Margarita.
"When attitude becomes a form... MARGARITA."
In this collaborative team “#Cocktail”, I tended to be a more practical person than Ideal one. In order to make audiences easier to understand our proposal, I made an instruction booklet which showed the main concept and rules of our project - Margarita.
A true margarita - a blend of fresh lime juice, tequila, and salt for rimming the glass - is a potent, well-built entry in the cocktail canon. Base on three essential elements, it is usually made with many other materials, margarita shows very different aspects in each bar and soon become a symbol of combining various makings. By naming ourselves team “#Cocktail” from the very beginning, we have the same spirit as margarita of blending many elements and possibilities within basic and important foundation. From the rules of the game as the essential foundation of our work to the democracy of audience’s participations and choices as the changing new effect, make our “Margarita” complete.
“When attitude becomes a form...”
Since the interaction between participants and the work, we believe the attitude we present on work will reflect to our audience, at the same time, the participants project their attitude through the action of playing on our work, which make both attitudes become a form on each other.
Game rules of Margarita,
remember, always do what you prefer! Use your imagination!
Step 1, CHOOSE!
Choose as many pieces of puzzles as you want of the shape of our five different countries.
Step 2, TARGET!
Stick the puzzles you picked on the clear tessellated cube.
Step 3, STRING!
Connect as many pins on puzzles as you want with threads.
DONE! Thank you for being a part of our creation.
During the exhibition we held in SWAN studio, invitation to neighbors, pedestrians, and students were made randomly. We were glad to have young children, parents, students, and even dog participating in this project and presented their attitude through Margarita.
Working as a collaborative team at the very beginning of module, we started from the diversities, similarities and connections between all five of us. Since we were five people from five different countries, knowing each other became the most essential step for us. We spent a few meetings discussing about the place we want to present our work and the form we might like to participate. In addition, each of us made a drawing combine elements of our own country. There were six important steps we had to take before we made any final conclusion.
Direct thinking. - Present own ideas. - Discuss with each other. - Make changes through people’s suggestions. - We modify. - Made final conclusion.
At the first offsite visiting of Dorich house, we pictured the ideal exhibition we wanted and made it into reality discussion, and this is the moment we had consensus of site choosing. Since few meeting were taken, we also popped up the idea of playing games with audiences, interaction became an essential element in our project.
After three months meeting, discussing, playing games, making experimental models, we had discovered the interest of developing different ideas accidently, which leaded to the final spirit of Margarita- we wouldn't make something we have known the final looks, but something full of other people’s engagement and attitude. Creating unknown things are always more interesting than something we have known, isn’t it?
We started to make our flag, which was one of our best experiment ever, showed great fun of classmates participating in our flag. They presented their attitude through the flag, which also leaded to the great meaning of the democracy we believed, people had rights to do things they wanted. Ever after, “When attitude becomes a form” was our slogan and stood a great importance in Margarita.
To sum up, things had become very different than we expected, not only the change of site, but also the work we presented in the end. We decided to keep our idea of the shape of our countries and even made them become a puzzle game with binding threads. Furthermore, the final work was even made on a huge acrylic clear cube, made light shining through Margarita and caused amazing colorful shadow the ground. These four months collaborative partnership showed me the surprising outcome of unexpected ending. We were basically strangers, we talked, we argued, we respected, we started to know each other’s strength and divided up the work appropriately. I also found out myself good at leading people to final conclusion, counting materials we needed, making up plans, which I didn't notice before. Since the Margarita is such a beautiful, full of ideas of participants and our own, great engagements with people, I will say Margarita is the best form I could ever imagine and certainly shows the interest of making unknown art work.