VIRTUAL: Learning. Life. Work.
Abstract
Does form have a voice? Does material have a word? Do sentences have structure? Do stories range in color? Does a project have characters? Does making have a narrative? In design education, space and time is devoted to discussion, discourse and understanding of processes. Documentation, representation, presentation and reflection of craft, making and production, proliferate in myriad visual, sensorial and verbal forms. What are words, written and spoken, in this process? How do they function? What do they reveal? What is their relationship to the process? This paper proposes to present the projects of a selection of students from an interdisciplinary seminar whose creative process deeply intertwined the writing and visualization of writing as form and meaning as well as reading and documentation of thinking. The projects attempt to reveal diverse approaches to language intersecting and integrating into the visual, mediated and material processes of art and design through the lens of creative individuals with different disciplinary foci approaching similar questions for an interdisciplinary course project. Student written work examples will range from written narratives and poetry to fiction prose and journalistic short-form writing, and visual work will link to these writings in the form of two and three-dimensional media and time-based studies. The paper seeks an opportunity to ask further questions in the space of integrating writing and verbal language into visual art and design practices.
Chelsea Limbird is an architectural designer, artist, writer and educator based in Rhode Island and New York City. Her work focuses on processes of narrative, memory and presence as generators for line, word, image and experience. Projects include writing, drawing, book arts, graphic design and installation. She teaches design, representation and theory courses at Parsons and Pratt Institute. She has exhibited and published written and design work internationally. Chelsea studied Economics and Architectural Studies at Brown University and received a Master of Architecture from RISD.