thesis starts _ the art of touching the ground lightly

_Notes date back to September 8th after talking with Ellen. I LOVE what she said, IT'S ABOUT"know thyself."

Not quite sure what I am trying to do yet, but here is my thesis attitude:

I want to look for something that is 'lacking'.

My thesis design work will ‘improve something’, and help to make 'design' better by expanding the current scale/field of design.

It should be a topic that no one has ever heard of. It is a loophole in the system.

No resource, no reference.

The topic of my undergrad thesis is 'design the shrinking process'. I love it quite a lot. 'We design the process of expanding, we ignore the process of shrinking'. And my proposal was about creating the dying mode of buildings/cities.

I wish my audience could say 'oh, there is such an existence' after seeing my thesis.

The site and topic works more like media, not for the sake of solving the problems themselves.

Same day, conversation with Karsten:

K:

Lu, this is quite ambitious what you want. And in a way anachronistic. Nothing is lacking, we both know that. But what is true is that we need to create desires. Something new which appears to be filling a gap which always has been there. Like the ipad. But this gap was never there. I find that quite fascinating. So you (and me) don't have to think of something which is lacking but of something new which appears to have been missing all the time.

L:

Right. What I mean by ‘lacking’, on the one hand, refers to something 'being ignored'. IT IS THERE as you said, but as invisible-scape. The 'rediscovering' process can be quite exciting. Like you are digging out the gold - something is there, but now you see it.

On the other hand, when the 'invisible-scape' is not an OBJECT, rather a RELATIONSHIP, for example, in Netherlands, wind and water are always there, but it is only until we started using windmill to drain the wetlands, something new was born at that moment - it is not the windmill itself really matters, rather, the relationship it creates between 'wind' and 'water' really mean something. For me, this type of 'lacking' is quite fascinating.

…'DESIGN' here is not the 'TOOL as we always think about, it can be the 'GOAL' for doing something. The reason that I love 'DESIGN', no matter, architecture, landscape, or just industrial design, is because I know and I can feel it clearly that 'DESIGN' itself is about setting up a 'network', creating a 'relationship' so that something already existed can be experienced differently - that is something new. And this 'relationship' can always help to solve problems: when one problem gets to be connected to another--boom! Mission complete.

Life itself is not just about solving the problem (which is negative), but more exciting, it is about exploration of the unknown world (positive!)…    

_Notes date back to September 9th:

The most fascinating and frustrating thing about thesis is, you have a feeling that you are going to do something really important to this world.

But, it can be anything – so hard to choose.

_Abstraction dates back to September 21st:

THE ART OF TOUCHING THE GROUND LIGHTLY

The post-war landscape in Xieng Khouang Province, Laos

With about 80 million leftover UXO (unexploded ordnance) remain scattered throughout Laos, populations living around the UXO embedded site are under serious threat. Clearance work, combined with community-based educational programs, have helped reduce the number of UXO causalities in Laos, but with less that one percent of the affected land area cleared, the UXO will remain a serious threat for decades to come.

Laos is one of the world's poorest countries. Many unexploded bombs are buried just below the surface, making farming a potentially life-threatening activity in affected areas. But small farmers have little choice but to continue farming to support their family, despite the risks. While the UXO buried underground condition creates a life-threatening picture, the scars on surface are transforming from a symbol of death into one of life: bomb-craters have been made to yield an alternative harvest, in an ingenious replacement of the rice fields they otherwise disrupt.

Instead of using mine-clearance machines and re-bombing the ground to save life, this project will save the life of the civilians by creating a landscape softly touching the ground which bearing the tension between life and death.