My cow

I actually thought i could build the whole cow out of cans... but a dozen cans down the line i realized that the 'face' made me happy enough!
Now she gives me company next to my seat.

Candid? :)

About Trees and Weight-gain

i was thinking a crazy thought...

The fact of the matter is that as a 'system' humans are pretty warped.. if we eat too much , ideally our body should use what it must and throw out the rest. but no, our body uses all the extra stuff, and slowly we become fat!

And that's when trees come in.

The other day i was eating and looking out the window at a sunny day. the trees along the raod looked beautiful in the sunlight.
And it hit me... Trees don't get fat! its not like a couple of sunny days can ruin the look of a tree... a good monsoon and and the trees become gross... NOPE that NEVER happens.
they become greener... leafier, and if ANYTHING just more beautiful...
However, starved trees DO look horrible, the leaves fall off, and they just look SAD.

hmmm... Humans ARE pretty warped.

Dreamy Debate

Perhaps it’s the month of idle time to blame
Perhaps it’s all the extra sleep
And then again, maybe it’s just how things are… I seem to obsess over the same things over and over again in almost a cyclic manner.

Dreams, humor, death, religion, time, patterns and design… definitely the strangest combination of interest areas.

This time its back to dreams. And in particular I’m obsessing over the ‘brim’. The crazy time between sleep and wake. The transition time when one is ‘half asleep’. It’s like between two worlds. A world of collective reality (awake) and the world of personal reality ( asleep).

While going to sleep its interesting how one tries to let go and just sleep… the funny feeling of KNOWING that one is drifting into sleep…

And then while waking up, the funny feeling of trying to remember a good dream, and the harder one tries, every last memory of it escapes leaving only a good feeling, but no trace of the reason…

I have often wondered using Darwin’s theory of evolution, what could be the evolutionary reason for dreams… and bad dreams? Is it just an error?... maybe not… dreams are perhaps a means of remaining in a semi-conscious state, keeping the mind alive, so that it is easier to spring to action if needed… the opposite of dreaming is the ‘dead sleep’ which is so much more difficult to snap out of…
The dead sleep. Now, away from the world of wild predators out to get us, a good sleep is meant to be a dead sleep. A complete write off of that time… and amusingly it’s always the people who don’t like ‘wasting time’ that prefer the ‘dead sleep’. Perhaps being completely in control ( after all its ALL your creation) and even so, not in control is a terrible feeling for the busy ‘doers’ of the world!

So are dreams a defense mechanism? A way to rest in way that still allows for an alert mind? If so, then the plot thickens!
So we derive that dreams are a means to attempt at a longer life.
And yet I’ve died so often in my dream, except the amazing bit is that death in a dream ENTAILS waking up. No dream allows for the experience of death… Death is ALWAYS about waking up…
And there again I’m back to religion! So does religion too take cues from dreams? Is this experience of ‘waking up’ upon death in a dream the origin of the concept of ‘afterlife’ or the concept of a ‘nirwana’ ?

SO not only have dreams given us longer lives, they have unwittingly instilled in us a concept of death as an awakening, stretching our existence into eternity!

Being 8

Quickly quickly before i forget this moment.

Its new years, and even though i have all the space i could ask for i am just not able to wrap up last year in my head.
maybe a post could do it for me...

high points?

a water fight

standing on a table and singing the birthday song

standing in Namsang tower watching the roads turn red as the night set in along with its traffic bottlenecks

taking pictures of myself holding wine after finding out that i got into ID, and then realising that i couldn't open it!

riding a bicycle on the coast of Korea

giving the Tata scholarship interview sitting next to an Alsatian dog

my best friend feeding me cake in Barrista after i put mehendi on both hands

seeing a train pass by from so so close

reading Jahajn

spending the night in JFK, surrounded by the happiest people in the world

the moment it was announced that i was about to land in Chicago

cooking an omelet in a pressure cooker on my first day in my own apartment

seeing snow...

dancing salsa in my apartment at 3 in the mornin cause me and roommate couldn't sleep

lows...

saying bye to dadaji

sitting in a car outside Big Chill with my Best friend after she didn't get something she should have got

walking on the streets on Christmas day

its been such a long year.
i was discussing years with somebody, and they explained that years seem shorter now because when we are young, a year is a bigger proportion of ones life - an age 8, one year is one eighth of ones life, at 25 one year is one twenty-fifth... so perhaps at 25, three years equate the one year when we were eight...

but this year broke that rule! this year felt like i was eight again.

closure.
goodbye2007.

and here's hoping i can keep being 8 for as long as i can.

little projects...

