Week one of promises...

October 23, 2009

The promise session has officially begun. I have gotten the initial questionnaire out to everyone and have already heard back from six of the "promisers". I have posted this information on the promise plate blog (promiseplate.blogspot.com) I still need a photo of Galatea though and may just ask her if it is okay if I pull one off of her Facebook page. i am encouraged by quick the responses from these individuals, but am a little disheartened that there are still four others that haven't gotten back to me (they are phil, lauren, adrienne and cathy) I guess on the bright side, though, I am a bit surprised that I was even able to get ten participants for the project in the first place. I also had my last meeting with the canary project class today during which we all presented our projects to the group for feedback. One of the major concerns that we talked about in relation to my project is, as I have already touched upon, the lack of response that I may encounter from the participants. Even those that have responded to my initial questionnaire haven't begun to blog about their experience. I am going to have to be more active in generating the conversation. From physical conversations with a couple of folks it seems as though they are holding out their comments until they have a more put together response. I'd rather there be just a general flow of random thoughts like stream of conscientiousness to the posts. I'm not sure how to encourage this and perhaps I should just let things evolve. Either way I need to send some gentle reminders out to everyone. Ed also suggested in the class presentation that I have everyone do a sort of overall written reflection on the experience at the end. I like this idea and if anything it will give me actual text to include with the plates in the exhibition if i can't generate this from the blog posts. Perhaps the final outcome will be some combination of both the blog posts and the reflection.

October 26, 2009

I talked to Sara Brown today she is someone I had talked to on a previous date that voiced real concern about the way recycling was handled at her apartment. She considered doing a promise plate to help motivate herself to do something about it. Since one of my participants Adrienne (i.e. my mother) isn't keen on the blogging it may be better to have Sarah participate. In any case I can make them both plates and even if it throws my original number off it's creating a proactive experience for the both of them.
I have at least talked to Phil about his experience (he has yet to blog) of trying to eat local food. Turns out you can't get local cold cuts for sandwiches. We talked about other ways to simulate this same experience (i.e. roasting a whole chicken, turkey or ham and cutting slices) It would be pretty challenging for him to do this. Looks like hummus is on the menu... but wait where did those chickpeas come from? I did recently find out about the Local Growers Guild here in Bloomington. I am excited about this organization for my own reasons and thought it would be helpful to point Phil in this direction. They have all kinds of information about local farmers and producers as well as information on businesses that support these resources in the community. the link is (www.localgrowers.org)

October 28, 2009

I had what looks to be my first post from a promiser today. I know others have visited the site and filed out a profile, but have yet to post. Shelly wrote about trepidations for the week of trying to cut out electricity when facing a deadline. I know I find it hard to focus on anything but the task at hand in those situations. She wrote more about having to plan for a day where she can afford to take this eight hours to devote to other activities that don't involve the use of a plug yet are still productive. It's going to be hard and a good strategy is essential if it's going to work. In any case, it's encouraging to see her write about it. I'm excited about Nicole and Shelley making a joint promise to both give up electricity for eight hours of one day. They are kind of keeping each other in check (i.e giving each other shit) about sticking to their promise. Nicole also teaches a few of the other promisers so she assures me she'll keep an eye on them as well, hopefully she'll blog about it. I need to get moving on the plate production this week as well. I need to make a new plate mold ASAP and start getting together the imagery and text for the wallpaper iconography and quote so I can get them into photoshop, get transparecy films made, burn screens, to make slip transfers, to put on plates, which i have to cast in the first place, then fire, then glaze, then fire again... anybody want to go get a drink?