My book: Time and Process

My book (I wish it was here right now so I could take a photo, or that I had taken a photo last night, oh well) is all about what people wish to (re)present. All semester we have focused on representing concepts (self, urban/rural space, and now time/movement) in visual mediums. This time, I posed the question: "What do you wish to (re)present" and encouraged people to "embrace it" -- it being the book, the question, the process.

This blog is part of the chronicalling of this process in order to achieve the overall result of representing time and movement. It will be integrated with a mapping of these books as they move through the hands of myself and my classmates. I hope that my book itself, as Alain de Botton says in Status Anxiety, will "evok[e] the passage of time as effectively as the rough, worn hands of a fisherman;" in other words, my book better not be in perfect condition when it returns to me.

What speaks even more to me about this process is Bill Viola's understanding (in Between How and Why) that we have long focused in the art/design/science fields on the "development of the material." Today, we have long passed perfection in terms of the "how" (the medium) and what this technology enables us to do. Therefore, Viola suggests that as artists and designers, we are in need more than ever to help relate the "whys" of life and "illumate the pathway" for the recipients of our work. For this reason, I think that it is crucial that we return to a deeper understanding of process and representation, in order to perfect that part of our craft and better relate messages to the public. In a sense, this understanding of process is one part of the larger process: to communicate ideas, themes, information, etc. to our audiences.

Here's to process. It's about time.