So I’d like to move away from the obvious shame of blog abandonment… I’m in the process of sort of re-evaluating my life/priorities. I have noticed a pattern when I do this…

However, I read through some of my friends’ blogs at college that they worked on for an elective in Social Media/Digital Media, and found them very insightful and current.

Please take a moment to read this post by Georgina Bourke, entitled ‘Museum of Me’, about how “your page or your profile [on facebook] is projection of yourself”: http://georginabourke.wordpress.com/2012/12/20/museum-of-me/

I am definitely one to do this. Life prior to London for me (i.e in the middle east) was almost centered on how others perceived you via Facebook, the only way to really show how you ‘really’ were as a person, since realistic social life was limited. I remember feeling a great deal of importance of maintaining an immaculate and constantly interesting profile or else popularity would lag in high school. I have friends still that want to keep their profiles ‘worthy of subscription to my posts’, and on the odd day I will visit an old friend’s profile who have Arabic origins, I will be amazed at the beautiful array of photographs, the carefully chosen posts and the intrigue they build at posting sporadically and calculatedly, it becomes something like an experience. And afterwards, I almost always for the first two minutes feel a sense of ego deflation and visit my own profile to evaluate myself - before telling myself to stop being silly. But it’s true that it just stays within you, I am proof of that. Vanity comes from the way we used to live there - I cannot blame anything but society. 

Then there are others that self-promote to no end, that can also get you down, spreading themselves across countless destinations, jobs, fashion outfits, whatever. And then you think, so where am I in this? Why is my life so unglamorous? 

Where are my priorities these days? I log in to these social sites before I would log in to my portfolio accounts. Why? I know that I have ambitions, that I want to get to places and success just as much as all these other people. Where is the balance, why have I missed it? 

In line with this evaluation, Sally Lewis posts a tally of how we actually keep friends on facebook that are just taking up space: http://socialsally.wordpress.com/2012/11/23/54/

Sometimes I get the feeling this kind of behaviour (which we all do) is like wrapping yourself in a blanket of familiarity or a blanket of ‘social safety’. I would call it ridiculous, but it’s become a kind of numb, take-everything-for-granted. You can look back at yourself and think, no, it’s all fine. But this lends a very vacuous tone to life. Thank you social media for that.

I wish there could be a new healthy trend to follow, would you not rather read amusing and insightful blog posts to staring at meaningless images?

I don’t know where I’m going with this. I’ll just leave it open-ended for now.

Lara

Refreshingly, we can choose our very own topics of interest for our midterm contextual studies essay. I am enjoying the freedom of self-direction this year. After a session of brainstorming in groups, my group came up with the topic of Seduction to research over the next few weeks. We chose to name ourselves ‘The Pheromones’ which sounds like a band name, doesn’t it? The Ramones, the Hormones… Pheromones are like chemical signals for sex and dominance status in animals, and are responsible for social and sexual behaviour among members of the same species.

Back to the point. Since there are 5 of us in this group, we have broken down Seduction into the 5 senses that it covers: Taste, Touch, Smell, Sight, and Sound. Since my chosen elective at Chelsea is ‘Textile Innovation’, I chose Touch, for its vast array of seductive textures, fabrics, surfaces, etc to explore. Combining my research and experience at 100% Design this summer (a photo I took below), a large design trade fair of some of the most cutting edge and innovative companies, my Textile elective, and contextual topic research, I feel it concludes nicely and I’ll be happy to have solidly covered this ‘territory’, so to speak. 

Here are some of my interesting initial finds:

“Attraction is built through touching. Plain and simple. If you don’t touch a date, lover, or mate, then attraction will not build.”

Studies show that products with a pleasant surface feel are preferred to those without. A particular surface feel can be created through the choice of printing stock (paper, card, foil, foam, etc.), coatings, flock coating, die-cutting, embossing and perforation as well as with relief and high-build coating and thermo-chromic inks. The latter offers an increased surprise effect since the colors change according to different temperatures or touch.

This can be interpreted more literally. See this bas-relief porn for the blind (‘Tactile Mind’ book by Lisa J. Murphy):

“Paper gives us a certain feeling of warmth, of calm and repose. It gives off no sound when it is crumpled or folded, it is quiet and pliant to the touch as the leaf of a tree.” - Jun’ichiro Tanizaki, In Praise of Shadows

“Yes, a good design should speak for itself—but what if the client isn’t listening? Well, that’s when designers employ methods that are not taught in design school. Psychological methods. Machiavellian methods. Used-car-dealer methods. Manipulation. Intimidation. Seduction.” - PrintMag.com: The Art of Seduction

If you want to save money, don’t touch things while shopping, says a research study:

“When you touch something, you instantly feel more of a connection to it,” says Suzanne Shu, a marketing professor at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management and co-author of the study. That connection stirs up an emotional reaction — ‘Yeah, I like the feel of it. This can be mine.’ And that emotion can cause you to buy something you never would have bought if you hadn’t touched it. Touching something gives you that little sense of control,” she says, “and that alone can increase your feeling of ownership.

The Apple Store openly invites its customers to fidget with its gadgets, and once you start playing with the iPhone, it’s awfully hard to leave the place without one.”

And finally, brace yourselves: A touchscreen that comes alive with textures and edges that users can FEEL. Yes, through the screen. The company has built a prototype of its displays into a tablet. The tactile panel uses electrostatic fields to simulate different levels of friction, allowing it to generate the sensation of texture on a totally flat screen. 

Innovation from Senseg.

We were briefed on a new project to do over the end of summer, which is to respond to the title ‘I AM HERE’ for a 3 minute digital presentation. My little film may not have a strong concept, but I aim to make it look pretty, and I am trying out some editing experiments in After Effects as I know little about editing and effects for film. Without revealing too much here are some stills examples so far.

I hate myself for not putting together all the films I had planned on finishing this summer. They WILL be edited, someday…