Calligraphy class 2

Today is my second calligraphy class but my first where i have to turn in home work.
I am horrible!

interesting course

This is the course I will attempt to follow in the next few weeks.

I think it is most important to do all the reading and explore the assignments.

"Course Highlights

This course features example student projects, as well as a comprehensive related resources section.

Course Description

This class covers a range of topics including hypertext, interactive cinema, games, installation art, and soundscapes. It examines the potential for dynamic narrative in traditional media like novels and films and as well as in computer-based stories and games. The course focuses on the creation of electronic stories and games using simple authoring systems and multimedia software tools. Students present and constructively critique one another's work in progress in a workshop setting aimed at expanding the representational powers of a new creative medium."

book club

Looking to fill up more time during my last free weeks of summer, I am looking through open courseware and came across "media in cultural context: popular readerships"

I had read about the forced selling of the oldest book club company in Europe a few weeks ago. And have been looking at the forms of the future of the book as well as the idea of readership as a strongly defined group. I have always been less precious and selective with my time when reading. I feel guilty watching tv, but never reading even if it is trash. this is odd when you think about it. Just recently I spent almost two whole days reading a novel about a circus which I don't remember the name of. My boyfriend's father just happened to have it sitting on a table and I picked it up. Two days fly by and then I am back with seemingly nothing gained. Should I be more selective about reading?

random things that may not be interesting:

In 2005, the readings of Oprah's book club were: the infamouse James Frey book, and three Faulkner novels.

Oprah's entire bookclub listing is included in the course's resources. Also essays like:"Pain and Circuses" from Oprah Winfrey and the Glamour of Misery. I can't wait to read this.

start of reading and research

Lately I have been preoccupied by my calligraphy class. It seems that time really flies when you are writing with a brush. It takes me more than a half hour to write a four line poem for homework. Do this a few times, and the morning or afternoon is gone. It is hard but definitely feels like a luxury. Also my grandpa is very happy to see this.

I am lucky that my grandparents with whom i am staying are extremely punctual with their meals, thus breaking my days into definite sections.

Starting today, a little more than a week before heading back to new york, I will be doing more active work for thesis. 

Will start reading:

1. packet of readings from school

2. readings from ocw 1

will also follow this course

3.seven great debats

seems interesting

4. technology and war

by Martin Van Creveld

5. I am also going to suggest to eric that we follow the documenting cultures course from mit open course ware together.

Gerhard Richter Show

Two floors above the new media show at the national art museum of China, there is a Gerhard Richter retrospective. I went to see it today after showing my friend around the new media show.

I really love his paintings.

ocean waves visualization

waves

making illustration of old data(horror movies and war casualty).

Data and accessibility

In a recent email from Joe about my thesis topic, he brought up the similarity between our interests. He is always talking about the semantic web which i still don't know what it is. He tells me it is about accessibility. We know that there is an obscene amount of documentation being done digitally, automatically at every moment. This information serves the interests of analyzing larger trends better than the individual for several reasons. Accessibility here is less important than the ability for any individual or small interest group to digest such information.

I think of reading materials from classes. Within the Information Design text book I used for information architecture class last semester, I found widely varying styles of writing that lent to my understanding on very different levels.

One of the many great diagrams we are presented with in that class was the process of learning. It is a series of overlapping circles, each representing a stage, from first contact with a piece of information to internalizing it.

The Agency I will be going to in New Delhi in a few weeks is part of the International Budget Project. Part of the project will be to effectively distribute the findings of my nonprofit partner to the public. This idea is very exciting to me for several reasons. Transparency is very important, but just how do people read transparency?
How do people find available information that addresses their issues?
How many groups should we break the audience into?
How do we address such a varied audience?
And just how does the use of governmental funds effect us?(how do we describe this effect in a way that is direct and useful?)

I often feel that it is hard to ignore the triviality of some design work. But in the subtlety of good work, information is communicated and ideas inspired.

Documentation and preservation

A few years ago, I read the biography of Liang Si Cheng, a famous Chinese architectural scholar.
He was educated in the states and returned to China to complete the only modern document of Chinese architecture. The document he created became one of the most important records during and after the cultural revolution. Various stories are told of how his writing on architecture saved some relics from being destroyed.

To be continued when I find the book again or read more about him. Its been a while since I thought about it.

gapminder

Gapminder is an incredible tool. It not only visualizes the growth of different aspects of a country and allows compare and contrast with others, it also allows us to experience history. It allows us to better contextualize periods in time of a particular place by drawing parallels between the place of the past and a country with a similar present.

The series of talks by Hans Gosling are very good. They cover topics from Co2 emissions to lifespan, education and other living conditions.

