My current thinking on my thesis topic still circles around this idea of the hybrid. Its enjoying popularity right now in reference to cars and science fiction plots, but if you look it up in the OED, find something quite generic:

Anything derived from heterogeneous sources, or composed of different or incongruous elements; in Philol. a composite word formed of elements belonging to different languages

The offspring of two animals or plants of different species, or (less strictly) varieties; a half-breed, cross-breed, or mongrel.

The following is the beginning of a site survey, conducted from the veranda of the casino in Roger Williams Park, overlooking the gazeebo and duck pond. It is an exercise in seeing the world through the philosophical tradition of phenomenology. [View original journal entry].

I am sitting with my back to a red brick wall. Looking down at my hand, writing with a black pen in a medium-sized notebook. The notebook is set on a blue and white striped dress with buttons down the front, in the style of a men's shirt. The hands gripping the notebook come out of sleeves clad in gray heathered sweatshirt material. I am writing with my left hand.

The purpose of this class was to dip our toes into the water (or, in this case, surf) of our thesis idea and use the experience as a jumping off point for further exploration. Since I am looking at the tensions between traditional technologies and digital ones, I decided to bring only analog image capture devices with me. In this case, that included a basic Holga, loaded with one roll of 120mm B+W film, and a Canon EOS Rebel and a handful of 35mm 36 exposure B+W film.

In Chasing the Perfect, designer Natalia Ilyin investigates the roots of modernist design, and looks at how it has trickled through our education system and into the philosophy of today's generation of designers. She uses her own experience as a RISD MFA student to talk about her own struggle to conform to this idea before coming to the realization that she appreciates and even seeks out the messy, the creative, the disordered and the "real" in her work.

This book resonated in two ways, the first being that she wrote her book after going through the same graduate program that I find myself in now. Secondly, she was arguing for a tactile, messy, unexpected and "real" design aesthetic that I find appealing even if I don't always seek it in my own work.

[quote here]

It makes me think about the two endpoints of this spectrum that she talks about, and it echoes the struggle between online and real world interaction.

This small book by Bruce Sterling combines science fiction with an imaginative prediction for how we will relate to our designed objects in the future. He moves through classifying the objects we currently interact with - Artifacts, Machines, Products, and Gizmos. In order to talk about how we might ultimately interact with objects Sterling coins a word called spimes, which are:

SPIMES are manufactured objects whos informational support is so overwhelmingly extensive and rich that they are regarded as material instantiations of an immaeterial system. SPIMES being and end as data. They are designed on screens, fabricated by digital means, and precisely tracked through space and time through-out their earthly sojourn.

SPIMES are sustainable, enhanceable, uniquely indentifiable, adn made of substances that can and will be folded back into the production stream of future SPIMES. Eminently data-mineable, SPIMES are protagonists of an historical process.

The concept was interesting and engaging, and I am still trying to wrap my head around what sorts of things this idea might mean for designers. It also presented some new possibilities for an object to be a hybrid of a digital and physical world. Of course it could be disastrous, but its also fuel for the imagination.

** Just found a supplemental video where Sterling talks more about spimes, and how they might contribute to an Internet of Things.

I am surfing the web from Windows for the first time in two years. A Mac running Parallels running Windows running IE 7, to be more specific. It is a little surreal, and is part of day 1 of my Network Landscapes class within the Digital+Media* department.

What IS fun, however, is learning how to use a cool tool called mscapes. Its a visual editing tool that lets you build GPS-based interactive experiences. So I can create a little program for any GPS-enabled phone that will show an image when you get into a certain zone, or play sound when you get within a certain area.

For someone looking to explore a hybrid digital-physical experience, this is pretty darn cool.

* These guys are really serious about that plus sign. Even when spoken in a speech -- like, say, by the new Provost at convocation -- you are supposed to say "Digital Plus Media" with a completely straight face. Its like no one here learned anything from the dot com era.

In our first meeting of the Official Thesis Class, we took turns giving the group updates on where our thinking had wandered to while away on summer vacation.

At the end of last year I was using the working theme of "spanning the divide between the digital and physical worlds." Dubious grammar aside, I still feel like these two ideas of our digital and physical lives are still interesting and engaging themes to be working with. But I have begun to step away from some of the ways that I was relating them in my earlier writing.

I wonder about the idea of spanning these two. Do I want to span them? Iterate between them? Use the idea of a hybrid so that projects exist in multiple categories? I have started to look into some of my summer reading for new ways of thinking about how digital and physical could/should/have/will relate to one another.

In class the discussion about my thesis got fun and sort of animated. As usual, people's initial assumptions of what I mean when I say "technology" are widely varied. A typical response at RISD to to assume that technology means Flash or interactive media, and that the internet means the commercial internet or ecommerce. Its useful for me to keep in mind that unless I get more specific, my critics and viewers are going to keep making this association and its going to affect the discussion going forth.

Also in class we got into the question of our involvement and connection to online social media, and whether or not the connection we feel is real or perceived. There's a common assumption that the younger techie generation has adopted these new technologies without any sort of preliminary questioning, and the argument was raised that our generation is more obligated than ever to put those questions out there.

grad-thesis-syllabus.pdf

I kicked off my first day of school -- the last of my academic career, most likely -- with a rousing meeting of Thesis I. It felt like show and tell, where we all talked about what we did over the summer, and shared how our thesis ideas had shifted in that time.


I also spent several days leading up to the start of school getting settled into my new desk, and organizing the ever-growing pile of junk that I tend to have around me at all times. I don't have a reliable digital camera lined up for this year, so pardon the Photo Booth graininess for the time being. :)