On most maps, this space of nearly untouched Manhattan is not mentioned or made note of. On some, it is subsumed by the combining of the two terminals into a superstructure keeping watch over Battery Park. As a passer-by, you may fail to make note of this diminutive shoreline as well. A fence railing blocks your view, trash tends to pool in the space, and the towering Beaux Arts façade of the Governor’s Island Ferry terminal distracts mightily. The surrounding area preaches an ideology of space that was long ago communicated to us through the maps that help us make sense of the areas we inhabit, whether physically or simply in our minds.

When the first Europeans set foot on the shore of North America, the cartographic intention was to define space, to create maps that showed the interior of places with their boundaries pushed to the edges of the parchment. Now, as we have built an environment of walls and dividers, our maps look quite different. No longer are the boundaries relegated to the edges, but instead are comfortably adopted as foundational building blocks to the culture and society in which we operate. Our maps are defined by the places we have built, and therefore, lend little guidance to the exploration of the wilderness.

We Separate to Define
This partitioning of space for organization and personal claim does not stop with our built environment or the artifacts we create to help navigate it; we have also turned our back on the spaces of imagination and intellect in favor of the confines of disciplines, medium specificity, and–at times–adherence to popular stylistic preferences. In partitioning the practice and study of our work, we build STATIONS. These STATIONS are in our minds. They are constraints. They are values. They are ways of seeing. But they are also in practice and function when we discuss things like disciplines and mediums.

The boundaries of disciplines are easily seen and we often find our identity as designers and teachers close tied to these boundaries. “I am a graphic designer.” I would respond to the question, as if the building or creating I do that is more closely linked to sculpture or industrial design is not an integral part of the design work I do as well.

From its root, we see that disciplines and disciplinarity are caught up with questions of the relationship between knowledge and power. The two modern usages of the term refer to 1) a particular branch of learning or body of knowledge, and 2) the maintenance of order and control amongst subordinated groups often through the threat of punishment.

Michel Foucault went so far as to say that almost the entirety of the political process from the seventeenth century centered on a structure of discipline and punishment. The discipline created neatly formed boundaries of appropriate behavior and thinking, while the punishment assured that outliers were vilified and minimized in number. “[Discipline] dissociates power from the body,” Foucault said. “On the one hand, it turns [this power] into an aptitude, a capacity, which it seeks to increase; on the other hand, it reverses the course of the energy, the power that might result from it, and turns it into a relation of strict subjection.” In short, Foucault argued that discipline and punishment provides space for an increased aptitude, but brings an increased domination of that aptitude as well.

Our disciplines are boxes. These neat and tidy spaces are well defined, have predictable outcomes, and efficient processes of evaluation. I learned design at a journalism school in the early 2000s. During this time, the communications discipline was starting to scramble around questions of adapting to changing technology and reinterpreting a changing landscape of crumbling economics and shifting business models. As an undergraduate student at this time, I had professors and professionals tell me that “Websites must work this way,” and “Magazines have to look and feel like so.” These statements were spoken and taught as fact. There was no discussion of how this might be or what complications came from this way of thought. It simply was that we were taught as Marshall McLuhan preached that the medium is the message. But if we are to get fully on board with McLuhan, we have to believe that creativity is defined only by the expressions in which we currently operate and that what we say in our work is of less value than that thing that our work uses to live. The clothes of the work are all that matters, not the individual being that wears them.

McLuhan, as my professors taught me, was extremely helpful in learning to communicate. Just as proponents of medium specificity were helpful in defining what was and was not art or painting or sculpture. We could learn the mechanism or the technically accepted means of creation, and in doing so we could do our jobs properly as communicators or artists. In other words, as long as we had the blueprint to the STATION, we could know where the train was going and did not have to worry about whom or what was on board.

Each time we give in to these myopic and mislead thought patterns, we help build, strengthen, and reinforce a boundary that places “proper” and “acceptable” work within a STATION and impedes inclusion of those who may feel outside of the definition we find comfortable and safe. And if these boundaries of new technology that McLuhan felt were so transformative matter more than the communication and expression of our work, than—in my opinion—we are all in pursuit of bad work, and we should simply create kitsch and clutter, utilizing technology as a gimmick instead of a tool.

But none of this is to say boundaries that we create through practice and craft are necessarily evil. They serve many purposes. As with a map, boundaries give us an idea of space and the internal and external of a location. They provide security for the timid and flagrant opposition for the avant-garde. They are essential to give order to a world that is confusing and constantly in flux.

We Define to Begin
I often think about a study devised by a group of psychologists sometime in the 1970s or 1980s. Using the same daycare facility, which was situated near a busy street, two groups of students were observed. One group was allowed to play on the playground adjacent to the street with no fence or boundary whatsoever. A fence was erected directly next to the street for the other group. The group without the fence stayed in small clumps, playing nervously as they huddled near the exterior of the building, while the group with the boundary played up to and on the fence. The fence was security and definition of space.

