Critical Design
Met criteria
| After following this course the student can use design to ask critical questions to themselves and challenges others to ask new critical questions.While making assignments form this and other courses, I've noticed something that maybe other people can relate. That's why the theme of my project is about overcoming a creative block. I wrote a song about my experiences with this problem and finishing, recording and publishing the song proves that it's possible to push through it.
The manifesto and mindset were very useful for me. However, I don't think it can solve other peoples issues or make a generic method for creators to use. I believe that others who are having this creative block can use this to ask themself new critical questions.
Manifesto
I changed my manifesto multiple times because it's quite challenging to describe a (personal) problem. And that's exactly the inspiration I needed to write this manifesto: Creative Block.
The buttons below direct to the visualization of the current and previous manifest. These (and the Story Creation assignment) are essential for describing my message, as further explained in the manifest document.
View all manifest View Manifest documentRed Dot On A White Canvas
Here it is folks. My new single called: "Red Dot On A White Canvas". It is a one-take recording on my phone made in my attic room with nothing more than an acoustic guitar and some vocals.
The tablature and lyrics annotations are available on Ultimate Guitar and Genuis. Luckily, the audio is free to download for everyone 😀 Enjoy!
Reflection on this course
The most challenging element concerning this subject is the conceptual design aspect; enable people to ask new questions by having critical statements. For me, as someone who is a die-hard problem solver, it was quite challenging. That's why the search for critical questions turned out more complex than I expected. I've been looking for multiple ways to raise awareness about concentration problems with mobile phones. However, I wasn't able to find that fitting question and to visualize it (as stated in my manifesto).
After some frustrations, I decided to toss aside my old manifest and start writing about something completely different. That was when I noticed I wanted to speak out my frustrations; I begin to write down what has been bothering me about myself. It sounded very pessimistic, but I found out that my song can be a way of saying that it is possible to overcome those feelings. Make something that makes you proud in the end.
On hindsight, this method of problem-solving is something that I noticed teachers are doing during this minor. When students have a specific question about their assignment, they normally don't answer with their solution. They ask new questions to help them find their solutions, which is something that inspired me more than Critical Design as a subject. I haven't felt like I was learning how to encourage people about questioning new things, which was something I'd expect to learn in this course.
Overall, I'm glad I made the manifesto and song. It became a new page in my setlist.