learning the ropes

After the frame was open, I started trying ideas for the mounting system in cardboard. Here are the sketches I started with:

I had in my mind that I would try to mock up a u-channel mounting system using cardboard. I visited McMaster-Carr’s website to learn more about u-channel. Suddenly, the project becomes more of an engineering project and less of a creative project. I was taking measurements and drafting things in Visio to try to get them to fit on paper before I built anything.

When I met with Wendy again, we talked about this tendency to invest to heavily too early in a process. She wanted me to try again — this time not focusing on duplicating ready-made materials in cardboard, but trying to piece something together in about two hours that will allow us to make some observations. Wendy is not even really sure what will happen when two frames are next to each other, so the quicker I can put this together, the quicker she’ll know if it is worth pursuing further.

Last class, Rachel asked us to try to recall our first mapping memory… What was the first map we remember learning how to read. I don’t remember specifically learning about maps in school. I can vaguely remember learning about lines of longitude and latitude, and maybe even an exercise where we took a list of longitude and latitude points and drew the shape of a country.

From a very early age (remembering way back to the first house I lived in), I had a map of the world on the wall of my bedroom (or maybe it was just the United States of America). More than anything else, it was a decoration.

The first thing that came to my mind when Rachel brought up map memories in class was reading Lego instructions. I’m almost positive I was putting together Lego models before I went to school. These pictorial representations of the steps used to construct a model using Lego bricks were the first maps I encountered: a schematic on a page represented discrete components in a pile of parts I had.

After locating each of the pieces called for by the model in my big pile of Lego bricks, I oriented and attached them according to the assembly diagrams. By following the “map,” I was able to not only construct the model I was working on, but I also began to take structural ideas from the maps and incorporate them into my own creates.