So, the answer cannot be to destroy the boundaries, to make some soupy mess of the world—that creates new problems. But we must realize these boundaries can easily impede creativity. The answer is to situate ourselves outside of these prescribed boundaries so that we may enter and exit different STATIONS as necessary. The world and our possible experiences shrink as we retreat into smaller spaces of thought and areas of practice.  As teachers and artists it can be easy at times to find security in a STATION or one of the nodes in the network we see around us. As we zoom out of this solitary view, we can more easily see the entire map with all of its possibility for new connections and space for new growth. The value is the possibility of new outlooks on old projects or questions as well as changing views as we move from the interior of one STATION to another, or to new territory altogether.

We have been having this conversation for a while in art. Ever since Kant told us the frame should be ignored, we have found ourselves discussing what that edge means and where it should be. Giorgio Agamben calls this area a threshold, a spot where something is not in but not out of a place; a fully inclusive and fully exclusive space. And before him, Jacques Derrida said the frame—the parergon as he called it—was to be blown wide open, to be used as something that almost forced entrance to a new place. Regardless of the way you lean, the conversation has shifted to notice the external, the sense of other that we feel when we find ourselves in a STATION that may not be so comfortable. It forces us to look beyond the walls and move into new territory, to reject the devil we know in hopes of something more transcendent on the outside.

We Move Beyond to Explore
When I was in second grade, I had one of those experiences that get seared into your brain. We had been doing weekly exercises in pencil drawing during my second grade art class. Initial line structure, shading techniques, and perspective were behind us, and the fourth week was about drawing negative space. We were given the same still life bowl of fruit from the previous week and asked to draw it, but we were only allowed to draw the exterior lines of the shapes we saw. We were forced to see the area displaced by the object, and that lesson has stuck in my head for years.

This new territory, the unmapped STATION the surrounds the familiar, is most compelling to me for that reason. As a reluctant doctoral student, the rituals of academia are strange to me, even while I practice them. As an artist, the idea of tenure folders and promotion packets are slightly nauseating.  But as a designer, the navigation of this weird landscape is a wonderful problem in need of a personal solution. In this sense, interdisciplinarity—or even extradisciplinarity—is a wonderful way to view the map of the doctoral world. By knowing the STATIONS, by understanding these nodes and what they contain, I can wander through and around them without value judgments or arguments of right or wrong. I can see them as appropriate or not. Helpful or not. Illuminating or not.

In Learning from Las Vegas, Robert Venturi writes about the intriguing views Nolli maps offer of the Las Vegas strip. These maps use black and white spaces to illuminate the things that are: things like parking lots, structures, asphalt, cars. And in the murky black negative space, we see the desert. The visual structure seems to value what is already there, while pushing the open space—this STATION of possibility—into the background.

And it is difficult work to push against the comfortable confines or see the negative spaces as possibility. We find solace in the shadows of others, and there is inclusion in the mimicking of their ideas. But I feel it is extremely important to work against the desire to spend the entirety of our lives behind these walls. So we must constantly be exploring.

We Explore to Create Anew
Guy Debord proposed the derive as one of the basic situationist practices. By passing through places through attraction we encounter new viewpoints and start breaking down or even obliterating borders. The derive isn’t just a walk toward something attractive, it entails knowing a place and knowing the boundaries that are active. The boundaries aren’t necessarily walls or border crossings or anything tangible; the boundaries are often attitudes, perceptions, and preconceived notions. For a derive to have any level of success, you have to know the place you find yourself at some level and proceed forward despite whatever may keep you from progress to new knowledge or renewed sight.

I see Walter Benjamin when I read about the derive, especially in regard to his supposedly unfinished manuscript of the Arcades Project. I say supposedly because it seems to work so well as a functional object of what he was doing himself.  The work is a wandering, sometimes dramatically unclear, exploration of the places he frequented; a sprawling map of the city he knew yet felt he knew nothing of at the same time. It is impossible to consume from cover to cover. The way in which it is compiled almost forces the reader to explore in his or her own way. Perhaps you begin with the early chapters and find yourself trailing away, resuming the conversation once Benjamin moves out of the common places and into areas that are unfamiliar to you. But you find yourself wandering through its pages, taking passing notice of small things and building a picture of a city in your mind.

So in this same way, I wander back to that sliver of space between the ferry terminals.

The post We Separate to Define, We Define to Begin, We Move Beyond to Explore, We Explore to Create Anew: STATION appeared first on DesignInquiry.

I viewed STATION as a place, and place as context.

I was curious how DesignInquiry participants would choose their objects’ new homes. What was the logic behind their choices? It made sense that Erin duct taped a defunct cordless phone from the Sparrow Farm to a tree. “It’s not working for us,” she said. (There was no reception in the barn). “Perhaps it would be happier here.” It was as if the phone gave up, exhausted from trying to work like the machine it was, and flung itself to the tree to be carried.

Mary-Anne brought a metal spoon from the Sparrow Farm and hung it from a clothesline next to wet bathing suits and towels. The entire Poor Farm was reflected in its curved surface. Because of the angle, only one person at a time could see the reflection, and had to get close to do so. There is an intimacy to seeing a large farm house reflected in a tablespoon.

For the participants, this exercise required openness and the ability to suspend disbelief. Improvisational theater has a lot to teach us about this. One of the main tenets of improv is “Yes, and.” For improv performers it means saying “yes” to what is offered by following their partner’s lead and building upon that. Through this exchange, characters are developed and a narrative is created. Asking people to take an object from the Sparrow Farm and place it in a new location that made logical sense, albeit absurd, at the Poor Farm, required the same spirit. In this exercise, the place provided the lead and the objects were the characters. The narrative developed from the conversation that took place between the two. The beautiful thing about “saying yes” is being surprised by the results from unlikely combinations. Who says a butterfly net shouldn’t be used as a lampshade? It’s white, finely-meshed fabric softens the harshness of a fluorescent light bulb in a dark hallway nicely.

