#that rare time in june i made and posted art? do you understand the amount of ppl that said 'ive missed your stuff'?

[the-kipsabian]

.

[readingrobin]

Mid-Year Reading Update

Tagged by @ninja-muse! Thanks for the tag! Been seeing this one going around and was eager to join in!

Amount of books you’ve read so far: 81

Best book you’ve read so far in 2022: This is so hard since I've read a lot of great books so far and naturally my brain is going to latch onto the most recent book I've given five stars to so it may be Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao. A Darker Shade of Magic, The Magic Fish, and The Night Circus are all up there though. At least 34 of those 81 reads have been four stars so the indecision is understandable.

Best sequel you’ve read so far in 2022: Sooo, I haven't actually read a ton of sequels this year, since I guess I'm just focusing on newer series. I guess by default it would have to be When Night Breaks by Janella Angeles, as its only competition would be Castle in the Air, which I had a few problems with, or the second volume of Wynd, a fantasy graphic novel, which I loved, but my brain has a hard time processing the idea of second volumes to a comic as a "sequel."

New release you haven’t read yet but want to: Hell Followed with Us by Andrew Joseph White. The cover completely drew me in and the story sounds absolutely bonkers. I'm usually not a fan of post-apocalyptic stories but this one has a hold on me.

Most anticipated release for the second half of the year: Bloodmarked by Tracy Deonn for sure! The Sunbearer Trials by Aiden Thomas, The Daughter of Doctor Moreau by Siliva Moreno-Garcia and Heart of the Sun Warrior by Sue Lynn Tan.

Biggest surprise favourite new author (debut or new to you): Probably Taylor Jenkins Reid for Daisy Jones and the Six. I usually have such a hard time with popular fiction that gets a lot of buzz because they rarely live up to expectations, but this was just a great read.

Newest fictional crush: RUIN! RUIN! RUIN! RUIN! *cough* from Sandman: Waking Hours. *cough* He is Mr. Blorbo from my comic, my soft sweet boy, my gentle skrunkly, the absolute lamb who is a literal nightmare made of snakes and goo. Who doesn't love goo?

Book that made you cry: The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane by Kate Dicamillo. This book is just so much man, so many feelings.

Book that made you happy: Out of the Blue by Jason June. Just such a cute book with a satisfying ending, at least for me. Good vibes all around.

Most beautiful book you’ve bought so far this year (or received):

Just look at that! Gorgeous. The art is done by @marlowelune/marlowlune on Twitter. They do amazing work and by god I just want to buy every book they illustrate. Taps right into my aesthetic.

What books do you need to read by the end of the year?: Too many. I have no plans on what I need to read. Everything is spontaneous. There is no order. What is picked is picked. It's all chaos

Tagging: @the-forest-library @agardenandlibrary @howlsmovinglibrary, @curls-and-books, @readaroundtherosie

[fromaliminalspace]

For the gif makers ask meme... 14, 16, 34, and 48?

[ask meme link]

14. How long does it usually take you to make a set

for real, while technically i can make a gifset within a day or a few, i have a nasty tendency to procrastinate everything, literally everything, even stuff i actually enjoy. and when i do get around to actually making sth i overthink it. sometimes for months. yup. lbr overthinking (alongside chronic lack of spoons) is the main reason i create stuff so rarely and post it even rarer even if i have it finished for a while. i'm trying to improve, okay..? just gonna kick myself more often into calling things finished and posting them, i literally have dozens of gifset ideas waiting to be executed, several art wips (as well as finished pieces), two videoedit ideas, and quite a few k words of both fic and meta… the tricky part is just to get around to all of it

16. How long have you been making gifs

oof lemme see… in June 2020 i made my first gifs that weren't completely horrible cuz before that i was using merely a phone app for this with video editing software (this and this were made this way). and then in February 2021 i finally figured out what was missing from my PS and preventing me from editing gifs there and fixed it. so yeah, i've been relatively new to this, i guess..? though ngl the experience of very spontaneously making two videoedits before trying out proper gifing was a nice starting point

34. A set that took you a long time/was really hard but you’re really proud of how it came out

hm the stardust one is the first that came to mind even though it's more the case of "it didn't receive as much attention as most my other cql gifsets but i'm still quite fond of it" rather than it being particularly time/effort-consuming. not to mention that i'm hardly ever actually proud of anything i create but well, that's just my brain cockroaches messing stuff up. back on track, the WWX gifs in the trust parallel set were a pain to edit but eventually i ended up learning new tricks while groping my way around it so i'm not complaining

okay, if i were really to pick a gifset i'm proud of that'd be the ripples one, no doubts (gonna add the link once i actually finish and post it, i promise). it's the most advanced technically (don't even ask me how long i've been nitpicking it from all directions and how i'm still tempted to drop the current version in favor of approaching it from a whole new direction bc surely it can be done way way better if i just go nitpick it some more! ya know, the usual overthinking) and it's sth very personal to me thematically. the underlying meaning of it is too closely related to liminal spaces (or more like what i simplify as "liminal spaces" as i suspect my own understanding of this concept in general can differ quite a bit from that of other people) so putting it into actual words gets tricky. but this kinda comes with the territory so nothing unusual

