All Wrapped Up In Paper, Now What?

So, we have our latest assignment in CFC (content, form, and context...Michigan likes acronyms).

"The purpose of this assignment is to make a perceptual investigation of a physical space. Your task is to reveal aspects of this place that you find significant and to make a work as an expression of your experience of this. You will develop a strategy to subjectively remap a place as an 'experimental terrain' (i.e. you will experience, perceive, record, and map not only the physical aspects of the selected 'space' but also the mental aspects that make it a 'place' for you)....This project provides the opportunity to study the relationship that exists between the material and social fabrics that from our built environment."

So, when this was assigned I was stuck off the bat. I decided eventually to do a piece where my place was besides Kara, in a hug. A very safe, comforting, enveloping and loving place for me (she is my fiancee after all!). I kinda wanted to do a projection piece where pictures of us (extreme closeups) would be projected around the viewers and our voices murmur sweet nothings in the background.

This was my first sketch, the cube. People would stand around it.

I then evolved that into the surround version. The screens would surround the viewers.


I actually wrote in my notebook...
My prof, John Marshall, then kindly informed me that besides this idea not really getting at the enveloping good, safe feeling I was getting at, it was just creepy for anyone who was not me or Kara. He had a very good point.

So, back to the sketch book. John started me off with the idea of a blanket. I went absolutely nowhere from there and last Tuesday, he wrapped me up in a paper 'blanket' so that I could experiment. I'm laying there with paper above and below of me with a sharpie in hand and was instructed to "map myself". What? All I can see is an inch in front of my face. K...map myself. I'll trace my body! So I did, badly as well. It's hard to trace your own head when laying down.
So after I trace myself, I stand there drinking my coffee and decide to have a classmate trace me on the other side of the paper that was on top of me. After this is done it hits me. Ever seen those magazine adds or illustrations where you fold the two point A's together and the two point B's together along the dotted lines and something comes out of the image at the end? That is more or less what I'm going thinking. But with a blanket. You have two cloth cut outs sewn onto an open blanket. Fold the blanket together, close it, and you've got one body showing from the two halves of each body. When the blanket is open the hug has not happened, the bodies are separate. When the hug is happening, the blanket is closed, the two bodies have become one body.

A few pictures of the idea from my sketch book.


I'm really terrible at sketching people. Sorry.


I'm looking forward to figuring out the rest with Kara this weekend. I mean I really can't figure out a hug without being in a hug can I?

Thanks for reading.