tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-66002950973641384822011-07-30T16:51:20.100-04:00Keep your eyes peeled for: some graduate work, musings on my grad school experience and the occasional picture of a borrowed superstar child.Hello there!http://www.blogger.com/profile/14853678120201182495noreply@blogger.comBlogger281100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6600295097364138482.post-33214644798238889632010-02-11T20:51:00.011-05:002010-02-16T14:08:01.249-05:00

On this very day two years is where it all began. In a bewildered state, brought on by nerves, excitement, anxiety, confusion and not understanding half of the words people were using, I survived Graduate Interview Day and along the way met a whole slew of people, including the 11 people that I would be spending the next two years with. None of us knew if we were actually going to get in. All of

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I don't know if it is the actual Pivot technology and capabilities or the music in the movie but I'm optimistic and I really want to get my hands on this thing. I can see now the trajectory of online "searching as consumption" to "searching as therapy" because, in the worlds of Microsoft Live Labs Development Manager Karim Farouki, "by allowing someone to move the data around we are allowing them

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Last weekend we pulled off the 2010 North Carolina State University College of Design Biennial Graduate Symposium entitled Design, Community and the Rhetoric of Authenticity. When we first began the discussions around the topic in studio, to be honest, I was less than thrilled. It seemed entirely too nebulous, too vaporous, too undefinable. How could we ever have an entire symposium centered

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"We are so accustomed to disguise ourselves to others that in the end we become disguised to ourselves." - Francois de La Rochefoucauld, French author & moralist (1613 - 1680)

Hello there!http://www.blogger.com/profile/14853678120201182495noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6600295097364138482.post-80582689076730530702010-01-12T15:16:00.005-05:002010-01-12T16:17:42.482-05:00

The NCSU College of Design Biennial Graduate Symposium is only a week and a half away and we are pumped! From the built environment to the virtual realm of interface, design persuades individuals and communities of the truth, honesty, and realness of objects, spaces, and systems. These tactics of persuasion amount to what may be called a rhetoric of authenticity. ////////////////////////////

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“Anything I’ve ever done that ultimately was worthwhile...initially scared me to death.” ― Betty Bender This quote, as it applies to my life today, refers to my thesis, naturally, and trying out the coffee from the new convenience store next door to studio. The coffee has proven to be worthwhile. We will see what happens with thesis.

Hello there!http://www.blogger.com/profile/14853678120201182495noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6600295097364138482.post-50317596165759475372009-11-12T15:23:00.004-05:002010-01-12T16:16:15.206-05:00

For the second round of this project, embodied in this stop frame animation, I am exploring self expression, the construction of an authentic self and how these expressions are shaped by community. Identity & Community from Caroline Prietz on Vimeo.

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As second year students for Project 3 we are to "Propose and complete a design study that addresses an intersection (a point) rooted in (1) your thesis questions and (2) an aspect of the symposium theme "Design, Community and the Rhetoric of Authenticity." So I suppose it is time... time to unleash the researchable question that has remained under wraps for some time now. Please, treat it gently

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Visual conventions, visual rhetoric or anything of the like has been the buzz around studio for the past few weeks. What are they? Where are they found? How do we as designers contribute to, create or disrupt them? Next we did experiments in "hybridization" attempting to infuse new visual conventions into the old. Attempting to lead our communities down a path. For the project we were to... 1.

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Thesis. It is well on its way by now. So I thought I would take some time to step back, examine my process up to this point and share it with you here: I began my explorations when I began evaluating why I even wanted to come back to graduate school. I gave my best miss america speech in my statement of purpose about wanting to explore how design could make this world a better place for an

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The Thought Journal: When re-evaluating my "thought catcher" I realized that I am interested most in the thought, where the mind wanders while engaged in the ritual of being in the coffee shop. I don't want to be too intrusive in their process I just want to capture the thought as it is happening. And in return make the person aware of the wandering thoughts. My New Idea: Provide a Thought

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The Thought Catcher: Ritual and a Cultural Probe: Are the rituals performed in the coffee shop experience just part of an illusion of busyness or importance, a facade? Where does the mind wander during those ritualistic experiences? What are the thoughts beneath the surface of ritual? My Probe: A single blank nesting doll is left randomly on tables, with a kit for creation inside including, a

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Upon explorations and musings on cultural probes getting at ritual I found that I am interested in where the mind wanders during those ritualistic experiences. What are the thoughts beneath the surface of ritual? And how can they be visualized? A "thought catcher" in a way. My classmate Tania, turned me towards a rather compelling photographic study (wish I would have thought of this on my own,

