Ego by Takashi Murakami

My sister is out of school for a week so I decided to take her to the Murakami exhibit at AlRiwaq art space, in front of the Museum of Islamic Art. I didnt think anything would be able to top Cai Guo-Qaing‘s fireworks show for at least a while, but I was wrong; this exhibit was fantastic. In one room there was this huge circus tent, with flower cushions on the floor and we sat on them and watched anime for half an hour.. I felt like I was in a completely different universe.. All I could think about during the whole experience was Bruce Sterling’s talk about “suspending disbelief”.. today was the first time I suspended my disbelief.. it was an amazing feeling.

On the way out the lady at the front desk handed my sister and I this build it yourself paper doll.. we enjoyed putting it together ourself

Visual Interface Design

For my elective this semester I signed up for a graduate level graphic design class called Visual Interface Design. The class meets once a week, for six hours at a time. I honestly was really worried about that, but after attending the first class I was be happy with the way things played out. In this class we are doing 8 weeks of mini projects, at the end of 8 weeks we will choose one of our mini projects to expand into an 8 week final project. We are required to keep some form of journal for this class, and since our teacher suggested a tumblr, and I already had one I wasnt using, I decided to start posting my work there.

Above is an image from last weeks iPhone App design. I designed an App called In My City that basically tells you all the events going on in your city.

So far we’ve done 4 projects, I’m not sure if any of them really scream final project yet.. we shall see.

 

 

From Nora

Sometimes its really nice being “known” for something.

M&M: The Birds Nest

In our materials and methods (M&M) class we started the semester learning about natural materials. For our lab portion of the class, we were given two weeks to learn our way around the woodshop and build a container. I decided to build a birds nest. I used pine, I cut it into strips, sanded it, stained it with charcoal, and finally waxed it. For a person who cried twice while working in the woodshop, I think I did just fine.

During critique we discussed changing up the attachment method.. by either using a ton more string, or none at all. When I get a free minute I’ll see what I can do.

Design Studio Two: Future Prototype – Part One

Our assignment was to write the story of the future, and then to represent it visually somehow. Above is my visualization of a newspaper ad for a public shelter, I based it on the image above it from the 1950 cold war fall our shelters. Below is my story. I’d like to point out that unlike most science fiction about the future I don’t believe that people will somehow evolve into either transcendent beings, or creepy creatures living in the underworld. To me people of the future will still strive to create a better world to live in, but certain things like conflict are a big part of being human, and those things will still exist.

Margot’s favorite place in the world is her bedroom. Her father, an architect with BioMimica, designed and built it just for her. The walls are made of transparent nano prisms, that make it so she cen see as far into the city as her eyes will allow. But that is not her favorite part of the special walls her father designed; Margot’s room can also sense her mood by measuring the pressure her feet place on the floor as she walks. Using this information the room shifts the tiny prisms to refract sunlight and change the colors of the room to match her mood. When Margot is angry she often stomps around her room causing rapid shifts in the nano structures, sending rays of contrasting colors shooting throughout the house. However, she finds it somewhat hard to stay mad for very long, and her rooms color often balances out rather quickly.

Though Margot is home alone today, her room shines in a magnificent glow of violet, she is happy. But suddenly, as her thoughts drift to the conversation she had  with her father that morning the room shifts into an almost psychedelic kaleidoscope of of colors. The idea of going down into the public shelter both scared and excited her. Her father had shown her the article about the shelter on his flexitab, then he spent a great deal of time explaining how it to navigate her way to the nearest shelter to their home “public shelter 011″ if anything should happen. He carefully commanded the evacuation procedures into the tab, first he told it to collapse the prism structures in her walls, turning the walls opaque. Then he instructed her tab to illuminate its surface making it easy for her to find, he continued to speak, but the little girl couldnt help picturing all the fun games she could play with the other children in the shelter, and she stopped listening to fer father all together.

The room was still spitting out fantastic shades of jade, maroon, and pink, when suddenly the room went dark, and her tab lit up. Gripped by the panic the situation had stirred in the little girl, Margot stood frozen. She searched her memories for  what her father had said to do next, but her thoughts were shapeless and confusing. Somehow through the panic, she noticed the tab flashing on and off, it was her fathers face on the screen. She swiped across its front, and his voice filled her heart as the prerecorded message echoed the evacuation steps that he tried to teach her that morning.

If the room had been able to light up, it would have shined a radiant yellow, she had hope.