restinmiel

[restinmiel]

here it is, I still have 5 more rows to sew.

[restinmiel]

the support from my buddy

[restinmiel]

evaluation

I actually have a few point that I want to mention here.  -I see this research as a start, not a finished research. Meditation is so big, and since I also had to get used to sitting behind a sewing machine, the outcomes aren’t reliable at all. That doesn’t mean they’re useless, but it means that I can’t stop with this project just yet. I’m going to continue the meditating, and eventually I want to use another medium. 

-Also I completely lost my way of working because the meditation slowly took me back to my organized way of working. It created complete chaos which I need to cut off immediately next time, this can be done by simply writing more in my regular agenda. I do think WdKA and corona have their roles in this chaos, but other students are also doing fine so I just need to figure that out. 

-I also hope I’ll settle on an idea quicker next time, so I can start (and finish) earlier. 

-MORE SKETCHING, I keep saying this and I noticed I started out strong, but as I settled/came up with idea’s, the sketching slowly started to fade away. 

(In the end I’m really proud, given the circumstances, and the only reason why I’m mostly writing down what I should’ve done better, is because I need to remind the positive things more often, so by not writing them down I really need to think about them.)

[restinmiel]

This is it (including an evaluation)

underwhelming? maybe. unfinished? definitly.

You’re looking at my five-times-folded banner, it has 8 of the original 13 rows and has an A5-notebook for scale. It only has 8 of the rows because I have a really small desk where I live right now, so if I added a new row it would’ve been really messy and (unintentionally) crooked. Since this is just a corona-struggle I didn’t want to cut corners, but rather finish it when I can give it the concentration and attention it needs to make it look nice. Also my house is literally too small to show the banner, which wouldn’t have been a problem at school, so I’ll upload a picture of that on sunday/monday. 

On to the conclusion.

I wanted to start with saying that this has been an experience and a half, and I’m glad it’s almost over. In this short semester I’ve developed a beginners-skill in both sewing and meditation. I’m glad this research proved my instincts wrong. I thought the meditation wouldn’t actually do anything significant, but it actually helped me so much with inspiration and my workflow (mostly outside of art). After almost every meditation I’ve felt super-inspired. I’ve really learned how to grab onto that inspiration, because at first it was all just like a dream; as soon as you wanted to visualize it, it starts to disappear. What I noticed is that I work more organized after the meditation, more step-by-step, instead of a whirlpool of (sometimes unrelated) actions. As much as I like to work organized like I used to before WdKA, I kinda live for the chaos when doing things like creating; it adds a touch of happy accidents. I feel like new idea’s rise from the chaos more than if you follow a step-by-step plan. I had also hoped that my speed would go up, but low and behold, it didn’t, as I expected. Take in consideration that I am NOT a professional, I don’t know how certain feelings act out within your mind/body, so this is all my experience, which can differ from yours. I don’t have much to say about the sewing since this is pretty straight forward and not at all my subject of research. You can see the individual results on the post made just for those.

[restinmiel]

SPREEKBEURT

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/17tI4jVfglBq35WYbw04F1l2KCRrXlIYyYNHQlZgknME/edit?usp=sharing :)

[restinmiel]

So Bart actually said that I shouldn’t have to give a lot more information besides what’s on the buddy-reflection. So I want to ask you to leave anything that’s unclear to leave it in the comments, so I can shortly explain it. 

[restinmiel]

These are my first sketches, I noticed I hadn’t posted them yet so here we go

You can see here that row 1-13 are sewing individual pieces together, and row 14-25 is actually sewing those rows of fabric together, giving a whole new experience from easy and small to hard and a lot.

[restinmiel]

This is my first draft of my reflection to my buddy. I’ll upload the final version later today.

Note: this is nothing like my actual reflection, this was just my first draft which I thought I’d share. To let you see where I came from.

[restinmiel]

rate the meditate

In this post I’m walking you through the forms of meditation I’ve tried during this assignment. 

The starting situation

I’m comparing the different kinds of meditation by doing the same thing, with different preparations. Each time I have to:

1) meditate

2) pick the 21 pieces of fabric

3) decide an order

4) sew

I’m comparing the meditation in 3 categories, preparation, sewing and total time. Because I don’t have enough experience with sewing, the research isn’t decisive enough. To make it an accurate research I’ll have to extend the project by a couple of months (which I am planning to do). That way we will see the actual effects of the meditation, and not so much the effects of my skill-development.

