Residential Cards

Today, I went to the Capital Area District Library downtown to check into getting a hold of a compilation of residential cards similar to what we were shown in class last week. We on the design team thought this could be a small visual part in the actual exhibit design to show the integration caused from the construction of the highway. I am not sure if we will for sure use these if we are able to to get them but it was a tangible item that is possible. Sadly, this portion of materials in the library is only accessible Tuesday nights like Brandon had mentioned or by appointment. I have emailed/called the guy who heads this section of the library and Rachel and I will be meeting there either next Tuesday night or by appointment if we need to! Hopefully we can find something good and usable for the exhibit! The information assistant that I talked to mentioned that he may be able to find other useful things for us as well. I will update that when I hear from him!

MHC A Second Time Around!

This week, we took our second trip to the Michigan Historical Museum and I felt it to be much more productive than the first time. I had visited this museum once in grade school but I remembered absolutely nothing about it and so being able to take a quick walk through was great!

One of the things that I really liked was being able to see all of the different exhibit designs. This helped me gather some ideas of what a good/bad exhibit looked like in order to postulate ideas for our exhibit that we do not have yet. I realized, as assumed that the exhibits that I enjoyed the most were the ones that had actual objects in them such as cars, clothing, animals, etc. The ones that I found least interesting were ones that were filled with only writing on the walls. While taking our walk-through I tried to put myself in the shoes of a young child, trying to imagine what he/she might be attracted to in the museum since that is who we SHOULD cater our exhibit to, although it is not required. In the same fashion, I realized that I think they would be attracted to the same things: color, tangible objects to touch and look at, videos and music. Another thing I realized was that some of the exhibits with writing on them were a little detailed and used somewhat large words. Can 4^th and 5^th graders read this well yet? Maybe yes, maybe no! Even so, we need to make our story for I-496 not only appealing to the public but also SIMPLE so that everyone can participate.

I feel that now that we all have been able to see real exhibit examples, I think we can really get to moving on what we want to do for ours. The one thing is, is what are we going to do. We have a story but we have no actual personal interviews or photos of people from the time. The only things that we have are maps of the area during the time and how they have changed, so my question is, is what can we do with what we have to make an interesting exhibit that people want to look at? Most of the exhibits at the MHC had objects and things to possibly touch or music? What can we do to compete with this? I am not sure the answer to this but I do think this is something we need to brainstorm about!

Individual Project!!!!!

So, as I have been pondering over what to do for my individual project I decided that I may choose to focus on the bringing about of the "social gospel" with groups such as the Salvation Army. Many people seem to know of that little store down the street where you can donate clothes and other items but not many people know what the initial creation of the Salvation army really stood for. I was one of these people I will admit it. I find it to be a really intriguing event/group and feel that it should be something shared with other people. I am not totally sure of what my overall focus will be whether it be about the struggles that women had during the period or maybe just some of the hardships of the group overall or something completely different but I am going to start researching to see what I can find!!! More to come about this soon :)

What to do?????

Now that I have finally had some time to ponder over the 2 focus choices for our I-496 project, I still am not completely happy with choosing either topic fully. I feel that both choices are beneficial into giving important insight into the areas concerning the overall construction but I still think we need to fully decide who our audience is going to be to decide what we want to do. I personally still think that if we are going to propose an idea to the MHC, that we still should cater to their audience (being third and fourth grade students.) I know that our overall goal is not necessarily to have the MHC want to use our idea but hey while we are putting a lot of work into this project we may as well do it in a way that COULD be useful if it was wanted.

Last week, Prof. Knupfer posted after class on how we were facing a problem between “realism and idealism.” I could not agree more with this statement. It is unfortunate that we have such a short time to complete this project but I tend to side more with the realism group! I do not necessarily think that one proposal or the other is harder per se but I do think that there are some areas in each that will be harder to do. With proposal 1, I am still having a hard time grasping what we would do to create an exhibit that would not only flow well but would also be appealing to any audience. Some of our listed sources are things such as census/population statistics, real estate assessments, city directories etc. but is the information that we are able to collect from these items going to interest our intended audience?? I am not sure. I know these are important things but I am trying to figure out what is appealing to let’s say a student age audience. Students like narratives, colors, personal interviews, pictures……. Basically visual items that they can learn from. Now, if our audience is going to be an older adult population, things such as numbers, documents, safety and efficiency issues etc would definitely be things to use and share. I am just really confused. I feel like we have little time to complete this task in addition to our individual projects that we SHOULD choose the option that would be easiest but I am mixed between easy and meaningful because there is no use in completing a project that is easy if it is useless whereas more time spent in a more beneficial project is worth the while in the end.

Needed think time now….. more to come soon….. hmmmmmmmmmm