Week Two: From Observation to Theory

Reflect and write about how you are exploring the words – use a mind map if you prefer.

taking the five words that i have chosen to explore. these words being; Boundary, Decay, Stain, Call, and Trace I have started to think about ways that these words link together and what meanings that they have in common. I started this process by taking the words Boundary and Trace.

Boundary and Trace can be linked together through the searching and collecting of different definitions of what the words boundary and trace mean. I started to look at the different meanings of these words as to think about them differently and help to form connections between them. After further investigation I have found a series of words that join Boundary and Trace together and these words are; circumference, outline, contour/shape, and delineate.

I also started to think about how Decay and Stain (2 other of my chosen words) can link together and initially without looking through the dictionary I started to think of death. and how in death there is decay and even stains of blood that can be the result of death or even when a precursor to it. So, with this thought in mind I plugged the words Decay and Stain into the dictionary and came to find the words of; discolour, besmear, besmirch, and slander to be a series of words to create a connection between Decay and Stain. It was interesting to see that through these descriptive words I could find a connection between the words of Decay and Stain and the word Trace, as a means of leaving behind, to mark.

After a bit of thought I still could not find a connection between Call and the other four words that I have chosen to explore in relation to my design practice. So I decided to collect a series of words to think about the word call in a different light. These words that I found were; Summon, Convoke, Muster, and Rendezvous. Even though after this I still could not find a strong connection to the other words that I am exploring I decided this outlier of sorts will make a strong and interesting addition to the other 4 words I am exploring. This word call is also very interesting in terms of my own design practice as it will help me challenge what it means by call, how can a call be made from a domicile to a nomadic person to create connection of what it means by home.

Identify the methods you are using to explore the words, write them down and explain “why?” you are using them.

To explore a way that I could think about these words in a different way I went through the method of collecting/gathering as an initial step to this process. Before I had even started to look at how these words could be used in a practical sense I took the 5 words that I had chosen and searched them in the dictionary. Collecting their meanings, synonyms and their origins I found it really interesting to see connections between the words start to appear.

It was then from this process of collecting/gathering I was able to move onto my next method which is filtering. This is when I take all of the information that I have gathered and sort through it and just pull out the information that I am most interested in. In this case it was finding words that create connections between the 5 words that I have already chosen these ended up being;
- Circumference
- Outline
- Contour/shape
- Declinate
- Discolour
- Besmear
- Besmirch
- Slander
- Summon
- Convoke
- Muster
- Rendezvous

After collecting this list of words that make up a description of what my 5 words are I moved into my next method called Ideation. This is the crazy method. From here I took random elements of each word and even combinations of different words to generate physical things that embody the essence of these, at a rapid pace.