Our latest assignment for 4D Visual Dynamics was to complete any of the assignments from www.learningtoloveyoumore.com. I choose topic 11: photograph a scare and write about it.
This is what I wrote about my scare:
The year was 1979, August, and I was 11 months old. We lived in a one-bedroom apartment in La Hoya. I was crawling, and getting around fairly quick. My mother had been ironing. The iron was off, but it was still hot. Like most toddlers I was very interested in everything used by my parents, including the iron. While my mother wasn’t looking, I pulled the cord, and iron fell straight down on to my hand.
The burn was bad. Third degree. The damage went down to the cellular level. The entire top side of my hand was burned. Because of the location, a skin graft wasn’t a good option.
So I have spent my entire self-aware life with a hand shaped burn on my hand. It isn’t foreign to me, it is part of my self image. As I grew, the burn stayed the same size. New skin wrapped the rest of my hand, but you can still see the small imprint of my baby hand on top of my adult hand.
The CCA website is touting its newest famous Alumna, Simone LeBlanc. If you tuned into last weeks episode of Project Runway, you probably know Simone’s design skills were found to be lacking, and was the first contestant to be eliminated from the competition. For shame! I was really looking forward to a good run by my school, and having something in popular culture to references when people ask me, “Where do you go to school again?”
But I agree with the judges, her design was poor. Honestly I am not sure how she made it on the show. You can look at her current collection here: http://www.tsbloom.com/ Her designs little innovation and often make her models look, dare I say, fat.
The latest assignment in my 4D Dynamics class, was to go to World Savvy Jam Session at the SoMa Arts Center on Saturday morning. There we interviewed young high schoolers about the topic of this years Jam Session - Power.
Considering how this classes pass field trips have gone, I expected a few things to go wrong. I didn’t have to wait long. Our professor reserved video cameras, audio recorders, mics, and tripods. However, when the class arrived, we were missing key piece of equipment. My group was given a low quality digital camera instead of a video camera. Another group had no tripod, the media center had run out, though it had been reserved, and another group had a camera with zero battery power. None of us received mics.
We managed to work out many of the problems ourselves, the tripod for the digital camera went to the team who didn’t have one, and we shared cameras when needed.
The second big problem came in the form of time. The Jam Sessions leader, Katina, met with us and explained we would have approximately one hour to meet, convince, and interview the teens. It wasn’t nearly enough. Finding teens willing to be interviewed took up most of our time.
The irony of this whole project was the topic - power. When we interviewed the teens, many of them told us that they had been required to come to this event, or they’d receive a poor grade in their class. Funny, I was their under the same presences. What was that topic again?
I just found the coolest little freeware game, Crayon Physics. Basically you are given a visual problem, and you solve it by drawing. So cool! The creator, Koonigames, is about to release a new version, Crayon Physics Deluxe, with tons of levels and many more shapes and actions to draw. Check out the video:
I played Crayon Physics for the first time today, and it was a lot of fun. It is a bit limited in your options, but you really can get creative. I can’t wait for the more dynamic deluxe version to come out. Full props to anyone who can merge game play and art into one.
The Photo Collective is taking submissions for a show at the Oliver Art Center. The deadline for submissions is November 16. Email all questions and files to photocollective.oliver@gmail.com.
Here are the details:
All entries must be photographic
No more than 5 entries
150 dpi or less (personally I don’t undestand this, it should be at least 220dpi)
8×11 inches max
Open to all CCA undergrads, graduate students, alumni, and faculity
Provide, title, dimensions, medium, and year made
The show start December 2. Maybe I should try and get one or two pieces together for this show. I recently purchased an old Polaroid Land Camera 450 for $15 off ebay, specifically to do photo transfers.
Today I went to the San Francisco CCA campus and signed up for the first level of graphic design classes. I got into everything I needed, but the class hours they are offering are really horrid.
Why couldn’t they put one of the Typography classes offered on the MW schedule so I could go to school 3 days a week instead of 5. It really aggravates me, and demonstrates a lack of thought by the administration.
The 