UN/RE/MAKE– or, rather, my capstone as a whole– began as a collection of the things I cared about, loved, spent a lot of time thinking about. For a month, I carried a small notebook in my pocket to record these things as they came to me. Each concept or object was written down free of association with any particular type of project or end goal, free of judgement, and without regard to whether they were important or just enjoyable. The idea was simply to identify things I care about.

At the end of that month, I wrote each of those notes out on a scrap of paper and spent a few evenings doing affinity mapping exercises– sorting them into sets based on different criteria and relationships. Through these exercises, I was able to identify a few key concepts that I found important enough to focus a project on: impermanence, change, relationship between past and present, and manipulation of purpose.