I won’t explain what the different meditations are, because the research is about the effects of the meditation, not about the different types of meditation.

Another thing I’d like to get out of the way, feeling and observing something for research doesn’t mean you have to act on them, I wanted to observe and note my feelings. Also I think that fixing them doesn’t show the actual outcome of what the meditation did. This is important to note before we get started since it changes the direction of my research. That being said, let’s get those results.

No meditation (row 6, 7, 13)

For one row I decided not to meditate beforehand. So this is a placebo-row. We’ll use this as the ground-comparison. I worked as usual, with my chaos that almost feels like a safe haven. I followed my usual way of working, aka I did something when I thought of it. It all follows a schedule that I write down before I start, which is usually only 80% of what I actually have to do.

I noticed that it all went very smoothly. I still had an overload of pieces of fabric so choosing them was a bit overwhelming, so it look longer than after (a bit of) meditation. What surprised me was the time I spent laying the pieces in order, I started to analyze every corner of the pieces, to see what sides match the sides of other pieces to make the sewing easier. While sewing I was testing the limits to see how close to the edge I can sew, so this interferes a bit with my research since this had more to do with my little experience behind a sewing machine. I noticed I felt a bit stressed out afterwards, because I really noticed mistakes here and there, which can’t even really be seen. My total time on this the first row was 81 minutes (1 hour and 21 minutes), for the second row it took 67 minutes (1 hour and 7 minutes) so a 14 minute decrease, probably because I had more practice than the first row.

For the row of complete distraction(6) I decided to pull up YouTube, and looked for some among us(video game) livestreams. This formed the perfect distraction because the talking really makes it so you forget what you were doing, and just watch me screen. I did sense my chaos again, picking the fabrics wasn’t as easy as with the meditation because I couldn’t really think why I picked which fabric. Also, you’re constantly multi-tasking. I think this takes away the part of my process that obsesses over every little mistake. It seems as though because something is distracting you, your brain doesn’t listen to the signals it sends itself along the way. I also felt pretty good afterwards, like I could go in for another row, however when I checked the time I saw it had taken me 97 minutes (1 hour and

real forms of meditation:

original, plain meditation (row 1&10)

It was my first time meditating, so I pulled up some tutorials and ask around for tips and tricks. After a few tries I was still very distracted. I took a short break, wrote down everything that formed any kind of distraction and gave it a final try. Afterwards I noticed that I felt like I worked more organized, instead of working in my usual chaos. Everything had this sense of smoothness to it, however, I did work a lot slower than without meditating but at the same time it felt way quicker than the completely distracted row. I also felt like Speedy Gonzales when I was picking the fabrics the second time because I just shredded my way through the fabrics; picking them and putting them in order along the way. On the first row I spent 85 minutes (1 hour and 25 minutes) and on the second row I spent 82 minutes (1 hour and 22 minutes). 

yoga (row 2)

So this didn’t really turn out great, instead it just ended in a lot of frustration. Yoga isn’t something to just learn in a day, while also having to go to work, do schoolwork, sew 270+ other squares and also try out 10-15 other forms of meditation. But it did motivate me a lot to learn yoga after this term, or when the quarantine-chaos cools down. I did sew after my attempt, and it was really similar to the row with total distraction, but the time was way lower! The choosing of the patches went as per usual (without any form of meditation). The sewing was pretty stressful because I kept thinking about how yoga was going be one of the special forms of meditation in this process, and it failed. Buuuuttttt, than I realized this wasn’t half bad since error is still an experience to  learn from, so after that realization it only went uphill. The total time was 71 minutes (1 hour and 11 minutes)

self-validation for kids Will be added when finishing up the research.

headspace (free):

5-, 10-minute guided meditation (row 3)

I only have a few words for this one: It’s regular meditation, but timed. I really don’t have much to say other than that, because what would you expect? The total sewing time was longer than the regular meditation, but that had more to do with the time of day, rather than with the form of meditation. The total time was 91 minutes (1 hour and 31 minutes)

early morning hike (listening to the early morning hike podcast and then to the surroundings) (row 4)

This podcast only lasts 1 minute 48, which I should’ve checked before leaving for a 3 hour hike, but I didn’t. After the (almost) 2 minutes I just started listening to my surroundings. I came home and immediately sat down behind the sewing machine, but this time I chose the fabric along the way. This time I really felt like I had all the time in the world, which isn’t necessarily a good thing. I spent 103 minutes on this row, that’s more than 4 minutes per patch... a record time for me.

alternative forms of meditation

music based meditation (during the sewing)) I’m going through these quicker than before. These were actually the first 3 rows I created because it was the easiest introduction to even the slightest bit of meditation.

