Tuesday, June 24, 2008

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7456357.stm

above is a link to an article on BBC's website that discusses people getting jail time for blogging throughout the world. So everyone watch what they say or the man will get us :)

stuff to think about

Everyone should look into films/documentaries by Fernando Mareilles. He is from Brazil and has made the films City of God and City of Men. Both of which document the lives of children living in the favella (slum) of Rio de Janeiro. The way life is portrayed is very powerful and could provide the viewer with a valuable learning experience. His films generally leave people feeling ashamed for ever complaining about their own life.

Also, I posted something before somewhere that isn't easily accessible, so... There is this book called Emergence, by Steven Johnson. He studied Semiotics at Yale and has developed a really interesting way of understanding and decoding the world. The book is about emerging systems throughout our world. Large ones, small ones, artificial ones... It is definitely worth taking a look at.

For a slightly more humorous addition to the news we are all keeping up on...

check out fark.com

Monday, June 23, 2008

Persepolis

I just finished reading Persepolis, and enjoyed it a lot. I didn't know what to expect, if it would be more about the daily life of the people, or more of a historical / political lecture. I found it to be well balanced with historical information and personal experience. Irans past and culture is presented in an understandable manner, which is a first for me. I learned a lot. The graphics and natural dialogue makes it entertaining and easy to read in a single sitting. I actually just saw a second of the preview for the movie the other day, it should be great in motion animation also.
Brett

Friday, June 20, 2008

Children Underground

Hello! Hope you all are having a wonderful summer so far. 

I thought this film may be of interest: Children Underground. It's an award winning documentary by Edet Belzberg. It documents the life of street children in the subways in Bucharest, Romania over a years time. There are thousands of street children in the capitol of Romania. Their former communist leader forbid the use of contraceptive. Living in such harsh, impoverished conditions, street kids found a better life outside of their home.

You can watch it for free online here
If you can't get the video to load, try downloading the helper that appears above the video.

Let me know if you get a chance to see it!!

Stay Sunny,
Lauren


Saturday, June 7, 2008

everyone is a contributor ...

and should feel free to add features ( or redesign! )

everything on the table

Just to make sure we're all working from the same starting point, here's a recap of the Muddy Cup meetings of Thursday 15 May 2008. If memory serves, Mariah, Brett, Kris, Lauren, Jen, Shawn, Adam and Xueyi were able to attend; Stephanie, Stefan, Elaina, Modesto, Laura, Cody, Theresa, Lorelei were not.

No worries, it's all here.

We talked about our
• theme : global citizenship, what this means for individuals and designers
• roles within that theme : local | tourist | emigrant
• 1st semester activities : ongoing projects | field trips | visitors | film series | reading | writing | a blog

2008-2009 plans
• to do both OMNI and the museum show (so there's a similar experience for everyone)
• to support both (really deal with what it means to show work in the museum and be prepared to do so)
• Our 1st semester goals are to (1) identify a globally-oriented issue that design can promote, solve, remediate and (2) have begun investigating a design response. The idea should be firmly enough situated that it can be presented at OMNI at the end of the semester
• The 2nd semester goals are to (1) have created the design solution | intervention, (2) have launched | tested it, and (3) to have shown it at the museum at the end of the 2nd semester

Summer 2008 plans
• summer reading : Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood, a graphic novel about a young girl growing up in Iran ( just made into a film; we’ll screen it next semester ) by Marjane Satrapi. The film trailer can be seen at www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PXHeKuBzPY And I haven’t checked it out but persepolis.com is supposed to be a rich web resource for Iranian culture and society.
• summer project 1 : choose to document through photography / video and / or a collection of artifacts your summer 2008 experience as a local OR a tourist OR an emigrant. You can take on a role and try to see through someone else's eyes, or be yourself. If you're in the position of enacting more than one role and can document this multiplicity, go ahead and do so. How many images and artifacts? Well, how many do you think makes for a rich description? Let’s say 100. Bring this stuff with you for our first meeting in a format that will make it easy for us to view.
• summer project 2 : do what you need to do in order to come to our first class with 10 possible project ideas reflecting your interests in possible ddesign pursuits along with a few supporting sources for each idea. This can be somewhat loose ("1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10") and list-like, but typeset neatly for me to collect. Sources in bibliographic style.
• summer project 3 : during the summer each person is expected to make a reading / resource suggestion for the group ( via this blog ); let's establish the habit of sharing resources
• every day : connect to reputable ( online or not ) news sources, particularly the BBC World News ( online ); their international coverage is stellar and includes hard and “soft” news items
• every week : check NP email and the blog

Monday, June 2, 2008

new group | new blog

Here's to the SUNY New Paltz Graphic Design Thesis class 2008-09 ... our theme this round is global citizenship: what does it mean to be a world citizen and designer? We have all experienced at least one, if not all three, of these roles: local, tourist, emigrant. What can we learn from this in terms of communicating with and connecting with the world beyond our corner of upstate New York?