Liquid Psychedelia

We're taking this course that is a simultaneous introduction to writing and an exploration of books and the form they take. It's more often than not pretty hippie dippy stuff with esoteric "writing exercises" that usually yield little more than awful poetry. I'm not receptive to the writing crash course b'c I can already write, but I understand how part of this course serves the greater good.

In a recent assignment, our instructor asked us to take some smaller bits of writing and some other pieces that were the product of free association exercises and create a bunch of varied type treatments. Type treatments are little more than artfully arranged text on a page, with an attempt at making a point or playing with a theme.

I was working on a more mundane series the night before everything was due, composing the work in Illustrator. This yielded the usual too-slick result, a piece of graphic design that has some visual appeal but no real soul. Rather than continue in this direction and have all of the enthusiasm sucked out of the assignment, I decided to experiment with a more physical transformation of simple, black, sans serif text.

Over the course of a few hours, I manipulated printed versions of my text while mid-scan and photocopy. Moving the text back and forth over the scanner and photocopier lens either stretches or condenses the text, often times separating the black portion into it's CMYK composite colors (cyan, magenta, yellow, etc.). I am FUCKING IN LOVE with the results. They are dynamic and each experiment has a surprising outcome. Further explorations are in the works using this initial foray as inspiration. The next obvious direction is the transformation of organic images, the introduction of video/animation work and an attempt of a large scale installation of scanners that act not as devices for capturing static images, but real time video input devices.

Mother fucking art school, ya'll.

Flying Cake (Trial 001)

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On Saturday, I met my group at the studio and we set to work on the first cake flight. Scott brought in six over-sized, helium-filled balloons, but they struggled to lift an empty Nalgene bottle. A trip to the 99cent store for more balloons also failed to turn the tables in our favor. We hollowed out all but the outer ring of an angel food cake and frosted what was left. From the beginning, the integrity of the floating cake has always been paramount and, as such, we were never interested in floating a box that looked like a cake.

Unfortunately, even the lightest store bought angel food cake (which, by the by, was infinitely lighter than the one we baked in Maira's kitchen) is too heavy to really take flight without strapping an unsightly number of balloons to the base. We have since resolved to frost styrofoam and even sculpt cupcakes, create vacuum molds and churn out perfect, hand painted, nerf foam replicas. All these eventualities didn't stop us from shooting a few screen tests for the ugly prototype. In the end, it took flight twice, owing more to large gusts of wind than defiance of gravity. Pretty magical, if I do say so myself. We are shooting again tomorrow with lighter materials. Here's hoping the fucker floats for a few hours.

Your Basic (Horny) Chair

Last week, I mentioned my first visit to the wood shop for our 3-D Product Reality course. I had to transform a basic wooden chair from IKEA into the embodiment of the word "horny". I cut the legs and back on two simultaneous angles with a power saw, sanded the edges flush, filled in some holes with wood filler and then painted the entire thing with nine coats of plasticized rubber. Bind it, gag it and truss it up to a ceiling pipe and you've got yourself a kinky chair, begging to be whipped.

My classmates were kind enough to spank the horny chair again and again for a few final photos.

Stefan Sagmeister (CRIT, Ep1)

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I am spearheading the effort to bring a regular video podcast series to CRIT, the SVA MFA Designer as Author blog. I volunteered for the position of Content Editor last semester because I was eager to help develop the ideas of my fellow students that were interested in writing but were reluctant or at a loss for subject matter. I have also been kicking around the idea of the video podcast for a few months now. Ideally, we'll be able to produce something in the range of two videos a month, each of them spotlighting professionals working in any design or visual arts medium. Our program already has a wide variety of podcasts available, many of them focusing on the Paul Rand lecture series. I hope to move out of the classroom and into the studios and workspaces of designers in the NY area.

The first episode, a test run of sorts, was filmed last Thursday, during the Deitch Projects book launch for "Things I Have Learned In My Life So Far" by Stefan Sagmeister. The exciting atmosphere and the fact that we knew the guest of honor made it an ideal trial for working out the podcast kinks and planning for future episodes. With the help of some mates, we captured some dope footage and I chopped and reassembled the whole thing over the weekend.

I'm really psyched to develop this project. Shame I'm not getting a grade for it. Stay tuned for more episodes in the future.

Precision Cut and Made To Order

As the ice breaker assignment in our 3-D Product Reality course, our instructor gave us each a wooden chair from Ikea with a personality trait scrawled on the underside. We walked into class, sat down in the Ikea seats and at the end, like a scene out of a low-rent episode of Oprah, turned the chairs over to reveal our assignment.

The chairs have to be transformed into something that embodies the given trait. I got "horny". After proposing a few different ideas (a chair transformed into Senator Larry Craig, sticking one of it's legs through a glory hole in an airport bathroom or a chair with a bike pedal connected to a cow tongue sticking through a hole in the seat that, when pedaled, allowed you to pleasure yourself), the class chose my more traditional bondage scenario. The bound, gagged, latex-covered transformation is due Thursday and I'll be sure to upload pictures, but in the meantime, here are a few shots of our first afternoon in the wood shop.