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January 19, 2006

No Doz?

No need. For some reason, ever since I've been back in Philly, I can't sleep. I know, freakin' weird. That's not entirely true. I can't FALL asleep. Once I'm gone I can sleep until the cows come home. Problem is the cows are coming home awful early lately. I don't think I've been able to fall asleep before 3 a.m. It totally sucks. Sunday night I left the studio at 1:30 and was home by 2. I was still kind of wired from being up working so I read some interesting stories on boingboing.net for a while. Then, still perfectly awake I just sat down and read. Until 5 a.m. At that point I figured it was time to force myself to sleep. So I tossed and turned until sometime after 6. Then back up at 10 to head back to school. Oh joy.

So the project we've been working on since we've been back is a little project called "strip fields." Although each 502 studio (first year: 5, second studio: 02) has a different location of study, different foci due to the specific critic (teachers are called critics, apparently they don't teach us anything, they are just critical of everything we due), and different assignments throughout the year, apparently each 502 studio for the past 10 years has started with the strip fields project. The idea is this: take a 8" x 8" white paper base, take 4 - 2" x 8" strips of black paper and manipulate them with two of the four following rules applied across a single plate: move, slide, or rotate; tear; cut; fold. First make forty different plates. Then, be criticized. From the ones that are working, take the specific rules from a plate (e.g., cut move) and make a set of thirty of these. Afterwards arrange the thirty in a matrix light to dark, rough to smooth, etc., with armatures moving in different directions when one's discrete rules have changes (e.g., angle of cuts change). Then, be criticized. From the armature that was working the best create a progression of 5-8 plates that show even steps from 1 to 2, 2 to 3, etc. Then make 5-8 3D models of these plates. My models were ridiculous. They took me about 10 hours each. Suffice it to say, I only finished three models. I'll post some pictures as soon as I can get Meghan to put down that damn baby and teach me how again. Let me tell you what, kid, no matter how new and cute you are, I'm still the favorite. Get used to it.

Posted by austin at 1:20 PM | Comments (10)

January 15, 2006

Oh, snap!!

On Thursday we had our first media class, which meant it was time to put down the pencils and pick up the mouse. Throughout the semester we are going to learn Photoshop, Illustrator, In Design, AutoCad, and, I think, Rhino (a 3D modelling program). Day 1 started with AutoCad basics; lines, curves, arcs, moving, stretching, copying, stepping and repeating, etc. Our assignment after all this was to draw four sports fields, which I've jumped ahead and finished yesterday. As we were going through some of the basic tools our teacher began to tell us about the OSNAP function. Of course I started laughing to myself, trying to keep things to from escaping. The more we were talking about it, the harder it was to keep it in. It was like a serious case of Tourette's. Eventually I couldn't keep it in any longer. "Oh, snap!" I'd yell. "Oh, snap!" Luckily my friend Noah is in the class with me and thought it was funny too, so he'd echo it from the other side of the room. "Oh, snap!"

Thankfully there's some amusement amidst the abuse.

Posted by austin at 2:10 PM | Comments (3)

January 11, 2006

Mothering Instinct

Well, Meghan's due date, January 9th, came without event. Despite that, Meghan's mothering instinct kicked in in full force and her "little dude" became the benificiary of that benevolence. The next day I received a couple sacks full of groceries delivered right to my door because Meghan knows how much I hate to go to the grocery store. Yeah, Meggie!! Now I've got breakfast food, dinner options that won't go bad (i.e. Mac 'n Cheese), and snack-ums for my studio.

Things are getting settled here so far. I spent the weekend cleaning my studio and my apartment and just getting settled back into Philly before the start of a new semester. Luckily we didn't have to change studio desks, as the rumors had led us all to believe, so I got to keep my kick ass desk with the window. Well, the desk isn't the great but the window is, as there are only three in the whole studio and two for our first year half of the floor. The semester has started out pretty much the way it ended. Day 1 we were given an assignment that was purt-near impossible to finish by our next meeting on Wednesday, even though we had Tuesday off, and which will normally be a full day of class, so this will be interesting to see how things move forward. We had to make 40 of these weird little collage things and now we have to make 30 more by Friday, and we've got a frickin' 6 hour computer class tomorrow. Gonna be another late night tomorrow. Well, there's a funny story I'd like to tell, but I need to figure out how to make links again so it will have to wait until next time. So come back, jerks.

Posted by austin at 9:45 PM | Comments (5)