Beautiful

Saw this posted over on Cinematical. Absolutely stunning use of still photography to create the animation. The song is pretty good, but really would be nothing without the visuals. It makes me extremely happy to know that there are still plenty of people out there willing to take the time to make something so complex and beautiful. My roomate found a video of stills of London, I shall have to find it and add it to this post. Oh, how I wish I had the time to learn to do all these things. I guess I will jsut have to learn them later.

Happy Friday! I am making mushroom soup and going to a dinner party! I hope your weekend is just as lovely.

How To Make a Tuna Salad Sandwich

The second simple exercise in Symbology. I'm a vegetarian, so it was a bit awkward as I haven't really looked at tuna fish in a long time. I never liked it when I ate meat, anyway. I'm more of a fluffernutter girl, with raspberry preserves. Or grilled cheese, with some mustard on it. Yum!

I'm watching Billy Elliot while working on making some rough books for my book binding class. Hopefully I'll have some schnazzy three dimensional stuff to show off soon. This semester is a lovely combination of theory (Symbology), computer skill (Alias), process (Plastic Production), intellectual pursuits (Jewish-American Lit and 20th Century American Art), and hands-on skills (Book Binding). I love having such a variety, my brain gets to work in so many different ways. I think in words, images, sounds, and emotions.

I leave you with my favorite scene from Billy Elliot, the "angry" dance:

Quick exercise

Assignment: Take "institutionalized" symbols and make them into a uniform system. This probably isn't the "best" solution, but I wanted to be both playful and as different from the established signs. It's hard to fix symbols that have been so ingrained in our psyche. The class is "symbology and semiotics." We spent the first class learning the difference between icon, symbol, and index. Very interesting, but very theory-based and conceptual.

The charrette from the first week was eye opening. I have a manifesto to post soon, the result of my group's weeklong struggle with solving humans' energy problems. That will need a whole post to itself. More to come in the next week!

Starting out with a Bang

We've hit the ground running in the ID department, starting the year off with a 5-day charrette. It's all based around the Next Generation contest held by Metropolis. We're working with Interior Design majors. The past two days have consisted of a multitude of environmental lectures, from sustainability to better building processes. Hopefully something great will come of this.

I will have some amazing update when this madness is done. For now, I have to get some sleep and recharge for tomorrow's activities.