[a warm-up thesis writing exercise given to us by Anne West]

I don't know if I would put composed music in my soundtrack, but I can think of sounds that are popping into my head. In a lot of cases when I'm involved in the processes that generate these sounds, I will sort of sing along to the noises as if they are music.

The tone of a modem dialing into the internet
the sound of pencil lead scratching on paper
keys clicking on a keyboard
rolling the drum of a printing press
the startup tone on my mac
pulling the squeegee across a screen
error beeps - dunk!
water swishing back and forth in a photo tray
pulling thread through the signature of a book
Ira Glass' voice in my ipod mingled with traffic
shuffling cards

Follow-up
Tonight as I transcribe some of these exercises into my blog, I am inspired to pull together music I am enjoying right now that makes me think about this digital-analog tension I am exploring. Recommendations for more music along this vein would be awesome!

Alone in Kyoto, AIR
Postcards From Italy, Beirut
Tropicalia, Beck
About Fun, Psapp
Tiger, My Friend, Psapp
Starry Eyed Surprise, Paul Oakenfold
Such Great Heights, The Postal Service

Today we had the first of several workshops with Anne West, focusing on starting the writing process of our thesis books. It was amazingly helpful! We started with a number of exercises aimed at getting us to look at the thesis from many varied angles, and then started preliminary versions of a number of key components, including something called "It began here."

Aside from getting our feet wet by putting rough beginnings on all of these important documents, the most useful part was pairing up with Melissa and asking each other questions about our work so far.

Why is this topic relevant?
- 2 poles that Americans deal with every day
- As designers and educators, how do we teach when we operate in these two worlds?

Is there more inherent value in the digital or the analog way of interacting with the world?
- there are benefits to both, and a hybrid of the two is the form I'm seeking
- its sort of a "pre-supposed" answer to the question of digital vs. analog
- tactile, experiential, layered meaning of the physical world
- fast, cheap, efficient, more available, less wasteful of the digital world

What does it mean to be a hybrid?
- this is where I am researching now
- examples of hybrids in other fields, like suspensions in chemistry
- precedence for reaction to new technology earlier in history
- how does this compare to other technical advances?
 
How do you want your thesis to live beyond you?
- I want the information I gather and the projects I produce to be available as a resource to other designers or educators.
- the idea of a "product" is appealing - something that can be published or distributed in some way

Tell me the favorite part of your [edge-notched card] sorter project?
- queriable, sortable, interactive
- BUT interact with it on your own terms
- tactile
- layered
- included a history of itself, a record of its own making
- ability to take what you need

Will digital win?
Yes, commercially.

Will it be like a pendulum or a graph [with a falling line]?
- neither
- floor of forest: things get layered, then decompose, form new compounds
- our generation sees the line between digital vs analog
- next generation won't have that knowledge

Are digital experiences as authentic as real-world ones?
- depends on what you think of as a true, authentic experience
- we're not there yet
- interactions can happen that are as deep as real world, but only in the best case scenario
- exception to the rule
- space vs. place
- can you really engage all five senses in digital yet? bring that experience into the digital world, or make the real world more customizable and efficient

What are the specific messages you want to send?
- arguing for the value of real world
- championing parts of handmade processes that are so amazing
- championing slowing down. longer experiences
- the point isn't to reproduce real world experience online
- simply can't do it, it would only be an approximation

Melissa's prescription: watch Battlestar Gallactica.

Exploration into visualizing the varying sunrise and sunset times across the world. An automated script takes latitude and longitude coordinates and generates a customized sunrise and sunset calendar for that location, along with related geotagged flickr images.