In Design 001 we were told to bring art making materials and to be prepared for team work and creativity in an outdoor setting. I filled my backpack with colored paper, pipe cleaner, scrape paper, paints, glue, string and anything else I could think of. I was a little concerned that I had completely misunderstood the assignment and was preparing too much for an elementary school arts and crafts project. To my relief, the rest of my group brought very similar materials. We began to make our own version of "Stone Soup" by putting all of our ingredients into the middle of our circle, or if you will, our "cauldron" . We then began brain storming "recipes"; toying with ideas of motion, different levels, what materials to utilize and concepts that help inspire us.
We decided to incorporate elements from our surrounding and placed our sculpture, a robot man, on the bench waiting for a blind date. This was the beginning of our first real group project which will set the tone for future projects to come. We bounced ideas off one another in a constant conversation as to how we would construct our robot. If one form of execution seemed to fail someone else would propose an alternative plan in a diplomatic and constructive manor. As our robot came into being we added creative touches such as a top hat, embellished pockets, and a pocket cloth thus giving him a classy, sophisticated final look.
The “Stone Soup” assignment not only emphasized the importance of group work but also allowed us to experience the creative process in an unorthodox situation. Everyone contributed something, even if it was an unsuccessful idea, it gave the rest of the group something to build on and was therefore was still useful. Had any one of our group members been absent our project would have turned out differently and possibly not as successful. This exercise made us create while lacking prior planning, traditional materials or any sort of topic thus making our task intimidating and reinforcing the need to rely upon each other for support and motivation.
Image courtesy of Curtis through the means of my point and shoot camera.
No comments:
Post a Comment