Rock (row 5) Fast pace, not really taking breaks. Everything went super smooth, which is a logical outcome since the BPM in rock music usually lies somewhere between 110-140 BPM. 49 minutes, which was weird since it was one of my first row, so it felt like I took ages during the other rows . 

LoFi (row 8) Also pretty straight forward; LoFi is usually pop music but slowed down until it becomes this smooth flow, almost anti-climactic. The flow made time fly by, and it made the patch-picking easier since I just went along with it. With a BPM between 60-100, it still beat most of the other forms of meditation with only 57 minutes on the clock.

Classical (row 9)

I was really hyped about this. Because I don’t listen to classical music often, but I do know a thing or two about it. At first it was super easy, it sounded peaceful, so peaceful that I chose to choose the patches along the way again. It was a whole experience to get really nervous because of the climaxes in the music. I kept rushing then slowing down, rushing then slowing down... Until I was done after a solid 43 minutes.

[restinmiel]

what my buddy is up to (documentation)

first week without Pavel/Sonia

This week she collected (and inventorised) garbage to make one big dragon out of that! She also finished up her blog and the assignment from Karin.

second week without Pavel/Sonia

She sorted out the garbage so she can start creating smaller models of the dragon. She also made three little shadow-dragons (which you can find here). She completely finished up her fabric and educative part of the assignment. 

[restinmiel]

:/

So, update time.

This deserves a separate post; because I have no clue how I’m going to fix this, but we’ll see how it goes.

On sunday I got my sewing machine, to pump up the efficiency and practice at home. However when I wanted to actually sew with it, turned out it didn’t work, and when I say it didn’t work, I mean it really didn’t work. The even more frustrating thing is that it wasn’t my lack of knowledge on how to fix it, but it had to do with the bobbin pin, not with the upper thread, not with the tension nor the needle. I still haven’t figured it out yet, but besides that there is literally no way to do this at school, because the deadline is in a week and two days. I was way ahead on schedule, so after 1.5 months of not working I decided it’d be smart if I could pay my rent so I started working again while sewing at home instead of school. The assignment depended on the sewing machine and my great time-management. So, no sewing machine = no assignment. So I’m going to try and review my work so far, and I’m going to try and make something out of the debris while pulling strings (ironic lol) to find a solution. As I’m writing this post I’m starting to lose any motivation at all. So, I’m going to take a deep breath, I think about my options and I guess I’ll come back later, hopefully with hope. 

UPDATE ON THE SITUATION Short, informal update: I’ve fixed the problem. Well, I took it to someone who knows these machines inside and out, and they fixed it! So, the sewing saga continues! 

[restinmiel]

The hike

For my relational aesthetics assignment I’ve decided to make a hike starting from Rotterdam Zuidplein all the way to Papendrecht. This might sound weird because the assignment had to create a social interaction. 

Reasons why:

  The first reason is that I’m now introducing the walker/viewer with The Night of the Refugee (Nacht van de Vluchteling). This is a night where fundraisers of the cause walk up to 40km to raise funds to make the process a refugee has to go to easier. Even tough the walk isn’t until September, I still need the training! So here I create a SI by educating readers about the Night of the Refugee, and bringing them closer to what some refugees might go through when they flee from their country.  The second reason is the interaction between Nature, human and (hu)man-made. On this hike you start out in the city, then you enter a town that has Rotterdam’s municipality. After that you enter a village, well more like a farmers-street, after which comes an industrial area, then some nature and finally an independent town. This is a SI because you can really see the dynamics of the different area’s!  The reason why I take walks like this is to find peace. Especially when I listen to my surroundings I have a lot of time to really think things through, and with music it’s a great distraction from all the pressure from stuff like school, work and even friends. I can really substantiate why it is real meditation for me, even if the goal isn’t to find inner peace. So by sharing this hike with you, I give you some more perspective into the works that Hilma af Klint created after meditation, and the works that I’m about to share.

The Social Interaction.