My prompt was to take an object from the Sparrow Farm and relocate it to the Poor Farm. “Make it absurd,” I said. They did. And I left with a new appreciation for a croquet mallet as furniture.”

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INTRODUCTION

I have been on a sabbatical from teaching Graphic Design in a small art college in Portland, Maine. This absence from teaching began a year ago with a detailed and zealous plan to fill what appeared to be an inspiring slow expanse of time with projects to initiate, pick-up, and conclude. Over the weeks the daily to-dos came with an evaluation of needs vs. wants, deadlines vs. the beautiful household rhythms of two teenagers, husband, a dog, a studio of work, and a garden of four Maine seasons.

TRUE NORTH

My main project in this year ‘off’ was as one of archiving, curating, and collating to edit and examine my body of personal work and creative research — transposing completed exhibitions, portfolios of photographs, bits of writing and film into a new view. My intention was that of discovering, not dictating forms of resolution that might emerge. The only rule was to use work that still resonates and still needs a home to be completed and transported. I was being pulled to better see to understand where my work has been in effort to see where it is going.

Taking a sabbatical also suggested I make time to initiate work not in the category of design or photography: making a will, finding a financial advisor, volunteering in my kids public school, going on visiting artist trips and learning to play the banjo. While these list-things were easy to name, what was not in front of me moved to the foreground about ten months into the break from teaching.

My parents, both deceased, had given me their small winter home in Mesa, Arizona years ago. I’d also lived in Tempe, AZ for 17 years before leaving 21 years ago to come to Maine to teach. I’ve been renting out this house with the granite yard for a couple of months each year since their passing. This winter the renters offered to buy it before they headed home to MN. — a long unpleasant real estate story made short — I found myself on a shaky attic carport ladder in Mesa, AZ for 3 days in the end of March handing down filthy taped-up bulging boxes to my sister-in-law. I had packed these 21 years ago. Holding disintegrating newspaper wrapped around objects I hadn’t remembered I’d owned (though I was happy to find the glass egg timer of Gram’s I’d wanted for banjo practice), together with emptying the house itself of mom and dad’s objects and furniture, clothes and details, the stack of what I simply didn’t want to transport back into my own life grew larger and larger. While the renters strolled through between their golf games and card parties, I felt like I was the star of my own reality show and the clock was ticking. I had only three short days until I headed back to Maine with the remaining dream of only a carry-on bag and one free checked box.

Convergence, traveling through, resting on, concluding, opening-up, weaving in the ends, moving, stopping — fits and starts of investing into what may be intended as a forward motion now includes overlapping side bars and history — non-linear and three dimensional. It is new information for me that my revered collection of milk bottles, glass marbles, carbon-copied handwritten letters, and prom corsages dipped in paraffin wax hold no interest now. Without fanfare I quickly tossed those items away or packed up for Salvation Army to pick up after I was gone.

GEOGRAPHIC NORTH

The geographic top of the earth where the longitudes converge is called True North, Geographic North, or Map North. We think of this North as the one and only real North. We orient our bodies to this direction and we know North is at the top of the map.

But True North would not be true if you actually get somewhere using a map and compass. Compasses point to Magnetic North, not True North so you’ll be off whatever the difference is, which depends on where you are on the planet.

MAGNETIC NORTH

The earth’s magnetic field is inclined give or take 11° from the axis of rotation of the earth. And because the earth’s core is molten — which is where the magnetic field lies — Magnetic North is always shifting slightly.

Since the red end of compass needles are magnetized, the earth’s magnetic field rotates the needle until it lies in the same direction as this field which is not True North.

ANGLE OF DECLINATION

The difference between True (Geographic or Map) North and Magnetic North is expressed in degrees and minutes, east of west. This is the angle of difference between the top of the earth’s axis and the North pull of the earth’s magnetic pull.

STATION

At DesignInquiry at Vinalhaven Island, Maine, July 23-29 the angle of declination was 16º 5’ 17” W. So to locate Magnetic North on our compasses and to set the angle of declination, we (DesignInquirers at our island STATION) turned our compass dial 16º 5’ 17” counterclockwise to compensate for the magnetic pull to let the map tell us the truth. Now when ‘RED FRED IS IN THE SHED’ on our compasses we could trust the top of the map is really North and our compasses were set to match the map which did not include the shifting magnetic north that is the real pull on our direction-giving compasses.

PART TWO

EXERCISE: LEARNING TO READ A COMPASS AND COMPENSATE FOR DECLINATION

At DesignInquiry we practiced ‘taking bearings’ and being ‘given a bearing’ to understand how the map’s North at the top of the page is different from where the compass points. We used Vinalhaven’s angle of declination calculation to compensate for the difference.

