F U T U R E T A L K S¶
This term has been very intense with many scheduled lectures and group meetings, where I started to lose motivation and inspiration along the way. I had to start thinking about what I really wanted to be and do and where it was the most worth to channel my energy, that was feeling very low. Within the project Future Cravings I had from the start been clear about how I work and that I can meet for group checkins once a week and the rest of the time work on the project individually and choose when the time fits best to work on it. I am a doer, and too many meetings talking and planning about projects take a lot of my energy, as I need and enjoy a lot of time alone to think and regain energy. With many lectures and scheduled time in school, together with group work meetings I lost track of who I am and what is important to me, both the present me and the future me. I had to remind my self that I am doing this master for myself, that I am here to learn about other ways of seeing things and doing things, adding on to the skills that I have and broadening this knowledge and critical thinking, and not here to please others. The word Design Intervention, although set out to be innocent without a ‘final product’ still elevated into a big, strong and strange understanding of what ‘should’ be done or more what I thought people expected from me. I realised I was working with subjects and towards things that were not true to who I am and how I want to work and had to reframe the understanding of an ‘intervention’ to ne about understanding the surroudnings, people and behaviors. It’s not about finding solely solutions, but to explore and learn to find other ways, resources that are needed etc where small changes can evolve into to big change, or simply not work at all, but then they have at least been tested and can be reframed.
After doing this I chose to focus on those projects that actually brought me joy and motivation, which was working together with Clean Beach Initiative and the viodeisgn dinner Future Cravings. The work with grey water had to be set aside as material experimentation for this term. Next term I would like to work with it further, but will move away from the technical aspects and work with the aesthetics and form to actually create a piece that can be used at home to test, as well as a piece in public spaces for feedback. I am within this project interested in the communication of the projact and artefact and interactions of them with people.
Through the Future Talks that we have been attending this term I was again reminded that we are all different and that we take on things in different ways and from different perspectives. It helped me understand that I had to dig deeper into who I am and what I can do in my way, not try to please schools, teachers or classmates. The talks were a very nice inspiration from how others work, although many still very academic. Some of the key take aways for me where how many were working from a 1st Person perspective, which I think is a very powerful way of understanding and working with subjects and I want to use this tool more, but more specifiacally remember that it is a a tool, wher I can sometimes feel that for me it isn’t legitimate enough as a process, which is not true. Another take away was how the process itself can be the outcome, as I come from a background in furniture and product design this has been a challenge to remember as I have learned and worked with the task of the outcome being a finished product. This has made this master a challenge to keep my workload to the extent where I also keep my mental health, as the projects are the process and I have a drive to keep working until there is an artefact proving an outcome. At the same time I have tried to stay away from designing too much and just producing, which has again worked against these feelings.
