Medium Specificity

 

The medium I chose to use was an application entitled “Planner 5D.”  I found it when I was researching different art technologies that can be used. It immediately caught my eye because I’ve been thinking a lot about home layouts lately.  There really is an art to interior design and structure. This app helps you plan out the design of many different types of rooms.  There are pre-setup wall templates you can use, or you can dictate the exact dimensions you want to plan for.  After that, you can choose what color you want the walls, if you want wallpaper, what you want on the walls etc.  I was surprised at the amount of options they gave! You could select furniture from a list of options which were sorted by room and type of furniture.  You could then organize this furniture and various decorations however you wanted in the room.

            I think that what I created serves as a celebration of the medium, as I was exploring the many ways to use it.  I chose to recreate from memory part of my high school theatre classroom.  It was fun to think back to what was in the classroom and what we used.  At times I had to adjust to use furniture that was provided in the app instead of what it looked like exactly.  In the end, I think I came up with a pretty close vibe to what I experienced in that classroom.  It was funny to me thinking of how many random furniture items we had in the room.  It probably was stressful to some students, but to me the chaos sometimes led to creativity as we had so much we could work with.

This application could be used by both teachers and students.  Teachers could use this medium to plan out their own classroom or to plan out set designs for shows.  I would love my students to use this in a design unit to create a set and then present it.  In my English classes, it would be so fun to have them create the setting from a book they are reading. 

Some limitations of this app are that it’s really hard to share the renderings.  The full 3-D animated renderings require additional purchases, so in order to share images you will still have the settings on the side of the picture.  Another limitation is that, although there are a ton of furniture options, there are not unlimited selections.  In order to get more options, you have to purchase a higher version of the application.  However, I think for a classroom setting it could serve its purpose and it might even be good that there aren’t tons of styles.  That way, they have to get more creative with what is provided for them.

When using this in the classroom, it would be useful to discuss the language and analysis of interior design.  By discussing the use and function of color scheme or layout, students can then analyze and respond to each other’s creations in more informed ways.