By Other Means

Either because they feel their instructors require it or because they cannot think outside a particular technological box, many capstoners start with a technological approach to a given problem: "I don't know what I want to make, but I know it's going to be a Web site/video/interactive installation." Or just as bad: "I don't know what I'm going to make, but I know it won't involve programming/design/editing." It's certainly easier to envision finishing your capstone if you stick to a technology you're familiar with, whether it's HTML, FinalCut, or Max/MSP. Unfortunately, no matter how competent your manipulation of a given medium, your capstone will fail if your approach to the subject matter is naive or not thoughtful.

To help you think outside the box of a particular medium, this assignment asks you to envision an alternative version of your current intent without employing "typical" new media--ie, no Web sites, videos, or interactive installations. Your goal is not to come up with a totally different project, and you may end up returning to one of these media in your final choice of capstone. But for this one assignment, I want you to imagine and propose some activity or object that gets at the heart of the issue you're interested in without using one of these technologies.

Describe this alternative vision of your project in enough detail so I can see what happens in my mind's eye when I read your post. Where and when does it take place? How many people are involved? Are there objects they hear, see, or handle? Then tell me how you think this alternative version would speak to the same issue/s that interest you about your original, technology-oriented intent.

This is not an easy assignment, but just think about the themes from your Daily Me that got you interested in the first place, and imagine them playing out in a totally different space: the dining hall, a sports arena, a forest, anywhere but in a Web site, video, or interactive installation.


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I think I have been in a good boat because with my project, most of the research I have been doing has nothing to do with technical issues, and i am really still thinking which platforms I want to use.

When i was thinking about this lately... I have been thinking of new names and things for this project like "whereabouts", which sounds more fun or something to do with Homage to the Places, which sounds more like an installation, but I need to come up with something soon.

When envisioning the core of what my project is really about, most simply it is about our experience with place which also has some relation to time. There are a lot of complexities within the tone of the project for me though as far as what qualifies for an experience worth retelling and in some respects reliving. In some ways the project is made itself in the respect that people hold the keys to unlock the doors to the project, and i simply want to bring them together to share. The New Media aspect I believe at the core is the connection of our lives to each other, something for the people and only for the people that has a deep investigation.

In thinking of different ways this project could be presented minus the website / installation ideas I have already been playing around with, I thought of some sort of way where people as they were experiencing or going to a place they experienced could transmit information. For example, if I used to go to an old fishing hole all the time when I was little, and I remember the time I caught first fish, i could go back to that spot and with some kind of device take pictures/write text/etc, which stores it. More simply, something that can give as much information about the place including the person's personal experience. This would obviously be a new device, one more handheld, but there are some cons in that idea. The fact is I feel like we glow to much in front of our screens, and the purpose of this is to relove places outside of a digital space.

In the end, I will probably use digital means to portray the physical spaces, but if there was a way to portray the physical spaces with physical information that would be great. I think the biggest analog version of that is the stereotypical engraving into trees. Lisa <3 style="font-weight: bold;">A QUICK STORY :
A friend was telling me last year a story about how when she moved into the dorms she got a call from two girls at about 1 AM. They proceeded to tell her all about how much fun they had as roommates in that room, and all the things they did. Maybe my friend did not care, but regardless in some way she learned more about that room knowing the types of people who had been there before. The good times or what no.

That is the kind of felling I am trying to convey, the "hey, here's what has happened here"