Go To Gapminder

fiction vs. nonfiction

Civil war photography is an especially good example of the blurred boundaries between war and pop culture. Mathew Brady and other prominent photographers almost always posed their subjects, even after death. What resulted was a mix of war and fiction that gradually became truth through the passage of time. Because support for the war was so important, the civil war put 5000 American war photographers to work. Capturing almost every soldier who served in the war.
Even before EBay, collecting war memorabilia has been a prominent American subculture. From uniforms and weapons to silverware, trading and gathering memorabilia has served both as a hobby and for some a profession. Why do we want reminders of war? What do we want of tokens from these large tragedies?
These cultural artifacts are taken out of their own lifetimes, their values determined often not by history, but by the present. Various symbols also possess timeless and world-less qualities whether captured on film or seen in real life.
Imagery of the American flag features prominently in many movies from romantic comedies to science fiction. When looking at an image of the flag, it can be hard to distinguish between life and film. It is odd but true – so many movies about aliens and Armageddon are also about patriotism.

numbers vs. trends

The GDP of China is a much-debated figure. It fuels rumors of both being inflated and deflated for different political reasons. Regional GDPs are often much inflated because each province is economically autonomous but depends on the central government for policy changes and other benefits. Regions therefore compete for higher GDPs. China as a whole however, is struggling to quiet the rumors of an explosive economy; it takes the provincial numbers into consideration but then lower it before publishing. Given such dramatic alterations, it is hard to know just what the GDP is. Financial firms in New York, however, know exactly how to take this number into account. Through a system measuring the relative value rather than the actual quantitative value, Meryl Lynch is able to rely on the published GDP for business decisions despite its lack of grounds.
Grounding statistics in relationships rather than hard numbers is a powerful way to view things in the context of time rather than place. Although it is a common practice in analyzing data already, its visual counterpart has yet to be explored fully.

more old work

dirty snow - image and side view

mapping and scale - contour map of paper napkin.

a little more planning

Plan to look at existing visualization projects starting from visualcomplexity.com projects.
for each:
- understand and describe goals and intentions
- uderstand type of information and user
- list valuable points for own project

Shanghai visualization

In the lobby of the pearl tower, a series of pictures show the growth of pudong area in shanghai since 1994. Since the last time I was in Shanghai 5 years ago, so much has changed that the city is mostly unrecognizable to me.


In fact, if the oddly shaped tower was not there, it would be hard to recognize as the same city.



1994

2008

The pictures shown give a good overview of changes. Is this type of visualization a good starting point?
What can I pair with this particular visualization to depict a fuller picture of growth? - income level of the area? renovation price? realestate price?

motivations and questions

In coming up with a mini thesis during the spring, I began by exploring several different questions. The idea of memory relating to documentation has always been of interest to me. The 20th century is also called the “first measured century”. In present day America, we live in both the most documented culture and the most documented time. Does increased documentation add or subtract from natural human memory? How can memory be collected digitally to build upon collective history? 
 What kind of tools do we use?

A project at work recently led me to visit a glass factory. There, I was shown a set of tools used to shape hot glass by hand. These tools have evolved very little in their design since their invention. Both the craft of glass and usage of tools are so well understood by craftsman over the centuries that there was no need to invent new ways to mold glass by hand. This is amazing to me because in the design field, digital tools can even become obsolete as you learn to use them. The speed of evolution for tools involving the design and development of the Internet only becomes faster as a larger part of the world migrates on to the web. Does the growth of tools show our immaturity and lack of understanding for designing for the Internet?

In food, clothing, and all objects of pop culture, we distinguish between different cultures, languages and histories. Over the Internet however, such boundaries are less evident. Cross-pollination between cultures happens much faster over digital means. However, looking at the state of technological accessibility today, we have to wonder if these web based hybrid cultures are too exclusive. Does this exclusivity qualify as a form of cultural imperialism? And where on the Internet is this cross-pollination of cultures evident?

I am also fascinated by the idea of the Internet archive. Having only recently learned that digital files have a longer lifespan then those on paper, I was intrigued by the permanence of these intangible objects. Is the Internet archive a depository of recorded history or discarded history? If we have unlimited accessibility and permanence, how can we express the sense of loss and preciousness of digital material? This lack of value system is often evident in new media installations where the work is marginalized by its medium.

Finally, I am interested in drawing comparisons between elements of popular culture and the histories from which it is formed. I am not sure what can be gained from these comparisons and visualizations. However, I believe that as products of the same histories, we coexist with cultural artifacts, or even as cultural artifacts. Very often by comparing and forming relationships between two distinct sets of information or knowledge, we can gain more understanding of both. 


In designing solutions for these interests, what kind of tools serves these topics and understanding?

Can we use media to visually analyze the context of historical events?

second semester work

My interest in data visualization excercises came from second semester studio. I had computation with Yury Gitman. There I learned processing and felt that it was a great tool to visualize concepts.
My final project was a data visualization tool that stemed from two data sets - war and horror movies. Below is a brief introduction to the project.

Introduction:
This project explores the possibilities of relating different types of cultural artifacts to events such as wars and the economy. During the research into movie statistics, employment rates, war histories, a visualization tool is planned to draw comparisons between these distinct sets of data.

the complete project can be found at yg.typepad.com/computation08
I am currently unable to go to many blogs in China. so hope it's still there.

list: data

to use in trying visualization methods

personal:
food
money
weather
mood of grandparents

public:
tide
personal timeline
war
movies
tv
$
furniture legs
chair height
door size
size of certain foods

first post: beginning to form a plan for the idea of thesis

Data visualization plans:

visualization of the day
lists:
materials/media
content

goals:

1. by exploring different types of data and how they can be effectively visualized with each other as contexts, methods of visualization will be evaluated.
2. to write something everyday because i am bad at keeping up with something like this everyday.

needed skills:
flash or processing
php
scraping data

research areas:
historical comparisons/analysis - written and visual
visualizations/mapping
interfaces/visual organization