STATION Inquirers made magnetic compasses for dining centerpiece which consistently reminded us which way is magnetic North. By rubbing a magnet onto a metal sewing needle in one direction over and over (picture whittling a stick only with a magnet on a light metal-something) the needle becomes magnetized with a N and S end. Then the needle needs freedom to turn towards the pull of the earth’s magnetic core and floating encourages this turn. Any other metal objects nearby intrudes and interferes. We taped True North and Magnetic North angle of declination onto the studio floor so at all times in the barn, we who were exploring STATION as place, attitude, or concept were reminded of the shifting, pulling, fluidity of our work and ideas. We too were finding our way and re-aligning with the topic of STATION, navigating our relationships to each other and our questions of STATION and all within this place that we had little choice but to be present within and together.

WORKSHOP: COMPENSATION FOR DECLINATION TRANSLATION

During the week of STATION I collected stories from participants through conversations and interviews. I asked each person to tell about an experience when, in the course of setting off in one direction, unexpected and unplanned events, needs, or pulls required a ‘righting of course’. Our conversations focused specifically in strategies of compensation for redirecting from the first True North plan to the real, magnetic North direction of purpose. These stories of navigation converged in differences of theme, time frame, approach and strategies of correction. Adjustments ranged with key phrases, people, and places and included quotes such as these:

… it was a veering off of what I was already in …

… only now I recognize the pivot points that I zoomed in on and pulled apart …

… a person made it possible, it could have been a move to anyplace but the shift in location also made it possible …

… the landscape proposed a different kind of education …

… one year got this all on track …

… building, building, building …

… where does this confidence come from? I think it’s family. Plus: I had him. I’ve kind of forgotten about the hard part …

… I used to regard interruptions as bumps in the road or hurdles to get over, now a drift is a sign that I’m supposed to go with the interruption or the thing I used to overcome is the sign. Now I see that thing that is pointing …

… it’s quite a gentle pull for me now, when I was younger it was very abrupt, the course was a snap-to …

… a slow process of life was falling around me. Each time I thought I was seriously invested, but each time a readjustment decision led me to another step …

… I’m at a fork in the road. Right now. How to redirect? Employ the rules of improv: to accept, to say yes, to build, to use generous acts …

… I’m not being pulled. I’m taking a guess that it’s circumstances and I’m making a radical change to stir it up. I just know I want out of the current situation …

… I’m cautious. I try to figure this out before I do it …

… where I was was not an expression of myself. Someone in that job told me “you’re going to hate your life”…

… there was a curiosity I was moving towards and I noticed if I didn’t have a chance to make things I’d get very cranky …

… moments of transcendence pulled me …

… I got some of the stupid out and I got the better part of life …

… a series of things built up that was turbulence over one year. To see what was next I needed to put myself physically in a different town, a school, finding a way …

… I felt lost and it took experimenting & seeing first hand how wrong the pieces were …

… I was sitting in the back of a classroom thinking about where else I wanted to be …

… the murky water was a culmination of things that had been bubbling up …

… it was a 1-yr. crash course in redirection …

… my True North was cooking school then an art teacher said to me ‘what about art? WHAT ABOUT ART?” He was right …

… my True North is flexible and flowing …

… I practice to be open and aware; meditation, reading certain authors, talking to people, having experiences, situations (DI) …

… I don’t like the idea of a singular True North …

… I’ve found planning my life out doesn’t work; even a five year plan …

… maybe you become your own node. You put yourself in the situation’s that teach you to become a traveling node …

… assumptions cause drift. The trick is how to navigate assumptions …

“When I was young I was attached to religion. I thought it was true north. At age 13 my uncle was diagnosed with AIDS and on his deathbed he was told by his priest he would be going to hell for being gay. He resisted death for months he suffered immensely until he could resolve this. I am not religious anymore.”

… I reorient by jumping ship (fearlessly)…

… I start to feel the itch …

… Every time you do it it reminds you how easy it is …

… Feeling in touch enough with what you’re feeling is what you need to admit; knowing what you’re looking for then not being afraid to jump …

… People can perceive it to be selfish, but its your life …

… it was not having a big picture I could get on board with …

… I don’t struggle with decisions, I flow into change; organic decisions because I’m already heading into the other path …

… I credit it to getting older and more inquisitive …

… we chose to give ourselves the sixteen degrees. We had hunches and weren’t committed to anything but an address …

… we came up with a plan for the worst possible things when the best possible things came up …

… major dissonance of investing in a life in a place we weren’t going to stay

… we cut and run …

… it’s about motivation. The fact that I wanted to do that was a sign …

… I made little steps that linked to other things, but I only knew that later …

… one choice gave me a chance that I didn’t even know was pulling me …

… each step was a catalyst, not what any given moment does alone …

… moments of generosity is the navigation and what I want to be around …

… I was associating milestones to my identity too much until I realized I didn’t want to pursue these …

… tracking the inner compass is much more subtle …

… I keep trying to notice. I write five things every day that is evidence …

… realigning is like when you walk into a dark room and you have to wait for your eyes to adjust …

… you have to train your muscles to feel the indications …

… lost walking in Paris, arguing with my sister, someone yells out a window in french for us to stop. I don’t understand but it stops our argument. We wander around until we find the place we needed to get to …

… I thought I was heading to Rt 1N out of Logan, but I ended up on the dreaded labyrinth of underpasses. I asked the guy in the tollbooth for directions and he said ‘exit 27’. I thought it was vague (wind) but once on track I realized it was full of potential (seed)…

