Last Friday, our design team met again to review all of the brainstorming documents and decide what direction our team would take. We were drawing from URBANO’s current work, notes from our own conversations and brainstorming, as well as the thoughts and ideas provided from the Urbano Fellows. Two common elements emerged while reading through these sources: a physical installation/object that allows for interaction with the art and ideas that Urbano artists are wrestling with and a digital interface to display these interactions and data collected from the larger community.
Taking this inspiration, our design team will create the PARDI, or Participatory, ARtistic, Travelling Installation. From our Project Proposal:
The team will design a mobile, physical installation which Urbano can bring to different community sites sharing information about Urbano, current student work and works-in-progress, as well as allowing community members an opportunity to respond or contribute to current projects. The initial run of the PARTI will engage with the current theme of Emancipated City, but the platform will be content neutral so that the installation remains relevant as Urbano engages with new themes in future years. The PARTI will allow the larger community, and in particular other youth, to contribute to and engage with the work that Urbano artists are producing. It will be installed in recreation centers, libraries, high school art classrooms, and other youth-serving organizations to both share and collect information and inspiration.
The PARTI will be a self contained unit capable of displaying audio visual work on a screen, collect video, audio, picture, or other data from participants, as well as display data collected back to the participant. The project will also include a web presence (engaging with Urbano’s current social media infrastructure) to share its location as well as displaying the video, audio, and data being collected. This web presence will also be the visual interface for the PARTI itself, allowing the content to be easily updated by Urbano staff in the future. The visual design of the PARTI will be developed collaboratively between the design team and the Urbano Fellows, a group of long-time Urbano participants. The design will also be adaptable and updatable to continue to be relevant with future themes (such as having a portion that can be screen-printed on, but then washed away and reprinted with new graphics).
One of the elements that most excites me is the potential for collaboration with the Urbano Fellows group, the group of youth artists who have taken a leadership role within the organization. Finding ways to bring the skills brought by the members of the design team (both students and Urbano Staff) and the skills that these artists are engaging (screen printing? performance? more). I think that this collaboration will make sure that the object/installation which develops is exciting, engaging, and representative of Urbano’s culture.