48. How would you describe your giffing style

ugh honestly idek if i have one..? for real, i don't think there's anything about my gifs that makes them stand out much. at least there surely isn't anything that i deliberately make sure to integrate every single time (maybe i do unconsciously though, who knows). so i feel like it's more for others to judge ¯_(ツ)_/¯

what i can say is that when i do make gifsets i apparently tend to illustrate some narrative parallels or sth with them..? or just combine scenes with a quote that strikes me with fitting vibes. or both. also i like to have fun with the colors and lighting and use adjustment layers quite heavily (but gotta admit it's hardly an option to halfass this if i wanna my Yi City gifs to look vibrant and alive enough). i suppose alternative subtitles to all my cql sets are a feature of my so called style as well since i always translate them myself instead of going the easy way and copying any of the already existing ones. which is also fun! even if, well, adds to the amount of time and spoons i put into it but what can i say, it's a matter of habit by now

[pawpiekyu]

Screenshots taken from various posts

It appears someone had girlbossed to close to the sun

(It seems their insta post was deleted as well, but I didn't grab a screenie of the post being deltleting before they priv'ed or Caard beofre they edited it. Also people have pointed out how this would say 'Dream Fuck' if actually worn.)

Things I wanna point out:

Screenie 3: Dream has stated multiple times he intially didn't want to make pride merch for those very reasons (Profiting off of the community), and only after his Queer fans asked loudly and consistently for it did he make it. Dream has also stated he wanted the designs to be stubble, so those in the closet could wear it without much issue.

Side note 1: GeorgeNotFound and SapNap also released a pride line with Dream, both men are cis het, with nearly the same style of pride merch as Dream (Intentional/Collaborative) - yet they aren't mentioned.

Side note 2: Dream has also stated multiple times he doesn't want to label his sexuality/publicly discuss it and has express discomfort when pressed - which does include calling him straight

...

Screenie 5: Dream donated all stream revenue from June to The Trevor project, but only streamed once, when he normally rarely streams as is, (tho they claim he didn't at all, which is false) near the end of the month which upset some people. (I understand those people, but also have personal reasons to why I'm not upset myself)

The amount he raised, as mentioned in the screenie, is around $140k, but feel like the way Tau Bade, among others, have phrased this event is deceptive and makes it seem like Dream only donated as some form of apology.

Dream has made very clear his love, respect and support for the queer community. If you care more about pushing a intentionally negaitve narrative to hate someone than the actual lives that money has saved/improved, then you should look within your self and think about why hate matters more to you than someone supporting the community.

There is no "shallow" reason to donate to charity.

...

That being said, and what I've personally seen at most people are making light-hearted memes/draws or at worst calling the design ugly (Which something they said about Dreams own design), do not send hate or harassment Tau Bade or anyone involved/mentioned in this.

If he comes back and apologizes, let them move on with his life and art career, and if they come back and they still hate Dream, let him move on with his life and art career. Don't let one young dumb bad luck post that blew up haunt them. I know it can be frustrating to see Dream receive constant unwarranted hate, both ridiculous like this and more serious defamation, doxxing and general harassment, but the best thing we as a coumunity can do is have our fun and move on.

They are entitled to their parasocial opinion about a celebrity, be it positive or negative. Though it does seem to stem from a lot of misinformation.

Screenshots taken from various posts

[heyitslapis]

Ok let's see... its been about 3 weeks since i posted last, give or take a few days. And I'll just say its been an interesting and exhausting few weeks.

Still trying to completely get over my dumbf*ck feelings for Alex. I'm not really doing a super great job at that, and still get random depressive moments that last a varying amount of time, but usually i just push my pity party to the side after about 2 minutes.

On the 3rd of June, Alex went up to see part of her family and join them on a cruise to Columbia. She said wont be back until maybe the 3rd or 4th of July at the earliest. I kinda miss her, but I feel like spending a month physically apart from her will do me some good. Her and i still snap back and fourth to save our streak and to day good morning. Whenever she cant find wifi, she turns on her dad's personal hotspot so she can send me at least one snap to keep our streak rolling (we are the longest streak we have with anyone on our snapchats, and it stands currently at 261 days.) The day after she left the streak sorta died for the day, but she was able to save it cause she was in a different time zone.

Since she's been gone, we've hired several new people at work, many if which being new hosts (thank God tbh, cause this means after theyre all done training and get a couple weeks to get used to everything i can train as a server and hopefully make a little more money). One of them is Giovanni's sister (Gio is a guy that works there. Mostly does dish, sometimes hosts.) And apparently she likes me? About a week before she started they came in to eat with their mom and after they left Gio was like "Dude, i think my sister likes you."

