%title Matt's Ideal Workspace
%date 2008-05-08 04:20:22
:diary:livejournal:fossils:

A room, wide open and brightly lit by picture windows along one wall houses all that is needed for a compositional workspace.  The walls are white, with wall-hangings and a few pictures added here and there to liven the place up a little without distracting from it.  On one wall is a whiteboard with a few colored markers on it.  The whiteboard has four staves marked on it with narrow strips of black electrical tape, good for scribbling quick ideas down as they come.  In front of the picture windows is an architect's drafting table set fairly high with a tall, armless swivel-chair in front of it.  In the tray are several pens, a few weighty mechanical pencils with different color leads in them, erasers, and a marker or two.  On one side of the table is a stack of wire baskets with different sized pieces of staff paper, a few pads of post-it notes, and some lined paper to take notes on and tape to the masonite boards.  The wire baskets sit on top of a two-high set of filing drawers filled with random things.  Next to the drawers, a keyboard sits on a stand with speakers and a small sound-system below it.  On the other side of the table is a tall desk with a tower computer and a dual-monitor setup, with a MIDI cable being run under the tray of the drafting table to the keyboard and sound being run to the sound system.  Behind the desk sits a table with a large laserjet printer on it, holding 11"x17" paper, legal paper, and letter paper.  On the end of the desk is a hand-made rack holding several large pieces of masonite board,  each labeled with a piece of masking tape folded over around an edge.  The boards can be set on the drafting table, and on each is a different project: a sheet of butcher paper covers the surface of the board to allow writing anywhere on it, with scraps and sheets of idea-filled staff paper and post-it notes taped on in such a way as to allow one to graphically connect ideas by drawing a line between them.  This way, one can switch between projects easily by just swapping out masonite boards - when one is done with a project, the bucher paper can be taken off and rolled up to be put in a mailing tube for storage.  A hand-made wood and cloth folding screen sections off this 'studio' - the wood is stained almost black with the cloth remaining white except for a few stylized drawings of bamboo along the bottom edge.

I was originally planning on just hanging the butcher paper from the wall and working there, but Shannon lent me a piece of masonite, so I came up with that idea and switched to a staff-lined whiteboard.

Post your own ideal workspace or studio.  It's a meme now :3