PART THREE

WAYS THAT PARTICIPANTS AT STATION COMPENSATED FOR ANGLE OF DECLINATION*

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• a sharp turn due to

  • Someone saying something: one thing that ‘hit home’

  • Meeting someone who supports a shift of focus or place

  • Changing location: a physical move to stir things up

  • Noticing a thought in a moment that is abrupt

• a slow building

  • One thing leads to another

    • Because of a conscious practice of listening and noticing

      • Meditation

      • List making, journal writing

      • Communication with others

      • Meeting someone new of influence who listens too

      • Being aware and measuring past needs, wants, successes and failures

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• messy shift that is not linear

  • Building, wandering, moving on hunches that are not clear, only now in hindsight the layers make sense

• clean shift that is a jump

  • Easy to make because it’s a recognized method of operation and has proven to work

  • Out of desperation because of a true ‘knowing’

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• knowing that the magnetic move is right because of the ‘wrongness’ of True North direction

• knot knowing True North was wrong until a slow build to something that ‘sticks’ feels right (and where most still live)

//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

• some were alone in the shift

  • School or job related (vocation and passion), sometimes a move alone to test the waters

• some were with partners or friends

  • Also passion related but most of the stories involved others only in the building-up-to the magnetic north move; supportive of the individual who ultimately recognized, with this person’s (family) support he/she made it into the pull of what was right.

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* my own summaries of these stories, trying to delineate the differences and similarities of the movement towards the angle of declination

- Thank You Gail Swanlund for your inspiration and asking the right questions!

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http://kitchenstation.wordpress.com/

Black Beans and Mango – attributed to Abby Curtin, prepared by Kim Loken

Sautee diced onions and jalapeno slices (with seeds as desired) in olive oil

Add minced garlic

One can black beans, drained

One mango, cubed

Salt and cumin to taste

Corn Salad – prepared by Kim Loken, attributed to Bob Loken

1 can corn, drained (or fresh, if in season)

Equivalent amount of zucchini, quartered and sliced

1 red pepper

Half a red onion, diced. Soak in apple cider vinegar (ideally for a few hours) then drain and add to salad.

One jalapeno, retain seeds as per heat level you like

Leaves of one bunch of cilantro

Salt to taste

Toss in a vinaigrette of 3 parts olive oil, 1 part lime juice

Holds up well for several days in the fridge; freshen up with a little more lime as needed. Particularly nice dose of tropics even in winter, as canned corn doesn’t compromise the salad.

Pork Three Ways: Ground Oven Cast Iron Savory Rub
Recalled by Kim Loken, pursuant to discussion with Sean, Garreth and Matt

Cut: Boston butt

Rub:

• (3 parts) salt
• (3 parts) black pepper
• (2 parts) crushed red pepper and/or hot paprika
• (2 parts) cumin
• (2 parts) oregano
• (2 parts) onion powder, or minced raw onion
• (1 part) garlic powder, or minced raw
• (1 part) each whatever else you’re feeling or can find, which at Vinalhaven might have been…
  • Mustard seed
  • Celery seed
  • Thyme
  • Sage

Line pan, around meat, with quartered onions and fennel

Cook slow and low.

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I was interested in developing a way to reflect on the week as it is happening (an experiment in archiving as you are making). I offered an invitation to the group to collaborate with me at various points throughout the week, and to consider the nature of those interactions and what made them successful or interesting. I had prepared charts for each day of the DI Station week; they proposed times for pause; stations for when these collaborations could take place. The times were determined by the intersection of two overlaid sets of drawings: one, the tidal charts for Vinalhaven, ME (for that week), and two, scanned drawings from my research. I was prepared for the project to be carried out as a primarily self-directed archiving of various activities at various times (if my invitations fell flat). I had hoped that by leaving the project open for others to be a part of, when, and, in any way they wished, I could discover more about people and their work, test new work quickly, and heighten the DI experience.

I collaborated with ten people, and at least eight others were involved in the documentation (introducing another level of participation and point of view). The video, drawing, mapping projects emerged from shared interests or from the ideas that were generated during DI Station. Afterwards, when possible, we would discuss what was just created or shared, and reflect on the successful or less successful aspects.

Station has reinforced for me the value of opening one’s work up to others, has informed the way in which I frame invitations to others to participate, and has reminded me to stay flexible and malleable in my methods. The projects connected me to participants in a creative productive way. It was also meaningful for me to experiment with ways of working that are useful to me: one-on-one collaboration, quick-paced exploratory projects. I hope to apply these approaches to different art, design, and teaching contexts and to develop the results further.

Stations of Pause Series
Projects that were created:

1. a scanning while hanging out, turned into animation. ‘Foam Scan Drawing,’ June 24, 2013 (continued on June 30 and July 4)
   
2. a video of a poem along the water’s edge ‘I Started Early—Took My Dog (poem by Emily Dickinson)’ (with Liz Craig), June 28, 2013 
3. a series of six collaborative responsive drawings. ‘Collaborative Drawings’ (with Mary-Anne McTrowe, Anita Cooney, Margo Halverson, Denise Gonzales Crisp, Gail Swanlund), June 26 and June 28, 2013
   
4. a collaborative responsive scan drawing. ‘Collaborative Scan’ (with Dan McCafferty), June 28, 2013
   
5. a documentation of an installation. ‘Amy Campos Foam Installation and Deinstallation—documentation,’ June 28, 2013
   
6. an intervention into a drawing, turned into an animation, discussion (with Erin Hauber) (to be posted soon)
7. simultaneous recording of the day (with Kimberly Long Loken) (to be posted soon)

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On Monday Garreth asked us to “make a map of the space where we find ourselves”; that was the impetus for Monday’s and the subsequent days’ work.

