a sampling of composing spaces

JS: Okay. Let’s look at the overall process sketch. Some of the questions I have about that might be answered here.

MB: Okay. The perspective is weird. I was in the second row sitting right here. You’re lecturing, you’re talking about something, I don’t know what. I just thought it was really weird that, like, each person is alive and thinks various ideas, that whole thing. I just thought it was weird. Then you assigned the [history of “this” space] assignment so I thought it was weird that you’d assigned something like that. I got my idea early and then I couldn’t figure out how to put it together. . .


Then one day I was [MB laughs] sitting on the toilet, so that’s my bathroom, and figured out how to do my history. I thought it was kind of weird. I don’t know I thought this whole project was kind of weird.

JS: All right and in—okay what exactly is this? The floor?

MB: That’s bathroom tile, a towel, the door.



JS: Okay.

MB: And this was when I typing away at my computer. Um, I’d type up whatever the class had written out. After typing it, I’d kind of scramble it up.

JS: Okay, um, when you were working here, you were inputting the information, scrambling it and color-coding it at this location. How long did that take?

MB: A long time. I don’t know like it took a lot longer than I thought it would take cause if you do a good job scrambling then these things turn out a lot better. At the beginning they were really nice but the more and more I would do it, it was just too much work and it became really, really confusing.


So this one was the first time I went to Kinko’s and I used the backlight and started cutting [the paper decoder keys]. I did five of them. That was the whole day, I ate, slept, took a bath, came back the next day and did three more. I did pretty much of the whole project there. All around here, the little pieces I’m cutting out. [JS and MB laugh] That’s the knife I used. There was a big window in front of me, a really big window. Um, there were like stores and bars [across the street].

JS: You were on campus?


MB: Yeah. I’m this guy right here [MB points to center of the image]. This is my reflection in the window. You can kind of see the eyes right there, the mouth, My shoulders. This is, like, from my view. I could see myself in the window. This is 6th Street. The one that goes north-south.

JS: Um, who is this? [JS points to the figure right looking in]

MB: Some guy who stopped to look at me. [JS and MB laugh] All these people were going out to the bars. It was like two or one in the morning and it looked like they were having fun. I was pretty frustrated. I’d been there since like ten pm, just cutting up the keys. There weren’t many people in Kinkos cause this was a Sunday night.

JS: Did anybody in Kinko’s come by and ask you what you were doing? Were they paying attention to you?

MB: No, it was just like all these people were just walking by outside. There was like tons of people walking by and I felt really bad cause I was stuck here doing this. But that one guy stopped. I think he was drunk, I’m not sure. He looked kind of weird. I just kept noticing a lot people and got more frustrated.

JS: Okay. Did you do anything to cope with that frustration?

MB: No. I would stop and pause, look out the window and see what people were doing. But that just made me more frustrated cause I realized I was stuck here. And I had to finish it that night cause it was due the next day.