Steampunk Clock

This is a Steampunk clock I coded in Processing and exported to javascript. It keeps time and the gears jump or rotate with each hour, minute and second.  It doesn't really tell the time, but who needs that out of a clock anyway? 

Click here to see it in action!

Data Crystals: Journal Designs for Arts for Survival

Here is a selection of journal designs I created for the Arts for Survival class. The focus of the class is to create a live action role play to help heal the survivors of human trafficking by use with their case workers.  Each one represents a "Data Crystal" which is a futuristic technology that allows participants to record their thoughts throughout the game we are designing. 

The journal designs are all unique. Each stamp is hand cut and pressed with watercolor paints. 

Night Sky Web Animation

The Night Sky explores html5, CSS via Sass in the form of a night sky. I used css and the transition tag to create all of the animations you see. Click on the image to interact with the animation. Wait a little bit for the surprise at the end before leaving!

#2 Response to Jamer Hunt in Text and Object

Jamer Hunt’s article, "Prototyping the Social", creates a careful triad between design, social responsibility, and cultural anthropology. Hunt uses Tony Fry’s theory of “defuturing” as a foundation for his analysis of the role ethnography is playing in shaping the design of our cultural experiences and potentially every aspect of life from cleaning products to genetic modification.  As stated below, Hunt leads with a warning to designers about the danger in creating for profit and functionality alone, without considering the consequences and future implication of design choices. Defuturing is, for Fry, not simply the law of unforeseen consequences. Instead, it is a conceptual mindset inherent to a style of designing that privileges the instrumental over the social. Designers ignore - at our own and others' peril-the extent to which any act of design is an act both of prefiguring a future social milieu but also the erasure of multiple possible alternatives. Design, for Fry, both designs and keeps on designing. It is an ontology of prefigurement that destroys as it creates. [1]

Fry’s notion of defuturing is important because it provides designers with stakes beyond price point, commercial success, and seemingly usefulness. For Hunt each design, system or object created becomes entwined in the “erasure of multiple possible alternatives” that never got finished.

For example, I like to imagine what Chicago O’Hare would look like if it were designed today. Would it have a central tower? Would it be circular? How would the role of computer networks affect the layout and transportation within the airport? The design is locked into time, but as Hunt says, it keeps on designing, even after it is finished.

When one imagines the impact something like that airport has had on millions of people over decades, the sheer weight of a design poorly executed is staggering. In this day and age of disposable digital design and emerging 3D printing technology I believe Fry and Hunt have more applicability in terms of imagining designing for waste management then perhaps the creation of objects with longevity.

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In response to Hunt and Fry’s notions of defuturing and erasure of alternatives within the design process, I will create an object that imagines multiple alternatives. I will also create something that considers it’s own lifespan. Temporality will be addressed in an attempt to confront the issues of social responsibility, usefulness, and waste management. I want my design to embrace it’s own entropy. I chose to hand sew a cup protector out of recycled felt. The piece is decorated with hand stitched lettering of the word "Defuture" to serve as a constant reminder of the choices I make. I intend to daily use this item with my coffee, not only to reduce the waste of disposable cup warmers, but also to remind myself to think of the future consequences of my daily and design actions.

---

[1] Clarke, Alison J. "Chapter Two." Design Anthropology: Object Culture in the 21st Century. Wien: Springer, 2011. 36. Print.

Mastery Object and Concept Map

Theater Workshop/Ritual/Warm-Up 1. Gather in a circle 2. say your name and favorite fruit 3. Take hands and pass the pulse 4. Turn to your right and massage that person, turn around and do it to the other person 5. face the circle’s center 6. Play energy ball or sound ball. - start with the ball in the center and ask people to imagine that it is a blue glowing light. - Demonstrate how it gets larger and louder and smaller and more quiet. Then do pitch - high is high and low is low. - have the group join in and make the ball expand and contract and get higher or lower - pass the ball to someone else - take the ball back and make it small and release it up 7. Ask everyone for one word of intention they would like to offer the class for the semester. everyone say those intentions. 8. Thank everyone for participating.

Concept Map

Resources:

• Breaking the rules : the Wooster Group
• Computers as Theater

Dance and Light Experiments

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The Long Walk: Mapping Hunters Point, a food desert

I know its been a while since I announced The Long Walk, an original Performance/Data collection piece  I created about San Francisco's Food Desert, Hunters Point. However, I wanted to share with you, the finished product of that process. In case you missed that incarnation, here is a little background on the issue I blogged about earlier:

'Unequal access to healthy food based on income and specifically within low-income neighborhoods is a huge problem in America. 2.3 million Americans live over a mile away from a grocery store without access to a vehicle. This has created something known as a “Food Desert” where entire low-income neighborhoods are under-served in access to the basic human right of healthy, unprocessed food. People living in low-income areas spend significantly more time (19.5 minutes) traveling to the grocery store than the national average (15 minutes) according to the USDA. The USDA has also created this Food Desert Locator, albeit somewhat inaccurate as it does not take into account corner stores with fresh fruit and vegetables, it is still a step in the right direction.'