Monday:
The number of stitches in the foundation chain (the width of the piece) was determined by the number of paces it took me to cross the width of the inside of the barn (14). The number of rows was determined by the number of paces it took me to cross the length of the inside of the barn (29). In each row, stitches alternated between double crochet and front post double crochet (or back post double crochet depending on whether I was working on the front or the back of the piece), which created 7 ridges (to represent the 7 presentations that occurred over the day- a very neat thing to come out of the number 14). At the end of the 29 rows, connecting each of the 7 ridges to the next is a representation of a number I thought was significant to each presentation. So, three chains of four stitches to represent the 4 tides (Rachele), the 4 points of the compass (Margo), and 4 notebooks (Patricio & Dan)*; one chain of three stitches for Laura’s 3 wooden shapes; one chain of sixty for Anita’s 60-minute subway journeys, and a series of 10 segments of 7 stitches each, to represent Brooke & Matt’s 700, 000 years of the kitchen.

*later the 4 notebooks were to become 5, but this “map” remains accurate as it is meant to depict the space of “Monday”

Tuesday:
Tuesday’s representation was based more on the passage of time rather than any assignment of numbers, and I wanted to address the ideas of boundary (Garreth), closeness and interconnectedness (Erin) that came up during that day’s presentations. Site specificity and place (Lincoln, Margo) also naturally came into play. And knots (Charles)!

The initial chain was stitched for as long as it took me to walk around the outside of the barn. It was joined to make a circle. The series of chains that followed were crocheted while I was in conversation with different people that night, and the end of each chain was connected to a point, chosen intuitively, on a previous chain, creating something that could not be untangled. I ended the piece when, by chance, the next joining point I chose was where I had begun.

Wednesday:
The aspects of Wednesday’s presentations that I attempted to represent were improv (Liz), impulse (Kim), “YES” and lines of desire (Emily), as well as the idea of just doing it and not judging what was happening (from Charles’ proprioceptive writing workshop).

I tried to use very little by way of a system, except for using filet crochet to represent the binary translation of the word “Yes” (the 3 rows that are comprised of open spaces and filled in squares). Looking back on my notes, the number 24 seems to be significant, although I didn’t note, and I can’t remember, why! One of my directions says, “then go for it, whatever, say yes + slow down”.

Thursday:
Thursday’s piece touched on points of reflection (Cat), and cycles and consumables (Amy), and I tried to just approach, groove, and depart (Denise) without too much conceptualizing while I was making it.

After dinner there was a screening of “Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey” (Lincoln) , during which I crocheted and drank bourbon (Sean). The circumference of the crocheted piece is the same as the circumference of the glass I was drinking from; as I crocheted I would sip the bourbon and when the amount crocheted matched the amount of negative space in my glass (that is to say, the part of the glass not filled with bourbon), I stopped.

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In order to learn everyone’s name, we had a giant pillow fight after dinner on the first
night. It was wildly successful, and since there were 2 Peters we just called everyone
Peter after that, even though both Peters left the next day.

Bacon also seemed to work against the ghostly crustaceans, so we cooked and ate
about a ton of it (except for the vegetarians, but I think you only have to smell like
bacon, you don’t actually have to eat it, for it to be effective). A jar of bacon-infused
moonshine was left on the windowsill to further ward off bad luck. It seemed to do
the trick. It looked a lot like a pickled punk that had long since been retired.

One of the things we had for breakfast was a “Dutch Baby”, which is not really a
baby, but Sean didn’t know that and Matt didn’t tell him until a look of shock and
horror had registered on his face. We all had a good laugh over it. But because of
that and having been mistaken one for the other during the first night’s pillow fight,
they became fast friends. You could hardly start a conversation with either of them
before they would mention the infamous “Dutch Baby”, their eyes glazing over with
such a look of contented nostalgia and happiness that you would soon get
uncomfortable and just slowly wander away without them even seeming to notice.

One day we took a trip to the “Low Tide Gallery”, which is an abandoned shack you
can only safely get to when the tide is low, and which was discovered when a group
of people were searching for a place you could only safely get to when the tide is low.
We knew when the tide would be low because Rachele brought a bunch of crazy
drawings she had made that predicted not only the tides but also when there would
be nuclear explosions (the latter of which there were, thankfully, none). We had to
walk over snails and barnacles to get to this place, and when Dan found out the
snails were alive he nearly fainted and had to be carried the rest of the way. Once we
got there Emily announced that the tiny, decrepit shack was her dream house, and by
the time we had all had a look inside and pretended to agree that yes, it was our
dream house too, the tide had come in and we were stranded for the night. Naturally
we blamed this on Rachele. As it was Liz, Dan, and I in charge of dinner, we did our
best to scrounge what we thought were edible plants and bugs, and had everyone
imagine it was kale salad, couscous salad, and sausages (chicken as well as tofurkey),
with berries with cream for dessert. The kale salad was the best I ever imagined, and
Liz promised to give everyone the recipe.

