Hot Rod Biology

Hi Luke,
Seen as you've been good in responding to my blog, I thought I should reciprocate...

I was quite surprised to read your difficulty in starting a project. Since the beginning, it seemed you were one of the students who was the most productive, and Lisa would sing praises about you. I noticed that the whirl of activity had really pushed you along and discoveries within the momentum.

If starting afresh is hard, you can always re-vist what you had done to critique it in new ways. If what you are coming to is to notice the monsters in /of other things, perhaps a good way to start the ball rolling is to see your past work with fresh perspective. Maybe you could attempt to re-do a piece again, and see how that felt. With your past work, I could be wrong here, but it seemed it was evaluated on how the artefacts appeared to be monstrous, the chintzy pillow, hot-rod biology etc. Could you look at it again and critique the process you went through instead, and frame it within how your topic is sitting now?

What I find incredible (and perhaps, obvious) is how much one's old, past work says something about how one's thinking now... subliminally, there's a thread that runs through them, and often it reveals the core interests, intrigues and ways of working that wasn't apparent before. Only when its seen in multiples, one begings to see a pattern emerging... does that make sense?

Anyway, I hope that helps.
y

Yeah I see what you mean. One thing I'm supposed to be doing is writing about the McCahon font as a 'Monster' for The National Grid . . . I guess I should reconsider my projects from last year also? In fact it seems obvious, now that you point it out, that the cushions would be interesting to reflect on, being that looking back on them I really can't stand them!?

That's funny Lisa thought I was on top of things. I was really just forcing myself to make work (which I guess was good) but at the same time I just had this horrible feeling that I was pissing in the wind. Which links into this post and my comment about "wasting time". . . I have a real fear of starting something unless I know its going to work outóprovide some sort of beneficial outcome (artefact?) for me. I guess I'm beginning to see that there's a whole lot of value to be got out of things that don't necessarily work out though . . . and I guess that's the point of being a 'reflective practitioner' that you learn from the process regardless of the outcome?

This obviously makes me realise that I'm not critiquing 'design' so much as myself in my 'Monster' proposal . . . I like to be able to see where I'm going with something and evaluate whether or not I think that's going to be beneficial to me ahead of actually doing it. I fear failure. (But doesn't everybody?) Perhaps this is why playing live in a band is more exciting to me . . . in design I'm only ever showing people a 'finished' thingóI have a choice as to whether or not I show itówhereas when you perform something 'live' you can't cover up the mistakes . . . you can't choose what-to-show and what-not-to-show.

But yeah I still feel really bloody lost!!! I was quite shaken by the panels assertion that I wasn't really 'doing' anything. I wish I thought to talk about the video more as a 'piece of work'. I think in many ways my interest in the 'Monster' actually has come from my reflection on previous work . . . seeing it through the new metaphor . . . maybe I should have discussed that specifically? I guess I really want to move on and 'make something' of my monstrous metaphor . . . Dave's question is ringing in my head at night, "what, or how, does this mean anything to clients or other practitioners" (not an actual quote).