Hunter's Point is listed on the USDA Food Desert Locator and was named one of the "Top 9 Worst US Urban Food Deserts." What I did to examine this issue, is create a visual map and an interactive Google Map that focuses on the Food Desert we have within our city boarders, in Hunter's Point.  The Map I created lists the closest shopping options for the residents of Hunters point, including a key that details the types of food sold and weather or not they support Food Stamps (EBT) and Women Infants and Children (WIC ) coupons for low income mothers. The map also tracks the distance amount of time it takes on foot to travel one-way to the store from the center of Hunter's Point Hill.  Check out the visual map below and the interactive map here.

Stuff I'm doing this summer: a poetry series, computer dance, and lots of weddings!

Experiments in Revision: Poetry

You know how it feels to write or make a first draft of something, then rework it until it shines like the top of Chrysler Building? You know how you kind of want to burn that first draft, so that no one will ever know the embarrassing wreckage of over-obvious, trite, and self indulgent ideas you have put down to the page only to be edited out? Well imagine that that first draft gets published online for everyone to read. That's the foundation of The Splinter Generation's Experiments in Revision series. Seeing as no one else was self-effacing and brave enough to undergo this grueling process they chose me! Over the months of June and July they are publishing a series of poems I have written, which culminate in one final (hopefully) awesome poem, which demonstrates that I did learn something after all. Apart from my own scattered first poem attempt I explore my Tanka, List Poem, and hybrid poem styles.  You can read the latest poem here. Keep your eyes on Splinter Generation, who will be posting the follow up poem and my process post over the summer. When I'm not writing poems I also write articles for Shamonica Magazine on music, tech, and design.

She Was a Computer: Play

She Was a Computer is a super funny tech-rich theater/dance piece from the masterful mind of Cara Rose DeFabio. I can't tell you what I'll be doing exactly, except to say that I think I am having a conversation WITH a computer on stage. Here is a bit on the piece: Drawing text from obsolete operational manuals, cyborg feminist theory and artificial intelligence programs, She Was A Computer looks for historical perspective on our current online identity issues. Record players, rotary telephones, and even the audience’s cell phones will be used for this interactive investigation of how technology affects our social selves. @ Counterpulse Theater in SF: JUL 20-22, FRI-SUN at 8PM, JUL 22 matinee at 2PM

 Lots of Weddings!

The funny thing about my thirtys is it seems like EVERYONE is getting married now and whats more, it seems like they all want to get married this year. Maybe its the whole Mayan Calendar thing or the Global Warming crisis, but whatever it is, it seems like people are eager to tie the knot before we say farewell to 2012. What does that mean for me? I get to drink free wine and make a lot of wedding mix tapes and DJ the receptions. Well the DJing thing is really just this weekend, so far, but there is some serious celebrating that is going to have to happen between now and December. Since not all my friends are invited to every wedding, I am DJing in the everyday world for the rest of you. Check out me and DJ Lady Bacon at Bacon/Styxx at St Mary's Pub every third Saturday of the month.

Nailzz

I'm also getting weirdly way into nail art. Inspired by this tutorial from Taylor Watson of Party Nails I took to painting my nails like a bat out of you know. Anyway, below are a few designs I have painted recently.

That pretty much sums up the fun stuff about my summer. So drop me a line, email, or Facebook if you want to connect!

The Long Walk: An Invitation to Explore A San Francisco Food Desert

Unequal access to healthy food based on income and specifically within low-income neighborhoods is a huge problem in America. 2.3 million Americans live over a mile away from a grocery store without access to a vehicle. This has created something known as a “Food Desert” where entire low-income neighborhoods are under-served in access to the basic human right of healthy, unprocessed food. People living in low-income areas spend significantly more time (19.5 minutes) traveling to the grocery store than the national average (15 minutes) according to the USDA. The USDA has also created this Food Desert Locator, albeit somewhat inaccurate as it does not take into account corner stores with fresh fruit and vegetables, it is still a step in the right direction.

To examine these inequalities I am creating a performance walk and interactive mapping project. “The Long Walk” will focus on the Hunters Point Food Desert that exists on local level, within the San Francisco community. This piece will combine a two and a half mile walk and shopping trip from the center from Hunter’s Point Hill to the Super Save Market and back, combined with an interactive web map recording the experience. At the market, which is the closest market to the center of Hunter's Point, I will purchase enough food for three days meals and carry the groceries back on foot.

You are invited to walk with me. 

