Sep 12

7 in 7 – Day 1 – Wire

Aside from time, I have two constraints for this project series:

  1. Theme: The Inherent Darkness of Fairy Tales
  2. Media: Each project will be in a different medium.

My first project is a barbed wire apple. It is the first in my series as a commentary on the inherent darkness of fairy tales. It represents the poison apple of Snow White. I used three different gauges of armature wire. I originally wanted barbed wire, but apparently when you ask for that in a hardware store, they look at you like you’re the Unabomber. Hardware men are a judgy folk. Instead I created my own barbed wire with the armature wire.

Wire1 Wire2

 

For future reference, the only place that carries barbed wire on this island of Manhattan is Chinatown Lumber. The smallest increment they will sell you is 50 yards.

 

Sep 11

In Support of Appropriations and Mashup Culture

We live in a culture that assigns great importance (rightly so) to recycling, reusing, and repurposing. The main purpose is to get the most out of our limited resources, to use the entire buffalo. A secondary purpose, which the concept of mash-ups certainly explores, is to not reinvent the wheel. There’s a great quote given by one of the toy designers in “Hacking, Mashing, Gluing: Understanding Opportunistic Design.” He says, “It’s never cheaper to start from scratch to make your own.” First, yeah, there’s no reason to develop the same technology that already exists or to break your back making a lesser version of a product that is commercially available. [Trash for Teaching in LA uses surplus items to teach kids about building and creating. Kids can invent and build with all these random materials that they don’t need to build from scratch.] Second, I think it’s telling and frames the entire argument that he didn’t say “or” as in “It’s never cheaper to start from scratch or make your own.” What he’s saying is that it is so not even remotely cheating, stealing, or anything nefarious by using a preexisting item. “It’s never cheaper to start from scratch to make your own.” You are still creating your own invention, you are still creating something new, even when employing elements of other people’s work.

Art is historically built on appropriation. The litigation surrounding art is a fairly recent development. I can certainly respect the fact that Jay-Z wants what should be coming to him, but let’s go back to early days of hip hop. We wouldn’t have this amazingly innovative and culturally significant art form without sampling, which can perhaps be understood as an early prototype of mashup culture. As long as time remains linear, we are meant to build on the things that come before us. We create new by exploring our history and all that exists around us. Danger Mouse is not criminal. He and Freelance Hellraiser and Norwegian Recycling and Girl Talk and countless others are all out there (or within the privacy of their bedrooms) grasping the best (or worst) of commercially viable music and creating something new, thereby elevating the original pieces and exploring their new poetic and profound qualities.

By grabbing the tailcoats of those who came before and resolutely refusing to let go, we can fly to new heights of creativity and creation.

**Jonathan Lethem has a great piece on art appropriation called “The Ecstasy of Influence: A Plagiarism” if you’re interested.

** Fabulous discussion of sampling and appropriation in David Foster Wallace’s fantastic Signifying Rappers.

Sep 11

Mashup Response

For the readings on mashups, I thought about how interesting it was to explore a term that seems relatively in its infancy, even within the realm of new media design. It seemed like a lot of the authors didn’t want to tie it down to one specific thing, however they could concretely trace the history of the term in video and music. That being said, I think that the historical definition is too limiting, especially concerning early developments in web. One article sited tailored shopping experiences, photo scraping and geographic data. I like the idea of using mapping data, since it’s essentially a permanent  and open data source, but I’m not sure if social data sources are as reliable and permenant as we think they are.

I particularly liked the articles that dealt with physical mashups. I think that is a good push in expanding the definition of mashups.

