bau6: dog, gran’ma, bad chicken, adrian ate my homework

‘I feel like I did it wrong.’

Class six starts with three stu­dents; three show up much lat­er. Just enough that I’ve de­cid­ed to start giv­ing away in­dus­try se­crets to those who are in class on time. I’m typ­i­cal­ly cool with stu­dents (or my­self) be­ing a lit­tle late, I use loose­ly the 15 minute rule (traf­fic is a bitch for ear­ly class­es); but now we’re get­ting kids show­ing up an hour to two hours late. And we’re dis­cussing a lot.

One stu­dent ‘ate bad chick­en’ and is ab­sent, oth­er ab­sences just hap­pen; then ‘my moth­er threw my home­work away.’

We have (yet) an­oth­er dis­cus­sion about fam­i­lies who get in the way of stu­dents in art school. So does mass tran­sit, car trou­ble, jury duty, germs, den­tists, friends at air­ports, di­vorce, and get­ting inked. ALL get in the way of art school. Even oth­er art school class­es (taught by peo­ple named ‘Adri­an’) get in the way of art school. So much to deal with!

Once we get the whin­ing out of the way – and we have a ser­vice dog in class, so when I men­tion whin­ing, the dog takes note.

‘It IS whin­ing, right?’ They agree. We move on fast to ac­tu­al­ly talk about the work. And here’s an­oth­er Kandin­sky playlist (what the stu­dents were lis­ten­ing to while home­work­ing):

‘Why are you lis­ten­ing to this??’
–gran’ma

fam­i­ly mat­ters
Slip­knot + ser­vice dog walk­ing on her home­work + gran’mother ques­tion­ing what­ev­er the hell is her home­work: ‘Well, I know art and that’s not art!’  – leads to these con­struc­tions (be­low). An­oth­er stu­dent points out that the blue painter’s tape be­comes part of the struc­ture, so does the print­ed el­e­ments and colours on the found items.

As a group we cri­tique the el­e­ments of her piece, break­ing it out. We pay a lot of at­ten­tion to her con­structs ap­ply­ing POINT LINE PLANE, tho her geo­met­ric stud­ies don’t match, they just mim­ic the FOOT­PRINT of the con­structs.

As con­tin­ue our analy­sis, we no­tice ex­tra ran­dom things added to the top of the can – and note that her in­stincts are tak­ing her into dec­o­ra­tion over good FORM:

Hu­mans have an in­stinct to dec­o­rate – just as we have an in­stinct to put things in or­der (see next cri­tique). In our con­ver­sa­tion, I com­pare her work to the Vic­to­ri­ans cause I can: they LOVED to dec­o­rate. Ap­ply or­na­ment and dec­o­ra­tion to every­thing!

Then I com­pare the Vic­to­ri­ans to Mi­ley Cyrus. Cause she’s pret­ty much do­ing what they were do­ing. Dec­o­rat­ing every­thing:

‘They say mon­ey can’t buy hap­pi­ness and it’s to­tal­ly true. Mon­ey can buy you a bunch of shit to glue to a bunch of oth­er shit that will make you hap­py, but be­sides that, there’s no more hap­pi­ness. There’s no point in me fo­cus­ing on get­ting any fuck­ing rich­er. Ob­vi­ous­ly the shit you buy doesn’t make you hap­pi­er be­cause I’m sit­ting here glu­ing a bunch of junk to stuff.’
–Mi­ley Cyrus

‘PRICE­LESS. 2 chainz face checkin out the #dirty­hip­pie dil­do’

(Then she did do some­thing good. Start­ed a Foun­da­tion for Home­less and LGBT Youth.)

But, back to class:

I do a quick sketch of we’re dis­cussing about the student’s CHAOS pieces – just to show the con­struc­tion of one of them. She sort of gets it, but that’s the prob­lem (typ­i­cal­ly) at this point in the course. Stu­dents have the ma­te­ri­als, but of­ten don’t see the con­nec­tion be­tween what they’re do­ing and what they’re learn­ing.

Today’s cri­tiques tend to shore some of this up.

bet­ter, bet­ter
The next stu­dent has moved for­ward from his framed piece last week, but still is fram­ing things by plac­ing box­es in the cor­ner. And his FOTO­FORM builds don’t seem to match his con­structs (now flat, cause mom threw his work out). Also: his WHITE SPACE (Neg­a­tive Space) is now filled with scrib­bles …

He’s avoid­ing WHITE SPACE. And just let­ting the area go BLANK is re­al­ly throw­ing him … So I grab his hat and place it on the wall. With tape:

And we break it out:
POINT is the cap it­self and the el­e­ments sewn on;
LINE is the blue tape ;
PLANE is the brim + tape, and can also be the sur­faces of the cap.

