DESERT PEOPLE

Our annual desert retreat is steadily approaching, the first days of November to be precise.

This means another speaker, another project and lots of "mingling".

I spoke with Michael last week about the project and structure of the events, trying to improve upon an already great experience. We talked about the possibly of doing two projects, one similar to last years(something curatorial), and one a smaller voluntary collaboration. As far as the secong project goes, maybe it could be something context based?, taking into consideration the environment of the desert.

I sent him an email last night with a loose idea for the second project. The loose premise is this. I'll start with the format: a series of still images projected into or within the environment. We have a projector, we have a screen just in case the elements are not cooperative. Each participant will create one frame at a set size/dpi(tbd).

The contents of the frames could be narrative, through text or image. It could be poetic, and not literally. It could be individual, or collaborative. I feel it should be contextual. How do we choose to efffect the environment. Do we consider the graphic language of the region? The 29 Palms Historical Society has great quote at the top which reads:

"What draws us into the desert is the search for something intimate in the remote." ~Edward Abbey

Maybe this is a good place to start. The contradiction seems to sum up a lot of our interests.

Any thoughts?

Other things to do in the desert:

http://www.noahpurifoy.com/foundation/joshuatreeenvironment.html#Top
http://www.zittel.org/
http://www.integratron.com/Welcome.html

Comments

[cameron ewing]

projecting images against the backdrop of the desert sounds like an incredible project, in addition to the curratorial excercise.

assuming that everyone wants to run with the theme of "intimacy in the remote" i would pose that we open up the projections to videoclips as well.

as a group we can pull together various interpretations of the theme and project the body of work throughout the night.

[Cassandra Chae]

"something intimate in the remote . . . " i like your idea of expanding the design context to the actual environment. it involves the idea of the journey to the desert. so maybe we should think of "the curatorial" in the same way - but as it pertains to the individual. so then the narrative is defined by the frame, acting like a snapshop of the place each individual is at in their own personal design journey?