Category Archives: Failure Achievement

Reflection on Creative Display #2

In my original conceptualizing of my creative display, four tree-silhouettes were supposed to be free standing. I wanted them to be approximately four feet tall, because I felt that at that height they started to really make a visual impact. Anything less than that height is really too far below eye level to be applicable to a human viewer. The problem with this, and one that didn’t emerge until I was attempting to put the whole assemble together, was that the pieces would bend so much that they were in serious danger of falling over. I had anticipated this and had tested the rigidity of each piece as I produced it, but I believe the simple fact that they have been glued together for a number of days now is to blame for their tendency to fall over now. The weight of the uppermost parts of the silhouettes is becoming too much for the lower parts over time and creases are forming. Some of the support pieces holding the larger sheets together had also began to come off, due to inadequate glue. This second problem was easy to fix, and helped some, but the second way did not have an easy solution.

Initially, I had a few ideas about what to do to compensate for these leanings:

Glue cardboard rectangles to the other side to try to counterbalance the sway

Cut more slits in the base in order to insert more perpendicular supports

Tie the pieces to the walls and chairs around them

I ruled out the second idea once I looked more closely at what was happening at the base of the display. The sides of the slits were being forced askew, and this was compromising the rigidity of the whole piece. I decided that it was best not to mess around with that part of the display then. I ruled out the first idea because due to a similar thought process. I had no idea if I would be able to counterbalance the shapes, plus I thought they would be distracting on both sides. I enjoyed be able to tell from one side that the large shapes would made up from a number of smaller rectangles. I thought keeping that smooth side was important.

That left the third option. At first, I didn’t think I would like the look, but after taping one of the forms to the wall I liked the effect. It makes the display sight-specific. When I set it up in the classroom I will need to use a different set of props than in the basement of my dorm building. It also one move more slowly around the display when reading the words that wrap around it. One is careful not to trip on the ribbon assisting its standing. In turn, this will hopefully cause the viewer to reflect more on the meaning of the sentence wrapped around the display.

The connection to the article Viewpoint: How Creativity is Helped by Failure is as follows: The article recounts the creative process of writers for Pixar. After an initial draft, each component of the plot is carefully considered, analyzed, and placed in the wider context of the film. In the same way, this failure forced me to reevaluate the whole project and its message. This failure has pushed the display into a more active work, commenting on the role the environment has on impacting what becomes of recycled materials. This is told through the symbol of the ribbon attaching the recycled cardboard to whatever objects are around it. The goals of recycling, what the materials are recycled into, is contingent on the value placements of the surrounding nation-state, county, or community.

Reflection on Research 

While researching the studies that have been done on nurse logs, I came to a point where I realized I had lost sight of the scope of the this project. I diligently searched through the vast scientific databases available to UO students online, and at one point had upwards of twenty-two different articles saved. Through the process of narrowing down which of Buster Simpson’s projects I was going to focus on, I also narrowed that list of scientific articles considerably. Three of those articles, however, turned out to be Ph. D. theses and my better instincts kicked in. I chose not to use these sources in my project due to their overwhelming length and dense subject matter, much of which went over my head. Instead, I narrowed down my pool of articles yet again, and printed them out in order to take written notes on them.

Even here, my desire to delve deeper into the subject than time permitted got the best of me. One of the articles I had selected and printed turned out upon further review to be only distantly related to the science I was studying.

Notice the title and the lack of relation to any mention of nurse logs. Part of the article included mentions of tree decay, a topic related to the broader study of nurse logs, but ultimately not a focus of my project. 

This process of failure taught me some important research skills that will undoubtably aid me in my college career. Namely: take time to consider the scope of what the research project requires, and to suppress my own insatiable desire to have complete knowledge about a subject before discussing it. In reality, this later desire is very often not feasible.

This realization ties in in an interesting way to the BBC article Viewpoint: How creativity is helped by failure . The article recounts the story of a ceramics teacher who divided his students into two groups – one that was to graded upon quantity of pots produced and the other upon quality. With this particular temptation, that is, to consider a topic more than is necessary, I found that my quandary was the same as the later group. By the end of the class, they had spent more time theorizing than producing.

Since this failure, I have spent some time doing quick free writes on how the different concepts I have been studying relate to one another. This practice eventually lead to the flow chart included in one of my previous journal posts.