I want to place around 20 screens along the way, they are connected to a downloadable mobile app, with which you can place an artwork on those screens. By doing so, you can view the different artworks in different social contexts. You can then leave notes on what you experienced while looking at the artwork. When multiple people are at the same screen, you can actually discuss your views on what artwork should be on the screen, and why. Every month the  artworks you can choose are different.

At every screen there is a different selection of artworks you can pick. Using your GPS signal, the app detects at what screen you are standing. By walking to the different screens, you can implement a score-board system, to motivate people to walk each month.

:) 

[restinmiel]

updateable post

This post will be finalized before the 1st of april 2021. This post is meant to share my experiences and thoughts during the process.  note: this post is to create transparency, this post is updated ‘along the way’

16-3-’21  During the zig-zag stitching of the fabrics I noticed that the time was going abnormally fast, it really felt like I sat there, stitching, for only 20 minutes. The thing is, in reality it was from 9:30AM all the way until 2:00PM. It almost felt like a trance.

I realized I work way faster with (fast) music (7 patches per 10 minutes) than without music (5 patches per 10 minutes). That’s a difference of 120 patches/hour.

18-3-’21 For my Relational Aesthetics assignment I’m also taking my methodology into the mix. I’ve decided to create a walking-route, to create a social interaction between something that feels safe to me. Note: I still have to finalize this concept. The walk I’m making is a circa 20-25km route, from Rotterdam to Papendrecht. In the walk, you go over the Willemsbrug, the Oude Hefbrug, the van Brienenoordbrug among others. You meet the boarders of nature and (hu)man-made. The social interaction I confront the walker with has to do with yourself, your viewpoints, and the different parts of both Rotterdam and some small towns. There will be an optional assignment that the walker could execute to document the interaction/experience (hypothetically)

21-3-’21 You might wonder where my views on different forms of meditation are, I’ll come back to that a bit later because I don’t have enough references to compare the different forms to. So as soon as I feel like my frame of reference is big enough, I’ll post my evaluations.

31-3-‘21

I haven’t updated in a while, the reason being that the isn’t much to update about. I’m slowly indexing the different forms of meditation, and I’ll update that post soon, also my first draft of my reflection on my buddy is now uploaded, and I’ll also post the final version later today, as well as a reflection-post.

Oh yeah, another thing, I can’t post the artwork as a whole, because my house simply isn’t big enough to show it anywhere, so this will be posted on SUNDAY. So just take a note of that, and I hope you understand that this is an external factor which I wouldn’t have struggled with if weren’t for corona.

[restinmiel]

marit’s results

The assignment I gave Marit was a bit different than the one I posted here. It was before I perfected it. The big error in that version was the fact that I told her to create, completely without thinking; so she thought she needed to avoid the inspiration she got while/shortly after meditating. However, I do think these sketches could come out of the methodology. 

[restinmiel]

post-schedule (draft)

Total to-do:

- create, combine and post the substitute-assignment from Karin (I have to create and execute the assignment myself)

- post Marit’s results of trying out my educational-translation

- post the documentation and final results of my works.

- combining and posting the Rational Aesthetics assignment (Karin as well)

When to post:

week of 15-21/3 -Marit’s results -creating&combining the sub-assignment -Rational Aesthetics: posting my route and description

week of 22-28/3 -posting the sub-assignment -making&posting the ‘buddy assignment’  -posting the description, further process, final work and the motivation behind the final work(s). -posting the reflection (which is already in every small part)

[restinmiel]

For my buddy’s assignment, I’ve collected photo’s. In my assignment I wanted to put you in my shoes, so I wanted to try that with Marit’s methodology as well. In the start-up stages of her process she wanted to make the contrast of a calm environment against a really busy one. So while I was on my way to my grandma I wanted to show a big contrast as well. I took the train, and got out in Zaltbommel, Breda and Eindhoven to take a walk (okay and maybe a bus) and collect pictures like Marit did. I decided to make two contrasts: 1) dry (1-4) and vegetated (5-6) and 2) nature (1-6) and human (7-10). I chose two contrasts, because we had to repeat the methodology multiple times. Later we discussed some feedback. 

[restinmiel]

but how? 2.0

I want to share my method of making decisions within this project, since I make a lot with my subconsciousness right after meditating. So here’s the scheme I use :)

Choices I make....

...before meditation - Preparation and documentation. (i.e. zigzag-stitching, cutting the fabric, writing this blog)

...after meditation // in meditative form - All the sketching, conceptualizing and visualization. (i.e. regular stitching, creating the ‘patterns’)