day.

All in all, the kind of public engagement that this assignment incited was new to many of the students but seemed to expand their thinking about what art-making can be -- not necessarily tied to a specific media or material -- but a way of studying the world and responding to it.

And, by the way, if you're tired of picking out what to wear each day, the students also designed a uniform for the school as part of another assignment. Take a look at the photos below and see if any of them tickle your fancy.

        So, we all love IKEA. Everyone wants a Varmluft or Lack or Poäng for the living room, and even if you don’t it's still fun to try and pronounce Swedish. 

        The IKEA Canton location is a must for my roommates and I at the beginning of each school year, stocking up on flat pack furniture to fill dorm rooms / apartments / student housing of all sorts. So what is this about the meatball-eating masses repurposing their very own slice of Swedish greatness? Well that my friends, brings us to the new buzzphrase “IKEA Hacking” - The process of modifying or repurposing an IKEA product or component into a new object. 

        Here is a nifty hack/project from friend and fellow A&D senior Ryan Thurmer. Check it out here and on IKEA Hackers.

        "These plywood lamps, held together by the tension of their electric cables (the IKEA HEMMA Cord), attempt to add a functional purpose to the necessity of being bound to a cord, other than our requirement of objects to be constantly 'plugged in'. This combination of form, and cord as a material, allow these lamps to be used in a variety of positions as seen in the installation." - Ryan Thurmer 2011

Awesome job Ryan – Thanks for sharing! 

        As 2011 comes to a close and the famed Michigan winter sets in, Integrative Progress (IP) is heading towards its first major progress milestone. The IP students now find themselves in the final leg of the semester and will be presenting what we’ve done to a group of professors in a one-hour individual consultation.

        With that on the horizon, I thought it might just be time to (briefly) articulate what I’ve been doing to the blogging world, as I will be asked to do it in a far more intimate (and for many, intimidating) situation in a few days. IP is often the first time that as young artists and designers we can really dive in and develop our skills and concepts on a project of this scale. It requires that we attempt to bring them together in a way that shows the complexity of both the thinking and the making we have done in the past 3.5 years.

        Since I’ve gone on and on about the nifty skills I’ve been working on, here is an abbreviated peek of all the good thinking I’ve been trying to do as well: 

        My IP project grew from an interest in Scandinavian furniture (you didn’t see that one coming – I know…) and a view that furniture can convey much more than a place to sit or set your cup of coffee.  I had known that I would be designing seating for a while, however the specifics of why and how stayed foggy since this year. 

        The entire project started by trying to do something that I was neither prepared to do, nor particularly interested in (but I won't bore you with that sort of thing). But luckily in IP, we have some guiding forces in the form of professors who help us navigate the terrain of art and design making. Sometimes it just comes down to plugging away at the bad ideas until you have a good one and can scrap everything else you've been trying to do. 

And the shift happened in the form of a word.

        Gesture.

        To Full-Body Gesture

                       To Dance

        I had been on this track to try and create a piece of furniture that did something, that affected in a certain way, that designed for a particular result post-production. That type of design, while perhaps being a great project, was starting a marathon at mile 23. I realized that it would not allow me to explore my own process in the way I wanted in IP (Major Lesson #1).

        So instead I pulled back in my thinking (Major Lesson #2) and had some conversations with my peers and professors about my personal process and how to even design a chair (something that takes years to learn how to do effectively) and how I was going to try.

        Thusly I began with a different starting point. Instead of beginning with how the seating should be used, I began with how the body can be used and I’m going to let the seating follow.

        I had the pleasure of Anya Klapischak (of the UM Artists & Designers Coming Out Project) loaning me her considerable knowledge of dance to begin studying the human form and translate it into the structure that would be used to support it. This was a major turning point as it opened up a whole new conceptual realm around body, movement, furniture and dance and their intuitive connection that I found fascinating. Likewise it allowed me to pick the brain of people who know a lot more about these topics than I do (Major Lesson #3)

        These drawings are in their early iterations but will eventually result in a series of chairs that design for the human body from the human body.

Stay tuned! 

