From the reading, "Play as Research: The Iterative Design Process" Design is a way to ask questions. Design research, when it occurs through the practice of design itself, is a way to ask larger questions beyond the limited scope of a particular design problem.

Iterative design is a design methodology based on a cyclic process of 
       proto-typing, testing, analyzing, and refining a work in progress.

Another way of framing this problem is to ask, What is the activity of the game? 
Rather than asking what the game is about, ask what the player is actually doing 
           from moment to moment as they play.

Core Mechanic

First Week of Research

I spent most of my time this first week finding a point of entry into my topic PVC. Though my first instinct was fetish, I thought that that might be too easy, and that I wouldn't push myself to be uncomfortable. But time is running out. And I think that once I gain contact with my experts (listed below), I will make a discovery and find an opportunity to experiment. The following is just a series of brainstorms and collected images.

The Call

• Images from fetish clothing's past (?and future?)
• Greening fetish ==> this is looking less likely that I will follow on environmental
• Good Vibrations Arts Festival

Brainstorms

• What questions to ask:
  • when did PVC become an erotic object?
  • what is an erotic object?
  • why do people like being encased in plastic?
  • why is PVC clothing so expensive?
  • can one get the PVC-look without the plastic?
  • what is it about shiny things that turn people on

Eroticism Futurism ==> futuristic clothing

does mainstream fashion influence latex fetishwear or does fetishwear influence mainstream fashion?

fashion history important spikes in time around when PVC clothing started to be manufactured

Experiments

• Make something with PVC fabric
  • where is it sold? ==> question to ask at Purple Passion

Taxonomy

(classification system; I guess this is the place where we work with the operations mentioned on the syllabus)

• I think this will fit well with Metonymy and False Mythology

• "fluency in the semiotics of dress"

Experts:

• Latex designers/rubberists/PVC enthusiasts
• fashion historians
• fetish historians
• people at FIT and Parsons
• Jo Boobs Weldon
• Purple Passion: manager, associates
• World Famous *Bob*
• Ask the publisher of 21st Century Burlesque
• Valerie Steele
• Julia Pine
• Stoya
• Molly Crabapple
• VenusNoire

To Do: - find stores that sell latex/PVC clothing - Purple Passion - Trash & Vaudeville (according to Yelp.com) - re-read Fetish and the Art of the Teese - research John Willie

John Willie Research

• publisher of Bizarre Magazine, the first magazine in America that catered to the country's fetish community
• Bizarre started in 1946 ==> right after the end of World War II
  • resurgance of burlesque in the 1990s and mid-2000s
• Remembrant of Pulp
• "fluency in the semiotics of dress"
• Most popular bondage comic strips: Sweet Gwendoline with the villian Sir Dystic d'Arcy
• "fashion fantasia" ==> Julia Pine

Ideas of Objecs to make:

• an erotic object
  • instead of shiny dull ==> try to dull PVC
  • can I buy a yard of PVC?
• a body part of PVC {costume as performance} ==> quote from Jo Boobs about Leigh Bowery {costume as sexual act}
• a pvc item that is a vibrator ==> but can't I buy that in a store?
• a PVC clothing item that is a vibrator I think when I know my central question this will be easier