Brooke had an amazing contraption called The Wonderbag, the workings of which
she refused to explain, saying only, “My mother is from Ontario”. A few people
came up with a theory that The Wonderbag drew its energy from some mysterious
occult force on the island, but as there was no way to test this we stopped speculating
and enjoyed the food it produced without comment or complaint. (ed. note: I have
recently managed to create a Wonderbag of my own. Though its workings remain a mystery to
me, I am looking forward to seeing what I can summon from it. However, I feel I must pass a
warning on to anyone who might be considering making one themselves – polystyrene beads are
as close a thing to pure evil as you will ever encounter in a craft supply.)

Grocery shopping was a daily event whereby two or three people would drive into
town and procure supplies, including the ingredients for that night’s dinner, anything
needed for the next day’s breakfast, various odds and ends, and a flat of beer and 6
boxes of wine. There were plenty of plastic grocery bags left lying around at the end
of the day, but by morning they would always have mysteriously been folded and
tucked into meticulous rectangles, like tiny inedible pastries, and left in a pile in the
kitchen. Now, I am as open-minded as the next person, but this was completely
unnatural, and whoever did it (we never did find out) is likely criminally insane. It
was probably the same nutcase who sorted all the dinner plates by size and by colour
that one night after dinner.

Many fine cocktails were had on Vinalhaven. Sean brought his entire bar from the
mainland- an immense, richly brown mahogany thing that was polished to a mirror
finish and stocked with countless tonics, salves, and preparations gotten from all over
the world. He was just like Tom Cruise from that movie about mixing drinksjumping
on the furniture and waving his arms around constantly. Matt preferred to
distill his own alcohol, and introduced us to a drink called the “shine ‘n’ brine”,
which is where you take a swig of moonshine and chase it with pickle juice. Some
people preferred the brine to the shine, and soon the pickle juice was gone. Then it
was just “shine ‘n’ shine”. Next Matt tried to teach a few of us to use the moonshine
to breathe fire, but we pretended to swallow it “by accident” when it came time to
light it. It happened so many times he must have thought there was something wrong
with us, but we were too drunk to care!

Cat, Amy, Garreth, Laura, and Matt took the canoe and the kayak out on Thursday
afternoon, and came back with several massive fronds of kelp and an incredible story
of adventure. Dan, Patricio, and I, however, suspected they had merely watched
“Paddle to the Sea” and described the story as their own. We Canadians are quite
familiar with the holdings of our National Film Board. Matt cut up and roasted some
of the kelp, and we tried it. It was salty as hell.

Kim and I shared a bedroom at the barn. It was fairly large, with 3 narrow bunk
beds. We pushed the beds together to make one really wide bed. I took the top and
she took the bottom, and we slept comfortably with our arms and legs stretched out,
like peaceful starfish, every night. During the first part of the week Kim had an odd
habit of commenting on the “set decoration” and “props” in the barn. She would
admire our clothing and ask who designed our “costumes” and who coached us on
our “regional accents”. Most people didn’t mind, however, and welcomed the
attention.

Margo taught us what a “compass” is, and how orienteers use it to find their way to
special boxes in the woods, and the difference between the 4 cardinal and the 4
venial points. She said, “Put Right Said Fred in the Shed,” and we all marched
around the yard singing “I’m Too Sexy,” which was entirely untrue about any of us
except for Anita, whose mere presence next to a compass would cause it to stop
working.

The tallest people in the residency were Lincoln and Patricio. The shortest person
was Obi, who is not actually a person but is a dog.

Laura and I were a real couple of Mme Defarges that week- during our spare time I
was crocheting and she was knitting, and who could say whether we were working in
a secret cipher, using our crafts to record people’s names in a register in order for
them to get the guillotine! At the end of the week we proudly showed off the fruits of
our labour- Laura’s a soft wool hat of the loveliest shades of blue, and mine a series
of ambiguous, nearly shapeless masses of knotted kitchen twine.

At the barn and the farm houses there is no internet, so you can basically make stuff
up when you talk to people, and then hope that they have forgotten about the “facts”
you told them by the time they have access to Google again. But if they are taking
notes you could get into trouble. Also, Peter D. was making an audio recording on
the first and last days, so anything you said then will probably be “on the record”.

Despite having never made coffee before in our lives, Erin and I decided that it was
up to us to provide the group with coffee each morning. We made a terrible mess,
with coffee grounds floating in the pot and spread all over everything in the kitchen.
Our product was sometimes as black as death and other times as weak and
ineffectual as fog, but we were so proud of our achievement and so useless at doing
much of anything else that nobody wanted to hurt our feelings and as a result we
never changed our techniques or learned any better. The others would watch us go
off into the corner and practice our “dances” (Erin called hers “tap” and I referred to
mine as “hula”), and shake their heads and sigh sympathetically.

There are quarries on the island that are good for swimming, and a synchronized
swim team was soon formed. One of the quarries is apparently “clothing optional”, if
you know what I mean, and we all joked and laughed nervously and vowed never to
go there.

