Here’s my first update for The Faith Project! I’ve reached the end of the Ideation and Evaluation stages of the project and am ready to begin creating the “prototypes”, i.e. sketch thumbnails and story outlines.
In the update video, I show you a brainstorming diagram that I used to generate ideas, but there’s been a lot more to this stage of the project than brainstorming.
For example, when I was evaluating ideas that could be used for the artwork, I had to first determine what feelings I wanted to communicate. After a bit of thinking, I decided on the following criteria list. Any idea that could be described with one or more of these adjectives could be put into the “Acceptable” list:
introspective emotional revealing ethereal
resonant important connecting powerful
mysterious immersive thoughtful contrast
Another example of this stage in project planning is doing research on alternatives for the physical presentation of the media. What audio-visual technology is available and affordable that will give the exhibit the impact that I envision? It’s incredibly easy to find this information on the internet, but it’s not quick. Give yourself at least a full day to research if you do a project of your own. I didn’t make any decisions regarding final equipment, but I’ve got some general ideas of what could be used and can plan the artwork within those parameters.
Then there’s all the thinking that goes along with trying to make art that communicates to people. For example, one morning last week I wondered if there are some kinds of faith that are voluntary and some that are involuntary. Can you think of times in your life when you believed something voluntarily, because you were convinced it was true, and times when you believed because you felt you had no other choice? Did you ever think of it as voluntary and involuntary? I think this has to be brought up in the project. Is there one type that is stronger than the other? Could one type be so strong that a person is highly resistant to change?
The project isn’t going to be designed to promote change, I’m hoping it will simply get people to be more self-aware of what they already believe. But maybe that, in itself, is a change. If that’s the case, I hope it’s for the better. I have faith that people are more likely to be tolerant of other’s beliefs when they are fully confident in their own. As Brad Warner often says “It’s okay to believe any thing you want to believe… it’s your actions that matter.”
I’m finding that a lot of planning goes into a project like this and a lot of decisions have to be made before any of the art work can even start. The good news is that each decision is another step down the path towards a solid understanding of what will be communicated in the final work. And that’s well worth the time spent in planning.
The next steps in the project are:
– firm up some of the audio stories, especially the beginning and end of the exhibit
– choose the first artwork and create thumbnail compositions for it
– decide on the media that will be used for the artwork
– prototype an inexpensive projection system
Look for the next update by the end of July!
