Buying chocolate scorpions and Bastet statues

We are almost in production. Atm I am buying chocolate covered scorpions, a statue of Bastet, the egyptian cat godess and just recieved a package of chocolate linguine in the mail last week... Fun times :)

In addition I am making an overview of the media we need and of the work we need to do...

Major areas to take time to think about: The middle division, the screens shielding the exhibition, light fittings, how to send in the eating pictures... :)

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...

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.

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!

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.

Great meeting @ SIFO

On wednesday morning we had a great meeting with Annechen Bahr Bugge and Runar Døving at SIFO! The meeting was most inspiring and the two of them had lots of ideas as to what themes would be relevant for us. Now ofc we need to sit down and sort out what is relevant to our project. On tuesday afternoon I suddenly had three/four ideas of how this can be visualised.
So stay tuned! We will be right back after this...

Fiskeboller at the railwaystation?

Some conceptual sketches of an installation at the railwaystation in Bergen... Could this be a location for Fiskeboller i karri?

Scriptwriter needed!?

I feel very strongly that we need a scriptwriter. Where do we find the right person? Skrivekunst akademiet? Wibecke? TV-faget? Or could the content be developed through visual development and visual use of text? And then we could get a scriptwriter to make the actual texts... if it is necessary... hmmmmm.....

moodboards

I made some moodboards a couple of weeks ago. The first one i have become quite attached to. I like the layers, the patterns, the feeling of transparency and the play of the light through the material. Jo Anne will now build on these and continue the development of a visual language for Fiskeboller.