Kill your dahlings...

I just re-read an old blog-post with advice from Havlandet. it said:

Kill your darlings, before they kill you.

It fits with todays decision of ditching one of the first exhibition ideas that came up. I think that the original idea of "This is your connection to the world" - is good, but as it had been worked into deal with everyday food instead, it didn't quite sit anymore. And it certainly didn't justify the amount of money we were going to have to spend on it. That is now freed up to spend on other things that would be nice, like projections of footsteps walking around the exhibition space and shadows moving across the walls. Perhaps.

Frode ftw

Frode Ljøkjell (link in Norwegian only, sorry) has started working with us as a 3D designer to work out details and volumes. We have had several meetings and it seems to me that this will work out well. Here is one of his first sketches.Frode's responsibilities will be to shape and construct the various parts of the physical structures.

Entrance III

Some sketches for the entrance alternating dark and light.

Food presentation - entrance

Food is nearly always presented on a white background. I guess it looks clean and delicate. Letting the colours of the food come out clearly. But the question is; do we follow the norm or counter it? A dark background can also be quite alluring and might be more exciting, giving the food more of a... seductive quality?

Entrance 2

Still pondering the entrance... It has two parts, should be something you walk through, should partly obstruct your view to the rest of the exhibition and should look fabulous! "With windows, you just have a few seconds to get someone's attention" said Paul Smith about window displays. It is the same with the entrance, a few seconds to dazzle and draw. So... How to dazzle and draw? Ppl are drawn to lights, to colours, movement and to visual humor. One thing ppl find amusing is objects that are out of scale, either super large or miniatures. There's the recipe! Simple. ^^

The entrance

I usually base my design ideas on images surfacing in my mind as I consider a topic. It is very intuitive. In my experience ideas that don't come as finished images often lack pizass. Atm I am labouring hard with the entrance. No immediate images present themselves. However, several ideas are peering out reluctantly, maybe this is the time when I will find the solution through hard work rather than through my inspirational muse...

Kids talk

Yesterday we spent an hour with a group of kids at a school in Bergen.

They were self confident and outspoken, not afraid to ask questions and give their opinions. A lively, positive bunch.

So, what exactly did we learn?

We learnt that we are on the right level with the stories that we are telling. Both the kind of stories and the way we are telling them. They easily grasped the concept that "norwegian" is a relative concept, and enjoyed the background information we provided.

They had very different opinions on the visuals we presented, which was also interesting. Hiphop style is not everybody's cup of tea (even if I like Banksy... *sigh*)

We also learnt that we have to be very concrete when talking to a target group, discussing exhibition ideas did not work as well as discussing the actual visuals.

The white sheet

I am preparing a presentation for both my supervisors. Not only a presentation but also an overview of what we have, both consept and visuals. The coming week I will be discussing the project with several colleagues of different professions. First out is Linda Kragseth, marked communicator who was intensly part of the project last year, and who still is lurking at the edges. Tomorrow I am meeting with Anne Mette Prestegård, who is also an exhibition designer and who I have worked with on Havlandet. Then later in the week I hope to have some time with Hilde Hauan Johnsen who is a professor of textiles at KhiB, she has worked on several exhibitions at Tromsø Museum.

So I am working on the presentation... and have so much of the project inside. It feels like I am on the verge of bursting, but I am struggeling with finding the right format for the output.

Hence the white sheet. The fear. And now I will get to work filling it.

the big idea...

...trying to unscramble the big idea and the key communication points with Nina at Kafé Kaos. A fitting location for our present state? Not really. We feel we have it all and know what it is, but we are trying to get our heads around the categories, and around what is what.

after some struggles we also start wondering wether finding "the big idea- sentence" to guide all further development is the only right way of developing exhibitions... We wonder partly because we feel that even if we do lack the sentence we can't see how finding it is going to change the manuscript and the way we are working with it.

