Reading The Slow Design Principles:A new interrogative and reflexive tool for design research and practice by Carolyn F. Strauss and Alastair Fuad-Luke was a positive experience and contained many new ideas and theories to speculate on through base cognitive thought and artistic expression.

It helped me as an artist to objectively look at art and view it through the principles outlined to focus on the idea in a time frame that is different for every idea or art. Through these principles I can slow down my creative side, process my idea/s proactively, retroactively and figure out what is the base reason for the idea. By following that process it also gives me insight into the possible outcomes of the idea. Whether it is art or just a facet for a multifaceted artistic expression.

This also brings up the issue of what physical medium would best suit art. Being able to separate creative thinking and critical thinking, then being able to combine them is an idea I find throughout the slow thinking principles and a powerful one. This allows art to adapt and change according to one’s own principles of what is art and the process of conceptualizing art into a finite, evolving or infinite thing.

The first example I chose is the art of the French artist Saype and the 100% biodegradable painting of a man smoking a pipe on using 107,640 square feet on the side of theChaux-de-Mont ski slope in Leysin,Switzerland.  This piece of art meets Slow Design Principles 3 and 5. In terms of Principle 3, by using paint that only contained linseed oil, water, and biodegradable natural pigments sprayed on to grass on the side of a mountain, Saype created something precious through ephemerality. As time goes by, this artwork will slowly change due to erosion and exposure to the earth’s natural elements. That gives it a time frame to live, or be, making it to some precious, since it will not exist in the same form over a period of time. That is what makes it beautiful and ephemeral. In terms of Principle 5, by being displayed over 107,640 square feet on the side of a mountain, that makes it shareable to a large audience. People can see it and share their reactions and ideas from that experience making it a conduit for new ideas and art. The artwork is considered graffiti. After being seen on Le Tour de France in 2016, the world was opened up to Saype’s artwork and he was commissioned to create the largest grass painted piece of art from the painting of a man smoking a pipe. Artwork like this has helped to start erase the negative stereotype that comes with something being labeled “graffiti.” That opens up people who would have never thought of graffiti as art to be able to see the beauty, hard work and creative genius in graffiti art like that of the artist Saype.

My second example is the Icehotel, located in Jukkasjärvi, Sweden. This ‘living’ hotel and art exhibition is reimagined and sculpted every year since 1989. Since the Icehotel is built using ice, creating a comfortable hotel inside something that is traditionally thought of as too cold and uncomfortable. This incorporates Slow Design Principle 1. Just like Principal 1 says, by using ice to make an everyday thing like a hotel, it shows that the modern experience of staying in a hotel built of modern building materials and using modern methods is not the only way. This can bring to mind the probability of using all different kinds of materials and places to feel safe and live in. Since the Icehotel is rebuilt every year it not only brings new artists together to remake and create a new experience, but it also makes each iteration of the Icehotel ephemeral and precious, a finite thing. This brings back Slow Design Principal 5 and Principal 2. Principal 2 is used through the reimagination of what ice can be used for. Instead of cooling of drinks in a hotel next to an airport somewhere, you can enjoy a cup of iced tea in a hotel sculpted out of ice, the very thing cooling off the drink you are sipping on.  That is a powerful artwork and can reach out to everyone who is subjected to the Icehotel, hopefully opening up the perception of what is art and let people look at everyday objects and materials in a different way for the betterment of living, environment and art. <https://www.icehotel.com>

After reading and researching I have come up with two examples of ideas that I thought of. One is the creation of a bicycle that is modified to create a generator through a person using the bicycle’s pedal system. The energy that the generator makes powers a light that allows a second person to work to create whatever they might like and when the person pedaling the bicycle generator gets tired he/she can then switch with the person using the light and continue creating by adding on to what has been already created by the previous user of the light.

This uses many of the principles outlined in the reading.  It is turning something used in everyday life by millions of people, the bicycle, into a power generator using the energy output of a human. In turn, the light, is allowing two, or more, people to coexist in a process to create something individually and communally.  What the light is used for is determined by the person using the light but also by the amount of time the person pedaling the bicycle decides to pedal.  This relationship can either be negotiated prior to the start of the project or left up to the people involved and their negotiations during the actual process.

A second idea that I had was the creation of a visual program which acts as a fungus that can take over and inhabit a human’s mind.  In the program the fungus will have certain constraints as to how the image of the person is effected over a period of time. For instance, the image of a person will consume or be infected by the fungus’ spores. As the fungus finds itself into the brainstem it will visibly make the person’s image degrade. As the image degrades the image will start to take on the process of becoming a living fungus factory, able to release fungus spores to other images and start changing them. Eventually all of the images of people will become infected, go through the process of becoming a fungus and then the program will die since there is no more images of people to infect. At the end of the program when all the fungus has gone through its constructed life cycle people will then begin to live again and the spores will infect the people and the cycle will continue.

The picture comes from a video game called “The Last of Us” made by Naughty Dog for the Playstation 3 console. I find video games very inspiring for the creation of art, both visually and audibly. Being primarily a musician for most of my life made me come to the conclusion that I could not create visual art. That is not true. From designing a logo for my brothers NFP No-Ops to enrolling in this New Media Arts class all the way to now reading Slow Design Principles and using Processing, I have proved to myself that I am fully capable of slowing down, making solid proactive decisions about new projects and allowing myself to not be constrained by my self doubts as an artist.

The reading for this blog entry has shown me the value of using the tools I have learned not constrain my artistic developments, but encourage and refine them: Make them sustainable as an artwork and as a construct for our shared environment.  To look through the lens objectively and subjectively, encouraging me to ask for help when needed and to create my own answer when feasible.

These qualities learned will help me be in control of all the stages of art creation. The understanding its finite and infinite elements and the process of building an idea through research, guidance, iterations and complications. The complications becoming positive because they are controlled by me and made beautiful by emotions and  the realization of the separation between the creative and critical means to which these ideas are built.