Week 12
Summative
Presentation
Narrative sits in the middle of my project. However, I still haven't found exactly what my narrative is. For this presentation, I chose a synthetic vs. natural narrative to tell my story about the importance of place-based connection.
I felt, however, that the feedback I got from the presentation was mostly things I already knew from answering. This means I did not explain it well enough, and that the angle I chose to explain from was not optimal.
While I was disappointed in myself for this, it was ultimately a good learning opportunity.
Cornwall Swatches
Earlier in DP2, I created a swatch test and wanted to do it again, this time with the four confirmed ingredients for the Cornwall Park coaster. I limited each sample to 450g of water and a maximum of 5g of fibre. For example, the tanekahu-only test was 5g, whereas the tanekahu and eucalyptus test was 2.5g of each. I did this with every possible combination of the four ingredients to create a sample palette of the colours that can be created. This can be used by Cornwall Park to let me know which colours they want. Coasters with textures will have to be dyed with a single colour, but they also want to do some plain coasters, so this would be used for that.
It is interesting to see clear 'dominant' colours and how some colours work well together. I also used a piece of wool lace to see the colour contrast between two different types of wool. It is interesting how the colour of the wool tells a story of the place, but also how that colour is influenced by its properties.
Dried Xanthan Gum Tests
After dehydrating for 24 hours and leaving over the weekend, the tests were ready. I should have put down baking paper to get rid of the texture, but overall it was a success.
This has led me to think about making a gum-and-wool hybrid with unfelted wool, then laser-cutting it afterwards, so you have weird-textured wool that could be cut into shapes.
Mapping
This isn't quite right. I talked a few weeks ago about defining my positioning and digesting the moving ball of ideas in my head. While I am getting closer, there is still a bit more I need to lay out better.
I have decided to visualise my thoughts in four main areas. I have chosen to leave out cost viability and, more so, view it as a paradigm in which all of this operates. I have mapped key literature in orange and my own making in blue.
I need to decide whether place-based design is its own category, or whether the combination of transparency, emotional durability, and wool-driven design creates a link to place. Is it the question or the answer?
Concept Future Application
I am excited about my next steps. Currently, my thesis is exploring how I can apply this Cornwall Park case study to multiple places and examining how materials from different regions and countries influence the products that can be created. Like with the felting, using the wool's constraints to create something. I am interested in exploring different ways to connect people to these places and how various factors influence their connection to them.
My imagined direction is to look into three case studies of different places using wool and collaborate with each place to create a product. As I dive more into the business side, I wonder whether the model sees Steaddi as a collaborator with the place, almost as if I were a 'wool consultancy'. I would take underutilised wool (like at Cornwall) and work in collaboration with the place to find a fit purpose for it in the fashion or gift industry that links back to their place. Ideally, the business model would be for you to use the profits from the products to fully compensate the farmers for the wool they originally had no use for. This would create a system where place seeks out support, effectively visualising a new framework to uplift wool that leverages place and material-driven design to form connections to the product and open the supply chain to let people in and form longer connections to the product.
Reflection
As always, there are things I wish I had done differently in this project. The main one that stands out to me is diving more into the experience around the product. While I am not too fussed about this as I will continue to do it anyway to get this product into the Cornwall Park shop, I am disappointed I couldn't get it done earlier, so it was shown more throughout my DP2 work. I put too much emphasis on the making side, when I should have started with the connection and then built from there. Maybe I should have produced a series of connections to 'objects' rather than products, to showcase the experience side of it more than the product. That was the goal with the coaster, though- a product so simple, but carried by the story it tells.
Overall, though, I am happy with my output and the amount of work I got done. I am also happy with the amount that I still have to do and the questions I have, as it means there is much to accomplish in my thesis. I did a better job of critically thinking about the 'whys' behind my decisions in the making process this semester and of grounding my methods in a rational basis. In contrast, in DP1, there was a lot of 'just cause'.
I know my project direction will continue to change, but the ball in my head is getting easier to articulate. I finish off Dp2 with the research question: Can a material-driven design approach use place as a collaborator, to create products that draw people into the processes & stories behind them.
References
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