magicbeans. nothing if not awkward.

I looked up from my computer screen at about four this afternoon and was surprised to find that it wasn't midnight. First, it was overcast and sprinkly for most of today, so there wasn't a whole lot of natural like making its way inside. And second, I spent most of the afternoon mucking around with Maya, something that has largely been confined to end of my long weekdays; partly because I've got stuff to do for my 3d modelling class, and partly because I'm finding it lots of fun. Thought my right (mouse, trackpad, stylus) hand has been cramping up quite a bit, much more so than when using any other software.

Also for school this week, for my interactive media class, I made my first (and possibly only) ever Flash movie. No conceptual depth to it. Just a pretty little toy that'll wear out its interest-factor in a handful of seconds. But, I know now that I could use Flash, were I ever in dire need to.

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Back on Saturday I finally moved some stuff into my temporary studio space in DUMBO. (If the Digital Arts floor of the new building is actually ready on the currently (third or fourth) project date, I'll have to move out again within the month.) Last weekend also turned out to be the DUMBO Arts Festival, including among other things, open studios. Out of the four or five people actually using their space (out of about 20 assigned) in the DDA studio, only Nikki had anything out to show.

I figured I'd put something up Sunday, and spent Saturday afternoon making an enigmatic invite. Sunday morning I printed some cheap 4x6s of the sorts of things I've been working on over the past year at a drugstore self-service digital photo kiosk, and then headed over to the studios. Nikki had deinstalled her project, leaving me the only one showing in the space.

A good number of people came through. Three-dozen maybe? A few left with naught by a perfunctory look. A few others spent a little time. A very small handful asked me questions about my process. I'm glad that I made the effort.

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And in thesis cataloguing news…

Three theses of note. One, an M.Arch. thesis from 1998, was a little hand-bound book, a VHS tape, and only three pages in the required thesis format—title page, advisor/chair/dean signature page, and table of contents. As I've been cataloguing, I've been thinking about how to format my own thesis so that it is as challenging as possible for whoever ends up cataloguing it. This one was an interesting challenge. The VHS tape is a fairly standard inclusion (though generally for animation theses, not so much in architecture), but the little book, seeing as how it was the primary textual information carrier, posed some interesting questions.

Yes I know, I'm a huge geek.

Second, and I'm in no way being overly critical of the student who wrote this thesis, as English was obviously not his first language and the project itself actually looked quite interesting; but certainly critical of the thesis advisor, who should have offered some help in getting the long, fairly complex title into better grammatical shape: Addressing the issue of abandonment : the expression and commemoration of completion the circle of life in urban which involving the multicultural of New York City : case study—Greenpoint Terminal Warehouse, Brooklyn, New York City.

And third—also as regards a title—most M.F.A. theses are titled something along the lines of An record of an exhibition of [medium] with a corollary statement. Occasionally the exhibition therein recorded has itself a title. Though that tends to be the exception. I have no idea why. If it was my thesis I'd title my exhibition. Though I'm not sure mine would have been quite as amazingly worded as: A record of an exhibition of painting entitled, The only reason I don't rub black oil paint in my eyes and cry uncontrollably like a little tiny baby is the simple fact that I would probably go blind : with a corollary statement.

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And back to today. Now, looking up, it is midnight.