The walk will act as metaphor for labor and duration. I want to express the labor and work it takes residents of low-income neighborhoods to access healthy food, that is so much more accessible to those that live in better serviced neighborhoods. While we walk I will document the  four mile walk with geo-located photography and journaling. I will also record the number of steps we take and create step markers every 500 steps on the map. Our pictures, thoughts and memories will be captured and mapped the published on the web.

Meet me at 12 noon on Sunday April 29th @ Kirkwood Ave @ Earl Street

The Long Walk starts at 12:20 and we should be back to the Hunters Point starting point by 3pm.

Bring comfortable shoes, a cellphone or camera and water.

For more info email niki@nikiselken.com  or call 415.692.1322

The Holidaze: Growing Up Together

This was my first family free Christmas. It was the first time I was not at my parents house, or my boyfriend's  family's house. I went to visit my family before Thanksgiving, but as soon as that was done, I hosted a Thanksgiving dinner with my boyfriend, in our home. It felt really grown up. There is something about hosting holidays yourself that speaks of a coming of age. We were not the only ones to do this, we had San Francisco friends hosting both Christmas Eve and Christmas dinners. I'm not sure why that matters so much, maybe it matters because it seems that we are all growing up together, creating homes and places for others to come to.

I belong to two expat communities: one from Santa Cruz and one from Wisconsin. The Santa Cruz folks are people I know from UCSC and their friends. We have a dynamic, lively, outrageous, kinky, generous, artistic, and loving community here in San Francisco and Oakland. I expect to know these people the rest of my life,  some of them I have known for ten years or more.

Team Wisconsin is a newer group of people I have stumbled into. Theirs is an honest, warm, decent, fun, and hilarious gang of game players, sports fans, dance parties, and awesomeness. I am grateful for those two communities and the way in which they have kept me on my toes, kept me happy, kept me in check, and kept me going throughout the somewhat difficult holiday season. Its hard to be away from my family, but now I have family in San Francisco too.

And besides that, there are the merry pranksters in my life; the people I can count on to put on stupid outfits and roam the streets with me during Santacon. They are people who will put on plays with me, who will DJ with me, who will come listen to the music I play, who will play music with me, who keep me from getting too serious.  Especially the folks from Costco Soulmate Trading Outlet, who always find the trouble and the fun in any situation.

I'm writing this to look on the bright side. To contemplate my good fortune for a minute. The cloud of holiday haze is lifting, maybe just in time for my boyfriend and I to face next year with a clear heads. 2011 had been one hell of a year, but there is one more hurdle to leap before the end. I just remembered that I am supposed to host all these crazy/lovely people for New Years Eve! Shit. I better get to work.

Winter Playlist and a New DJ Night!

This winter had me up to my ears in music. I've been creating playlists and organizing my vinyl and digital music collections. On the winter nights that start now at about 5:30 pm, I find it soothing to order and organize music. It may come from an OCD streak or just my Taurean sense of order and harmony, but either way its a fun way to pass the time.

It's lucky I have been doing all this music listening, becuse after going to visit my friend and bartender Visa at his new bar, St Mary's Pub, I offered to play some records for an upcoming Saturday night! Luckily, I was taken up on the offer by the well dressed, snazzy owner, Jimmy Driscol. So DJ Lady Bacon and I have put together one glorious night of music, Bacon/Styxx. It debuts on Saturday December 17th at 9pm.  Expect to hear bands like The Lightning seeds, Belly, Wild Nothing, and Joy Division. I would love to see you there!

I've also been writing for and designing a new online women's magazine with some talented friends called, Shamonica. It's one part culture rag, one part comic, and one part magic. We are still in the beta phase of the magazine, discovering our style and voice as we go. Expect a full launch of shamonica.com in early 2012. My most recent article features a winter playlist called: Music for Mystics. Listen online right now!

Tartuffed!

I was lucky to have been invited to Rapid Descent's version of Moliere's Tartuffe by a Ko-llaborator and  friend who was performing in the piece. It was directed by Megan Finlay, who formed the company two years ago, to explore the combination of movement and text with live music. Tartuffe is a classic French comedy, first staged in 1664 and censored by the king and archbishop of Paris on the grounds of the questionable virtue of the swindler, Tartuffe. Rapid Descent's Tartuffe was playful and precise. It was whimsey and rhyme wrapped in an exaggeratedly physical container. The performers were working in sync to complete tumbles over and under couches, out windows, and through each other's arms. All the while this near constantly choreography continued, the performers were delivering precise and rhyming text. Meandering through the scenes was a trumpet player, playing music for the audience and sometimes playing with the performers in the scenes. The speed and tension of the play just, worked. The characters were directed and bold and the energy of the piece flowed fast from one scene to the next.

