For Project Brief 4, I wanted to take a step back from the new media forms and concepts we had explored this semester that I gravitated towards and looks at more traditional hand-made art forms. Having looked at principle closely with Project Brief 3 and Kona’s bartending work and philosophy, I wanted to look more towards to the process and the implications of contemporary content set in a more traditional medium.

I am currently leaning towards the idea of the contemporary content being completely out of touch and context of the medium, to make a jarring contrast between what I plan to make and what the medium is traditionally used for, and have a bit of fun with it as well. I originally planned to make a small hoop embroidery pattern, decorated primarily with flowers and palm leaves in line with the 2016 aesthetic. I played around with some cotton fabric and a cross-stitch square to get a feel for the process and the technique to execute the project, and pencil-traced a map of what I was going to stitch and when. I had to take into account of the timeline of the project when executing the stitching, to maximise efficiency and minimise mistakes and thread use. The planning process ended up being more time consuming initially than the trial attempts I made, but I believe that is an indicator that the planning was an important step to make, as making preparations and executing once instead of winging it and repeating my work was going to make the whole process go a lot smoother. The principles of procedure that Kona talked about, in that each consecutive step must be made in preparation and in execution in order to make the correct outcome.

I soon realised, when beginning the actual project piece, that an attempt of the size that I planned would come to be considered a bad move. It turned out to be terribly time consuming, and not only would I be cutting the deadline close over the course of the next week a half, I may also jeopardise the quality of the project, something that would compromise the purpose of spending so much time. I began to resent the now perpetual hell that is my spare time, in which I sit still performing the same action over and over again for very little reward or progress in each session, and my very short, flow attention span was not helping.

I decided that maintaining the idea but changing the medium would be the best course of action, switching to watercolour or an ink medium to enable me to focus on the individual components of the project rather than the whole picture in very, very slow succession. This also enables me to do more drafts and more variations of my concept, and enjoy the process of the craft itself, rather than losing my mind.