Project Proposal

Working Title:

A reflexion about the producer-consumer (Prosumer)

Prosumer a brief definition:

1. A consumer who is an amateur in a particular field, but who is knowledgeable enough to require equipment that has some professional features ("professional" + "consumer").

2. A person who helps to design or customize the products they purchase ("producer" + "consumer").

3. A person who creates goods for their own use and also possibly to sell ("producing" + "consumer").

4. A person who takes steps to correct difficulties with consumer companies or markets and to anticipate future problems ("proactive" + "consumer").

Aims + Objectives:

To start, my objective is to produce work based on this character of the contemporary society, the prosumer. Also do a reflexion about how to combine mass/medium production and personalization/customization. Nonetheless, try to produce pieces that the design is not completely finished, a piece that provides a intervention from the consumer.

Context

Until this moment, the theoretical backbone of my research is based on the writings Marshall Macluham, Ernst Hans Josef Gombrich, Jean Baudrillard, Toffler, Alvin. The concept of Hypermodern times presented by Lipovetsky is key to my work, for one of it's main ideas of the contemporary men. In addition there are some artist that I am studing at the present moment: Antoni Gaudí, Alessandro Medini, Mia Cullin, 5.5 designers and Sam Buxton. I am also studing geometric forms, patterns, origami and some islamic art.

Methodology:

I have divided my studies in four sections:

Section 1 Theoretical research about the prosumer;

Section 2 Research what was produced to this kind of consumer, what artists would be related with this behavoiur.

Section 3 Create pieces related with the prosumer.

Section 4 Execute the pieces to the final presentation.

Outcomes:

Until the moment I want to present my final work as a 3d real size pieces, that will be probably made by wood and ceramics.

Work Plan:

I am planing to use the ceramics workshop and the tutor’s orientation, the 3d workshop to work with wood and use laser cut to help do mokups and the final pieces.

Bibliography:

Baudrillard, Jean- The consumer society : myths and structures, London : Sage, 1998.

McLuhan , Marshall - Take Today, 1972

Gombrich, Ernst Hans Josef - The Story of Art. London. Phaidon, 2006

Lipovetsky, Gilles com Charles, Sébastien - Os Tempos Hipermodernos. São Paulo. Editora Barcarolla, 2004

Lyotard, Jean-François - The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Minneapolis. University of Minnesota, 1984

Tapscot, Don - The Digital Economy, 1995

Toffler, Alvin - The Third Wave, 1980

The Mona Lisa Curse

As the critics exercise Jee Young Talked about Damien Hist, It make me remember this tv series because it mentions him many times once this series is about money and art and he is the most expensive artist at the moment. If you already saw it, please disconsider this post.

The Mona Lisa Curse, the first film in Channel 4's three-part Art and Money season, is a timely polemic by internationally renowned art critic Robert Hughes which examines how the world's most famous painting came to influence the art world.

It starts with Mona Lisa but in the end, in my opinion, it is a big ego trip of Robert Hughes with images of his house, his bathroom, dramatic soundtrack and he always playing the guardian of the truth character. However it has a good theme, important artists and memorable moments. Moreover, it is unbelievable how people behave in the art world and sometimes it is never about a good piece of art or talent but about vain, fame, greed, capitalism and power. Things that are attached with money. Because if one already have money, it will make look for other values that make the person noticeable, as culture, intellectuality, elegance, class. Things that are attached with art. For instance, Guy Mograbi is looking for immortality as a rich and intellectual man with his collection, once his eyes sparks with the idea of his collection become a part of a museum. In addition, there are other characters as Robert Skull who is seen as cruker but at the same time he was the first who find out that art is a real business, and he played very well this game since he knew how to deal with vain and fame. The artist didn't like that he was making more money that them, even though their pieces were becoming famous, maybe more famous than them.
The series also has some real art lovers as the modest couple Herb (worked at the post office) and Dorothy (librarian) who used to buy art pieces and with any vain just say that they bought the pieces that they thought it was beautiful. Nowadays Herb says that he can not afford art anymore and also lucid says "but that's ok. It is progress".

Well, there are 12 videos, it is 80 min series. If you have time enjoy.

Ceramics Workshop

This is the Rosa's Ceramics Workshop. Rosa gave a lot of attention to every detail in this tutorial. If you check the video you are going to notice that it is easy to follow. It is almost a food recipe show (kidding). Well, the thing that I thought the most different from the way I used to do molds for stop motion dummies is that she started from the upper part. Better explaining it, she full fill the bottom half part with clay to do the plaster mold of the top half part, a complete different way of doing it! However, in the end everything finish with two pieces mould.

Untitled from lu madm on Vimeo.

DM/3DD joint practitioner lecture

Ben Wilson

Ben is a 3D Industrial designer working with mass produced products and one off hand made commissions. He studied in Manchester for his undergraduate degree and went on to the Royal College of Art for his postgraduate studies in design products. Ben works from his Design studio in East London on projects for many major global brands. (tooke from his site www.benwilsondesign.co.uk/)

The designer developed many pieces, one of them is showed below:
link to the article


This is a monowheel – The cycle was commissioned for the XXIst Century Man exhibition at 21_21 Design Sight in Tokyo.