Yesterday i made something.
I picked up the single use coffee cups, cut them up, and made a bicycle out of them!!

Its rare for my impulses to DO something to override my inertia. I often get ideas to make things, often silly little things, but long before I can gear up to build it, my mood deflates, and thats the end of the story. But the few times that i hold on to the excitement, and just do the little things that i want to, it becomes a day to remember...

So here to all my forgotten discarded little ideas:
1. I wanted to go out during the rainy season and pick a part of a strange weed. That part of the weed behaves like Velcro, it tends to stick to cloths, and also to each other. I really wanted to collect them and then play with form.. make cubes, pyramids etc out of them... i never did... So many rainy seasons have gone by...
2. I wanted to make a Christmas tree out of old bottles... i lost patience and finally threw all the bottles away... they were taking too much space, and i wasn't convinced that i would ever finally use them.
3. I wanted to take pictures of the first night i saw snow fall...
4. I wanted to make a little shelf/rack to put next to my bed so after reading a book, there was a good place to put it.

Thats all i can remember now.
And there will be many more to come.
I just hope that i find the patience to see these little things through... it really makes my day!

If weather can effect moods...

then chicago doesn't need drugs... !

why do stars twinkle?

Somebody once told me that stars twinkle because of things like pollution and dust particles, and that if one went out into space, then stars don't twinkle anymore..

More recently someone told me that some stars are so so far away that the twinkle is actually because we are catching only one photon at a time, and the delay between the photons is what causes twinkling.

I had a very interesting class the other day. We were trying to understand perception. We noticed that people's understanding of the world around them happens in waves, and not in a straight line. We tend to compare by forming ratios. Everything is measured as relative information and not in absolutes...This got me pretty excited... we noticed that we could immediately detect the difference between NO light and a Very small amount of light, but if we already had a lot of light in the room, and somebody let in just a small bit more, nobody could tell the difference.

So this means that extremes define the scope of perception... light and dark ... weightless to heavy ... black and white to color saturation ... and the inbetweens are ratios and relatives within that.

This got me thinking about beauty/art/poetry. An old experimental idea of mine.
That beauty lies approaching extremes... pushing the limit, but perhaps not crossing it.
Playing with the limits of perception.

I probably need to think this through a bit more...

Ghar Ghar

I've been thinking about this for so long.

Suspension of disbelief excites me. what amazes me really is that it seems to be an innate need in us. Nobody actually needs to teach us about it. My earliest memories revolve around playing ghar ghar. Me and my cousins would assume roles and enact the roles for hours. We would unknowingly stretch the situations we enjoyed, and compress the time of the actions we thought didn't added to the 'story' .. like sleep. A whole night was enacted in 2 minutes. ( perhaps an elementary translation of sleep-time: the time taken to sleep + the time taken to wake up!! - the in between time was non-time!) In just 2 hours we would easily create the routine of 3 or 4 days! We would willingly take anything lying around and imagine it was something that looked similar enough...

Years and years later I'm studying design methods. And it feels like I'm relearning all THAT. we need to re-learn storytelling, re-creating scenarios, and do prototype testing using 'similar objects'.

Its a game of adult Ghar Ghar!

more time?

Its already the end of session A.

Only a few days ago we were defining upward mobility in terms of the notion of time. It seems that the higher one climbs the ladder the longer one can plan into the future. People who only had means to plan for one day were at the base, the people who had the means to plan a week, a month were a little higher. People who had the means to look years ahead were far far higher.

I chewed on this for some time.

In another conversation i concluded that music shrinks time. Movie without sound is longer than one with sound. Journeys are faster with music.

Dreams dislocate time. Dreams are oblivious to time.

Misery expands time. aways.

And 'Virtual life' subtracts time from 'real life'.

So, i suppose i can cure my fear of time flying by being miserable. Not being glued to headphones and and staying away from the internet!

about faces...

its again been long since i wrote.

The past month has been full of ideas... in fact i found myself composing so many posts in my idle time... but since i wasn't near a comp most of the time... the post might never come here!

anyway. i visited Frank Lloyd Wright's house in Chicago this Sunday. It was a beautiful neighbourhood, an interesting house, and some some lovely little insights into his life. something completely off track got me thinking though!

