First Draft!

 It has been kind of topsy turvy trying to make sure I am caught up in other classes while doing the thesis. My first Draft has come together, and it is such a far cry from my original concept! I have created my best practices guide for VR development which has probably been the hardest part so far. I am an amateur when it comes to development, but having friends who do this for a living has been a great resource. Now, I am focusing on finding people to interview for original work. Some professional VR devs are willing to do it, which is great. Coming up with questions has been hard. It's also been hard trying to find Museum professionals to interview. I plan on creating a google survey to send out, but I just need to get the motivation to do that. It has been a really busy couple of weeks, for sure. I am excited to speak to professionals and gauge their opinion overall, though. Catching up in everything is exhausting. Though, hopefully by next week's class meeting, I should be on track. Looking forward to it, future John. 

Dr. Decker also recommended a VR conference that I am really excited to attend. I think it'll open up a lot of the view for me, in terms of VR in museums. It'll be great material to work with. I'm taking this weekend to focus solely on the interviews, and have two lined up! I wanted to do Zoom interviews, but one guy is only willing to do typed answers. Though he is willing to correspond in the future, which is great. 

First draft completed.

 Hello everyone,

I am pleased to tell you all that I had a great meeting with my Thesis board. We all were able to share our ideas. I am happy with the results, we all agreed to focus on research methods. My advisors and I have picked a couple of museums/galleries to analyze what they did best or needs to improve to meet Deaf visitor's needs. I struggled to try to complete 8 pages due to not able to have enough information in time. Not only that, I am usually capable to complete my papers by having a conversation with someone to help me expand my horizontal views on certain things. Right now, everything seems to be on a right track and I will continue my research. I am excited to see how things go.  

First Draft in the Books!

       As I initially prepared for my Thesis Board Meeting, I was very hesitant to write anything in advance, as I felt that I did not yet have an idea that was focused enough. While I have spent so long learning about KAWS, I knew that this knowledge and my own personal fascinations had not yet come to form a solid foundation for any further writing. As luck would have it, these reservations were put to rest once the day of my meeting came and Dr. Lent, Dr. DeRoo, and Dr. Schroeder took the time to patiently flesh out various ideas with me, until we settled on the best choice.

    Discovered during our discussion, was the fact that the Brooklyn Museum of Art will be holding a KAWS retrospective, entitled KAWS: WHAT PARTY, beginning on February 25th. This exhibition is so important, as it will allow me to focus my thoughts on KAWS' relationship with museums, and see how the two parties represent each other. This idea relates back to the initial example I had formed in September of last year, but it is now far more nuanced with a particular focus on KAWS and his connections with cultural institutions. 

    With my trip planned, and the anticipation building, a recent meeting with Dr. DeRoo pointed me in the direction of additional topics to write about in advance of my travels. I am very excited to write about these topics, as they relate to the idea of "the artist's persona," as well as to the history of the Brooklyn Museum of Art- in connection with street art and the recent trend of gentrification in Brooklyn. Through writing additional sections on these ideas, I believe my visit to the exhibition will be much more informed, and will allow me to ask even more questions.

***Fun Fact- The exhibit is sponsored by Dior, which further emphasizes the impact of KAWS' work with fashion brands!

Progress & First Draft Done!

 

I can’t believe that I finished my first eight pages! It started off well but as I went on it got harder to get to that eight page mark. I found myself struggling to come up with more ideas and was stuck.

I found that when I got to my thesis board meeting I was out of ideas. However I found that my secondary advisor, Cindy, had a new idea for me to explore an exhibition about quilting. The History Center has a large collection of quilts that have been sitting in storage and they have decided to make an online exhibition utilizing those quilts. They also are making the plan to have this exhibit in the physical space come 2022. I am going to integrate this exhibit and the process into my thesis to help further my ideas. 

Progress on the Process (and Very Fast Paced Progress at That)

I feel like I’ve gotten whiplash from the differences of pace between my last entry and this one. I felt like I was trying to eat sand when it came to writing eight new pages and organizing and finalizing the project aspect of my thesis. I somehow, miraculously, managed to write eight new pages almost entirely on the process of the many decisions that went into the project aspect of my thesis. Who knew there were so many factors in choosing a letter or a font to work with?

Compared to the slow crawl of gathering materials and information to write eight pages last week, I am absolutely overwhelmed by a whirlwind of progress. I feel like I have done so much and the first round of creation will be completed soon, which is absolutely amazing, by the way. I’ve also learned so much during the process of creation. This past week, I’ve been focusing on 3D scanning the physical typefaces I want to recreate. You would think that scanning four letters would be a pretty simple process, right?

There are a lot of nuances that I didn’t even consider when it comes to 3D scanning. The scanner operates off of two cameras that focus on the object. Lasers then triangulate information based on the location of the camera and the object. Each object needs to be scanned from multiple angles in order to have a full, detailed render. Each individual scan takes about three minutes. Needless to say, I spent about two hours scanning each letter from multiple angles. Sometimes, the same angle would be scanned before there was a high quality image that could be worked with. When working with the third and fourth typefaces, the scanner did not want to pick up on the letterface, and there were large portions of data missing. I think with the third typeface, there were a lot of issues with exposure. Typeface are incredibly dark from decades upon decades of ink, and the background for the scanning was a dark table. The fourth typeface would not scan because of the above reason but also because it was such a glossy letter. The lasers used for 3D scanning need to be able to “grab onto” the surface of the object to record data points. A glossy object will reflect the lasers, and it can cause large gaps of data in the image. 