Sep 11

7 of 7in7

For the last project my constrain was to redesign touch screen buttons, without replacing their functionality with gestures. That basically means, that I just wanted to make a uniform visual scheme for using buttons in mobile apps. The reason I picked this was because I was thinking about how most mobile designers are trying to move as far away from the aesthetic of the touch button (the app Clear would be a good example). However, I wanted to play devil’s advocate, and thus viewed this direction as running away from the problem of mobile designers not being able to settle on one visual style. So I tried to make a flat style button that still felt like a button. I added dimension to the down state of the button and designed a variety of different icons that could be used in a gamebutton

comp2 comp1 Blur-2

Sep 11

7 in 7 — Day 7 — Thinking about Apple’s new product ‘iPhone 5c’

steve jobs 5c

 

Yesterday Apple has a new product published — iPhone 5c, it is colorful, like nano, I curious about if Jobs knows this new product, how would he think about iPhone turns to colorful? So, I did this wallpaper.

Sep 11

7 in 7 — Day 6 — First contact with Arduino

_MG_2022 copy

 

I did a RGB light with Arduino. When I saw it shining, I’m exciting.

Sep 11

7 in 7 Day 1 – DIY LA tour Eiffel

Today, it is my first day of 7 in 7 project. I decided to use my trash to make my own Eiffel Tower. Also, my roommate works at Rag&Bone. Everyday, she uses different fabrics to create her own dress collection. So, i added some of fabrics on my eiffel tower:

 

First, I picked some bottles from my trash to create my own eiffel tower. Also, I washed them. After that, I cut some of them to make up my eiffel tower. FInally, I started to stick each one to finalize my Eiffel Tower:

photo 3photo 1photo 4photo 2photo 3photo 2photo 4photo 5

 

Sep 11

Week 3 – Reading Assignment Day 2

Week 3 – Reading Assignment Day 2

 

I believe that the Mashup Readings for Week 3 can be framed really well in context with Monday’s reading on Prototyping. To frame this context we jump from he representational role of prototyping to the tangent role of problem solving. There is a clear theme in almost all of the mashup readings that edges one to more dynamic thinking when it comes to electronic interaction.

 

Beyond the shameless plug of Professor Brucker-Cohen’s work in Michael Hohl’s, “Calm Technologies 2.o: Visualizing Social Data as an Experience in Physical Space”, I think these works show a very interesting methodology for changing computer interaction (both giving and receiving information) with the user. While I could see how some might view these attempts at correlating the ethereal experience of the Internet to the physical as a reduction of technological expression, it has merit towards changing the way we perceive information.  At the end of the day is a drill being activated every time a website is viewed any different then having a desktop app that acts as a counter for the same information? We could argue that one might have a more clear and concise representation of information, but they both provide the same data.

 

Redirecting the subject back to the idea of prototyping I like how the musical “mashup” produced by Danger Mouse was thrown into the equation. It helps to push you further out of the trap of electronic collaboration. As a fan of Danger Mouse (especially his work with MF Doom and Adult Swim), I may be slightly biased, but I think this album shows a willingness to blend technical exactness with the translucent nature of artistic expression. He kept to technical specs both in the nature of music production and the technical specs of the programs he was using, but allowed himself to really creatively express a blend of two different worlds. (four if you count technology to music and the two music groups)

Sep 11

7 in 7 — Day 5 — The Great Gatsby


g1 g2

 

Recently I watch a movie ‘The Great Gatsby’, I feel it is a good movie, so I did this just for fun. When she chooses the red heart, a romantic music will be show, the lyrics is’ Will you still love when I’m no longer young and beautiful?’, and when she chooses the money heart, another music is appear, the lyrics is ‘ Money, Money, Money, yeah-yeah.’

1 2 3

Sep 11

7 in 7 — Day 4 — Green Diet (Starbucks)

_MG_2015_MG_2019

 

 

 

I went to Starbucks to order a green tee frappuccino, and it is so sweet for me, so I realize although the frappuccino looks green, actually it is not ‘green’ for people’s healthy, so I make another bottle, full of grass, that means everyday we eat and drink should be healthy, I use pipes make these tow bottle together, it means natural and diet is like a cycle, we need to eat and drink healthy, and if we do that, it is better to natural.989o0p-[jkl;'