Checking in

The getting-closer-to-finished user matrix:

And I decided to try KBen’s suggestion of inverting everything (even the already inverted inverts…heh)…  they are perty.

  

an old section… drawing… whatever.

New piece of really ridiculously long section (224 inches long x 8 inches high) that doesn’t tell me squat:

Seriously, this section actually melted my screen.  Feel like I am just re-working the same thing over and over.  I have no idea what to introduce here.  I think I’ve been doing the same thing for so long that I’ve lost all interest in even thinking about it.  Either that or the melty illustrator screen has infected my brain and it is getting melty too.  Maybe I’ll find something in a dream… 

New Swamp Stuff…

Well, new things are afoot.  Although I haven’t yet decided how to finish them… or if they need some extra tweaking.

New User Matrix – the icons should probably be smaller and perhaps something else, but I’m leaving it for now:

New diagrams – I decided to re-do the whole thing.  Scanning and sizing the old ones looked pretty dumb and would probably take longer than just doing it over.  I stayed with B&W for now… might change later.  I haven’t decided about the composite maps yet which will probably go on the bottom:

Matrix of traces…  Even though it is by far not done, I still love how they look.  Since right now it’s just basically two sets of the same information, I will end up having to get rid of part of it, but I’m working on how to give it hierarchy…  :

Next on the list… detailed and scaled map, sections… decisions.  But I switch to the rep animation for now…  working on the lighting and motion of the various devices.  

And what the hell is wrong with this internet connection…  tempermental, it is.

Swamp visit – take 3

Tribute to Messy Ecosystems

Thought I would put a pic up of the model for Frank’s class.  I don’t know why, but my models for his classes always come out very nice.  Fairly normal, but nice.  We’re working on designs for the new courtyard area at hilltop.  We’re in the modernist phase, so I was working toward a cubist design after my favorite Kandinsky.  I used one of his paintings to think about program and spatial areas.  And I used one of his markings based on Lotte Jacobi’s dance pictures (no credit given in the book, thank you very much) for the circulation.  I would like the design to mimic the dance…  using echoes of the elements and sweeping motions.  I’m using a mixture of prairie grasses – swishing and blowing in the breeze – to fill out the plant palette.  I think that the design will be pretty decent in the end.  I really like this class and it actually feels like we’re learning something. 

 

And a veggie burger stain, reinterpretted…  I may use this for rendering inspiration.

Hopefully I will get a lot accomplished on the swamp situation over the next week.  Who knows… maybe I’ll even clean my computer!

Overintense fantasy

 

I think I just got into the studio project.  First I decided to watch the Pervert’s Guide to Cinema (which is part of class, not some random thing I picked out) while working on my planting design.  It was actually pretty good and I stopped it before it was over so I can take it home and really watch it.

Some quotes that I think I should remember…

“events on the screen threaten to overthrow and grab us, the spectator.  The fantasy space gets too intense and reaches out toward us so that we lose ourself.”

“is it the brutal real that disturbs us or is it our fantasy?”

“we escape into a dream to avoid a dead look into our real life but then what we encounter in the dream is even more horrible so at the end we escape from the dream back into reality.”

“[it begins] dreams are for those who are not strong enough, who cannot endure reality and ends with reality is for those who are not strong enough to endure, to confront their dreams.”

the uncanny = where the fantasy space is already disintegrating but we are not yet back to reality

“Flowers should be forbidden from children.”

“The male fantasy can never catch up to the female fantasy.”

That was a lot, but I’m sure there are more when I’m actually paying attention.

Second bit of ah-ha space.  I figured I should try to do some of the digging about the site and after quite a bit of tangled research by using antipodal mapping (is that what it’s called?) I found that our site is actually linked to Atlantis.  Wow.  It doesn’t sound as good when I say it like that…  let’s try again.  Our site, located at 30d24′40.29″N 91d10′48.16″W is directly antipodal to 30d24′40.29″S 88d49′11.84″E which is right at the convergence of the African, Indian and Antarctic crustal plates on the mid oceanic ridge.  This is also said to be where “Kumari Kandam” or “Lemuria”, ancient land of paradise, sunk into the seas…  I believe that Nicole’s psychic abilities were active when she put up her comic last year…  “we’re lemurs!  LEMURS!”

 

In other news, I’m looking into Night Gardens for plant design and I’m really excited about the new shampoo I splurged on today.  No word on the rest of that list…  I’ll try again tomorrow.

