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APT FOTOS!

After a LONG day/week of preparing the deal, getting the apt, buying initial stuff, here are the first pictures of the apt!

Yes – that’s right – 27 1/2 is the number!

Entrance:

Stairs – 5 flights walk up – great for the legs!

Entrance door to the left – HUGE living room 😉

View from entrance door – those doors go into my room:

This is my room:

This is the other side of the living room – my room on the left and kitchen to the right, bathroom door right before the kitchen.

The bathroom:

Another look at the kitchen:

And the second (and smaller) bedroom:

Furnishing coming soon! Stay tuned 😉

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MY LOVE IS IN TOWN

As usual when she is around good things happen…

Appart from being her 30th birthday today, I finally got my apt!!

5 story walk up but nice 2 bedroom with tons of light and VERY close to school!!

I was also with her when I found out that I was accepted to ITP!!

And now her CD is finished and masterized! It is amazing!!

Also – got a new computer yesterday – the CD got stuck in the drive and the computer was not turning on so instead of leaving it there I asked for a new one and they gave me 😉 I love Apple – got back home – logged on to .Mac and synched my whole computer again… ok – iPhoto and iTunes library information was lost but no harm done…

In any case, SO HAPPY to be here! And even happier because my LOVE is here with me 😉

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APPLICATIONS CLASS – VIK MUNIZ

2 first groups presented their reactions to Acconci presentation.

1st group presented a high-tech solution where pictures of students were shown on the screen with the text they should speak. The content was typed in live by the team members using their laptops in the audience. The topic was the new tower that will replace the World Trade Center, and how Acconci might want to design those towers.

2nd group presented a totally low-tech solution – each memeber of the team presented their own skit with the central theme of Push/Pull-Public/Private that Acconci talked about in his architectural desires.

For the surprise lecturer – VIK MUNIZ!! A Brazilian photographer/drawing/sculpture artist. Came from a poor Brazilian familiy in Sao Paulo and started out as an advertising agent – and won a prize for it on his first year of work. When he left the prize awarding event he was shot in a random “rescue” he was attempting. Lucky for him this guy was rich and bought him a ticket to the US, where he has been for the past 22 years.

His new show in NY:

Pictures of Junk
Sikkema Jenkins and Co.
New York, NY
September 9 – October 14

Some quotes:

“Most FINE artists are quite ROUGH characters…”

“An artist only does half of the work – the viewer does the other half…”

Amazing lecture…

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APT HUNTING

Back to square 0…

Stuyvesant town did not work out… no guarantor…

So back to square zero – starting search again – was REALLY frustrated yesterday but after deciding to pay the broker’s fee I actually found quite a few interesting apartments for the budget I have…

So feeling better today about it… might actually find something better that Stuyvesant Town and closer to NYU…

Let’s see what I find 😉

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M5 BUS ROUTE Assignment

The assignment was to simply take the M5 Bus on Houston and La Guardia to its end stop at George Washington Bridge and back and write a 5 page doc on your impressions and reactions.

So I decided to add some media to it… took some pictures and video while on the bus… wrote down my comments and thoughts throughout the trip… tried to keep track of the bus location to have a sense of speed…

THEN did the same route on my bike… well… ended up not doing the exact same route but close enough… but placed the camera on my bike (yes – with dck tape and a plastic bag under it to act as a cushion) and filmed the whole thing.

Wanted to trace the route with a GPS but it would not pick up the signals from the satelites withing the city…

BUT got my heart rate data.

Now have to figure out how to present all of this using text for the comments, a map with my position, scenes from the bike, and my heart rate in a little graph…

Here are some pics for now…

1. Beggining of the ride – a construction site – NY is being rebuilt!


2. The few passengers going uptown…


3. My annotations…


4. The final stop! The George Washington bridge


5. Final Stop – interesting architecture


6. Final stop 3 – smoke staks

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SECOND & THIRD DAY OF CLASSES

WOW!! That is all I can say!

Not necessarily overwhelmed by the amount of information but the QUALITY of information and resources we have available here…

For example – we have access to a 3D PRINTER – that’s right – you send them a 3D model and then you get the actual PHYSICAL object out the next day!! Not to mention the large format high-quality photo printers, full multi-media studios with video and sound editing software and hardware…

So – let’s take it one step at a time:

Wednesday:

Communications Lab

Frank Migliorelli

“Good interactive design is good story telling”

Recommended 2 books:

“Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man” by Marshall McLuhan – “old” book but still very current in its ideas.

“Charles Chaplin – my Auto-biography” – thought it was interesting how the story teller fell in love with technology.

VERY interesting homework – 55 word challenge – have to write a full story with who, what, where, conflict, and resolution in no more than 55 words. This was a “theory” that Steve Moss, the author of “The World’s Shortest Stories: Murder, Love, Horror, Suspense, All This and Much More in the Most Amazing Short Stories Ever Written, Each One Just 55 Words Long” came up with – the least amount of words you can use to write a full story is 55…

Here is mine:

“THE DUTCH IN THAILAND”

TEMPTATION OVERTOOK.

“NO ONE IS WATCHING.”

THE FASCINATING JADE BUDDHA STARED AT HIM FOR ONE YEAR ON HIS DESK.

GUILT OVERTOOK.

“I MUST TAKE IT BACK.”

FOUR MONTHS BY BOAT, TWO WEEKS ON FOOT.

HE PLACED THE BUDHA BACK AND HEARD A MONK SAY:

“GLAD TO SEE YOU AGAIN. YOU’VE CONTEMPLATED AND LEARNED YOUR LESSON!”