As a group we de­scribe how the cap STANDS OUT on the wall be­cause of the WHITE SPACE – AND the blue tape works as an ar­row, works to di­rect one’s eye to the cap.

I add, Imag­ine the wall with gray scrib­bles all over it, drawn with a mark­er pen. ‘Would the cap stand out as much?’

They seem to get it, but I’m go­ing to keep ham­mer­ing on WHITE SPACE, as will oth­er in­struc­tors at this school.

I then point out there’s some in­ter­est­ing ideas in his FOTO­FORM stud­ies. He says, ‘I want an­oth­er chance.’

gets it
Wal­dorf nails it – again. Dis­cov­ers the art of work­ing hard, then calm­ly cre­at­ing good in the sec­ond ver­sion:

Time spent on first piece (at right): Four hours, mood mu­sic is Sys­tem of a Down and Em­inem
Sec­ond piece: (at left) 20 min­utes, mu­sic by Ja­son Grey

We dis­cuss at length that the 20 minute piece prob­a­bly wouldn’t have ex­ist­ed if she didn’t ag­o­nize over the first study.

work­ing cre­ative: a slap­dash chart

‘I have al­ready se­cured the com­pound: Two homes with a 50-me­ter pool on the edge of the sea on Alli Dri­ve in Kona, where the sun al­ways shines.’
–H.S.T.

This leads to a di­a­gram I cov­er in most of my class­es. Usu­al­ly draw it on the board re­al­ly quick­ly, some­times I morph it into a com­plete de­sign process, adapt­ing as nec­es­sary. To start, I ref­er­ence Hunter S. Thomp­son’s plan to WIN the 1980 Hon­olu­lu Marathon – from The Curse of Lono. (And H.S.T. is a great trub­ble­mak­er to in­tro­duce to cre­ative stu­dents) (Welll, some­times)

It’s a sim­ple plan. No trick­ery, no cars, no mope­ds (mope­ds were big in 1980).

TO WIN THE HON­OLU­LU MARATHON,

all one has to do is

sim­ply run the EN­TIRE MARATHON at TOP SPEED to the END.

’Cause no one has ever done it.

Stu­dents say it’s im­pos­si­ble to run a marathon like that, ‘You’d get tired or DIE!’ is the con­sen­sus.

I ask, ‘Then why do so many of my stu­dents work like this?’

Af­ter some grum­bling, I hear, ‘As a teacher I now hate you.’

‘Why?’

‘Be­cause this makes to­tal sense.’

I talk about the re­wards to fin­ish­ing fast with­out think­ing about what you’re do­ing – is a LET­TER GRADE or a slice of PIE (I al­ways throw the PIE in. ’Cause PIE is good).

‘Are you re­al­ly here – at an ex­pen­sive school – to just get a GRADE or a slice of PIE?’

One can get pie at Mc­Don­alds. They’re a lot cheap­er.

What RE­AL­LY IS the fun part? Fin­ish­ing – eat­ing PIE – or go­ing through the cre­ative process?

Even­tu­al­ly, we de­cide it IS the process. Any­one can get PIE – go to NA­TIONS.

And (us­ing a Back to the Fu­ture ref­er­ence, I’ve cre­at­ed al­ter­nate time­lines on my chart, in that each line rep­re­sents OTH­ER op­tions to solve the de­sign prob­lem) …

‘These oth­er pieces you cre­ate will NEV­ER ex­ist if you don’t try oth­er op­tions! NEV­ER EX­IST, MAR­TY! We can’t let BIFF win!’

Doc Brown from Back to the Fu­ture Part II
© 1989 Uni­ver­sal City Stu­dios, Inc.

(My Doc Brown im­per­son­ation is get­ting bet­ter)

shat­ner
I also ex­plain a con­cept that comes up again and again in my class­es. THE SHAT­NER MO­MENT. And how this can lead to good de­sign. It’s not very easy to ex­plain, and helps if there’s a Trekkie in the class (and I do get to hone my SHAT­NER im­per­son­ation).

To start: The Wrath of Khan – pri­or to the re­boot movies – was the best film in the Star Trek se­ries. One rea­son is WILLIAM SHAT­NER’s per­for­mance is ac­tu­al­ly quite good. And it’s cause di­rec­tor Nicholas Mey­er knew that SHAT­NER tends to over­act; which may be re­lat­ed to his Shake­spear­i­an train­ing – which em­phases pro­ject­ing on a stage, doesn’t al­ways play well on film or tee vee – tho prob­a­bly his stac­ca­to per­for­mances may also just be ’cause he’s sort of nuts.

