Last Friday, I got in my car and headed to North Carolina State University in Raleigh. I got a hot tip about an awesome symposium full of fun talks, workshops, and Elliot Earls premiering his new movie, The Saranay Motel. So, I Hotwire’d myself a hotel and started driving. If you feel the need to follow along, you can find the program here.
FRIDAY::: After checking in to my hotel, I headed to toward the campus and met up with my friend, TJ Blanchflower. Before I could take two steps, Kenneth FitzGerald and JiWon Lee (professors from ODU) come walking up. We all went to TJ’s studio and got a behind the scenes tour of student workings and did some catching up. After shooting the breeze for a while, I went to a screen printing workshop and discovered I knew more about screen printing than I thought. Then, it was off to the opening remarks.
If you don’t know who Elliot Earls is, stop now and head over to The Apollo Program. I’ll wait…okay that’s enough. The topic of the entire symposium was based around authenticity and community. Elliot’s “talk” (because he said lecture was an evil word) focused on how his personal work differed from the dominant canons present today. It was very akin to the talk he gave at the ICA in Boston and even shared the same title of Elegant Dissent. Catch a snip-it of it below.
I had no idea who the second speaker was, but that made it all the more surprising. The second speaker was Brenda Laurel from CCA and she spoke about design research and her experiences in the video gaming industry. She was one of the first females to become involved in game development and her research is almost the sole reason girls touch computers today. It was her frustration coding boys’ games when she started conducting research on gender values. She devised toys like: the pink fuzzy truck, the war journal, and Helmet-hair Barbie to determine what girls and boys valued in a toy. No one played with Helmet-hair Barbie in case you’re wondering.
Brenda’s research determined that girls (in general) prefer games with no levels, lots of secrets, and didn’t like “turned maps.” Long story short, she founded a company Purple Moon and dominated the girl’s segment of the gaming market until Mattel stepped in.
Both speakers focused around reaching the most authentic design and how it fits into the public, but through different means. Elliot was a through-and-through romantic with an “know-it-when-you-see-it” attitude and Brenda used research to develop a real solution to a problem, but each found common ground in that personal values came into play. I wish I had taken better notes, because this short synopsis doesn’t do it justice.
SATURDAY::: Beginning early in the morning, it was Jon Sueda’s talk about the Hawaii University logo that set the tone for the day. I’m sorry I don’t have a link to the actual time line, but here it goes. A new president wanted a new logo, tried a firm in Baltimore, and the population hated it (it was bad trust me). After following the peoples’ suggestion to hire local for a more authentic logo, this still yielded bad results. The lesson was “Could a non-local designer make a design authentic to an area to which they are foreign?” The results appeared to be yes, given that the locals produced something equally bad and generic.
The next talk was short, yet fascinating one. It was “Mutation Breeds Authenticity” by graduate student Gary Dickson. Referencing evolution, permutation, and “freak” mutations, Gary gave a very left-brained look at the inner working of how ideas are formed and how innovations come about. While he admits his thesis-in-progress needs some work, I agree with him when says that, “…something in there has legs, I know it.”
Next up was a musical panel with no classically trained musicians. It was Elliot Earls, Maggie Fost (of Merge Records), and Kenneth FitzGerald. Each gave there own perspective on authenticity in audio and the connection it has to the community it seems to create. A common theme was that of “selling out” and the live experience. This talk was kind of a blur to me. I just remember getting this feeling that this whole week-end The Man was under attack. I’m not against that, it just gets old after a while.
After lunch came a series of three workshops people could sign up for and some of them seemed to be little more than a showcase of student theses. I did play Devil’s advocate at one and ask the question, “Could authenticity survive at a corporate level?” This was prompted by the repeated summation that once an idea got big, it wasn’t authentic anymore. I wanted to know where the line in the sand was. After a few minutes of heated back-and-forth, an older gentleman named Mike simply answered my question. He said that as an idea gets bigger and more people become involved, there is inevitably compromise at some point. Cost, benefits, and other options are weighed and things are changed. Thank you Mike for the great answer without uttering, “…because big business is evil.”
With the last talks at hand, I hadn’t had a decent meal all day and developed a mild head-ache. I sat through the last two lectures, but I don’t remember much. I was too busy thinking about the movie premier later that night. But more on that later.
SUNDAY::: A very small crowd of us met and discussed student these work in progress. Lots of interesting ideas and thoughts, nothing concrete enough worth sharing at the moment.
I glossed over a lot of what happened, but the experience was awesome and well worth the week-end. Everyone was so gracious and the Southern hospitality was definitely in full affect. The students at NCSU are incredibly gifted. I wish all of them the best of luck in their research and beyond.
After the talks on Saturday, there was a screening of Elliot Earls’ new movie The Saranay Motel at one of the local studios, but that’s a whole ‘nother post. I hope to get a review and recollection up sometime next week. Until then, have a great week-end everybody.
