Oded Workshop

I really enjoyed our few days with Oded Ezer, he was an interesting guy and it was a great workshop.

We had to do a project for him before he came-- we were supposed to build a letter or symbol at least two feet tall and photograph it in a banal and an extraordinary place around the city. Becky and I were assigned to work together and we started our project with the stipulation that we didn't want to spend any money on supplies. We decided to be adventurous and attempt the euro symbol... and the available materials we had? Garbage. Hence, we titled our project Eurotrash. We took it up Via del Corso, and we about to walk away and observe after we set it next to some piles of trash, while we had to run and rescue it since the garbage truck just pulled up. We also had some guy try to talk to us about it, and he wanted his picture with it.


When we came to studio for Oded's lecture that Tuesday, I knew it was going to be good since we were only allowed to enter the room from in one way, and because Troy needed to borrow someone's camera. When we walked in, Oded had some giant paper ascender hat on...


He talked to us about how, in our lifes, about half of what we do should be work and half should be play and that the eventual goal is to turn your work into your play. He talked about his work, and how he gets inspiration from science, among other things. Overall, I think we all felt really pumped after his lecture. While the Primo Angeli workshop was all about pleasing the client and getting the most consumer response business and seriousness, Oded was telling us that we needed to do a lot for ourselves, and to get away from the client and the deadlines... it was great to hear that Oded's work eventually became his play, so it can happen!

The next morning, we presented our large letters. At first, we all had a tough time figuring out what Oded was trying to get at when he asked us to talk about each other's pieces, but then we started to figure it out. He wanted to show us how to ask questions from the work we've done, and also not to force materials.

After this, our assignment was to pick a letter of the alphabet (with no two people picking the same letter), then creating a three-dimensional letterform that acted like a famous person whose name started with the letter we chose.

I started with the letter S, and the first thing that came to my mind was Santa. Although a little silly, there's a lot of personality and associations with Santa that could be used. We then went off to work on these. The next day when I talked to Oded about my semi-final form, he had told me that he had kept thinking about one of the things I had been doing the day before and that he thought it was brilliant. (Oded thinks my work is brilliant? Wow.) So, although I had followed the wrong path, there was still time to correct myself.

Here's how my project had turned out by the end of the workshop... it's still something I think I want to keep working on, especially after talking to him at the end of the workshop, so we'll see where this eventually goes...