Hey, some random girl actually has a crush on me for the first time in my life? That's cool! Right? It would be, if she weren't 17. If i were still 18 or 19, i wouldnt really care. But now that im 20, even though we only have a 2 year and almost 6 month age difference, i still feel like its weird. I feel like im in a whole new age threshold now that ive hit that 2 decade mark, and she just seems to me like a kid. Anyway, Sammy (thats her) is bi with a preference for girls. She's very forward about asking the girls at work about their sexuality (she'll be mid convo and just be like "wait; you straight?") She makes a hobby of flirting with the straight girls, because as she says it, she can easily flirt with straight girls bc she knows she wont have a chance. As soon as she knows theyre bi or gay, she cant even really talk to them. Sammy flirts with me in excess, has asked me 3 times if im straight, or if im sure that i am (homegirl has only been here like two weeks), and the reason why is because she would happily let me break her heart, and has said thats its too bad im not gay bc if i was she would let me crush her. Also has told me that i remind her of her ex girlfriend, and when i said idk if thats supposed to be a compliment or not, she said "well i really liked her, so..." Oh and btw all 3 times shes asked, I've told her im straight (yknow, bc im not out to the irl general public) and I'll just say that having to lie outloud about my sexuality does not feel that great. Thats not something ive ever had to verbally do before, and now i understand. Tbh i dont really lie, or at least i very rarely do, bc i dont like it, and i want to be seen as trustworthy. i have told my share of lies in my day, but i feel like that was in the top 3 worst lies ive ever told. Simply because i know thats not who i am, yet im saying it anyway.

Besides that, in these last couple weeks ive:

Gotten my computer hacked and almost got scamed out of the piddly $120 dollars total that is in my bank account for me to try to live off of until next Fridays paycheck, and almost got my brother's bank account hacked (looong f*ckin story. Short version, im a gotdang fool, and people are absolute bastards), so now i cant use my computer until i get it looked at, which means no art (sucks bc i wanted to draw myself a bi pride icon)

Put in 103 hours at work in the last 2 weeks

Had our only available car break down twice

Got about half of our kitchen painted. Still need to find time to finish it

Purchased tickets for a convention, and bought almost everything i need to finish my cosplay.

Have a sore in the back of my mouth thats been plaguing me for over a week (finally starting to heal. Its been hurting to do so much as talk, much less eat or drink)

Had to deal with everyone's attitudes at work (some sh*ts going on with the moon and everyones been a pissy ass lately, and im so over it)

The pain in the ass girl at work that we've been trying to get rid of for over a year called in and quit 15 minutes before her literal last shift (Father's day) and our proprietary manager told her "its bullshit that you just found out that your other job scheduled you to work today 15 minutes before you had to come here" and "dont try to come back to this store again". Im ecstatic about it tbqh and feel a small sense of victory about the whole thing.

One of my favorite gays from work had his last shift Saturday night and im still sad about it.

It may not seem like much but its just all around every other day something else small happened to add to the weird and crazy smorgasbord that is my life.

Also bless Sammy bc yesterday was Father's Day, and because of that, i was in the building of my work at 9:45am, started working to get set up at 10, opened around 10:50, and didnt stop until about 8:50pm, 10 minutes before we closed. Our proprietary manager bought us tons of pizza and snacks in the middle of our shift so that we could all take turns having a 10 minute breather, but other than that it was non-stop work and dedication to the customer. At 9:50am my brother went to the Duncan Donuts down the road from us to get the handful of morning people either coffee or bagels or whatever they asked for. I told my brother to get me the english muffin with egg and cheese, and if they had the option, to add sausage to it. Also to tell Sammy i said hi (because she works at that Duncan also, and was there yesterday morning). My brother comes back with breakfast, hands me my food and said that Sammy made it especially for me. (At that time i was also in a bad mood bc i was tired from working four open doubles in a row, and was stressed, so that really lifted my spirits a bit. The food, and the thought that someone made it especially for me.) And i'll just say she just earned my love for the next week at least.

Anyway i think thats all for now loves. I dont have a very eventful life, but i sure do have a busy one.

[yourmandevine]

‘What can I get you?’

I was 15 when Norm Macdonald got yanked from his spot as the anchor of “Weekend Update” on “Saturday Night Live.” I didn’t know why he had; all the stuff about Don Ohlmeyer and O.J. Simpson was a little over my head. All I knew was that this really funny, really dry, really different and really talented guy I’d come to enjoy wasn’t hosting the fake news anymore, and that Colin Quinn was.

I’ll never forget how Quinn opened his first run at the anchor desk:

You know how you go to your favorite bar, and your local bartender isn't there? You ask, "Where's Jeff?"

"Jeff no longer works here. I'm Steve."

And you're thinking, "Hey, who's this idiot? I like Jeff."

But you still want your drink? And even though Steve doesn't mix your drink the same way you're used to, like Jeff, you still like the same bar. You don't want to have to go to a different bar.

And even Steve might feel kinda bad, because Jeff trained him. Jeff showed him how to work the cash register. Where the tonic was on the soda gun. Who tips, who doesn't.

Well ... I'm Steve. What can I get you?

For the past month, I've been feeling a lot like Steve.

One month ago, the company I work for got acquired by another company and merged with a third company. (I’m pretty sure I have that right. I am bad at business.) This had been in the works for a while; I expected that some things would be different once it all finished. I did not expect that the significant layoffs would include Kelly Dwyer and Eric Freeman, two of the best basketball writers in the world and my co-workers of many, many years. Kelly’s last day was June 14. Eric’s last day is today.

Kelly’s last post was a corrective/history lesson. Eric’s last post was about how failure can be beautiful and spectacular. I take a small amount of solace in knowing they went out strong, and as themselves. Cold comfort is better than no comfort at all.

