EXQUISITE CORPSE AND THE IPO PROJECT. VISUAL RESEARCH COLLABORATIONS. PARSONS THE NEW SCHOOL FOR DESIGN, NYC, TSINGHUA UNIVERISITY , BEIJING & SYDNEY COLLEGE OF THE ARTS, THE UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY

This paper addresses the IPO, Input-Process-Output model that was the pedagogical basis for a collaborative research course between Parsons and TU in May/June 2009. This cross discipline and cultural research collaboration included students & faculty from Design & Technology, Photography, Communication Design, Industrial Design, Fine Arts, Fashion Marketing, Interior Design, Design & Management, Product Design and Arts & Crafts. The collaboration involved students from freshmen to final year MFA.The goal of the collaboration was to produce real working art & design prototypes, installations and pieces. IPO was developed to advance new research methodologies in creative practice and was a development of a prior project, the Exquisite Corpse (EC). EC was a 12 month visual research collaboration between BFA & MFA students in Photography at Parsons and BVA, MVA and PhD students at Sydney College of the Arts, The University of Sydney. The project took as its premise the surrealist notion of the exquisite corpse, one idea must shed to reveal the next. At the heart of the project are the two cities, NYC and Sydney. A city imagined, indigenous history, colonial contemporary city living and transience became the basis of the participant’s investigation. Commencing in NYC in January 08 with a residency at Parsons, the project participants worked collaboratively in small groups, passing work back and forth to produce photographic images, performance, sire specific installations and more, all from the premise of photographic practice. Each group was asked to formulate work based on the initial conceptual parameters and text they had been assigned. Each group then inherited the work of another group and was asked to 'corpse' that work into a new work. This process was repeated until all of the groups had rotated through each of the three conceptual parameters. Outcomes were exhibited in both NYC & Sydney. At the core of the IPO model is the fundamental design pattern of how information is processed and differentiated by humans and electronic devices such as computers. Information must be entered into the system, processed using available and relevant procedures and finally outputted in either a virtual or physical form. Critical to this methodology is the initiation of a collaborative system that enables the participants to use the IPO framework along with a set of tools, mediums and conceptual ideas to develop critical thinking, information design and conceptually driven virtual and physical realization of ideas with analog and digital as its loci. Students, placed in small groups of both Parsons and TU students focused on all three areas of the IPO model at different times throughout the four-week period. The IPO model gave students a valuable working knowledge of collaborative and cross-cultural design and art practices. Connections where created between daily language courses, cultural observation, exploration throughout the city, studio production work, corporate, non-profit organizations and artist collaborations. In addition an archive, a collectively assembled outcome via photography, video, and web, was produced.