Flickr Update!

Our CLEAN studio! We'll see how long it stays that way. . .


This was my set up for Final review. For more pics, check out my Flickr site using the link below!

More Cool Stuff From Flickr

Check out this Flickr site by Dominika Naborowska. She also has a blog also.

Bad Blogging Habits

Megan says Jan is teaching the class bad blogging habits. Use the link button to make links in your post!
Thanks Megan!

Give Make Swap Pics!

Check out photos from Saturday's Give Make Swap event!
givemakeswap.blogspot.com

Cool Stuff on Flickr

Found these through a contact on Flickr.

Give Make Swap

For info about our big event coming up on this Saturday, check out our blog at: givemakeswap.blogspot.com
Hope to see you Saturday!

Snorg Tees

Ok, so this add came up on Myspace, but I think a lot of these T-shirts are really clever and funny. Check it out at snorgtees.com.
Steve, this one's for you:

Tagged!

So I was tagged by http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif Now you will all know for real, how uninteresting I am:
1. I got stitches in my eye-lid when I was 2. I don't remember any of it, apparently I slid under the coffee table and cut myself pretty bad.

2. Speaking of groundhogs, I'm from Western PA and have never been to Punxetauny for Ground Hog Day. It's maybe an hour from where I grew up. It makes me feel like a bad Western Pennsyvanian. It's not that I don't want to go, I've just never been.

3. I was in Science Olympiad in High School and my senior year my partener and I won 2nd place in the state for the bird event. We lost first place by two points. I had a gut feeling that it was a Carolina Chickadee,'cause that's that kind of thing our coach would do, but we over thought it, went with Northern(?) Chickadee and lost first by 2 points. Seriously, I've forgotten more about science than most people learn in a life time.

4. I think anyone who chooses to live in Pittsburgh is lame.

5. I have a lot of wierd food issues.

Oh, and here are the rules:

1. Link to your tagger and post these rules on your blog.
2. Share 5 facts about yourself on your blog, some random, some weird.
3. Tag 5 people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blogs.
4. Let them know they are tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

Free Rice

So I went home for the holiday, and Gavin's mom Kim (who has been reading all our blogs) told me about this great website:http://www.freerice.com It's a vocabulary game where you have to choose theword that means the same as the word they give you. For every correct answer 10 grains of rice a donated through the UN to help fight world hunger. This morning I got up to level 44 and donated 800 grains of rice. I also learned that "donnybrook" the name of the apartment complex I live in means "brawl".
Since the school distrct where Kim works is aparently against games and for world hunger, and agaist children building their vocabulary, they've blocked the game on the school computers. I don't know TU's stance on world hunger, but I feel that it's safe to assume that our class is against it. So play Free Rice, learn a new word, and help eliminate world hunger.

Things I Love

Things I've fallen in love with this semester:
1. My digital camera
2. Wheat bagels from Dunken' Doughnuts
3. NPR (particularly A Prarie Home Companion and This America Life)
4. Selvedge Magazine
5. Printmaking

Philly Trip

See more photos from Philly at my Flickr Site.

Cool Stuff

Found these on Design*Sponge, and they made me think of my rocks for enameling.


Also check out Poppytalk,which has its featured artists up for November, including our own Megan Auman and Liz Matthews. Laura Crow Miller is also featured. I've been reading her blog, whcih she is making a real effort to update everyday, because her husband is in Iraq. Her page is full of really lovely, soothing photographs. There's a link to her site under "Other Cool Links".

Materialise MGX (bib.)

By far the best site I found dealing with Materialise MGX, other than the official website was www.designmuseum.org/design, which provided background info and interviews with some (but not all ) of the Materialise designers. It provided more insite into the designer's ideas and concepts as opposed to thier bios. Like Erin, I also found stuff at www.within4walls.com. This site is good in that it shows that these items are actually for sale. Dan Yeffet's finger print lamp is 1948 pounds or about 4052.25 US dollars. Bathsheba Grossman's starfish pendant lamps are $644.86 for the small and about $1774.42 for the large.
other sites I found:
www.designbeans.com/specials/london05/london05_materialise.htm
www.stylepark.com/ru/materialise-mgx
www.dezeen.com/. . ./17/materialise-in-milan
www.maricazottino.com/blog/?/m-200606

I also read the "Private First Class" article in the ID archives. It was pretty basic, but clarified a few things about the Private exhibition. It would have been a good place to start. I should have gone there first.

Virtual/Tangible

Bathshba Grossman (designer for Materialise MGX) was in the Virtual/Tangible Show mentioned by Rod McCormick. Check it out at :www.virtualtangble.com.

