If you are interested in reading my Vordiplom Work feel free to download the pdfs below and have a look. I would be happy to engage in intelligent discussion of these (or any other topic) in the Gute Stube upon request :)

Piggy Bank Brainstorm

Your dream is a creature that you have to feed. The creature is actually a part of yourself. For the bank to say thanks makes it feel like a separate entity. It is better for it to feel like a separate entity or yourself. Perhaps the bank could give a sense of accomplishment. What about it being a pet. You take your dog for a walk and it wags it's tail. You pet you cat and it purrs. These are a kind of small thank you that you put the effort in. Some kind of friendship. The friendship however cannot be fake. And it cannot be clear that the thing is supposed to manipulate you like this. To create a true emotional attachment it cannot be forced, it has to grow organically from a series of positive experiences. With humans this kind of purr is a smile or a giggle. So what you it be for an inanimate object? A giggle is to say you are on the same page, we know what we're both doing together, and we're enjoying it. how would an object giggle? t could say yay. It could make you laugh with it. It could make you smile. Because you are the one who should be thanked, and thankful. It kind of being thankful to yourself for taking good care of yourself. Smiling is contagious. If a smile can induce a smile, it could be said that the thing that induces a smile is also a smile.

A smile

The thing just has to smile. How should it smile? It should be a physical act, and not a picture or representation to make it more emotional. In addition to make it personal, something that everyone can have but can be still taken as their own, it should have a personality. It could be moody, it could be that if you don't give it a coin for a couple of days that it is even more appreciative to have one. But if it smiles even bigger this might be incentive to not put coins in for a while. Why is a purr so nice? Maybe because the thing is soft and cuddly, and when it purrs it gently rumbles a fitting but somewhat surprising action. Why is a tail wag so nice? The speed and intensity can tell you a about its feelings. It can be funny, when it wags it's tail so hard that it's whole body wags too.

Is this too literal to be object love? When it seems to fake or forced it doesn't work. The ipod has the hardware which is standard, and the software which is personalized. This might be playing too much with robotics like the furby or something.

What if it did it's kind of smile every once in a while, just to get your attention.

Ornament und Verbrechen

People like the style of older things. They like to carry these styles over to new technologies, and materials, where they just don't fit. As Ayn Rand pointed out in The Fountainhead Everyone then was trying to make a wood or cement column look like a greek column which from it's nature was intended to be carved from stone. As Adolf Loos implies in Ornament und Verbrechen a farmer who cannot afford more than straw chairs, should not pretend that his straw s mahogany, but be proud of it for what it is, and use the straw in the most fitting way for it's own characteristics.

But people still like old styles from an emotional point of view. It is comforting not to have something too new. So how do you keep this emotional attachment, and still make new advances in design that follow the new advances in material, but still attract the attention of the history loving public. Perhaps the best way is to understand the reasoning behind the previous styles you are tempted to imitate, what was is about them that the people so loved? How could those characteristics be carried over without carying over the exact visual ornamental style? How could those characteristics be built into the new innovations?

By using emotions and goals to communicate a visual style, rather than the exact visual characteristics, one will see that there are many ways to express these characteristics without copying the "look and feel" of the old pieces.

However, better than copying the motives, new motives should be searched out. What will hit the nerve of the modern person in a new way? If the old goals fulfilled certain parts of the societies wants, what kind of wants are there today, and how can they be fulfilled in a new way?

Cool flea market stuff

I found this teacup a little while ago, and thought it was perfect for my roommate who was mourning the loss of her favorite tea cup on our tile floor. Nice!

Corpses of good friends

I may have made this card to get out of cleaning my ashtray, but I kind of think there might be truth in it. (Says as she is smoking a cigarette and typing)

Walden

"I am convinced, both by faith and experience, that to maintain one's self on this earth is not a hardship but a pastime, if we will live simply and wisely; as the pursuits of the simpler nations are still the sports of the more artificial."

WaldenHenry David Thoreau

The odds that I lived

Use the world factbook to calculate the odds that I lived and translate that into a creation.

Knitting Statistics

Knit a blanket where every stitch is representative of a statistic. Every stitch could be one person who died, every stitch could be, one person on the earth, it would be an immense project to stitch 6.6 billion stitches, it could be a worldwide project. But I have already stitched 31,640 stitches into my the first third of the current scarf I'm knitting, it has taken me about 24 hours to create this. Use the CIA world factbook as a source for the statistics.

Now that you can do anything, what are you going to do?

Thinking philosophically about where I want to go with design.

Use design to enhance my understanding about the world, use my understanding of the natural world in my designs. Abstractions of deeper concepts about life. Create designs that inspire wonder. Communicate what I understand about life through my designs. Make sure there is a good reason why behind every design I make. A why that somehow goes deeper than the money, and makes my invested time valuable. Learn something greater while creating every design.

is home-making design?

Hmm, well if it is then I've been doing a lot lately, but if it isn't then there hasn't been much going on. I have lately, made a very successful thanksgiving dinner, baked lots of stuff (aka apple pies, cakes, cookies, and so forth) cooked somewhat extensive meals, been knitting a lot, bought a sewing machine, and decorated the kitchen of our dorm, and am in the process of making christmas ornaments. I have been told that I am nesting and my friends at work are convinced that I will be getting married in the near future. Don't tell my boyfriend (of 2 months) that. Don't know what else to say, what a let down, after having said nothing for practically 2 months. I'll try to be more entertaining next time.