The show had some notable performances. Brian Livingston as Tartuffe managed to sleeze and ooze over the stage at Elmire, Orgon's wife. He had a loose and open physical language punctuated by moments of tension and rapt prayer. Orgon, played by Zack, simpered and hyperventilated in one moment then gracefully tumbled and flowed the next. Addie Ulrey as Dorrine held the first act of the play together with her quick delivery, steady energy, and witty physical banter with the musician onstage.

The space, Shotwell Studios, which lends itself to dance pieces and small theater well, was reconfigured and the back wall painted a bright (almost garishly so) color, but it worked to create the livingroom wall, with windows and all. The couch the company used for the piece must have been forged in the fires of Mordor, because it took a beating! They stomped, fell, lept, skipped, stood, jumped and tumbled over and onto that couch.

The crowning moment of the piece was immediately after the intermission. The trumpet player had set up a series of live loops of trumpet to start out the piece. One by one the performers filed onto stage and began performing a series of movements without words, which I quickly realized were the exact movements from the first act. They performed a fast take of every single movement from the first act at a blinding pace and it was hysterical.  They say comedy is drama sped up, but what happens when you speed up comedy? This great piece of theater, that's what.

I will keep my ear to the ground for Rapid Descent and I hope to see more from this emerging company.

Making it Dutch

Puss n' Boat, Gay Frits, fancy beer, and lots of boats. Those are things that you might find in The Netherlands, or in my case, things I found in Amsterdam. The canals of the city reminded me of the Beirut song, by the same name. People seems to smile more there than in France (I know, I know, but I think the smiling has more to do with the culture than the pot.) There were blessed, blessed Thai food places, that served amazing, and spicy food, sans cheese, wine, or baguette.Bikes, bikes, and more bikes crowded every corner, and they had these hourly bike rentals that we have seen all over France and England as well.

Overall, Amsterdam seemed like the kind of place I could spend more time, with people who spoke my language and shared some of my tastes and values. I have put together some of the highlights in a photo collage, for your viewing pleasure.

Puss n' Boat is a cat adoption houseboat in Amsterdam. It's totally cute and filled with cats! I saw it because  Alan and I ended up on Amsterdam's St. Nicholas Boat Club on a historic boat. The boat ride was not much of a tour, but just a normal guy who took us around the canals who liked to use the boat in the off time.

It was also gay pride in Amsterdam. I have a questionable photo below of some gay frites. Just tilt your head to the left and look toward the pink to read the sign in the photo. We heard some live house music with a vocalist which was extraordinarily loud, but kind of cool.

Also, take note of the image of  Rasputin beer. This is the Dutch Rasputin beer, from Brouwerij De Moulen, not the American Northcoast Brewers. one. The barkeep told us that De Moulen was sued by Northcoast over the name Old Rasputin, so they had to release their Rasputin beer in the States as a different name. They released it as Disputin. Kind of genious!

Ana Peru, Paris's newest patron saint

The thing about art is that it is ephemeral. Sometimes what seems progressive on minute is old hat the next. The street artists like banksy, become the next creative institutions.

Be that as it may, I thought I would share a couple of the images I saw throughout the left bank, on buildings and walls and windows. There is the image of the girl. Placed next to Shepard's obey on one wall, she becomes the latest image of big sister watching the Parisian streets. She is definitely a stencil, like andre the giant in "obey." Unlike obey (pictured in the second image up top) she is weeping red over her face, she is something more sinister. Also, in her solo incarnation she bears the tag, "Peru ana ana Peru." This little tag showed up all over Paris. Not sure if it is a female monomer, but it somehow worked with the woman it was written on.

I like to think of thst image of the weeping woman as Ana Peru, Paris's newest patron saint. Ana Peru has come to lead Paris toward a future where women can become world renowned grafitti artists and our street art watches us with compassion rather than commanding us to obey.

Parisian Street Performance

Parisian music and performance is everywhere: on the steet, on the metro, on then bank of the seine. Performers playing classic accordion music, upright pianos, marching band music, and even fire spinning.

Paris is full of accordion music. That is just a given. On the the train into the city I saw two people performing traditional french accordion music. Kind of Beats random people asking for money on the Bart train in San Francisco.

The very next day I caught a glimpse of this adorable Parisian old woman dancing to street music. Tres Bon!

One of the most exciting things I saw was Boula Matari, a Parisian marching band. They were playing on the bank of the Seine. They gave San Francisco's Extra Action Marching Band a run for their money with song covers like the Beatles, Magical Mystery Tour. Check out the video I took on you tube.

One magical night we stumbled across the courtyard of Notre Dame, only to find two fire spinners performing. A young woman using fire poi and fire hoop with grace and dexterity. Also a young man with speed energy moved through a number of throws and figure eights with fire poi and something I had never seen before: firework poi. Here is a video of this spectacular show