Knots

Over the weekend, I went back into the matrices to come up with a design strategy.  I decided that my “buoy” thing would be some sort of device or design that would accommodate the different interactions of the user groups.  It was difficult to come up with what each user group should have in a device.  I mean, doesn’t everyone want shade and electricity?  Anyway, here is the new design matrix as it stands right now.  I think that it needs to delineate the grid pattern more- either by using a dot instead of blocks or by actually putting a grid on it.  And of course it needs words.

The site:

So after that I worked on the design.  Using the thoughts about the different variations of sails on a yacht – stormy weather, normal weather, windy weather – and about the connecting these areas of the swamp that are in my site, Kristi has urged me to go into this in layers.  The first layer is the part that is a completely designed experience, then it goes into pieces of a designed experience, then to “its possible to go here, but I’m not going to tell you what to do” part.  The materials will be deliberate – something light, something floatable, something that will weather.  I’m thinking that my previous models have already told me the materials:  string (rope), wire (steel, steel cable), wood (logs, boards), and whatever that paper represents… maybe a plastic or something.  The string has been a really big part of the process for this project, so I really want to feature it in the design as either the material of rope or the cabling that is used for sails now.  Thinking about rope, I have come to “tether and fray”.  And then of course I looked at knots.

The Carrick Bend has been my favorite so far because is used to join two ropes together, much like joining the two ecologies together and joining user groups together.  I have thought that this can be a sort of layout for how the design begins, then gettting further and further away as the rope “frays” at the ends.

In this part, I need to keep in mind the original beginnings to this project which are the traces that have been left on the land.  What new trace am I adding and how long will it take?  What does it do to the original traces and the swamp itself?

We’re running now!