Friday… er, rather Saturday

Where did this week go?  And how did this list of things get so long?  (Actually, I think it’s the same list from last week…  it looks the same anyway…)

Studio is just weird.  I can’t tell if I like it or hate it.  I like that we get to be weird… having psychics out to read the site, geomancy, looking for ghosts and UFOs and lines that don’t exist.  But there’s something annoying about being told to be strange… takes the fun out of it.  (maybe?)  Perhaps it’s just upping the ante…  now strange / weird isn’t enough…  have to be ridiculous.  Pics…

   

   

KBen keeps talking about all these “details” he wants us to do.  I was thinking of doing some sort of weird series with the photos.  Among (or is it amongst… I always get them confused) other things, I was taking pics of things that we can “hook” stuff to at the site.  Thinking maybe of doing a layout with the pics in color, then black and white, then a “detail” drawing of it.  Keep them small, say 2×3-ish.  I think it might be kind of perty.  We’ll see.  Not sure that is what KBen was talking about, but who really knows what he’s talking about most of the time… heh.

Tomorrow…  studio strangeness, plant design, some balloon / helium shopping, reading and more reading trying to get that thesis statement, think about STW (studio that was) and hopefully do something with it, research for Cat and…. hybrids.  Oh, yeah and have a lots of time left over to finish that rep animation…  and laundry… and buy ink.  What is this?  A grocery list?  Oh, and that too.  Bleh.  I hate shopping.

This video is just cool

Whirlwind week

Whew.  Glad this week is over. Actually I think it may have been two weeks, but who’s counting?  Let’s see here… what’s been happening?  I’ll go backwards.

Yesterday was the studio exhibition.  I have to say that it was awesome.  Finally a group project that seemed to just work.  There was not much fighting which I contribute to our excellent class of head-strong yet pensive peeps.  Everything looked beautiful and we even had a visit from the dean…  I don’t really know about the response to the projects, whether they were understandable or not.  Honestly, I just wasn’t into mine that much – more interested in the hybrids class.  But I was really glad to see that some people in our class, who haven’t been really excited about projects recently, get into this one.  In my opinion, it was their energy that made this project shine.  I’ll post more pics at a later time – took video of it with the hybrids contraption, so that should be fun.

Hybrids…  crazy vids coming out of that class.  I suppose I need to go shopping for a rolly device to put the camera on.  Animation is due on Thursday and I might pull out my hair.  (Hopefully tugging on it will just make it longer, not fall out.)  See the hybrids page http://hybrids4504.wordpress.com/ for more weirdness.

Plant design…

I really need to find a style of rep that I like.  I’ve been using watercolor on my layouts and, while I like some of it, I think I would benefit from lifting some ideas from others.

Research methods…  that class is the bane of my existence.  I have a bibliography that is 8 pages long, but I can’t write a damn thesis statement to save my life.  This is what happens when your brain just refuses to think.  Until I get some serious down time, I fear that this class will continue to suck the life right out of me.

Structures / Construction class, whatever it is.

Ah, the balloon madness.  Very very cool stuff. 

The launch…

And a slide show from the booklet…

So, onwards and upwards I guess.  Why are weekends only 2 days long?  When is the US going to adopt the 4 day work week?

Smoke and Mirrors

Hmmm… studio…  a device that reads something about the landscape (garden, shoe, whatever) and gives a readable output which can be used to map the space.  The stranger the better, it seems.  The device doesn’t really have to work, we just have to make up a story that could be plausible at some point.  My device…  combo of sound meter and gaze tracker.  Reads the glance…  creates a map of distraction.  It sounds fine, but it’s been a struggle to create anything.  Some pics below of a piece of the device, some little study models I made of the “output” and a diagram that I made about what’s supposed to be happening.  I have a vid of my eye, but I need to edit it before I can post cuz it appears that I can’t stay awake for more than a minute and my eye surely shows it.
      

 

Some little sketches from Plant Design class…

   

Hybrids…

Having a struggle with trying to make an armature for my camera that has mirrors on it.  I have a base put together, but the mirrors are proving difficult.  I think I will need 5 – behind, ceiling, floor, peripheral right and peripheral left.  I think they need to be adjustable which is part of the problem right now.  What this is going to prove, I’m not sure… I’m starting to waiver on the idea a bit.  Kind of liked the auditory approach that Allen suggested (Brad hinted at it before that too…)  Distortion…  kind of fun.

So I have distraction and distortion…  kind of fitting.

device… device… device… device…device

What are the options for making a mark, something that makes a tangible record?  I had something going in my brain about reflection and then it just went bleh. 

Camera obscura… light sensitive paper…  ink… chalk… lead… dragging my feet in the mud…  memory foam… plaster casting… ugh. 

     

I like the reflections… the distortion… the multiple views combining… seems like it would fit… 

but making a record? 

I hate it when I hear the trash truck outside…  it means I need to go home.