As I vaguely posted previously, our latest project for CFC II is on camouflage.
Part of the assignment description:
"...the issue of
visibility and invisibility lies at the core of any discussion surrounding camouflage. Understanding camouflage as a process of concealment and acculturation, you are asked to think deeply about these issues on a physical as well as a psychological, social, or cultural level.
You are then charged to put your ideas into practice by creating an artistic response to this topic."
So I was thinking about camouflaging or changing the normal function of an everyday item to do something extra-ordinary or a task not at all associated with that everyday item. I settled on working with kitchen appliances, specifically a blender, because of the interesting connotations that kitchen appliances have. They are a decidedly normal item, we all have microwaves, toasters, blenders, coffee machines populating our counter space but they are more and more associated with chic design. A browsing of Target.com's blender selection shows no less than 5 blenders, adorned with stainless steel and colored plastic, all color coded to go with your kitchen motif. I picked the blender as my everyday item because the smooth lines and singular design motifs common to each one (they all look pretty much the same in form).
To change the blender I mind mapped the various functions it performs and decided to work with liquids as they are always involved in the function of a blender, be it going in to be blended or the product of the blending. I settled on using wine because of it's antithetical qualities to the blender. Where a blender is a normal everyday, middle class item, wine is seen more as high culture and ritzy. A blender often is stored away in a cupboard while a wine collection is proudly displayed.
My Notes on "Why?"
In my debate on how to change the blender in respect to the wine I decided to serve wine as it is not normally served. For the non-wine drinkers, depending on the wine you are drinking, it is either opened hours before drinking and possibly decanted (poured into a specific vase to give it more surface area) to let the wine breath or drank immediately after opened. It is always poured from the decanter or bottle to the glass. Wine is never 'on tap'. So I decided to do exactly this.
In doing this, I was changing the function of the blender (from blending to distributing liquid) and concealing this change so it still looked like a blender from the outside. Also, I'm going to create a reservoir for the wine in the blender pitcher and cover it with grapes. Grapes become wine by being squished and fermented, so it kind of makes sense that they are in a blender (work with me here a bit). Also it conceals/camouflages that there is wine in the pitcher, which would be a giveaway that something was up with that blender.
Rough Preliminary Idea Sketch
Now after all of this, you would think I would have already made my wonderful blender wine tap. Nope. I'm waiting for my hose and faucet (purchased from a home beer brewing store) and am still trying to get the blender I purchased at
Ann Arbor's Recycle Center opened to gut the mechanical internals so I can run my line out the back of the blender's base. The base is bolted on with these little 2.5mm allen (hex) bolts which have this tiny little pillar in the middle of them which don't allow a normal solid 2.5 mm allen key to fit in a unscrew them, which means I'm screwed (pun intended). Now I've got to make a hardware store trip to get some hollow allen keys and drop some more cash from my limited supply to get into the dang thing. It's going to feel great to finally break it open!
This evening, my thoughts are pretty organized on why a blender and why wine, but this morning, oh boy...we had a mini-critique halfway through the assignment. I was not prepared on the context of the project (CFC stands for Concept, Form, and Context), I had spent all my time planing how to make my blender into a wine tap and it showed. They ate me alive. A classmate asked, "How does it address culture (as it is a culture class as well) and context?" I looked blankly at her and made a conscious decision to not B.S. on this and said "Hmmm, don't know." It was a slippery slope from there. Needless to say, I did some thinking this afternoon, and with the assistance of my fiancee,
Kara, got to where I am now.
Once I actually start making this piece I'll post pictures, in the meantime, thanks for reading!
