a lot of thinking...

I spent a lot of time this weekend writing and re-writing my thesis. A majority of my time was spent thinking/researching and trying to organize my thoughts, and after many revisions I have my new proposal/explanation (John – could you update my proposal on the site to this):

As children, we live with a balance of routine and spontaneity. We know when it's time for bed, time to eat, time to play, etc. but we are also surprised with birthday parties, play dates, field trips, or outings to various places. Even routine outings (such as grocery shopping) would include some spontaneity because our imaginations would run wild. But as we get older, it seems that everyone gets bogged down in routine.

School, work, even hanging out with friends turns into something that is so routine we almost float through it without any appreciation. Too much routine, a lack of new experiences, disguises itself as something it's not. It makes us think our lives are peaceful and content, but in reality it stifles, frustrates, and leaves us feeling restless and anxious. Too much routine causes people to question “Is this all there is?” and in turn suffocates success and happiness.

Humans are not meant to do the same things over and over again. Just as we are meant to exercise and challenge our muscles constantly to stay young, energetic, and healthy, we are also meant to exercise and challenge our minds, hearts, and spirits to stay young, energetic and happy. But how can that be done when some routines (school, driving, grocery shopping, etc.) are completely necessary?

The answer is to actually pay attention to your surroundings and look in places you normally wouldn't. New things are all around us, we just need to open our eyes and look for them. My thesis is a commentary on the fact that people tend to drift through these routine situations and also an attempt at forcing myself to stop doing that.

I will go about doing so by forcing myself to pay closer attention to what I'm doing/where I'm going, using my video glasses to record the routine situations and then creating pieces to reflect on that. I've decided that I want all of my pieces to include some type of transparent medium. Transparency is defined by the Merriam Webster dictionary as “having the property of transmitting light without appreciable scattering so that bodies lying behind are seen clearly” and in routine situations there are things lying behind something (or right in front of your face) that could be seen clearly if people were looking.

Since I spent the weekend doing a lot of thinking/writing and not any making I want to start doing tests/experiments that actually go with my proposal...I plan to keep projecting different videos onto water in different ways, then move on to using glass to do different tests, and various other transparent mediums. I want to do a bunch of tests on a bunch of mediums and then pick specific ones to pursue to a final stage.