business cards

business cards i designed and printed in my letterpress class. *note* although i have registered the doman, it’s not active yet… but patience my pets, stuff is coming to www.aaank.com soon enough…

how to seek revenge on a photographer. (DIY documentation project)

sometimes people are assholes. sometimes those people are photographers. this is one way to deal.

(click image below to watch. will be on youtube once it’s done “processing” but this one is better quality…)

youtube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Np_cULYpPQE

make stamps out of arcade buttons and stamp the shit out of things. (DIY final)

the requirements for the DIY final were to make a tool for someone else. you could be part of the user group. (i am.) i turned an arcade button into a stamp.

user group defined
people who appreciate the nostaligia of arcade games/arcade game machines, and who like to stamp the shit out of things.

the final product
i made a lightning bolt stamp. when you depress the arcade button, the stamp comes down enabling stamping. well, its supposed to. i used too much glue and that part doesnt work. but i’m making a heart one for becky and that one will work. because becky is cute and nice and i like her hair. see the instructable.

note: i did not once harm myself in the creating of this project. i did almost cause an electrical fire, but it was entirely unrelated to this particular endeavor.

fun with etching (DIY in-class workshop)

heavy duty battery + salt + water + dremel a piece of metal + epoxy a litle bird onto piece of metal = i electrolytically etched a little bird!

see that little hole (top left)? i’m gonna string some chain through it so i can wear it like bling. bird bling.

process photos

big battery powering some chemical reaction with salt and water and stuff

chemical reaction mmm tasty…

you can’t always be a winner. (DIY midterm)

for the DIY midterm we were supposed to make something for ourselves, for our home. part of me wishes i was a product design kid. i’ve kind of always been jealous of them, and frank gehry, walking around with their functional carboard chairs. so,

pictures are linked. from left to right: frank gehry, designboom-instructions for carboard chairs by various designers, nick tretiak, student (lostspyder?) chair featured on MAKE blog.

full of hope and inspiration, i set out to create a cardboard chair of my own. it turned out to be more of a tower. for barbie. oh le failure. see the flickr set for more photos.

oh and check out all the times i cut myself.

not sure how i managed to puncture my arm, but what can i say, i’m good like that.

run wrake

in narrative strategies today, olivia showed this short film called jukebox by run wrake. when i searched for it on youtube, i came across another one of his/her/their movies, rabbit, which i had just recently seen at the animation show…

jukebox

rabbit

narrative strategies: find fable; see doug aitken

assignment 2 part 1 find a 4-5 page narrative, story, fable, or news story that you think best illustrates the kind of stories you are fascinated and inspired by.

assignment 2 part 2 do a narrative analysis of Doug Aitken: sleepwalkers, which is currently being projected outside the MoMA.

letterpress: reading

earl highly recommended these books by rebecca salter…

letterpress: what came first, the lobster or the ank?

today we got to print with metal type! sadly today is the only day…

first comes lobster

then comes ank

here’s a photo of siu using the press and earl with the drawer of metal type.

steve, siu, and earl, all admiring siu’s good work..

narrative strategies: notes from class 2

modes of representation
we spent the first part of class talking about modes of representation, and how did digitization change modes of representation. some notes are below.

• people like stories because it is a famliar mode of representation
• modes of representation could be thought of as ‘the arts’, ‘the media’, ‘ways in which human beings represent themselves.’
• modes of representation emerge out of a particular use of a medium.
• someone called something realistic. to that, mark said that the use of the word ‘realism’ is complicated. he went on to explain that in animation, it’s considered fantasy, or detailing which evokes audience’s familiarity with what they know as realistic but may not expect from an animation.
• animation can now imitate cinema as a result of digitization. the language of cinema, at least in part, is camera movement, and now, animation programs can do that with ease.
• digital photography created a panic. photography was/is representational, and trusted. the creation of programs like photoshop, made it easy to subvert that realistic representation, yet somehow we still trust photography.
• newspapers[front page doesn't carry one single story on the front page], broadcast[voice and image], comic books[ex. writers & readers..?].
• radio & music are modes of representation which liberate us from the image. they use pure voice. radio founded itself on the fact that it could broadcast music.
• mark said he considers music a mode of representation but it is debatable. music is least bound by cultural stereotypes. music is not a representation of the real, it is the antithesis of photography. There can be a translation of the real in the aftermath of music.

at the very end of class we watched a few short avante garde films from the dvd below. i think they were duchamp. maybe they were man ray. i can’t remember.

artists/people that came up in discussion…

janet cardiff
bill viola
ron flaherty