Feeling detached...

During tutorials I sit with a tutor and discuss my work, the tutors then ask questions, offer opinions and advice, and it is during these conversations that most ideas come together or develop. Although as students we sometimes feel that there is a fine line between developing ideas and working with a tutor and them giving you the idea. However this line can blur. This happened when during a tutorial Steve showed me a piece of paper with a few ideas he had jotted down. All of these ideas were great, and we discussed them, but I felt uneasy running with the ideas as I felt like I had no involvement in how they came about. Its one thing to come up with ideas together and another to be given them. After expressing my concerns to Steve he explained how it was no different, he said that he couldn't have thought of these ideas without having spoke to me, seen my research, listened to my ideas or having seen my previous work, therefore I was involved throughout. To begin I didn't understand and felt guilty for rejecting the ideas, after all he had took the time to do this for me. With time I understood, it was no different to our face to face tutorials, but I guess its just the way that the ideas come about. See as I was presented with a piece of paper, covered in sketches and notes I felt so detached, whereas during a conversation the two people bounce off each other, the ideas feel as if they come much more naturally and you get a sense of personal involvement and ownership.

I decided that I would use the ideas if I could take them and adapt them. See the tutors give everyone ideas, but its our job take them and make them personal, change them to fit not their vision but our own, after all the ideas are driven from our previous vision that we have shown in our journals. However I was struggling to adapt these ideas. They were all so clean and simple, which I like my work to be, I like to have an idea and strip it back, making it less complicated. To add anything to these ideas would just lessen them and since as I didn't want to run with them as they are I decided to leave them for now.

Explanation of sketches :

Image 1 : (Paper cup phone) Highlighting that the distance is a main focus of the paper cup phone. Distance is a barrier and this leads the idea of a screen becoming a barrier. (Sketch of people at computers) This piece highlights how we use the Internet to speak, teenagers will often sit staring a screen for an entire night speaking to someone who could live a mere minute walk away; and adults may send emails to a person within the same room as them rather than waiting to speak face to face. For this piece two computers would be set up on a program which will allow you to type sentences, much like I am doing now, however no Internet is needed. These two screens will be placed next to each other but put facing the opposite way. Screen A's keyboard will then be placed in front of screen B, screen B's keyboard will then be placed in front of screen A. Person A will then stand in front of screen A and keyboard B, what they then type will appear on screen B, where person B will be standing typing back on keyboard A.



Image 2 : Two dark phone boothes for annominous texting. The only light source would be the phone, drawing people in. The only numbers within the phone would be the number of the phone in the next booth. The boothes would be stood next to each other creating a divide but losing the distance of the normal text conversation.

Letters and a letter box. Once again letters are normal sent because of the distance between two people. By closing in this distance the reply time will be faster creating a live chat, much like facebook chat but in a physical sense. I would be interested to see the messages sent between the divide as when I sat down to write Jade a letter I found myself writing alot more that I would normaly on a social networking site. I also found that I rambled on as I couldnt remove the text once it had been written.

Two tents in different locations within college, within each tent would once again be a mobile phone with each others numbers in. This time we would have created a distance, how would the messages change from the idea of having the phones next to each other? Also voice mails could be left to each phone, with each user carrying on from the other users previous conversation.