Scanning typeface involved placing the letter on a small pedestal within view of the two cameras on the actual scanner. I would select a part of the image for a detailed scan from the preview given to me by the cameras. As the scan completed, I could see the parts of the image that were fully captured as well as what data was missing. 

In the end, the inability to gather nice scans of the third and fourth typeface is not a large issue that makes or breaks the project. There are other ways to go about making a facsimile than 3D scanning. What this means is that I can’t 3D print those two typefaces. I will still be able to create facsimiles of all four letters through other means. I just need to scan and create vector files for the four type I am looking at. Once that’s done, I just need to find some time to head on over to The Construct, the maker space on campus, and do some routing and laser engraving to get some facsimile typefaces made.

This is what the one of the scans of the fourth typeface looked like. All of the white areas are areas on the letter that were too glossy for the laser to register any information. 

Changes in the Process

 It feels really weird to jump back into writing and working on my project after such a long break. Writing about my process has brought about a lot of thought on how much my thesis has changed since I first started to think about this idea. The ways in which I am recreating typeface both digitally and physically has drastically changed. I've changed the number of typefaces I am making as well as what I am focusing on for the creation process. 

I think looking back on all these changes and explaining the rational behind the changes is really important for me to be able to understand my project better as well as the process behind writing a paper and working on a project with such a short deadline. I think it has taught me a really important lesson on narrowing my focus and trying to avoid being too ambitious. I know I tend to think big when I first start a project or a paper, and that is generally a problem for me. It isn't feasible for one person to create scans, vector files, and accurate recreations of a full set of typeface, generally around sixty to one-hundred twenty characters. It is a lot more feasible for one person to create scans and recreations of four letters from four different fonts and have them print accurately. 

I think despite the long break and all of the changes on how to go about my process, I am enjoying working on both the written aspect and project aspect of my thesis. It's really fun for me because I absolutely love working with typeface, and having an excuse to talk about them, printing presses, printing history, and typography has made the whole process even more exciting for me. I'm learning a lot from the process of working on my thesis. It's okay to have a narrow scope, and it's really important to write about something you're passionate about. I wouldn't have anywhere near the same amount of motivation if I was writing about recreating a ship as I do with recreating typeface. 

Getting There

 I feel like I'm getting to a better place when it comes to my thesis. I had a meeting with my advisor that went quite well; It gave me a lot of ideas for new pages as well as some new avenues to take when it comes to "making" an original contribution. We talked about setting up interviews with some museum professionals to discuss their thoughts and their institutions thoughts on VR, as well as VR's viability when it comes to small museums. I think finding that middle ground that allows VR to be accessible while giving people a reason to use it is going to be the hardest part. VR is niche, and I get that; I think it is an important cornerstone in tech, and it could be utilized effectively for a lot of museums that typically avoid technology. The hard part is convincing people that it can be useful, especially when it has mainly been used by larger museums in long, costly exhibitions. I don't expect people in the museum world to give full approval for fairly new tech with niche application, but if even one professional reads and approves of this idea, I think I'll be happy with that.

 Hello Everyone! It's time for me to work on my thesis paper. I am nervous about my paper because what if my thesis is too general or not enough to write about. But I know I have people who will support me. During the break, I was able to do more research on Accessibility for Deaf visitors cases. Also, I think I am going to focus on research methods because I feel like survey I was going to do won't give me the results I am looking for. Today, I will have my first thesis eboard meeting. Wish me good luck! 

8 new pages

 8 new pages can be a lot. Granted I shouldn't have put them off till the last day to do them but I have written more with less. I think the worst thing about it is that the advisor discussion post I had gave me a lot of great ideas, but I haven't had enough time to determine whether or not they will be making it into my final project. I think I'll still include it in my pages cause it's not the final draft, but it doesn't feel good to write stuff that will not be making it into the final. Either way, I have to begin writing now and determine what things I want to start with first. 

Jumping Right In

 As the Spring semester continues to gain speed, it has become very apparent that I am nervous to start writing the next chunk of my Thesis. Following the break, I feel as though I have become so knowledgeable of KAWS' career evolution, and yet I am still hesitant to make a strong statement and move forward with it. There are so many aspects of KAWS' rise to fame that interest me, and I think that this may be the reason why I am struggling so much to narrow it down- if it was up to me, I would try to write about everything. Since this is not feasible, I must now focus on the parts that interest me the most, and allow my newly found passion for this topic to propel me forward. This passion centers on the ways in which KAWS utilizes social media and brand collaborations in an effort to expand his following and reach broader audiences. This ever-growing audience has aided KAWS in becoming more and more famous as time goes on, and has also cemented his status as an emerging figure in pop-culture. For me, the most interesting phenomenon to be drawn from this, is the fact that the growth of KAWS required little to no intervention by cultural institutions- implying that they may no longer be necessary for an artist's fame to grow.

With this perspective in mind, I can continue to narrow my thoughts and move forward in the writing process....hopefully forming my ideas in a manner consistent with how they are currently residing in my mind.

Starting The Writing Process

 I was originally very nervous and uneasy about starting the writing aspect of my thesis. However since we talked about it in class and I have looked over a few other students' theses to get a better understanding and idea of what the final looks like I feel better and ready to start writing. I am starting my first eight page draft soon and I already have some thoughts in my head that I have started putting to paper which feels really good. I’m now more confident and excited about the rest of this process.