Lots of people lost their jobs in this deal, in all aspects of the workforce, because it is my understanding that that’s what happens when gigantic companies become parts of other gigantic companies. Every site, department, office, etc., lost smart, capable, valuable and talented people. I know that, and don’t mean to come off as overly selfish or maudlin. I just miss mine, is all.

Kelly’s one of maybe three or four people who can lay legitimate claim to having defined the way people write about the NBA on the Internet. His Behind the Boxscore columns helped teach so, so many of us about the teams we never saw, about history and context and how to watch what happens, about something called “efficiency” and “pace-adjusted stats” ... about everything. (Oh, and about Queen. And Steely Dan. And Alex Chilton, and “Alex Chilton.” Kelly's columns never traveled far without a little Big Star.)

Even after he shuttered BtB -- as it turns out, not even the dude who’s the best at this can watch 15 games a night and write 4,000 digestible and insightful words about all of them for 10 a.m. Eastern the next morning, every morning, forever -- and stepped into the editor’s chair, he worked his ass off to bring that expertise and attention to detail to everything he wrote. Libraries full of NBA writing have landed in KD’s recycling bin because it wasn’t good enough if it didn’t get the words right, even if it might’ve been better than 75 percent of the stuff the rest of us write. Kelly loves the NBA, and loves writing about the NBA, in a way that has frankly made me question many times over the years if I even like the NBA. His enthusiasm was obvious from the outside, way back when I was commenting on BDL live blogs and writing about nothing on my own independent blog, and only grew clearer when I spent seven years engaging with it every day.

Eric joined the team in 2010, bursting through the screen like Monta. Eric had been great for FreeDarko and The Sporting News’ The Baseline -- his clarity of expression and sense of humor made him so much fun to read, and so daunting to compete with, even at a time when the burgeoning corporate basketball Internet felt less like competition and more like a great broad swindle we couldn’t believe we were getting away with. And then, Sporting News shuttered its blogs and laid people off, and all of a sudden Eric was available, and then he was with us. I felt so unbelievably lucky. I still feel that way.

Eric could write work-a-day blog posts like serious art criticism, but he also really wanted to do stuff that straddled the line between dumb and brilliant, like writing about robots playing basketball or writing fiction about journeyman center Earl Barron that presupposed he was an actual earl. He could be incisive and ridiculous, in-depth without feeling overbearing, polished without being precious. I have always felt smarter about something after reading Eric’s perspective on it.

He’s also possessed of such generosity of spirit that he used his favorite baseball team winning the 2010 World Series to let me know that he wishes good things, and only good things, for me and for mine:

There’s still a website, of course. Ben Rohrbach and Henry Bushnell are working their asses off, and I’m trying to steer the ship. We’ll keep trying to do things that are good-and-smart and good-and-dumb as best we can, because that’s all you can really do. It’ll be different, though. It is different.

The seven-plus years I worked with Kelly, and the six-plus I worked with Eric, weren’t perfect, because no long-term relationship ever is. Everyone has his off-days. But I never took for granted how much they cared, or how goddamn good they were, or how rare it was for any group of dopes on a website to get to work together for as long as we had.

Ball Don’t Lie has been a special thing on the Internet for a long time, thanks in large part to Kelly Dwyer and Eric Freeman, two unbelievably talented people who gave me support and instruction and friendship. They made our site better, and they made me better, too. I look forward to them doing the same for someone else, someplace else, very soon.

[ntrending]

This textile's twitching tendrils hint at a future of programmable materials

New Post has been published on https://nexcraft.co/this-textiles-twitching-tendrils-hint-at-a-future-of-programmable-materials/

This textile's twitching tendrils hint at a future of programmable materials

Touching artifacts, in most museums, is not encouraged. And art, on the whole, is not responsive. But from the third floor of the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, the view is a little different. From April to October, The Senses: Design Beyond Vision exhibit asks visitors to feel, smell, taste, hear, and otherwise engage with art and design.

It’s a child’s (and perhaps a parent’s) dream—guards are present, but rarely intervene. It’s uniquely accessible to museum-goers who may not have the strongest sense of sight. And it’s a compact, organized glimpse at the future of applied materials, an under-appreciated but consequential field at the intersection of design, aesthetics, engineering, chemistry, and physics.

On my first visit to the showcase, with Carol Derby, the vice president of research and development for materials design and manufacturing firm Designtex, we stopped to pet an undulating wall covered in a dark synthetic fur. As our hands moved up and down, back and forth, and in broad circles, sensors in the fur triggered symphony orchestra music, filling the room.

But Derby wasn’t there to caress a wall—or soak up experimental aromas representing things like “a moment of collective deja vú”—or contemplate consuming wooden chairs and metal ottomans built to look like delectable baked goods. She was there to check in on the Active Textile, the largest working prototype of a new class of materials that respond to environmental stimuli on their own, no robotics involved.

From afar, the Active Textile, which is a collaborative project between Designtex, the furniture company Steelcase, and MIT’s Self-Assembly Lab, looks like a living organism. It’s built like a Japanese partition—tall and wide, but foldable. The outer layer of fabric is gray, with a gradient running red to blue behind it. For the purposes of the exhibition, the textile is illuminated from behind by heat lamps, set to move rhythmically up and down like a miniature sun.