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This semester is all about culture (Design as a Cultural Experience, to be exact). We could sit in the studio discussing culture round the clock (which I am sure we will take a stab at), and/or we could get out there and experience, observe, explore and wonder a bit. We start things off with the latter. For seminar we are to take a stab at a Thick Description (See Clifford Geertz's writings on

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This summer began with days of sleep to catch up on, long lists of projects to complete and a few meandering lines across my calendar indicating exciting journeys. It was a time to get re-inspired and re-connected with life. One of my plans of attack to achieve this goal included revitalizing another passion of mine, photography. Check out my photoblog here to get a glimpse into my summer

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My fellow classmate, Liese Zahabi and I (along with our awesome TA, Helen Dear) took on the challenge of introducing 80 high school students to graphic design (16 a day for 5 days) during week three of NC State's Design Camp this summer. What did I learn? Well, it is a whole lot of fuss... but definitely worth it. ///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// For three

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Final Critique was a culmination of all of our work from the past semester. I decided to even bring along a slightly unsuccessful but still intriguing (and hours of hilarity in studio) project too. For part of my Moments of Interface project I was interested in the reflection of one's self and was looking for how I may distort that in unsuspecting ways. I came up with the Face Mash Up. I

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The children of today are the parents of the future. Growing up in an environment where social networking is vital, thoughts are contributed in motion and walls of privacy are fading these new families lives will be one large system of communication networks. They will hold a great sense of value in this interconnectivity without boundaries and the web of networks will touch each and every area

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For our next three moments of interaction we were to respond to one motivation in 3 different designed environments, while maintaining comparable attributes of experience across. For this round I wanted to push myself to investigate form-making areas I may have never been before, and that meant at least something had to be digital and interactive. I also knew that I wanted to explore the idea of

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In critique for my first interactive moment "Snack Time" we wandered into an area I found quite interesting and tender, the reflection of ones self. For parts 2 and 3 of this 6 part project we were to combine 1 motivation with 1 attribute of experience then combine the same motivation with 1 attribute of experience that shifts the motivation. I choose the motivation of reflection. Moment 2:

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Thus far this semester we have created some rather compelling studies on interface. Yet throughout our conversations we have found a common inquiry: Why would someone be motivated to interact with an interface in the first place? One could create the most sophisticated, functional or beautiful interface but if if there is no motivation for the individual to interact then the interface is useless.

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For the performance aspect of this project I was inspired from a past Valentine's Day gift idea that may have been misappropriated and went a little array. One year from Valentine's Day my gift for my husband, Zach, was a book, not necessarily one that he requested or that he would have even been interested in actually reading. In order to disguise the lameness of the gift I decide to

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In the midst of Project Two's Critique we were asked to free write on our reactions to each project. While I found myself writing about things such as; how proud I was of how far everyone had come in their form explorations, questioning how I could condition my body to not need sleep (thus being able to produce much more), magic and illusion, laughing until my face hurts, questioning conventions

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A lot has happened since we spoke last. Interface is consuming my life and I have learned a few things along the way. Here is what I've learned thus far: 2/2 - An avocado is a fruit not a vegetable. 2/2 - WORD: Memetic - that which is imitated 2/3 - WORD: Anthropomorphic - having human characteristics 2/4-2/11 - Life is busy, busy, busy... (trust me, I learned lots) 2/12 - Its not perfection

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To say the least our Thursday afternoon critique lended itself to a great deal of discussion about interface; what it is, what it is not and what the possibilities of interjecting in this "said" or "said not" interface could be. It was productive, not in the way that we all got a pat on the back and a "job well done", but in a way that expanded our individual thinking and the collective

Hello there!http://www.blogger.com/profile/14853678120201182495noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6600295097364138482.post-29935533290215193772009-01-15T13:27:00.004-05:002009-09-08T13:28:11.405-04:00

I have decided to shift the focus of my interface project. I am intrigued with my other before-mentioned ideas but ran into a few road blocks. For the camera interface project I was having a difficult time determining how the "thing" would be displayed on critique day and decided to shelve it as a idea to consider in the future. The tactile email interface idea, come to find out, was not totally

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Our first project in Studio this semester (the warm up project) encourages us to explore possibilities with interface by "intervening in an existing interface to reconfigure the condition of contact." The "condition of contact" being the space between two entities and the way they interact. And did I mention that it is due on Thursday, so this is a quicky. While I started off with many ideas such

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...my apologies, this is my very first blog (believe it or not). Don't get me wrong, I have been reading blogs since back when they were musing of serious writers and have continued to read them into the age of "mommy" blogs. But I had always resisted taking that step into the blogging world. I am not a serious (or even good) writer, and I am not a mommy with pictures, videos and those hilarious

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