PSDTU

中国 CHINA CHINA CHINA CHINA CHINA CHINA CHINA CHINA CHINA CHINA CHINA CHINA CHINA CHINA CHINA CHINA CHINA CHINA CHINA CHINA CHINA CHINA CHINA CHINA CHINA CHINA CHINA CHINA CHINA CHINA CHINA CHINA CHINA CHINA CHINA CHINA CHINA CHINA CHINA CHINA CHINA CHINA CHINA CHINA CHINA CHINA CHINA CHINA CHINA CHINA CHINA CHINA CHINA CHINA CHINA CHINA CHINA CHINA CHINA

欢迎! Welcome!

Course Details:

Over the next 4 weeks you will be engaging in a project that will challenge you to reflect, connect, speculate, consider, process formulate and make work in response to the environment in which you are in. This is a 3-credit point course and you will be assessed and graded on your participation, engagement and outcomes. As per with courses held on campus absences may result in a failing grade and as such attendance at excursions, meetings, workshops artists talks and successful completion of all project requirements is critical.

This course will be continued during November 2009 in NYC, when a group from Tsinghua will visit NYC for two weeks.

In China you will be working in small groups, collaborating on the core project IPO (input, process, output) in which there are several required concept outcomes, several specialized satellite project and also on your own self directed work.

Dates: May 23rd, 2009 through June 20th, 2009

–In Beijing: Monday May 25th– Saturday June 13th

–In Shanghai: Saturday June 13th–Saturday June 20th

Fab Faculty.

Weeks 1 – 4

Benjamin Bacon

Simone Douglas

Haiyan Huang

Jia Zhang

Weeks 1 – 2

David Carroll

Jim Ramer

Weeks 2 – 4

Sven the man Travis.

Roving

Zhang Ga

Urban Games

Leanne Wagner

Terrific TAs

Sandra Elkind

Simeon Pouulin

PLUS BONUS!!

Tsinghua Faculty!

Visiting Artists!

Mystery Guests!

Aim:

The aim of the course is to produce real working art and design prototypes for installation in Shanghai. The working model for the course will be IPO. During the course students will focus on all three areas at different times. This model will give students a valuable working knowledge of collaborative design/art practice.

Where possible, we will attempt to create connections between the daily intensive language courses, travel and exploration throughout the cities, and studio production work. A variety of visiting artists and designers from Beijing and Shanghai will take part in the projects. In addition to the IPO process, each group will document their work via photography, video, and web, producing an archive as part of the deliverable. Each project area will follow the same creative collaborative research process to build on concepts and interrelationships investigated during morning language study, urban/cultural exploration, areas of study and corporate and artist collaborations. The projects will be constructed using the IPO model. The input group will provide raw materials (analog, digital, mobile, video, photography, illustration, materials, etc.), from daily language studies and urban exploration to the process group. The process group will use the material provided in any manner of destructive and non-destructive creative processes (they will process the input). The output group will then create a virtual or physical object/images from that processed material. The model lends itself to feedback from output back to input creating a loop of the overall model. Student groups will change roles at intervals providing every student a chance to participate in each part of the model.

There are 3 critical concepts will must be addressed in the core project, pollution, mapping and documentary. These are not inclusive, it is expected that you will find many ideas that you will work with in addition to these core requirements.

You should not take these concepts at face value – research and extend your understanding in idea, material and outcome.

Regardless of the group focus, each team will cover concepts such as:

• Document; Image. Object, Trace, Remnant, Sound. Marker. Imprint.

• Communication; Translation. Slippage. Failure. Mutation. Interference. Transmit.

• History; Legacy. Perspective. Visible. Invisible. Time.

• Future; Vision. City. Making. Construction. Imagining. Promise.

• Intersections; Culture.

• Urban; Mobility. Graffiti, Spaces, Architectural, Gardening, Traffic. Neighborhoods.

• Mapping; Interface. Geo-mapping. Intersection. Information. Dislocation. Connections.

Potential Outcome/ Output:

• New media art

• Photography and time-based (video) media

• Mobile media

• Fashion and wearable technology

• Installation

• Geo- spatial / environment

• Gaming

• Sight. Sound.Taste.

Students will be expected to self identify based on interest and skills but also to work outside of their specific area of study.

While the project is collaborative in nature it is also anticipated and highly encouraged that students will also engage with and carry out their own research projects.

Final outcomes will be exhibited and these may take the form of performance, video, object, sound, systems, mapping … at EArts in Shanghai and later in the year at Parsons.

But wait there is more…………….

The Cloud Room.

One room at the hotel will become the Cloud Room. IN the Cloud Room will be the ‘confessional’ and the media data centre, the blog. Each day your group must come and upload the work you have done that day on the blog in addition to posting your own individual thoughts, images etc. This repository is the live archive of the project and is part of the project criteria.

IN the Cloud Room you will also find the confessional situated on the bathroom.

Here you will videotape your thoughts, anecdotes, impressions and revelations about the project and Beijing. Unlike Big Brother, negative comments about your fellow students and faculty will not be tolerated and will fast rack you out of the project. Like Big Brother everything on the tape will go into the archive and there will be a screening of the edited highlights as the project comes to a close.