Three focus areas II

Three pods with distinctly different atmospheres.

Tomatoes - visual, tactile

Cardamom - aroma, mechanical theatre

Chocolate - taste, aroma "magic interface" "new media"

With this audience we need to be very direct. But how? Open questions that are not moralistic. But we shouldnt be afraid of having a moral.

Three focus areas

• Potatoes (or should it be tomatoes? Annechen said the use of tomato in Norwegian cuisine has exploded...)
• Spices (only one spice? like cinnamon?)
• Chocolate!!! (ofc!) (Milkchocolate - a small piece of Norway...(?))

Going into production!

The time has come to move the project into production. We will start the development of the "smell/picture" and the "how are you connected to the world" installations. The timeframe we have - with opening in march next year - forces us to focus. Which is a good thing.

For a while now I have felt as if the installation needed more ideas... but it was allways intended to be a small installation in order to have time and means to work out the details. A small gem.

So I have decided to start the production by contacting the following for consultations:

BEK - Bergen center for Electronic Art - for the interactive elements of the installations. Because they are the most experienced on interactivity in a 3d space.

Tveit&Tornøe - For ideas on the physical structures of the installation. Because they are energetic, creative and available. They are here in the same workspace that I am at KhiB, which makes contacting them low-threshold.

For the development of the script I have already spoken to Nina Svane-Mikkelsen who also wrote the script for Havlandet. Because she is the only one (in Bergen at least) who actually understands writing scripts for exhibitions. And her own PhD is focusing on exhibitions and new media.

Konseptutvikling

Brainstorming med Joanne; min og din utstilling på lørdag. Joanne veldig konkret i utformingen av utstillingen, har tanker om bygging av rom, bygger rommene før vi har innholdet. Plutselig blir jeg den akademisk konservative, brainstormingen fungerer fint og vi får definert en hel del ting i forhold til farger og det grafiske. Tre nyanser av beige over til gull. Tre nyanser av grønt. Svart/hvitt. Mønstre – blomster. Lag og gjennomskinnelighet.
Men blir det for vakkert? Målgruppe. God design er ikke nødvendigvis riktig design.

Vi lager rammer før vi har bildene. Det er greit å jobbe med design konseptet, de grafiske snittet, utforske et visuelt språk. Men vi må ha innhold før vi kan lage en en installasjon. Brainstormingen gjorde at det ble klart, så det er et positivt utslag.

Trenger vi en tekstforfatter nå? En som kan jobbe aktivt videre med tematisk konsept... hvem skal gjøre det i så fall?

Etter å ha lest Joanne Jones-Rizzi, Contextualizing Culture i Exhibitionist vol.27:

Unger trenger å starte med seg selv, å ha en følelse av hvem de er etnisk, nasjonalt, kulturelt.
Phyllis A. Katz: når og hvordan utvikler barn holdninger til etnisitet, rase og kultur?

Why is cultural understanding so important?
We want to foster kids cultural curiosity. We want all children to feel valued.

Plakat i museet:
”Help us with a new multicultural exhibit”
”What do you want to know about people who look different from you?” ”What do you want others to know about you?”

Vårt konsept (litt utvidet)
• Alle har mange identiteter (Hva er din forbindelse til verden?)
• Forskjellighet innen én gruppe (”Norsk er ikke én ting”)
• Kultur forandres hele tiden (Lukten av Norge)

Hvorfor er kulturell forståelse viktig?
Vi ønsker å stimulere barns kulturelle nysgjerrighet. Vi vil at alle barn skal føle seg verdsatt og del av et eller flere felleskap.

Idées Vagues

Easter is over, extremely early this year. It has eaten quite a chunk of March so the month has been entirely occupied with applications for funding (to Hordaland Fylkeskommune, Prøvekluten and Stipendiatprogrammet) and presentations. The presentation at the Stipendiatsamling went well, although I messed up a bit in the end... I guess that is where my thoughts are the most fuddled too so it actually made that fact very clear to me.