        Two weeks ago my friend Courtney Duffey (Architecture) forwarded me an e-mail about this competition that was going to be happening on North Campus called 42-hours of Re_Creativity. We gathered our engineering pals Dan Connors (Material Science and Chemical Engineering) and Ben Mason (Computer Engineering) to form a team. We called ourselves the “Desperate Designers” and operated under the guidance of Art and Design Professor Jan-Henrik Andersen. The competition is a collaborative effort by ArtsEngine and Group Idea (http://michiganidea.wordpress.com/) to bring together and tap the creative power of the North Campus schools and colleges.

        The premise of the competition is you have 42 hours (43 because of daylight savings) to buy/gather only reused materials that collectively cost less than $50 per team. Each team must be made up of three or more students two of which are currently enrolled in a school on North Campus.

        Ten teams competed and created entries that were judged on the basis of creativity, unconventionality, innovation, concept, completion and aesthetics.

        After 42 hours of fighting, giggling and cardboard cutting, here is a look at our process and Courtney, Ben, Dan and my third place winner:

Dan and Courtney gathering cardboard at the beginning of the 42 hours. 

Outlining a game plan for the design on the scuplture studio chalkboard. 

A little market research on the tail end of a coffee run. 

Eating too much pizza and lamenting the direction of our project. 

Ben inspecting the finished product and discussing a closing mechanism for our boxes. 

(Click Here for Larger Size)

Finalized designs. 

Thanks to 42 Hours for a pretty fun competition and some North Campus collaboration! 

        So, after going to Denmark for the summer I absolutely worship at the alter of Verner Panton (possibly more than any other Danish designer - which is saying something). His chairs are amazing; you might recognize the famous S-chair (which can been seen in the atrium at the UM Ross School of Business). 

        That being said, I had the ultimate find at the Ann Arbor Reuse Center a month or so ago when I found an original Panton Cone Chair for the amazingly low price of $3 (paid entirely in change from my pocket). Quite the find considering a new Panton cone chair will set you back well over a thousand dollars. 

        Since the first day of IP when we were running through initial concepts for projects, I had wanted to try out some upholstery. It was suggested to me by the very smart (and I later found out, very patient), graduate student John Gutoskey that I find a chair to rip apart to the bare bones to start to learn about the techniques necessary.

        Like any good art & design student with skill envy, I asked John to help me with the process of taking apart and recovering the Panton chair. With many, many years of costume and hat design to his name (and that’s putting his depth of skill lightly) – he was the right man to ask. The cone chair ended up being a perfect practice piece due to the fact that it required several complex curves and complete replacement of the foam and batting elements (the originals where nearly petrified).

        The process was a little daunting but the end product was great. The fabric is a QR code jacquard woven stiched double cloth that I chose to contrast the 1958 circular construction. I also felt that the QR pattern played to Mod feel with a very modern technological reference, exactly the type of cheeky contrast that I like to make.

Naked cone chair with original foam still intact. 

Process of scraping out the deteriorated foam and cleaning the metal cone structure. 

The QR code fabric (no it doesnt actually scan... I asked.... and tried.... but that would have been cool) 

The flat peices after being taken from the chair, ready to be transfered to a paper pattern to cut out of the new fabric. 

John helping to line up and center the fabric before cutting out the pattern. 

Paper patterns being laid out on the new fabric. Pieces were arranged so that each piece after being sewed would have a continuous pattern. 

Learning to sew and use a fell stitch (sort of like on the seaming of jeans) to give the seam a directionality by pressing it with an iron and restitching along the original seam to create a faux-piping look and better structure. 

What a fell stich lookes like. 

Taping off all parts of the chair that would not be getting upholstery glue. 

Replacing deteriorated foam with a new piece of 1'' high-density foam for the back of the seat. 

Lining up the new foam and cursing a lot at the evils of upholstery glue. 

Doing an inital fit with the new foam replacements.

Old foam on the seat. 

Sewing a circle and long strip to cover the seat cushion of the cone chair (all seams were also felled) 

Stapling the new cover over a new piece of 2" high density foam and original wooden circle of the seat. 

Nearly done with the back of the chair over the structure and the seat in place. 

More awkward modelling of furniture....

Huge thanks to John (and many others for remedying a little bit of my sewing ignorance.)