On one of the walls was framed Frank Lloyd Wright's passport. I t was nothing like the passports today. It was one plain sheet, with NO picture, and just a physical description. It went some thing like ( the picture on top is of another such 'passport'):

Name: Frank Lloyd Wright

Age: *whatever*

Height: 5'8"

Forehead: receding

Nose: large

Chin: average

Color: brown

and somehow i was just intrigued!! i was intrigued because i found it Hillarious that a person be described that way, and yet, when i really got down to thinking about it... if there were an image there of his face, my mind would subconsciously note those attributes... after all there must be some unsaid way in which we recognise faces, but to see it written in 'black and white' terms was strange.

Ok, - here's Strange twist to this train of thought.... i met someone the other day that discussed a peculiar ailment with me : Prosopagnosia
Prosopagnosia is also known as 'Face Blindness'. Here people are unable to tell faces apart ( like some people can not tell different brands of cars/sedans apart... or tell fonts apart). People with this disorder cannot make any sense of faces and can't make same-different judgements when they are presented with pictures of different faces. They may also might not be able to tell differences such as age or gender from a face. However, they may be able to recognise people using non-face clues such as their clothing, hairstyle or voice!!

So what this person explained to me was that face recognition is a kind of 'developed expertise'. As in the in actuality face recognition is a complex process as it involves analysing complex surfaces, and sometimes very subtle differences.... Thus most of us over the years develop expertise in this... so slowly we all become 'face experts' which is why sometimes we can recognise a person, and still not remember his/her name!

So all this began with surprise at an image being broken down into just a few words- basically objectivity in a complex subjective subject... and then came through to the fact that it probably That crude break down of attributes which is what actually happens in our head without us sometimes even realising it!!

ok... i promise the next post will not be this crazy!

Chapters and more chapters

A chapter is nearing its close. And another is about to begin.

Unfinished stories have totally different charm. Perhaps that’s the secret of sad stories too…. Impact is about a lingering feeling, something that stays with you. Happy ending don’t leave lingering thoughts, incomplete stories do, and the final proof that we are all intrinsically optimistic is that sad stories linger in us for long. Cause perhaps we all try to find think and restructure the story to see all the ‘could be’ endings

Unfinished stories… may be this chapter will be an incomplete chapter.

Incompleteness is perhaps a formula for creativity.
I learnt the rules in design school, gestaults laws: give a person an incomplete visual, and the mind attempts to complete it
I saw the same in my research on humor in products where just a part of a product is all that’s needed to convey the form.
Questions… are incomplete by themselves, they need answers, and thus questions too, remain the base of creativity.

In life does incompleteness spin the same magic?

Needed to write this down.

After a particularly bad presentation the other day, my mentor came upto me and said:

" You had many sketches, perhaps too many. you see, if you imagine that there is a target in front of you, what you have done is shoot many many arrows in the periphery, i want you to shoot fewer arrows, but as close to the target as possible"

I felt bad, but it got me thinking.

In design, can/ do we ever 'aim and fire'? i mean, unlike the board exams, or a sales number, a new design is not a perceivable target, so one has to shoot blind. We shoot many arrows hoping one may accidentaly hit the right target. The target sometimes, if we are lucky, appears before us in the form of a mirage or 'inspiration' and we can only hope to catch that glipse of the mirage for long enough to be able to aim and fire!

...

There are two kinds of people in this world:

Those who sketch

And those who can't.

and this time it CARS!

Yesterday was a day dedicated to cars!

I had dropped over at a friends place for breakfast... though this time it was breakfast with sketching classes! So while my friend busily sketched car after car explaining the importance of contrast, variation in line pressure, and using perspetive rather than isometry... i was completely distrated by the TV in front of us cause 'Too Fast Too Furious' was playing...and though its not really MY type of movie, my dratted cousin has managed to condition me to like it!... so between looking at a car being sketched, and seeing some mad car chases on TV, we both realized that we were getting late for the 'Seoul Motor Show' !

So now we set off for the one hour long journey to 'Kintex' where the motor show was being held.
Reached Kintex, and after a long walk though the parking area ( which incientally was also like a motor show for me - except without the crowd and model!) ... soon ... we reached inside. It was ONE big hall as opposed to our Indian multiple hall Expo.