55 WORD CHALLENGE BY LUCAS LONGO
BASED ON A TRUE STORY FROM
“THE BUDDHA IN THE JUNGLE” by Kamala Tiyavanicht>

Seems like it will be a pretty cool class where we will look at all kinds of media and how to use them.

On Friday:

Introduction to Computational Media

Shawn Van Every

Basically a programing class with the focus on how to manipulate, create, and automate media… using an open-source program called Processing to start with… seems to be pretty powerfull – wanted to see if I can use it to do my M5 Bus tour presentation – wait for next post 😉

The first exercise was pretty cool… each student drew a picture with a few basic shapes (lines, squares and circles). Then we had to write instructions on how to draw it. Instructions swapped, you had to draw according to the “program” you had – and as homework – had to do the same but using Processing.

Here is my first assignment – pretty basic – “Drawing #2”

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FIRST DAY OF CLASSES

So it beggins!!

First day of classes at ITP!! Applications class with Red Burns… What an interesting lady… Founded ITP in 1979 and participated in technologies such as Public Acces, Teletext, and the first emails in the world!

Some of the things she expects us to do:

  • Embrace the unexpected
  • Value serendipity
  • Play
  • Create a whole with disparate parts

A quote from one of the founders of Xerox: “If you want to know what the future is – INVENT IT!”

Another interesting topic:

Consumers are becoming content producers – how to sort/distribute/access all of this media/content?

***

Our first assignment was handed out:

“Take the M5 bus on a weekend at Houston and La Guardia Place to the last stop – George Washington Bridge – and return.

Make notes of what you find surprising – e.g. Changing neighborhoods, changing people, changing architecture, or none of these – and write your personal experience of the trip – observing, imagining, and reacting to New York, or you can choose to imagine a story about the people you see.”

Some ideas I have:

  • Video/picture sequences of the route
  • Map pinpointing position
  • Retrace route on bike – shooting video and pictures along the way
  • Include heart rate monitor data
  • Interview people along the way (not so good)

***

Second half of the class we had the guest speaker: Acconci

Here are two VERY short exerpt of the lecture – was really just testing the video capabilities of my phone…

(Coming back soon)

Started out as an artists experimenting with the self – showed us some of his pieces:

  • Video with him using a candle to burn the hair off his body and trying to become a woman
  • Installation in an empty room with a ramp – he was under the ramp talking “dirty” and masturbating – experiment on togetherness and isolation
  • Installation with a dining table that stretched out of the window – becoming a trampoline
  • Installation of 4 planks on the floor – all with the American colors – and a seat in the middle. The seat is connected to pulleys that tilt the 4 planks up to close up and form a room – the exterior walls having the Soviet colors. The room existed just as long as the person existed sitting there.
  • Upside down houses – 3 houses upside down one on top of the other

“Art started to become specific to space and time. If the piece was somewhere else or at a different time it would not make sense or make a different sense.”

Nowadays he is a designer/architect www.acconci.com

Dwells on natural shapes – how architecture should move to adapt to humans – not the opposite. Organic shapes.

In NY:

  • Queens College – sphere installation
  • Clothes shop in Japan – cloth used to cover the interior to give it a soft feel – in the changing room, if you liked the clothe, press a button and take picture of yourself – picture is projected on store front’s panel
  • Staten Island subway station – walls that become the seating

***

Can’t wait for more!

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GADGETS

After having sold EVERYTHING I owned in Brazil – car, motorcycle, camera, video, dvd player, home theater, windsurfing and kitesurfing equipment, bikes, stereo and so on – I have purchased some new toys 😉

Felt good and at the same time funny to look at my 2 travel bags, some cases of books and clothes, and realize that it was all I owned… great feeling… start fresh.

Did some research and got the following:

1 – MacBook Pro 15″

I switched!! Did the switch from PC to Mac and must say that I am absolutely LOVING it! Have to admit that one of the reasons I actually switched is precisely because you can install Windows XP on it!

BUT when I started using it I realized that I might do it just to test it and might never really use it. During an interview, Apples PR guy said that he was not worried about people buying their hardware and using Microsoft’s software since once a PC user tried Mac OS X they would not go back to Windows XP… thought it was a fantastic and bold (and probably well thought of) comment.

Mac OS X is amazing – just like the ADDS say – it is ready straight out of the box – configuration is simple and you cannot go wrong. All the tools you need are there, even if you are an advanced user you will find that the simplified tools are great for the basics.

Thought about getting the 17″ one but the performance is the same and it simply is a little too big to lug around.

2 – Helio mobile phone

Decided to steer away from the traditional mobile operators and go with the new 3G MVNO (Mobile Virtual Network Operator) owned by Earthlink’s founder and a Korean investor I believe.

Only 2 but very cool phone options… all you can eat data services which I loved… free videos… the phone I got has great features – amazing screen – 2 megapixel photo camera with “flash” and digital zoom – vga video – mp3 player – voice recorder

Did not like that it is still not compatible with the Mac and some of the features like shortcuts are not all customizable… also did not find a way to store bookmarks while surfing for sites…

3 – Specialized Tarmac Expert

Was going for the Cannondale CAAAD 8 but after the guys at the shop told me to try the this one I fell in love with it… don’t know if it was the full carbon frame or the modern geometry but it just felt right… loved it…

To go with it got top of the line Specalized shoes (carbon), Time pedals, Bell helmet, Polar heart rate monitor with wireless speed and cadence transmitters, and Specialized goggles that adapt to the lighting conditions.

Still want to buy the Canon EOS 30D and the Apple Cinema Display 30″ but waiting to move into my official apt to get that.

Well… now will also have to spend some money furnishing my apartment… but that is from a different budget… mentally 😉