Ceven Knowles
Today, I bought paint for my bedroom. In the end I chose convenience. A few months ago, I wanted to work on a smooth gradient over the walls and ceiling. These days, I am excited to have any improvement at all. I don’t have the kind of time I thought I would. The blue I chose is the same as before and my favourite and it keeps things simple.
The city is waking up again. Even if the restrictions didn’t loosen, Berliners can’t stay inside during summers. I have just recently been able to have a proper work-life balance after five years of financial struggle. Right now, the air seems lighter all around.
I’ve been learning words to ideas I didn’t know how to talk about before: transformative learning theory, alchemical psychology, and social scuplture. These came from reading the dissertation, “For the Love of Reality: Social Sculpture as Self-Experiment” by Ivan Provisoire. I’ve always felt that life is art and then it suddenly made so much more sense to say LIFE=ART=RESEARCH.
The goal is to embrace a new epoch. I know where and how I want to see myself in 5 and 10 years. The plan is clear. These intentions provide a basis that will allow for most fluidity while adapting to a new vision:
Approximate geometry of the room to be redesigned.
As soon as the Covid lockdowns began, more people normalize working from home. We have learned to compromise mixing work and home, but do we maintain a sense of balance between practicality and comfort? This project will take my bedroom and redesign it into comfortable living and working spaces that need not exist simultaneously. The main furniture will serve multiple uses and can transform to fit my needs. I require a studio space, and office space, an entertainment space, and a comfortable bedroom.
My apartment currently has two flatmates and a dog. Each flatmate has their room, and we share the kitchen, bathroom, corridor, and living room. For basic computer work, I can use one of the other rooms, but there are times when I need to video chat, or use multiple displays, or even need to stand up working. I have a very large green screen that needs to be used for future projects. It should be easily assembled and disassembled, plus have enough light around it to be used optimally. Having the ability to link my computer to the Television is also helpful in some work.
The bed and side tables should move quickly to hold a wooden platform for a shooting stage on the bed. The mattress will be sunken into the wooden frame so that the platform above it can remain stable. Under the bed will be four constructed wooden boxes that fit into the available space under the bed.
The walls will be as bare as possible. The wood platform stage will hang on the longer wall when not in use. It should be easy to hang and unhang at any time. I will keep the same blue on the walls but explore it as a gradient that goes over the entire wall and ceiling space. Also, the lighting will be done with full colour and intensity programmable LED lamps.
The project has already begun, and I will update with that material soon. The projected timeline is the first week of March. I plan on documenting this project through a blog, along with the team I put together. There will be livestreams, podcasts, and blog updates about the process, furniture and painting designs, methods, and techniques used.