Well to be honest, going to a motor show ( for me) is a bit like visiting a zoo. Only that perhaps in a zoo i'm more familair with the creatures on displaywhile in an auto expo, i am a little more at sea! But on the whole, people behave pretty similarly in both these places!! so as we moved from cage to cage ( read 'brand to brand') i was really trying to get a fix on the design identity of the various brands and how they differenciated themselves from each other. I heard a lot about 'wheel arches', super-cars, hydrogen fule cell cars missing 'b' pillars from my friend, and also managed to notice a lot of whacky rear view mirrors and LED experiments with headlights... quite a mind swim!

All in all, it turned out to be a far better experiance than i had expected. Some cars actually caught my attention and amazement,like:

'Altica' Renault-Samsung concept car
http://aving.net/usa/Exhibition/default.asp?mode=read&c_num=41606&SP_Num=73&mn_name=exhi&BTB_Num=136

the hyundai QarmaQ - a full plastic body concept car in association with GE plastics
http://news.windingroad.com/concept-cars/geneva-motor-show-hyundai-qarmaq-concept-goes-for-whalebones-safety/

and of course... the mini cooper ( one of the few cars with a MALE model!)

Came back home feeling good and tired. So maybe cars arn't that boring after all!

Patterns

One of the scariest feelings is realizing how similar you are to your parents!

And whats even scarier is that one can never see this similarity until its too late! Similar mistakes, similar triumphs, and lives led almost on that invisible line of fate.

Fate? i NEVER believed in it. And who am i kidding, i still don't. But i think we are all programmed to see patterns,we love it when we detect a pattern in anything... differnt people do differnt things with the patterns they see... 'scientififc people' notice patterns in an accurate manner and turn their onservations into scientific theories, artists tweek and exaggerate the patterns they see in life so that they communicate better... and some of us see patterns and start forseeing the future... we take the pattern to its next predictable level, and know exactly
whats about to happen... or at least we would like to think so!

'markers' of time!

Been some time again since i wrote...
I did something yesterday which i had spared myself from doing for a long time... ironing clothes... i had left the jeans for the end bit... and while ironing then i noticed how much thier color had changed since i had bought the pair.. i could see around the seams how much darker they used to be... and how with all the fading i liked the pair more and more...
nostalgia...
perhaps 'markers' of time...are more valuable than we admit..
There are so many little things we look at, that are just affirmations that 'yes time has past'... like sandal tans.... faded scars... length of hair... white hairs...
This reminds me that while doing research on bicycle customisation... it suprised me how much a flaw like a dent or a scratch made people know thier bike more than any other means of personalisation! slowely i noticed that Many people actually know thier products by the product's flaw, a flaw that occuered by a mistake, or through some funny incident... anyhow, that flaw becomes a 'marker' of time.. and something 'of your own'... in a world of mass production, and identical pieces... perhaps the few things that we still have control over are flaws, and those flaws make things our own!

Season of Lurve !

Everything intertwined…

Ever noticed that while talking to someone with music playing in the background, at a moment of pause in the conversation, the song playing mysteriously says a line that seems to be in continuation with the conversation you were just having? well, when it happens one tends to just laugh it off.

This happens to me more often with books. Sometimes when I read it feels like the book is telling my own story in an allegorical manner!.. When I had just entered Design School, I had also just begun reading Harry Potter. And the similarities were eerie! While Harry Potter had the strangest course material buying list, I too had to go out, and buy A3 sunlit bond paper, French curves, half imperial ivory sheets….things I had not even heard of! The whole struggle between the ‘muggles’ and the witches, and the children of muggles Vs the children of witches…. I too was noticing that some people were from artist/ creative families while some were from families who still could not understand WHAT their child was paying good money to ‘study’! So, by crazy association, I fashioned all of us to be witches and wizards of sorts!

And now its happening again… I’m reading a book with three stories intertwined. One a fairy tale, one of the past, and one in the present ( the past of the auther now!) and I can’t help but feel that there is a fourth ! My present, my Right Now! I read every chapter with baited breath, read the three stories and almost and feel my own building itself alongside!
Scared to reach the end of this book!

Flowers for a change!

Really liked these images.

they are actually Xrays! Never thought a rose could look so good!

You can see more images at www.bmyersphoto.com