Stone Soup Activity

Today, we spent most of class time doing a very exciting activity- making a stone soup. This is an outdoor activity, taking place outside of our classroom, which has a more serious atmosphere.

First of all, I think the benefit of taking an activity outside of the classroom is being able to relax easily. While we were sitting on the grass and making our stone soup, we also enjoyed the nature: sunshine within an unlimited working space. Secondly, it also taught me that the working space is very important for an artist or designer to gathering their inspiration.

The piece we made today is a figure that has a bald ball head with funny face expression. Because of our ethnic materials, this figure has a very Asian look. It also gave us a sense of how to extend the design within the theme. Consequently, we added the surroundings and background included the traditional Asian fringe flags, Japanese bamboo umbrella, and bento lunch box with chopsticks, etc. to our lovely body. In the process of this design, I learned how to incorporate the design element into a specific theme, and choose the decorations to match it. Indeed, there are plenty of elements and materials we can pick to make a design, but how to use them effectively and correctly is the question for designers. To answer this question, I would say team work.

The stone soup activity taught me the importance of team work, the benefits we can get is a lot more then we think about. First, when a group of people works on a design project together, it means the team would have an infinite amount of inspiration. It would help the design be more successful. Next, advice and discussions would help every single person in the group to avoid getting stuck at a dead end. Finally, based on my experience, group work also helps to manage and organize design elements and materials. The very last point: this experience really conforms to what doctor Housefeld said in class earlier, “designers need to work in a team.”