recent thoughts part five
After hitting a wall many times within my project, I have reached a point where I have decided to eliminate one of the drivers of my project.
As a refresh, my current question is “How can we identify the barriers that exist within who we are versus who we want to be?”, using self-positionality, radical visibility, alternate universes, and fashion as my core drivers.
The hardest part about my research has been finding a way to materialize my data to design an intervention revolving around fashion. While there materialized interventions around fashion that I can look into, nothing has felt right or has been too surface level.
As a result of this, I questioned to myself if I have been trying to force fashion as one of the drivers of my project. This question has come to my mind since the beginning of my research, and if I am being honest with myself - the answer is yes. It seems that although there are possible ideas I can follow through with, having fashion has one of the core drivers also limits the potential of my project.
Instead, I have decided to shift the foundation of my project to focus on self-positionality, radical visibility, and alternate universes, with aspirations to have fashion as a possible outcome.
I feel this is the best decision for my project as it enables me to explore possible avenues of design that I can explore, especially ones that feel more aligned with the goals that I have.
My mind keeps coming back to the question, “what do I want from this project?” A question that has been repeatedly asked by my tutors as well.
Although there are many outcomes I hope for in terms of my research and design, I feel the most important outcome I am reaching towards for my stakeholders and participants is that acknowledging your emotions is extremely crucial to our life journey.
In addition to my previous blog entry, it seems that much of society attaches ourselves to negative experiences which in turn leaves us with a false perception of ourselves. The focus on self-positionality in turn of my research is to understand why this is a common experience, and ways that we can deconstruct the false perceptions we have built about ourselves.
If life is happening from us, and not to us - then how can alternate universes act as a mirror of internal barriers that need to be brought out? It’s interesting how much of an impact our subconscious has on our daily experiences, and I am curious to understand ways to dissect this.
As I mentioned previously in my research, thoughts —> beliefs —> perceptions. So what is that moment that impacted you the most? And how did you or are you coping with it? How can you channel that experience into a positive reinforcement of self?