IPO model and Satellite Projects

The IPO model allows you to gain valuable experience in collaborative research reflective of growing trends in design and art practice. The IPO project incorporates the research work you will do for the United Nations (pollution), Nokia (mapping), and BBH (youth culture). The description and guidelines of the

IPO model below forms the basis of the core structure of Project China. Around this core will be several but equally critical satellite projects. The satellite projects will incorporate urban games, which will be site specific and/or in response to specific concepts and a specific project for Nokia. The specifics of these will be revealed to you at each commencement date. The IPO core project will run continuously throughout your time in Beijing and also in Shanghai.

The core IPO project will run as an immersion project in week 1 and then will continue from week 2 when the Tsinghua students join the project.

Specific guidelines for the IPO core project will be revealed each day via sms on your Nokia cell phones. You will need to check your phones bright and sparkly each morning the cell phones have been provided by Nokia and they will be collecting all data from the phones and their R&D department.

Input criteria

In this rotation your group’s goal is to collect through experience, observation, touch, sound, image, objects the raw materials for processing. The raw material may take the form of found objects, audio recording, video recordings, air, or water samples. They can be formal, gestural or re-active. Consider your subject

matter from many points of view. In what way can you interpret your subject through the collection of raw materials. These materials will form the critical basis of Stage 2, Processing.

Process criteria

Your groups mission is to take the raw material given to you and take it apart in as many ways as possible. Through this process of creative destruction you will via heuristic and analytical processes identify patterns, chaos, particles, concepts, and critical positions… Your group will deconstruct the raw materials–physically? in idea?

Through these processes you will make an assessment of the systems etc you have uncovered. This will in addition to the processed raw material form the basis of the final stage, Output.

Output criteria

Re-form, re-boot, re-cycle.

The output group will realize concepts through the process /materials/ideas. Outcome may take the form of physical virtual, expressive, and analytical, this is for your group to determine but you will have to form a deliverable.

IN each cycle of the output stage each group must present 3 out comes, one based pollution and environment, one on a functional outcome (a tool/map/object/ information??) and one other outcome which must be more interpretative.

Groups

There will be 12 groups in total. In week one the groups will consist of Parsons students only due to health regulations but from week 2 we welcome the Tsinghua students into the groups. In the week one the groups consist of 10 groups of 5 and 2 groups of 4. In week 2 at least – 2 – 3 Tsinghua students added to each of the existing 12 groups bringing the each group to a total of 7.

Please note your group allocation is NOT negotiable. Groups will remain consistent throughout the project to allow for a growing working relationship to evolve.

Facilities

There will be limited facilities provided at Tsinghua University, at the least we will have a studio to work in. Part of your Chinese immersion experience will be to locate and use local printing etc facilities, for example to Lotus Centre has a photo out putting bureau.

Outline.

Day 1 you must post on the blog an image of yourself with a brief introduction - no more than 200 words. The Tsinghua students will also do this and so in week one you will all meet virtually. Tsinghua students will be able to see what is being posted on the blog and be able to comment and give feedback and make their own postings.

In week 1 the 3 cycles of IPO model will run in tandem across the groups, in week 2 the groups will run asynchronously.

At the conclusion of each cycle each group will be require to present their findings. In week one this will take place in your rooms, we will rotate presentations across the rooms, a moving feast of ideas and outcomes. IN week 2 they will take place at Tsinghau University.

Week 1

All groups (Parsons)

Input – Monday May 25 & Tuesday May 26

Process – Wednesday May 27

Output – Thursday May 28 7 Friday May 29th

Additional specific instructions will sent via sms for each stage of project.

See attached outline for day-to-day breakdown.

Week 2 & 3

The working hub of the project will now be located at Tsinghua University in addition to offsite locations for research and excursions.

At the conclusion of each cycle each group will be require to present their findings at Tsinghau University.

Monday

Parsons students will present their groups 3 outcomes to the Tsinghua students and faculty.

See attached outline for day-to-day breakdown.

Rotations;

Parsons & Tsinghua University students. Additional specific instructions will sent via sms for each stage of project.

Monday June 1 – Wednesday Tuesday June 2

Input Groups 1 – 4

Process Groups 5 – 8

Output Groups 9 – 12

Thursday June 4 – Friday June 5

Input Groups 9 – 12.

Process Groups 1 – 4

Output Groups 5 – 8

Monday June 8 & Tuesday June 9

Input Groups 5 – 8.

Process Groups 9 – 12.

Output Groups 1 – 4.

Wednesday June 10 &Thursday June 11

Each group will work on a final presentation, a reconfiguring of material gathered across the rotations with focus on the 3 critical concepts addressed in the core project, pollution, mapping and documentary.

Shanghai & Hangzhou

All groups (Parsons)

IN this final stage of the China project each group will continue to work on the core concepts in addition to found outcomes but in this instance the work will not rotate across the groups. Each group will transit and evidence the transit of their work through the IPO model. The final presentation date for this work will be advised.