School: Week 1

We've just concluded our first week of school here in Australia. My week started on Tuesday with Ceramic Production Techniques and Textiles: Print & Dye. I was originally signed up for a glass forming class, but that was unfortunately cancelled, so they put me into ceramics.


Now, when I was in high school, I was definitely into all the artsy stuff, and I thought that these sort of crafts courses would be fun, plus we don't exactly offer them back at Carleton. Typically, the first classes of any course will be highly boring, as we all know, since everyone has to read out all that legislative stuff. These classes however were particularly painful. It made me realize that ID has made me take a more practical approach to a lot of things, because these classes just felt like fluff. 


I don't exactly want to bash these courses, since these things can be fun on their own time, but it's not something that I really want to be studying in university. So far I've dropped the textiles class. I was more opposed to waiting for cloth to dye for hours than I was to actually making things with my hands. I still have the ceramics class for now, but I should be getting into a furniture for manufacture class with the help of my studio prof. With this at least I'll get a chance to go work in the workshops.


Studio class was a completely different story. Our prof seems really engaging and the project he presented to us seemed challenging. We were supposed to design something to help nurses with the process of dry wound dressing (when they change and clean up bandages). This was set up much like the toy design project I did last semester at Carleton, where it spans the entire semester from research done through site visits and nurse interviews, to the final concept and presentation. 


Friday was the day we were supposed to go visit the hospital. That never happened. Unfortunately there were too many barriers involved with us visiting even the staged, educational wing of the hospital as it was reserved for studying nurses. The school is going to try again to run this project next year, but in the meantime, this year they've decided to run two projects in parallel.


From what I understand, these projects will be separate, but we'll be working on both during the semester. Since we have two studio periods each week, one day will be dedicated to the first project and the other day will be dedicated to the second project.


Only one project has been introduced so far. We'll be redesigning a mobile projection unit. Basically it's a self contained laptop/projector/sound station that lecturers can use for their classes. The current one looks like a mobile metal box until it's unlocked, and pre-fab parts line the inside with cables everywhere. Its nickname: the dalek. Our job is to turn it into an R2D2.


(Pictures of studio to come)