Class Lectures

How Bushwick Became the Center of New York’s Art Scene

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WRITING EFFECTIVE ART EXHIBIT WALL LABELS
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BRIDGE #4 INTRODUCTION TO RESEARCH: HAZARDS, DISASTERS AND VULNERABILITIES

Hazards, Risks, Disasters, and Building Resilience

Case Study: 100 Years After New York’s Deadliest Subway Crash
An estimated 100 people died in the Malbone Street Brooklyn Rapid Transit disaster. Here’s how the tragedy changed public transportation in America.

 

 

Glossary of Terminology from Caribbean Vulnerabilities: Case Studies on Hazards, Risks, Disasters and Building Resilience, Denise J. Roberts, PhD 2018

Disaster: A hazardous event disrupting the functioning of a community or a society at any scale due to hazardous events interacting with conditions of exposure, vulnerability, and capacity, leading to one or more of the following impacts and consequences: human, material, economic and environmental.

Hazard:  A process, phenomenon or human activity that may cause loss of life, injury or other health impacts, property damage, social and economic disruption or environmental degradation.

Vulnerability: The conditions determined by physical, social, economic and environmental factors or processes which increase the susceptibility of an individual, a community, assets or systems to the impacts of hazards. 

Nature-Triggered Environmental Hazards
Structural collapse, drought, earthquakes, hurricanes, torrential rainfall, volcanoes

Case Study: The recent storms in North and South Carolina, the Philippines, Hong Kong, and Guangdong Province, which moved through the US South and China.
Category 5 typhoon Yutu devastates the Northern Marianas in worst storm to hit any part of U.S. since 1935

Anthropogenic Hazards
Social and political upheavals, transportation accidents and mishaps, explosions, fire, crime
Case Study: The killing of eleven people at a Pittsburgh synagogue on October 27, 2018, was the deadliest attack against the Jewish community in United States history.
Suspect in Pittsburgh synagogue shooting charged with 29 counts in deaths of 11 people4b

Case Study: The Camp Fire in Northern California erupted Nov. 8, 2018, leaving a path of destruction and forcing tens of thousands of residents to evacuate their homes.

Case Study: Residents of Thousand Oaks, Calif. gathered for a vigil Nov. 8 after a mass shooting at a local country-music bar left 12 people dead.

Case Study: The natural gas explosions in Lawrence, Andover, and North Andover, Massachusetts.

Building Resilience toward Sustainability
Developing resilience is a personal journey involving thoughts, behavior, and actions. Anyone can do it.
-Denise J. Roberts

Resilience: The ability of a system, community or society exposed to hazards to resist, absorb, accommodate, adapt to, transform and recover from the effects of a hazard in a timely and efficient manner, including through the preservation and restoration of its essential basic structures and functions through risk management. 

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ZINES

History
The zine popularity grew out of the 1980’s with universal themes in science fiction. Retail stores sold zines along with books and comics.
In the 1990’s the zine format moved to websites sometimes called “e-zines.”
Now zines are returning to printing methods from the past such as silk-screening, letterpress, linoleum cuts, and hand-stitched bindings.

Why publish a Zine?
The content of a zine can be diverse and unique. It’s a way to communicate on a very passionate, free, and sometimes intensely personal level as it is a medium not bound by censorship. It allows people of all interests and agendas to voice their opinions, art, and rants to a wide audience in a relatively cheap and enjoyable way.

Skills developed through creating a self-published book
-The ability to see things through to completion
-Time management
-Make a publication that goes from idea to reality
-Create your own content based on group dynamics, creative writing, storytelling, and location visits
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One Minute Book Zine Template

BRIDGE 3: THE URBAN EXPERIENCE

Locations to choose from for the project:
Grand Central, Time Square, Union Square, High Line, Canal Street. Coney Island, Central Park

Why do I need a team?

The best groups are made up of teams which are 2–6 people. These people are friends, peers, and generally, collaborators. Individuals in a team with committed members are more likely to complete the assignments and report that they have more meaningful learning experiences. They also make friends and strengthen relationships.

What is the ideal size for my team?

I generally recommend a team of 2–6 individuals. If your team is too big, it can be more difficult to coordinate schedules and conduct discussion together. I will also ask you to designate a Team Leader, who will coordinate and lead your time through the project.

What will make my team successful?

• Leadership: A team needs someone—a Team Lead—who takes the initiative to get everyone started.
• Scheduling: The most successful teams map out the required time for the assignment and schedule all of their team meetings from the outset.
• Preparation: The most successful teams have members who are committed to completing their individual prep work before meeting with their team.
• Co-Creating the Learning Experience: In the most successful teams, everyone recognizes the value of peer learning and understands that real learning comes from meaningful interactions based on trust, respect, and accountability.
• Enjoying the Moment: The most successful teams make their meetings FUN!

