Aesthetic Systems

To develop projects whose outcome represents an advancement in your own work (i.e. to advance in artistic, technical or contentual areas) and possibly surprising to yourself an organized iterative approach is vital. This means to us:

* The creative process as a continuous research in which results emerge from purposeful experiments rather than from unsystematic jamming
* Applying the divide and conquer principle
i.e. splitting up a yet unclear concept into smaller logical sub-problems while gradually converging to and readjusting your vision

Applying this to our project management methods, this leads to the following structure of alternating planning and production phases.

1. Idea

• brainstorm and discuss to develop an initial idea
• roughly define the boundaries of the project
• reflect on the idea by facing the necessary steps (technical, artistic, contentual) between your current position and your goal

2. Plan

• check the feasibility against your timeframe and eventually readjust your idea
• plan sketches and experiments to examine sub-problems of the idea

3. Experiment

• execute the sketches and develop sub-solutions
• explore neighbouring fields of interest

4. Concept

• develop the concept from the initial idea and the conclusions of the experiments
• plan the production schedule

5. Production

• follow the production plan
• if you encounter unforeseen problems apply the divide and conquer principle again which most likely means another (quick) round of planning and experimenting followed by readjusting the concept

6. Feedback

• critically examine the finished product and its development process
• develop further ideas from the experiences made during the production and the experiments

• divide the day into 1-3 focussed working sessions of 1-3 hours each
• each session needs to be followed by a 30min - 1h break somewhere else than on your desk
• define a clear task for each session
• make it clear when you start or end a session. keep record.
• turn off email, instant messaging, unused processes and other sources of noise
• answer your email, browse the web and chat only inbetween sessions
• dont interrupt the other one when its not time-pressing
• communicate important things and news in written messages
• when others show up and ask for help, make an appointment with them for after your current session
• have a 15mins chat about topics and status in the morning, after lunch and before dinner
• explain to yourself and the other one what you plan to do, how long you expect it to take, and why.
• avoid having these chats during meals
• end the working day with dinner
• fill 1.5 to 2 days of the weekend with completely different stuff