Purl

If you feel like drooling over some great colors and patterns, check out purlsoho.com. They carry fabrics, yarn and other notions, some of which are sustainable (ie: bamboo yarns).

Materialise MGX

MGX in Milan

Overview:
Materialise was founded in the early 90's and was and remains a front runner in utilizing digital technology and rapid prototyping. Materialise began by making medical equipment but in recent years has developed the MGX division which focuses on consumer goods/ objects such as home decor, furniture and lighting. They're goal is that of a "new era of mass custom design". Materialise sets out to create whatever their clients can dream up.

Private:
In 2007, MGX asked several designers to develop an object based on the theme "Private". Objects ranged from fingerprint pendant lamps by Dan Yeffet which looks at the loss of privacy, to the "Shaman" pendants of Arik Levy, where the wearer can carry something secret and spiritual in their own "micro personal universe."




(A few)Designers:
Bathsheba Grossman
Grossman's designs are driven by science (particularly astronomy) and geometry. She has degrees in both mathematics and art and is primarily a sculptor. She designed a lamp of repeating starfish for MGX. She states that her work is about "life in three dimensions, symmetry and balance and always finding the beauty in geometry." She has designed many other works including a line of laser etched glass sculptures of proteins and galaxies.


She has a pretty fantastic website:www.bathsheba.com
Luc Merx
Merx is responsible for the "Damned Lamp" the idea of the fall of the damned. Merx pictures this lamp hanging above a dining table, where it can disturb the diners with age old questions of morality and guilt. (Frankly, not what I care to get out of my dining experience.) More interesting are some of the other ideas behind the lamp: that of the 18th century virtuosity, only now that virtuosity is created by a computer (is it still the same?). Merx also challenges three taboos set on 20th Century design: the figurative, the ornamental and the narrative. "Damned Lampshade" is certainly all three, proving that ornamental isn't necessary pretty.

Assa Ashuach
Ashuach feels that design should be "a strategy for questioning and modifying tradition." He is concerned with the visual and the physical and the relationship between them. He seeks to push the use of material by using the minimal amount and achieving maximum strength through form.


Read more about Assa Ashuach's design philosophy at: www.designmuseum.org/design/assa-ashuach
Ross Lovegrove
Lovegrove sees himself as "evolutionary biologist" and not a designer. He is concerned with "organic essentialism" and the thought that "form grows where you need it" like nature. He is concerned with the earth, time, evolution, systems and transitions. Read more about his design philosophy here:www.designmuseum.org/design/ross-lovegrove.



Quotes:

"Everything around us can be represented and understood by numbers"
Leonardo Pisano Fibonacci

"We don't see things as they are, we see things as we are."
Anais Nin

"The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to see."
Robertson Davis

"objects can now be a range of objects like in a family or a species. We can breed objects like we breed rabbits."
Lars Spuybroek (designer)

Response:
I think this work is pretty amazing, it's very fun to look at but many of the pieces like they were created in a 3D modeling program and printed by a rapid prototyping machine, which they were. I can't tell if they look that way to me because I knew that's how they were made before I saw them, or if that really is just the way they look. I love how the designers don't really think of themselves as designers by as scientists, evolutionary biologists (although I would like an evolutionary biologist's take on that) explorers, adventurers and mathematicians. They don't sound like artists, they sound like nerds and computer geeks, which I think is great. I love the repetition of natural forms, I love the science speak, I love the idea of a "micro personal universe". MGX just goes to show how it really is all about art and science and the two are not mutually exclusive. They're pretty much the same thing. I do wonder why most of their objects are lighting (unless it said somewhere and I missed it, which is entirely possible.)I'm sure I'll come us wiht more later, but right now my brain is grinding to a hault.

This would make a cool print.

Color Pics (Round III)

I'm really getting into all the shades of white.


I'm amazed that nature can produce all these colors at once and that berries can even be these colors.




Purple Yarn


An interesting combination. I would like to see these two colors blended together.


Metallic Sage Green Ink

Crocodile Man

Check out my brother's web comic "Everyone Laughs at the Crocodile Man". There's a link to it under Other Links.

Color Pics (Round II)

A great green.


Oxidizing copper.


I'm really beginning to love all the subtleties of gray.


My apron patches have great colors.


An intriguing combination. I can't decide if I like it or not.


A pretty scarf.


A nice combination.

Color Pics (Round I)

I'm really into this shade of blue right n. This pic doesn't really do it justice.

Shifting purple

A popular color scheme

Red

Metallice Silver Gray

the perfect blend of reds and greens

a clear and perfect blue

A many layered, subtle green