White Ephalumps

For our final, we're to make a white elephant gift with skills we've learned from a forgotten or rare skill. My girlfriend Kati knows how to knit, so I asked her to show me how.

It actually wasn't too hard! I feel like I took to it faster than sewing. My goal was to make a phone cozy, but I guess it is more of an all purpose bag.

I particularity enjoy the makeshift solution of putting multiple buttons on there! We actually lost the one we bought for it.


I really hope whoever ends up with it likes it! But don't tell them before they see it;)

School Spirit

I made an intervention happen last week! This is the thing I was planning.

I gave away these cardboard shirts to fans with very little pocket money.


It was a really cool thing, and the first guy gave me a beer in exchange. I'd say it was a good day.


Here's is how I presented it in class. It's pretty snazzy right?

T-Shirt Shop

I'm planning a thing.

I've never ran a print shop before. It's pretty fun! Stay tuned...

Finally (and not so Finally)

We are gearing up for finals. For once I am pretty certain of what I want to make!


We worked using a 3D mill, and it was rad. Rhino was a super sleek program, and allowed us to make a cool test object to make molds from. I am really pumped for this, ad I think a lot can be done.

Maps

So we had been given a project, wherein we would artisicatally map out an area in the Unvinersity district on the unversity of washinton, in some sort of arttistic fashion, keeping in mind that a map is always drawn by human hands and has room for vision, interpretation and error.

I was assigned this little area right here.

The stadium is complete now of course.

I travelled all around this zone and took a great many pictures, but in the end did nothing wit that data. In addition to the pictures I took an audio recorder and put it in my pocket. It took a while to come to the conclusion of it, but I became really interested in finding a way to map out the ambient sound. I was thinking of concepts like the audio tour and those little maps you'd find in children's museums were you could lift a flap and press a button to hear a sound clip of the animal or subject it was explaining. I ended up settling on the latter.

Under each of these flaps was a little audio button. I made it very childish looking as though a kid were to map out a make believe land and play games in it. The fanciful descriptions were fun to write.

In the end, I think the audio and visual elements conflicted with each other. People were interested in pressing the buttons and hearing what sounds came from them but had little interest in looking at the images or descriptions. It could have been made very detailed and not so childish, but I think the result would have been the same. Ideally, I would have loved to make a map grid-ed out with sounds from each specific square of the areas. I was trying to save some money on the ordeal though, and I don't think te amount of buttons necessary to make it happen would have shipped to me on time for critique. It was suggested that may not be in my style, but I think I decide that! I am not always messy, and I would like to show that.

Wire we doing this?! Don't be a chicken!

The crit has passed me by at this point.


This is the end result of my endeavors. No one had much to say about it. I realize that I needed more effort to make the frame concrete, and extremely solid in comparison to the sticks that were made by twisting the wire and and adding abica. I tried to use cotton to replicate the faux paper of the object and to have stark contrast with the abica on the sticks.

I think it is alright, and I am happy with it barring my slipshod solutions to use the inner part of the frame to hold the cotton in. It was late when I got to it, and I was getting tired of mucking around with the cotton that would not stick. It's no excuse, but man, cotton is the pits to work with.


Ugh. I often feel like I'm not as skilled as others in class, at least when it come to structure and craftsmanship. I think the things I have made do have a lot of style and attitude. They have a sort of exaggerated and melty quality, sort of like Claus Oldenburg. I would like to get better at the details everyone else in the class is so great at, but maybe I should not ignore the base appeal of that, even if it's not everyone's cup of tea.

Oh Yeah? You and what Armature?

We're gonna be dippin' stuff!

Specifically chicken wire. It's an ornery material, but man does it pick up Abica beautifully. The cotton seems more of struggle, but I guess well work through it.

The objective of the assignment is to play around with the opposites on inside/outside, geometric/freeform, and natural/manmade. I have seen these kind of opposites things before, and we even talked about it being a cliche in photography class. I hope not to apporach it that way, but it is pretty hard not to. My object is some kitschy overpriced frame nick-nack I found right outside my house and multiple sticks that were on the ground(we had some nice blustery days recently!). We'll see how it goes.