New York Travel Vlog 2018 | My FIRST Time In The City!

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Composite Portrait: The Pairing of Words and Images Skills and Learning Outcomes

Concepts

• Uncover more than the obvious aspects of your peer’s representation and identity such as race, stereotypes, gender, appearance, assumptions.
• Link the Studio assignment concepts to, discussions, guest lecture, and the museum visit as well as written assignments, discussions, readings, videos and exercises in Seminar.

Materials and Methods

• Adobe Photoshop combined with other materials and methods, text, voiceovers
• Merge yourselves together into an interpretive portrait or series of portraits

Process

• Use the guided methods to learn about your partner
• Brainstorm by exchanging ideas with your partner
• Learn to work through differences and tensions
• Decide on a concept, method of working and materials 
• Allow each other equal input
• Practice skill sharing
• Fine tune the project to bring it to completion
• Work together to create a presentation for your audience
• Show your process from start to finish and reflect on the experience of working alone and together

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Memories, Hopes and Dreams: Past, Present, Future Skills and Learning Outcomes

Concepts

• Improve ability to think outside of immediate perception
• Discover new ways to make associations
• Link studio concepts to written assignments and readings in Seminar

Materials and Methods

• Adobe Illustrator
• Mapping out a personal timeline

Process

• Brainstorm by creating sketches and thumbnails, outline notes
• Decide on a concept and layout and materials and stick to them
• Prototype – create the first draft. A prototype is an early sample, model, or release of a product built to test a concept or process or to act as a thing to be replicated or learned from.
• Fine tune the project to bring it to completion
• Present the outcome to your audience
• Show your process from start to finish and reflect on the experience

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Excerpts from “Words as Material” by Nicole Fenton
http://nicolefenton.com/words-as-material/

How design works

(In the case of the Memoir)

Communication: Clarity around the intent.

• Self: We start by thinking alone. We may be collaborating with friends or colleagues, but we still need space to make sense of what we’re making. We have to put it into terms we can relate to.
• Product: After choosing a design direction, we can prototype it, refine it, and try to make it speak for itself. The product needs to reflect the goals and intent we set out to achieve—and in some ways, it needs to stand on its own.
• Public: Once we’re clear on what we’re making, we build it. And if we’re lucky, we get to announce it and share it with the world.

As we move through each of these steps, the idea starts to solidify and become visible to people around us. This is why I think of design as a process of articulation. We join together to express an idea in a coherent form. We bring ideas to life. We connect the dots or build bridges for our users. That often means being specific about what a product does, who it’s for, why it matters, and how it works. We have to trek through a pile of ambiguity to do this.

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In class exercise
GESTURE
A gesture drawing records what the subject is doing or the action of the pose. It is done quickly, without forethought or planning. The gesture drawing may look like a tangle of fishing line. The pictures may look meaningless but the benefits that you have at the moment of reacting to the gesture will pay dividends…learn to act swiftly and directly without questioning it.

–Kimon Nicolaides

 

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THUMBNAILS
Draw a small box less than 3 inches across. Place in a rough sketch of a composition. Create seven versions of the same subject matter in different arrangements. No need for a lot of details just focuses on line and shape. Include all objects in each but in different arrangements. 

 

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What’s A Map?

Map: “a spatial representation of reality”

• spatial: consisting of at least two dimensions and usually referring to geographic space
• representation: something that stands for something else
• reality:“The totality of all things possessing actuality, existence, or essence” (The American Heritage Dictionary, 2002). Origin(etymology): 1550, originally a legal term in the sense of “fixed property.”

example: The Geography of Geography 222 Spring 2009

Think of it as making data into visual marks.

 

Maps can show just about anything:
Much more than just road maps!

Abstraction and Categories

Humans have the ability to think abstractly and develop categories

• abstract: having conceptual rather than physical existence
• categories: a unit or a subunit of a larger whole made up of members sharing one or more characteristics
• we understand better and faster by simplifying and categorizing the world, and how we simplify and categorize varies from person to person and culture to culture
• maps are an important means of simplifying and categorizing things so we can understand them

 

 

 

 

Symbols and Representation

Everything on a map is a symbol

Symbols are at the basis of natural languages (eg., English), math, statistics, pictorial communication (such as drawings, maps, graphs)

Symbol: A thing representing something else because of relationship, association, convention, or resemblance.

 

Some maps don’t look like maps but are

Think about colors on a map
Engage viewers

Visual Variables