Though some of us slept at the Sparrow Farm, which is where the barn is, others
stayed at the Poor Farm, which is only a few minutes down the road and is also
haunted, but by people rather than lobsters. In trying to stir things up Denise dumped
a bucket of ping- pong balls down a stairwell, which everyone had great fun
recording on our Cellular Telephones and Digital Cameras. Emily and Rachele and
Lincoln and Liz and I made various attempts to contact spirits using a Ouija board.
We either succeeded fantastically or failed miserably, as the only thing that was
spelled out was “BS” and a lot of letters that didn’t seem to amount to anything.
However, Lincoln later whispered to me that the string of letters actually did have a
horrible significance that he didn’t feel comfortable revealing to us at the time of the
session, and which I promised to keep secret so as not to disturb the others. This
message from the spirits of the Ouija board I will take to the grave with me.

One thing about living with a group of people for an entire week, without the relief of
seeing another soul besides the twenty-some same people you are eating every darn
meal with, is that you start to develop a special language, like those twins who
babble back and forth with a secret code that no one else can understand. Amy was
the source one of these peculiar phrases, which at the time seemed so apt that it
slipped seamlessly into our lexicon and was used at every chance. I don’t know what
it means back in San Francisco, but if you heard someone in the Sparrow Farm
kitchen yell, “foam out!” you knew coffee was on, or it was your turn to do the
dishes, or Garreth had lost his shoes again. By the end it had almost become a sort of
“aloha” to us, and many a teary “foam out” was said on Saturday morning when we
finally parted company, marching down the muddy road to the solemn beat of
Denise’s snare drum. Another phrase no one tired of hearing, or saying, was “map
boner”.

Many of us were enthralled by the fireflies, which came out at night in droves, but
none so much as Cat, who tried ceaselessly to video tape them despite the fact that
everyone knows “fireflies” are a hallucination caused by drinking moonshine. She
did capture some stunning video of seaweed, however, and showed it around
happily, inadvertently hypnotizing anyone who gazed at the tiny screen of her
camera for more than a few seconds.

On the final night a crate of lobsters, a shitload of devilled eggs, and several boxes of
whoopee pies were delivered, along with two additional DI board members and
other special guests. We had worked hard all day trying to make the barn look nice
for the soon-to-be ghost lobsters and also for the handful of visitors who joined us for
dinner, with candles everywhere and furniture cleared away to create space for a
dance floor and a Cooper Mini. Along the windows a line of fancy laptops stretched
as far as the eye could see, with their gears grinding away to display all manner of
digital videos and photos and photomontages and all that type of thing that designers
seem to be so good at. Before dinner was served, Sean jumped on a piece of furniture
and waved his arms around and served a cocktail he had invented for the occasion. It
was delicious. On the serving table were massive bowls of potato and green salad,
loaves of bread with strange symbols on them, the devilled eggs (which covered
every available surface) and some pine needle shortbread cookies that Emily had
made and which she assured us were perfectly safe to eat.

Eating lobster is a marvelous event, which begins with passing the animal to
someone who knows what to do with it and is not afraid of, or too weak to achieve,
splitting it open and tearing off its head, which is how pretty much everything was
eaten 700,000 years ago according to Brooke and Matt’s story about “The Kitchen”.
Then as you eat you try not to get covered in lobster juice or butter, or have Anita
spill red wine on the sweater you knit for yourself. Many of us had eaten lobster this
way before only once or twice, if at all, and the more experienced diners chuckled at
our attempts to discern which part of the lobster was food and which was not. Sean
then gave an impromptu lobster anatomy lesson, by which we learned which was the
inside of the animal (mostly edible) and which was the outside (mostly inedible).

After everyone had eaten, Liz and Cat held a break dancing seminar, and Erin taught
us the dance move which is called “digesting the lobster”. It came in very handy, and
without it who knows what might have happened! It seemed like everybody had a
special dance move to share, even if it was just standing in the kitchen doing the
dishes with Margo.

A Design Inquiry tradition is to save the lobster heads and boil them in order to
create a smell that will sicken anyone unfortunate enough to pass through the
kitchen the next morning with a hangover, and the antennae are set aside to later
become the most beautiful silver rings you ever saw.

Everyone was really smart, and nice, and interesting at DI: Station, and I hope I
have done well capturing all of their endearing foibles. Did I tell you about how Cat
kept calling everything “spectacular” and Patricio would ask, “So what?” no matter
what you said to him? He was so tall you wouldn’t dare answer back. Also, anytime
anybody mentioned the title of a movie or TV show Garreth would ask if you had
heard of the porn version of it, which I am pretty sure he was making up on the spot.
As for myself, my most animated conversations revolved around a scant 4 subjects:
the Banff Centre for the Arts, ukuleles, Blundstone boots, and bigfoot, and for that I
would like to apologize to anyone unfortunate enough to have gotten caught in a
conversation with me (Garreth).

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We set up a drawing apparatus in one of the bedrooms in the oldest part of the house, the site of an infamous DesignInquiry ghost story.We set up the tool (a string tied to a lightswitch on one end and a pen just skimming the floorboards on the other), put some paper down, made an example, and left a tiny glass of whiskey for the ghost.
In the morning we raced into the room to see if anything had happened, and they didn’t even take a single sip.

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