When it comes to the funding bit; yesterday I was informed that we have received 200 000,- NOK from Stipendiatprogrammet! With the 75 000,- NOK from Kunsthøgskolen i Bergen it is starting to look like proper funding ;-D

I also got an e-mail from Amanda Steggel about the aroma installation and we have had an e-mail exchange about possibilities and restrictions. Very nice.

On the coming Monday I am doing the "key note" for museum educators in Hordaland. Trying both to say something in general about what exhibitions could be and present the project. It is a heavy job to do the writing, mostly because it seems there is so much I want to say! There are so many themes I would like to explore, but it is so boring to try to write out the whole argument. I must find a way to relax with the writing...

Interviews and organic design development

According to my project plan I was supposed to do interviews with museum professionals in March. However, due to easter being early this year and a couple of presentations in March I will move the interviews to end of April/May.

I am a little confused on how to continue the development of the design of Fiskeboller. It seems as if the design is just growing inside of me... Erlend Loe said in an interview with "Interiør" (1-2008) that the best ideas are the ones that stay with you, they go through a kind of destillation process and only parts remain. Often an idea is only good once you combine it with something else that has been around for a while.

Thats the way it feels with the exhibition ideas atm. They seem to be merging and shaping inside my head, without much of a visible output. At some stage they will be put on paper, and then into space.

The confusion I feel is because I am uncertain wether this organic way of working with the design ideas is ok, or if I should be more structured and exploring.

The smallest acceptable solution

In the smallest acceptable solution there will be aroma and projected images/text and a web solution.

In the (highly unlikly) case that the only funds we have for Fiskeboller i karri are private and from Kunsthøgskolen.

Producers

Through Amanda Steggell's website I found the name of the aroma designers she used for her Emotion Organ. Dale Air Aroma Design makes aromas for museums and shopping experiences. And it doesnt look that expensive either. :-)


Anne Mette Prestegård tipped me (even if she didint know) about using BEK for technical solutions on multimedia.

Both Trond Lossius at BEK and Amanda Steggell has completed their research fellowships in the same programme as me. It all stays in the family!

Design Methods

When I first started in 2003 there was very little inormation out there on the www. Last week I checked again. Lo and behold! Here is a nice article on Design Methods from Wikipedia. It says among other things that

Design Methods is (sic.) challenging to implement since there are not enough
agreed-upon tools, techniques and language for consistent knowledge
transfer.

Rita Marhaug said in a discussion once that

artists are not very true to method.

The purpose of design is to make something that doesnt already exist. Maybe you can not follow a recipie if you are to create something new? Just a thought.

new moodboards

...it seems that I keep turning out moodboards for this project...

Containers...

Back from an extended christmas holiday. Have been approved for "readmittance" to the fellowship programme!

However, after looking again at some of MMW's container projects, I got inspired to look into containers again for FiK... Apparently it is possible to buy used 20' containers for approx. 15 000,-. So I did some drawings and some thinking. Considering the problems of wheelchair access I started thinking about other types of disabilities. The combination of small and sound (and taste) makes the exhibition an interesting experience also for people with a visual impairment. And the combination of smell and images (and again taste) makes it interesting for people with an hearing impairment.

I would want it to be a seating area and thought about doing it with an organic shape and some soft surface, but that requires people to take off their shoes, and that again creates a whole set of problems relating to logistics, entrance threshold (mental ones :-)) etc. So maybe we just keep the organic shape, but make the seating of a hard, shoe friendly material.

Atm I am thinking of a sound, images, smell show that could take something like 10 - 15 minutes (or run continuosly when viewed in public) with visitor interaction deciding what section comes next. ("Is this the smell of Norway? Lean to your right if you say yes. Lean to your right if you say no. Why/not?") In this case the main development would be with the AV(S)-program and the interactive programming. As well as developing stable technical solutions.