Stone Soup at UC Davis!

     Stone Soup in Design 1 was a great success. Seven bright minds worked together to create the most bizarre and beautiful sculpture of all. Everyone in our group brought art supplies, and then put our heads together to make the most daring creation. Though we barely knew each other, communication was great as we worked to incorporate our different ideas. It was a great communal feel because every person already had a contribution to the project by the bringing of supplies. Our group of seven was a good number for the task, anymore would have made it hard for everyone to have a voice and the end result would have been more messy and disorganized, with a less refined vision.

    We started off with everyone taking whatever materials they liked and making their own element to be incorporated into the final design. Then we all evaluated what everyone had made and tried to see how it would all fit together. Someone has started with a basic foundation, others with other decorative and structural elements. We started with the cardboard foundation, building more structural elements on top like twisted water bottles and then adding Christmas ornaments, roses and paint splatters. The fact that we were limited to only the supplies we had compiled also gave us a creative challenge to create a sculpture that would stay together using non-traditional structural elements.

    The great thing about stone soup is that it's like combining the creative process and the critique into one so that its a faster path to creation. Feedback on proposed elements of the design is immediate and you get instant advice on how to better incorporate your idea into the design or change it to better it suit it.
    I learned a lot from Stone Soup, most importantly that that the creative input of others is invaluable in the design process. If design was always limited to one person's vision with no input from anyone else, it would make for a very narrow vision indeed and pose a risk for serious design flaws that that designer wasn't called out on. More input and ideas from more people is only a good thing because it results in a more interesting, eclectic and sophisticated result that is more likely to resonate with more people. Great design is not just created by and for oneself, but for other people to enjoy.