Unlike traditional fabrics, which would simply sit there, dead and dumb to the surrounding environment, chevron-shaped cuts in the Active Textile open and close in response to the movement of the lamp. As they’re bathed in heat, little wisps open up like frill-necked lizard inflating its throat. As the light retreats, the fringe tightens up, micro-military officers closing rank. It gives the entire installation a fragile but inviting feeling, like palm fronds swaying in the breeze.

For all the Active Textile’s delicate beauty, the science underpinning the project is a technical mouthful. “It’s six layers,” Derby explains while drinking tea in the Cooper Hewitt museum courtyard. A sheer polyester printed fabric, she says, enhances the lamp’s glow. An aluminum screen gives the textile its shape. And adhesives hold the whole thing together. But the material’s life-like behavior comes from the reaction between the top two strata, a printed face fabric and the low-density polyethylene film to which it is laminated.

These surface layers were carefully selected for something called a “coefficient of thermal expansion,” according to Derby. Every material, from the wood beams in your ceiling to the concrete beneath your feet, reacts to heat in slightly different ways. This happens naturally, all the time, often without our notice.

The true innovation at Active Textile comes from the manufacturing team’s decision to harness this behavior. By laminating two carefully-selected materials with different coefficients together, the production team found they could trigger in the textile a consistent, visible response to heat. On its own, one of those layers might not change much in response to a heat lamp. But taken together, the layers flick open or clamp close as they warm up and cool down.

Skylar Tibbits is the founder and co-director of the Self-Assembly Lab at MIT and the progenitor of the Active Textile project. In 2014, Tibbits presented a TED talk about the future of what he called “4D printing.” While 3D printing emphasizes width, height, depth, or breadth, Tibbits proposed a fourth dimension of time. Materials could be designed to “self-assemble” or otherwise transform after they were initially produced. “This is like robotics without wires or motors,” he told the TED audience. We might one day print and install pipes inherently capable of expanding or contracting according to water flow, he said, or deploy drug-delivery nanobots that assemble themselves. Rigidity, the talk suggested, could soon be a thing of the past.

Basic textiles were a natural proving ground for early-stage programmable materials. “We were making like little small swatches and samples,” Tibbits told me over the phone. They relied on common databases to determine the thermal properties of various materials and tested combinations of various textiles at small scale. The primary goal was gaining new knowledge and creating a proof of concept. “But then the collaboration with Steelcase and Designtex was, ‘Why don’t we translate this to the marketplace?’” Tibbits said.

Together, the three teams narrowed in on the materials they wanted to use for the Cooper Hewitt showcase, as well as smaller but no less important details like color and cut. The cumulative color effect, which to my eyes looked like a fresh plum, is beautiful, but it’s also essential for energy absorption. “All of the different colors of the spectrum will absorb different amounts of light—essentially different amounts of temperature,” Tibbits says. The darker a color, the more light it absorbs; the whiter, the more it reflects. Similarly, the dancing chevrons determined the intensity of the textile’s movement. “Those cuts actually change the geometry,” Tibbits says. “Basically, the longer a beam is, the less force it takes to transform it at the end. If you have long strips, they’re going to be much more active than if you have little small ones.”

Past programmable textile projects have looked like lizard skins, the surface covered in tiny, flexing triangles that respond to light like a Venus flytrap responds to motion. Others, like oversized, rippled fencing masks. While the process of testing such material mixtures is laborious, Tibbits says, thanks to Steelcase and Designtex, the process of constructing them is easier than ever. With an industrial laminator and computer-controlled cutting machines, “we can make it in large quantities, on many different textiles,” he says. “It’s a big leap, in my mind.”

On that hot June day at the Cooper Hewitt museum, Derby looked closely at the Active Textile, noting the subtle changes it’d undergone over the months since installation. “We do see some cases where it’s not folding back into a perfectly flat arrangement,” she said, referring to a few tendrils that stayed open even as the heat receded.

All materials lose their strength and sensitivity over time. Shirts rip. Paint fades and chips. Wood cracks. The Active Textile is no different, though the warping process is sped up in its imperfect indoor display, where harsh heat lamps mimic the gentler passing sun. These imperfections might be frustrating to a theoretical future homeowner, who paid to hang Active Textiles in their windows. But given small deformities are a fact of life, these feel like a reflection of the textile’s fundamental liveliness.

That liveliness is essential to Tibbits’ vision. People used to understand, appreciate, and utilize the peculiarities of natural materials, he says. Ship makers, for example, used wood’s natural propensity to swell to seal the hulls of their boats and lock out water. Yurts, a common type of dwelling in Central Asia made of wool, held in heat over the winter and breathed easy in the summer. “We’ve kind of lost a lot of that knowledge,” Tibbits says. “Now, we tend to throw robotics at it.”

By eschewing screens and wires, Tibbits has used the most modern technology available—like those laminators and cutting machines—to create decidedly simple materials. In the process, he and his collaborators are blurring the boundaries between the nostalgic and the futuristic. “A lot of those older or craft-based knowledge of how material will respond and solve a problem for you,” Derby says.

A programmable textile probably won’t be in our homes or offices anytime soon. Designtex, Steelcase, and the Self-Assembly Lab say there’s more to do to refine these materials—and find an appropriate market. In the months and years to come, the lessons learned in the production of this prototype may be channeled into a responsive shade, clever privacy screen, or some other object that hasn’t even been dreamed up yet.

Standing in front of the Active Textile, resisting the urge to touch it as it waves its carefully-crafted tentacles at me, I find myself hoping for some third application—an unknown, interactive wildcard.

Written By Eleanor Cummins

[catcomixzstudios]

I’m all caught up with Friday Fan-Art pieces!

Ever since September 9th, 2015, I’ve had a Fan-Art piece ready to be posted every Friday. With the one I posted this week (for Friday, June 23rd, 2017), I’ll officially have reached the end of my queue. 

I’ll still be doing some for comics that really appeal to me, mind you, but no longer on a weekly basis. 

It has been a solid experience for me, and was probably the most consistent source of practice and improvement when it comes to my artistic skill. Attempting to understand and somewhat mimic other people’s characters has lead to me getting a better grasp on a lot of things, and I’m extremely thankful for that. 

To be honest, most of them are not very good (at least in my opinion), but I ABSOLUTELY see tons of improvement as time goes on. It’s exciting drawing new characters in new ways, and provided a great challenge. 

What sticks out most to me is that a piece that wasn’t even colored - just inked - took me roughly four hours to complete in the beginning.  Now a full color piece rarely takes half that amount of time.

To everyone whose stories I made fan-art for, thank you for inspiring and challenging me. If you want to check out the pieces I’ve done, head over here (the first one was for @cm8x-insanity‘s comic, Guardian Ghost). 

I’ll be looking forward to making even more in the future! 

[reathneilsonsw3-blog]

Essay

Reath Neilson

Final Paper

Adriana Balic

Songwriting 3

This semester in Songwriting 3 has been challenging at times, but an overall positive experience as a student and musician. In this paper I’ll discuss my experience and growth, from my lyrically-crowded first song to my more comfortable and honest final one. Over the semester I was blessed to encounter new material as well as improve on my pre-existing abilities. Collaborations, workshop comments and consistent need for new material helped to push me to broaden my experience as a songwriter. I would be remiss, however, not to mention the fantastically accepting environment created by my peers and professor. Without their encouragement and often insightful critiques, my personal growth as a songwriter and performer would certainly have been stunted. I felt free to explore areas of music that I’ve always enjoyed but had never had the confidence to participate in because of the overwhelming support from the class. Additionally, having a veteran of the grand-scale performance industry as our professor provided an experienced opinion to compare with the opinions of my peers. The experienced perspective combined with the greener yet varied perspectives gave a much more complete understanding of where each song needed to improve and where each song succeeded. For these reasons and many others, I am profoundly grateful to Ana, Katharine, Jess, Christine, and Adriana. My experience in Songwriting 3 truly advanced my ability as a songwriter.

As a lifelong songwriter, I was eager to digest the new material I was introduced to. Although I enjoyed Songwriting 1 and 2 thoroughly and greatly appreciated the feedback I was given, I felt that I had at the very least had minimal experience with everything covered by the syllabus. I do feel that I improved significantly in many areas of my writing during those classes, but I rarely felt challenged by anything new. In songwriting 3, I experienced many new things. The first concept new to me was performance technique for my own music. In high school I enjoyed participating in musicals and plays, activities that I thought prepared me well for public performance as an artist. In actuality, theater never taught me subtle elements like mic positioning and proper storytelling through stage presence. After taking Adriana’s notes into account, I could feel my performances improve song-to-song. I was able to utilize some of these techniques while playing my favorite song from this semester, “Airhead,” at our final. A second new experience came soon after. The accepting and intimate environment created by our small class gave me the courage to try hip-hop. A long time lover of rap music, I’ve always felt that I had no business making it myself. Something about participating felt different than spectating, like I would be inserting myself into a narrative that doesn’t concern me or appropriating someone else’s culture.  After a half of a semester though, I felt creatively free to explore whatever avenues of songwriting I would like, even the ones I hadn’t been down before. “Waiting” was my first attempt at a R&B/Rap song. Working with Christine on our collaborative song brought new things in hip-hop as well. Prior to our final, I had never performed rap publicly or used the stage name Sam Handwich. Christine’s bravery in tackling such a public project outside of her comfort zone gave me the courage to really go for it in the performance and lyrical composition. This experience gave me confidence to push myself creatively and to proudly share the art that I make, regardless of audience or context.

In addition to new material, familiar concepts improved my songwriting and ability as a musician. When writing music I especially take pride in my lyrics, but I learned that my enthusiasm for words can actually be a hindrance as well as a benefit. When I wrote “Onomatopoeia,” I wanted my lyrics to be rhythmically complex, to utilize the maximum amount of wit I could muster, and to be chock full of external and internal rhyme schemes. When I presented my songs my peers and professor felt that they were somewhat crowded, which made them hard to understand. This was an extremely helpful critique for me. Being so wrapped up in the wit and sound of my lyrics, I didn’t notice that I had sacrificed some comprehensibility in my pursuit. When I wrote “Waiting,” I tried to write extremely simple lyrics, leaving significant space in my verse and brief choruses. In my initial performance of the song, the class and I agreed that it felt slow moving and empty. By writing the second verse as a rap, I was able to balance out some of the lyrical simplicity in the rest of the track. My final song, “Airhead,” is my favorite. After writing too much then too little, I found it easier to let go of my expectations for my own lyrics and write honestly. I found that my natural lyrical voice might not be as complicated but may be more effective as a songwriter, presenting the same themes and wordplay in a more comprehensible way. I feel that I’ve grown closer to writing insightful lyrics that sound like casual speech, something that has always been a goal of mine. Also, I feel that my collaborative abilities improved. When I was working with Katherine on the Bigfoot song, I felt very comfortable, like I was operating inside my comfort zone. This is probably because I have written many songs with jingly guitar rhythms and cute lyrics, like the Bigfoot tune. While there is nothing wrong with collaborating on material you feel comfortable with, I was excited to tackle something more difficult with Christine. My second collaboration was anything but comfortable. The song was a groove-based vamp, relying heavily on the vocal performance and showmanship of two first-time rappers. I learned how to better trust my partner’s musical instinct, especially when trying a new style of music. In the future, I hope to be a more open collaborator because of this experience.

Much of my personal growth can be attributed to a few especially helpful and engaging aspects of the course. Without these elements I can confidently say I would not have had the opportunities I did to push forward in my progress. Due to the fact that each song required a recorded demo, I was prompted to begin the recording process on all of my songs. Now, half of them have been completed as full songs which will appear on my two summer releases. Without the initial prompting to record some kind of basic track, I could’ve easily allowed myself to move on to writing the next thing rather than finish recording the last. Also, the way Adriana ran workshops became extremely beneficial. In my past experience, the class would listen to a student perform, then give feedback verbally. While this method is certainly helpful, I often found that after four or five classmates and the professor had commented, it was difficult for me to remember the details of the critiques. By asking us to type out statements on a shared Google Doc before explaining ourselves face-to-face, Adriana made it easier to quickly recall what was said when I returned home. This made the workshops far more productive and effective at improving material.

After one of the most difficult years of my young life, I am pleased to say that I have big plans for the future, thanks in no small way to Songwriting 3. Due in part to the required demos, I am proud to announce that my hip-hop EP titled, “Lucky Cricket” by Sam Handwich will be available for streaming and download by June 10th this summer. My fuzz rock EP, which was briefly put on hold to accommodate my rap project, will be released in early July. This release will include “Onomatopoeia,” “Airhead,” and “Looking at the Same Moon” as well as several unheard tracks written last semester and in between assignments. Outside of upcoming personal projects, I’m launching a quasi-record label with a few friends this summer. Our goal is to unite a network of young Los Angeles artists who use social media to promote their art. When each artist goes to post their new content on their social media pages, they’ll share a link to the label’s website. When followers click on the link they’ll see the artists’ new material first, then can scroll down to see material posted by every artist on the label. This way, we’ll be able to improve outreach. Additionally, the label will be hosting shows this summer featuring all of our artists. During the shows, artists who aren’t performing (myself included) will sell merchandise and direct audience members to any of our social media pages, or our website. Although I don’t see this “label” making much of an impact initially, I trust in the value of consistent collaboration and networking. If nothing else, this label will provide some interesting creative opportunities. Any interested parties should contact me at my personal email, which can be found on this site. Finally, I would like to quickly thank my peers and professor one last time. Your support, understanding, and genuine belief in me was unwavering. Your creativity, musicality, and kindness were inspiring. Thank you all for a wonderful semester.

[brendagilliam2]

How conversational interfaces are innovating banking

It’s probably fair to say banks aren’t particularly popular these days. What is Capital One doing to help change people’s feelings about their bank?

The first step is designing for people and keeping humans – with their full, messy stories – at the centre of everything we create. Every year we gather as a company for a TED-style speaker series where we share customer stories and insights, so we never forget who it is that we’re making financial products better for. It’s what drives us, and why so many of the most talented designers I know are working at a bank right now. Money is emotional, and it enables us to live our best lives. What better design challenge is there?

Capital One acquired UX pioneers Adaptive Path a couple of years ago. How is that influencing the design culture at Capital One?

We love Adaptive Path. Even before they joined our design team, Evelyn Huang began to teach and institutionalise design thinking at Capital One, so now you see 350 designers all working for a bank versed in things like human-centred design and service design, doing empathy research, testing early and often with real people.

Steph Hay, the head of conversation design at Capital One, leads what is now a weekly international meeting, where all 350 designers across the US (and a few in the UK) get together on a video conference and talk about our discipline and craft. All of these things together create a culture of empathy that starts with each other and ultimately drives us to create great things for our customers. 

Another thing that we’re learning from Adaptive Path is how to be good hosts. Their events like UX Week have been beacons for how to run a good conference. This year, Brandon Schauer, Steph Hay and myself have programmed a new conference called Humanity.AI where we’ll gather people to talk about designing for the future of bots in a human-centred way. And when you have a powerhouse like Adaptive Path behind you, it makes you much more confident that the event will be great.

In her session at Generate New York Mindy Gold will talk about what it means to design for conversation

How does Capital One use conversational interfaces?

Right now we’re really digging into character development, which is particularly interesting in the context of money. How we use data and AI impacts the development of our character and how the character speaks with our customers. Sometimes, there’s a fine line between a character that feels like a stranger (who knows just a little too much about you) and one that you connect with in a meaningful way because it has context about your life and your personal relationship with money. And since we deeply believe that money is emotional, it’s important to get that right. 

When we do, we move beyond transactional interactions that sound robotic and cold, to contextually relevant, meaningful conversations that evoke emotion and lead to relationships rooted in trust, empathy and understanding. Through character and conversation, we’re creating an environment where customers are comfortable and an experience that has them paying attention with their hearts as well as their minds. Stay tuned for more on that.

Do you think the industry is finally making headway with chatbots design? 

  If I’m being honest – and I know my buddy Chris Messina (of hashtag and conversational commerce fame) would agree – we’re not yet at the point of super-awesome best-in-class chatbots. We’re in the phase of exploring the cultural contexts that are making them more prevalent, testing use cases that work well for the new medium and weeding out ones that don’t feel authentic, and figuring out what new job roles this elicits (for example, the head of AI Design at Capital One was producing movies at Pixar not so long ago). So this isn’t me being pessimistic, it’s actually a really fun time of prototyping and it’s okay that not everything’s going to be great.

Could you give any examples of chatbots or conversational UIs that are getting things right? What do they do well? I’ll  throw some opinions out there. I should note that these are not Capital One’s opinions, by the way, just mine.

Slack /Giphy 

Slack looked at the way people were already accomplishing tasks on their platform and designed a bot by learning from existing behavior. In this use case the task just happened to be sending the Dawson crying emoji to your coworker who’s complaining about the office being too cold.

Things I like:

It does one thing, and it does it really well

It simplifies a user flow by integrating discrete tasks so I only have to do one thing. Instead of going to giphy.com, searching for a GIF, copying and pasting it, and then sending it, it’s all done in one place

It’s delightful as heck

Giphy lets you send GIFs to your colleagues easily

Digit

Digit helps me go on more vacations and that’s all I need to say about that. Kidding. But it does. Digit learns from my behaviour and helps me save money by putting small amounts from my checking into a savings account. And then when I want to go on vacation I have a slush fund to pull from and I feel less guilty!

Things I like:

It meets me where I am by integrating into my messages. I don’t need to go to a separate app to do things like check my savings balance or transfer money

It designs for tensions in a thoughtful way. When you’re building a bot you have to think about things like, ‘What does this thing do in a push mode vs. pull mode?’ and ‘What interactions should it have daily vs. less frequently?’ I think Digit does this well, and I know that because it rarely annoys me

Digit lets you check your finances from within your messages

DoNotPay 

In the fall of 2015, 19-year-old Joshua Browder launched a bot to help reverse parking tickets in London and New York City. So many things are amazing about this, but having chatted with Joshua a little bit (he’ll be speaking at Humanity.AI), he’s totally the heart of this story. In the first six-ish months, the bot had been used 9,000 times for parking tickets, so then Joshua started thinking of new use cases, like helping refugees seek asylum. 

Things I like:

It started with one use case and nailed it before moving on

It guides you through a complex process, allowing both experts and novices to get the same value out of the experience

It keeps real human needs at the centre, instead of delivering pizza faster (which, I know, has its own value)

What’s the biggest mistake you’ve made in your career and what have you learned from it?

I received one of the most valuable pieces of feedback early on at IDEO – someone said, “We asked you to come in and help install some windows and instead you started ripping up the floorboards.” And though I didn’t realise it, it was true. I’d be asked to come in and polish some work, and the next thing I knew I was taking it all apart and trying to tell them they were wrong about some of their most foundational stuff. In trying to enforce my own sense of ‘truth’, I was the brakes and the bulldozer, and I wasn’t helping anyone move forward with momentum. 

Now my mantra when it comes to design – especially in teams – is to be generous and generative. Or as one of our design leaders says, “Make stuff before you debate stuff.” I’ve learned recently that one of my top five strengths (according to StrengthsFinder) is ‘Arranger’. So I use that to remind myself that often the process is more art than science. Try. Build. Do. Design to prove new things, not disprove them.

What can people expect to take away from your talk at Generate New York? 

On the conversation design team at Capital One, we use our expertise in storytelling and communication to bring humanity and clarity to every conversation we design, and that work manifests in happier teams, lower call-volume costs, higher NPS, and – most importantly – healthier customers. 

Over the past three years, we’ve coached teams to design more meaningful, tailored experiences that feel like personalized conversations. Now with CUIs, a meaningful conversation isn’t just part of the design, it IS the design. 

In this talk I’ll share some conversation design principles, best practices for adapting those to the new medium of CUIs, and some examples of what makes bots successful and not so successful.

What can designers do to make the world a better place in 2017? 

If you’re reading this and have an idea and think I can help, please reach out to me. After the 2016 US election, many people were distraught. One thing I read that made me feel better was a Fast.Co article about how designers will be integral over the next four years. We tell the best stories. We structure information in a way that is consumable. We make sense of messes. We are inclusive, empathetic, and we figure out solutions based on real human needs. I think designers are going to be so important in 2017. 

I recently saw a project where someone hacked an Amazon Web Services IoT button to make it easy to donate to the ACLU. Let’s do more of that – let’s design for buying toilet paper and also protecting our civil liberties.

If you can’t make it to Generate New York, there’s also a Generate San Francisco conference on 9 June featuring a talk about conversational interfaces by HUGE’s MD of Experience Design, Sherine Kazim. 

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