Research on Rhys Grubel
I have emailed and been in light contact with Rhys, my gift recipient in visual communications. He has replied to me, stating he will answer the questions I have sent him within the week, but as of writing this post, I am answerless. As I already had some ideas in mind, I asked some quasi-pointed questions aiming at a few aspects I plan to focus on in my designed gift. The questions I asked Rhys were:
- What is your relationship to live performance (theatre, dance, stand-up, dynamic arts)? Have you ever performed in front of a live audience? If not, have you ever wanted to?
- What is your relationship to board games? What are your favorite AND least favorite design elements within them? Do you like to play with small or large groups? Do you not like to ply at all? Why?
- What is your relationship to subtlety? Do you prefer to be loud and proud with blunt communication? Quiet and complex with mysterious character quirks? Do you prefer things to have subtlety or lack subtlety? What is your favorite AND least favorite example of subtlety?
- Define these words/phrases as they relate to you:
“my own body”
“the body of another”
“myself”
“other”
“human form”
“human shape”
- What is the best way for you, logically, to receive a gift from me? In person? Mail? Digital instruction?
- If you want me to know more about you, what are your social medias?
Since I was unable to get these answers before the time this post was due, I stalked Rhys slightly online. I looked up his name on Instagram and Facebook to no avail but found his name motioned on the Twitter for OSU design. There, I found his MFA thesis proposals and what interests him in design. One of the first things he mentioned about design was “storytelling” in design and how that can reshape things. He has a strong interest in the political space, particularly about sustainability and how we can repair the recycling system in America. He is a family man. On that same Twitter I found out that Rhys also was awarded Global Arts and Humanities Graduate Team Fellowships, further supporting our shared interest in the arts.
Designer Quote
From the wonderful mind of Marcel Marceau, a French mime who revolutionized the craft with his design of sixteen fundamental emotions in silence called The Conventions of Character: “Mime makes the invisible , visible and the visible, invisible.” So often in design do we talk about great design being invisible, and this is no different. In his craft, he deliberately designed The Conventions of Character to be invisible tools within mime, much like how designs goal is to be entirely invisible, to be great.
Attached is my wonderful friend, Taylor Moriarty (a theatre major who studies mime), and her best representation and description of each of the sixteen conventions.
Marceau’s Conventions of Character (Taylor’s Representation)
Narrative/Concept Statement
From the information I have currently received from Rhys (none), I can’t perfectly describe quite what I want to gift yet, but here is my idea for what I plan to do regardless:
I want to show off the invisible conventions of visual communication and design in the most visually communicative way possible, human performance and mime. No words, just deeply meaningful and subtle poses that represent the sixteen Marcel Marceau’s Conventions of Character. I plan to create a set of sixteen (or more – some poses have movement, requiring two figures for one pose) clay figurines as the gift, enclosed within a gift box representative of a stage with the curtain rising to reveal the figures. Oven-cured-clay will be the easiest material to work with from home, and an additional layer of paint/glaze to further emphasize the subtle differences in form would help distinguish some of the similar poses. I plan to create these clay forms in all sixteen Conventions of Character poses, although heavily stylized, the eyes simply being arrows on where they would be looking, and the mouth enlarged for detail. Each figure has an accompanying card (digitally done) that describes the pose, how to do it, what it means, what it is based off of, and why it was included in the conventions.