He also developed projects for major brands such as nike:

But to tell you the truth what I really thought was more valid in his lecture was the fact that when he finished his masters at the Royal College of Art and found himself unemployed. Then, he told that one of his projects that he developed at the RCA received some media attention and from that everything started.

He also said that he is not too much into do bicycles but many of his projects are related with bicycles and transportation because it was the opportunities that was offered at that time and was a way to start. Even projects which seems good to do as nike projects, he is conscious that they are not sustainable and has just visual appeal, but sometimes it may be done in order to do some great projects as bikes for disabled children which he also developed. His speech looks very reasonable and close to and how things works in the real world.

First Workshop

Hey, finally our first workshop!
It was very good, I did not knew how to work with foundry but some concepts are the same of molding with plaster, so it was not so like walking in the dark. Although it do uses a lot of gas to heat the bronze, this technique looks very economic, because the sand, the wood boxes and the bronze can be reused. It was the main advantage that I could see, in addition with the advantages of working with metal witch allows to polish.

Untitled from lu madm on Vimeo.

Research Methods Lectures

After been in some Research Methods Lectures, I decided to do a parallel between this two postmodern directors: Gondry and Tarantino.
I have chosen them because I really like the creative line that they do, sometimes naive and really personal. Not only that but I consider them two icons of creativeness and also good examples of postmodern artists.
This video is how they get inspired and how they get in to a concept and it is very curious how similar is this process to them.





The video below shows how inspiration can come from anywhere and different fields can communicate with each other because the concept may be the same.
Talking about Gondry, there is a Brazilian journalist who says a line that illustrates his kind of mind :

" Some people gonna see the prism and some gonna see just a triangle."

To this post not look like so out of the "artistical world" I am gonna cite Yayoi kusama, she is an artist who I do like and also see some similar points with both of directors above. Yayoi is inspired by something very unusual and personal : her illnesss. She has experienced hallucinations and severe obsessive thoughts since childhood and though that she did paintings, collages, soft sculptures, performance art and environmental installations. She as Tarantino and Gondry also created her own world and it also reminds me childhood.

Werner Herzog inspiration help

Ok ok, I confess I am writing this post because I am ordinary like anyone else and want to say that I saw Herzog in person this weekend in a lecture at Royal Festival Hall.

Well, besides it, I think this part of the lecture is a good example to show that we get inspired by anything even if it is something really really stupid.

It is good to see someone so respected like him saying something like that.





Of course I do not want to compare myself with him, but there are some images that I capture and I though it may be a good inspiration.

The below one is the image which first called my attention. I saw it and it was so colorful, so great, so very well done and so delicious, that I had to take a picture of it.



And as Leonard Cohen says:

“Everybody wants a box of chocolate”.

So, why not be inspired by candy?



The next one is a pattern that I really liked. Therefore, It may be something that I will work on my project as a graphic reference. This picture was taken at the Lacoste Store as you can check.

Quick view of the project proposal:

I check Jessica’s Blog and I thought her idea to do a diagram about the Project Proposal clever and clear. So, I did one too. Sorry if I was not so original, but I thought it was very easy way to understand. This is a diagram about how I believe my Project Proposal is going to work.

Molo lamp

This is a lamp that I saw during the London Design Festival at Londonewcastle Project Space (28 Redchurch St, Shoreditch). The lady who appears in this movie is the designer who created the lamp Stephanie Forsythe. Molo design is a Canadian company behind this project of products made with paper, and the lamp is part of a line that Stephanie created.

Related with my project, I believe the whole line is a good example of versatility and interaction between product and consumer. That is a great point in the prosumer behavior.

check the hole line on http://www.molodesign.com

http://blog.ponoko.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/molo1.jpg
here a image with some products

Getting started

First of all, I am sorry about my English. As I am not writing in my mother language, it is possible that I make some mistakes.


This is my first post, so, to start I would like to say that although my project proposal needs to be fixed because what I was proposing was to open and it could not really explain what I wanted to do , it is almost decided that in some point the subject of my research is going to be the "prosumer".

So what the hell is prosumer?

I found it on wikipedia:

Prosumer is a portmanteau formed by contracting either the word professional or producer with the word consumer. The term has taken on multiple conflicting meanings: the business sector sees the prosumer (professional–consumer) as a market segment, whereas economists see the prosumer (producer–consumer) as having greater independence from the mainstream economy. It can also be thought of as converse to the consumer with a passive role, denoting an active role as the individual gets more involved in the process. More recently, in the mental health field, the word "'prosumer'" has come to mean "consumer/provider," also known as a "peer provider," such as a Peer support specialist or other mental health consumer who also provides peer support mental health services.

read more on wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosumer