Introduction:
Lake Merced is a natural, fresh water lake within San
Francisco. First described in a journal of Juan Bautista de Anza’s exploration
in 1776, it had been the seasonal home for the California Ohlone Indians for over 4000
years.
Lake Merced is an important part of the city’s watershed system as well as a home to a vast number of animals and bird life, including migratory species. Although Lake Merced is well within walking distance from the SFSU campus, it is not a common destination for the SFSU community.
This project is collaborative rediscovery, or new discovery, of Lake Merced, combining the skills, interests and knowledge of two CIA courses: Art 511-Artists as Cartographers and Art 511-Physical Computing. We will be meeting as a combined class, and students will be working in collaborative groups that bring together the knowledge, tools and curiosity from both classes. For the next third of the semester, the goal will be to radically change our relationships to Lake Merced through site work, walks, research, art and experimentation.
Process:
Students will create projects located within the Lake Merced area that relate to questions and issues of water. Each working group will propose, develop and produce a working project that "claims" one area of Lake Merced and reflects the combination of skills from both classes. Project topics will be discussed in class. A production schedule will be discussed in class and posted on this blog.
Final project:
• Presentations of projects on site
• Papers on the projects: research, design, description, sources and resources, discussion of outcome and ideas on where it might go from here.
This Blog:
This blog will be a shared space for the class. Everyone will have access for posting. Keep your individual process blogs ongoing, but use this shared blog to add to the collective knowledge for the project.
Requirements:
• Student keep individual working process blogs for all research, links, project ideas, process and reading notes. Collaboratively proposed ideas and proposals should be included on each blog.
• Grades will be determined by individual contributions to the projects and the collective project outcome.
• Any questions, problems, difficulties should be discussed with Carlos and Paula.