So when they shot the film, SHAT­NER end­ed up do­ing mul­ti­ple, MUL­TI­PLE takes. OVER and OVER and OVER. And even­tu­al­ly he’d re­lax and give a good per­for­mance. And they used those cuts in the fi­nal film.

James T. Kirk from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
© 1983 Para­mount Pic­tures Cor­po­ra­tion

Same thing works with de­sign. It’s like a Chi­nese fin­ger trap – once stress, ego and fear gets pushed aside – one may end up do­ing their best work.

When I see it – es­pe­cial­ly in my be­gin­ning ty­pog­ra­phy course – I call it THE SHAT­NER MO­MENT.

built land­scape
The last stu­dent (with work) this morn­ing end­ed up build­ing a large con­struct based on Kandinsky’s ear­ly land­scapes:

From this build, her take on POINT, LINE and PLANE (im­age up top) lead her some­where else. And this is good be­cause …

the chal­lenge!
I do a lot of in-class chal­lenges. An­oth­er class­room idea from Project Run­way. Projects are done quick­ly and there’s a lim­it­ed time el­e­ment. And curve balls, haf­ta throw in some­thing un­ex­pect­ed. And I get to sound like Timm Gunnn! As a re­sult, Stu­dents don’t have time to wor­ry, fret, leave the room, call friends, ar­gue with gran’ma or do Adrian’s work.

H adrian’s wall

In some class­es I do chal­lenges that are three hours, in some, ten min­utes. To­day is a ‘redo’ your home­work chal­lenge. And they have ONE HOUR.

The catch? This chal­lenge re­places your home­work. If you don’t do it, no cred­it, for any­thing.

‘DE­SIGN­ERS! you have one hour. Go.’

The I’ll De­cide What Home­work stu­dent doesn’t have home­work (again). And isn’t very hap­py that he has to do this project – be­cause he doesn’t have the POINT LINE PLANE com­po­nent done at all. ‘You’re in col­lege, come up with some­thing. Clock’s run­ning.’

(I of­ten do in-class chal­lenges where stu­dents have to have their home­work done or they can’t do the next part of the as­sign­ment. It’s a good time to in­tro­duce this.)

They get to work. For am­biance, I put on:

FLOM­MIS­CHEN número 70
« as­cen­dente de spec­tre »
16 tracks [1hr 12 min]

And I leave be­cause they re­al­ly are on their own. And a lurk­ing teacher gets in the way.

one hour lat­er
As I’m head­ing back to class, I’ll De­cide What Home­work runs past me and says (in a flus­tered voice), ‘I’ll be right back …’

I call TIME right on the hour.

And the work is good. It seems that they’re fi­nal­ly get­ting it.

‘Put your pen­cil DOWN. You’re DONE. Time is up!’

‘But …’

‘STOP eras­ing! You’re DONE!’

I usu­al­ly have to say this a few times.

We dis­cuss what just hap­pened. ‘We had NO TIME to sec­ond guess what we’re do­ing.’ And they note there was some­thing in that.

Some­thing dif­fer­ent than just do­ing home­work.

Be­fore go­ing on, I de­cide to wait for I’ll De­cide What Home­work to re­turn, but I’m told, ‘Oh, he won’t be back.

‘Re­al­ly. He took his stuff and left. He spent most of the past hour bitch­ing about you.’

I don’t be­lieve it, but he’s gone for the day. He does leave his in-class work though:

Home­work:

RE­SEARCH the work of Lás­zló Mo­holy-Nagy (1895–1946)

Just like last time, pre­pare a pre­sen­ta­tion for the next class. In your pre­sen­ta­tion, an­swer: What did he do at the Bauhaus? And how did he use Trompe-l’œil?

Plus, READ De­sign Ba­sics Chap­ter 10, pages 196–201

—steve mehal­lo

Last year, FLOMM founder Steve Mehal­lo re­built a de­sign fun­da­men­tals course into a five week study of the­o­ries and work done at The Bauhaus (1919–33). This BAU blog se­ries will doc­u­ment the lat­est teach­ing of the course – with les­son plan – Sum­mer 2015 to a group of 8 col­lege stu­dents. What’ll hap­pen, who’ll shine, who’ll drop. Names (and some sit­u­a­tions) have been changed to pro­tect the in­no­cent as well as the guilty.

 
co
nti
nue
read
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