studio1thousand Press

Map Magazine, Brisbane AU

2009-01-14T12:56:00.000-08:00

A nice local trend magazine out of Australia, Map Magazine reached out, and wrote a small beautiful write up.

See the whole issue here, digital. (page 8)

Page in HD (download the PDF)

Nerve.com, the Modern Materialist.

2009-01-14T11:24:00.000-08:00

Blogger extraordinaire Steph Auteri, found the constellation, posted about it and then asked for an interview.

The original post

The interview

The text:
A Q&A, courtesy of Kenzan Tsutakawa-Chinn, the mastermind behind the magic:

1. What led you to focus your work on LED lights?

Initially, with the very first lights...the idea that the light did not need to be replaced was very attractive. That pushed me to think of ways to use it where this was highlighted. But that was 4 years ago, and that is only half the story. LEDs really offer lighting designers amazing opportunities to offer lights in forms that have never been seen before. They give designers a chance to stretch, contort, distort, and generally knead what we think of as lights, or what we think lights can or should look like.

2. How large is your design team, and how does such a collaboration work from project to project? More specifically, how did the constellation chandelier come into being?

The Constellation comes from a large cloud of ideas. Studio 1 Thousand is actually only one person, with help, lots of help, from friends and acquaintances. One person who was a ton of help was Michael Nuzzi. He is an electrical engineer, who had some (lots) of spare time. Other people include a community of designers who I went to Pratt Grad ID with: Ebbin Martin, Keen Gat, and Kandice Levero.

The Constellation was originally something that was based around an idea to mimic Queen Anne's lace. There is a feeling that the multiplicity of the flower was a good model on which to base the light. I thought a lot about the illumination plane, and what the lights would be supported by. That was very important because it would become the fixture itself. There is a sense that LEDs are not powerful enough by themselves. While that is true, it is important to stress that if we are to move to an LED-lit world, we have to understand a paradigm shift. This is more than just lighting. As consumption gets more and more expensive, we must try to consume specifically what we need. The Constellation was my effort to try to present a mass of LEDs, enough to be effective, in an enjoyable manner.

3. Do you plan to market and sell this chandelier?

The light is being made right now. The first run consists of ten units. The retail price is $5,000. I am looking for shops to carry the light. I will also take a limited number of custom jobs. People who are interested in buying one should start by contacting me first.

4. What recent design trends are you most excited about?

Design and creation in general is starting to move too fast for me. Through blogs (my frienemy), I get a lot of publicity, but looking at them too much, looking at design magazines too much, is overloading. One of the goals of these lights is to connect people with a feeling that is closer to their heart, to make things that remind people of things from their past. I am way more interested in things that a normal consumer with taste will like. I look at a lot of Japanese craft, baskets, George Nakashima, craft perfected over generations. My issue is that many things we create now do not engage people at the heart level; they engage people on a brain level. That said, the most amazing thing I have seen recently is Arik Levy's Fractal Cloud.

5. I feel as if your designs are aimed toward a more high-end market. Do you have advice for fine design-loving homeowners with a smaller budget?

This is one of my biggest complaints with my own designs. In conversations with the designers at Niche Modern, one of the gripes from their products was that it was not acessable to the average person. I feel the same way. I am working to try to make products that are accessable to all sorts of budgets. I think my advice for households with a more meager budget is to sharpen your eye and broaden your horizons. Deals can be had all over. I would like to be able to design things that I or my friends could purchase, but I resort to finding things on the street, craigslist, yard sales upstate...if there are any DIY people out there, they can talk to me about buying parts.

PSFK

2008-05-19T08:21:00.000-07:00

I had a short internship with these guys. They are a really great group of people, who do some awesome work. I stopped by, they gave me some interview space. It's a video blog entry.
www.psfk.com

Link to video:

Click to play

Original

3 Rings

2008-05-19T08:12:00.001-07:00

This website is a new catch-all for ID. They have a huge list of things that they do there, one of them is reviews.

http://3rings.designerpages.com

They dug a little deeper into the site, and found the original lights. They had quite a lot to say about them.

Original

The Kevin Pipe

2008-05-19T07:35:00.000-07:00

Blogs can just be little galleries of what people like.
Someone else who likes the light.
www.thekevinpipe.com

Original

Eco Friend

2008-05-19T07:32:00.000-07:00

There are more and more eco-product blogs out there.
www.ecofriend.com

Original

Good Clean Tech

2008-05-19T07:20:00.000-07:00

I think this light is hitting an intersection which has not been addressed.
Eco-tech people love all this technology, but they feel guilty for all the industrial waste.
www.Goodcleantech.com is trying to address these things.

Original Post.

Engadget.

2008-05-19T07:13:00.000-07:00

When you get on a blog as big as this, people start to notice.
Check out all the gadget freaks in the comments

Original Post.

Design de Móveis

2008-05-13T11:38:00.000-07:00

This is some sort of Portugese language design blog. Its getting international.

Original

Design Sponge

2008-05-13T11:33:00.001-07:00

Getting anything on d*s is a gold mine. I heard this girl is only 24. She is definitely a tastemaker of a blog.

That's Tim Richardz. He cordinated the booth for the Pratt ID department.

See Post here

Inhabitat for real

2008-05-13T11:11:00.000-07:00

Abigail Doan and her Inhabitat team put together a nice little piece on this light.

You can see the original post here

Notcot.org, Kinda

2008-05-12T22:45:00.000-07:00

Its not a real post yet, but this is a big blog, so I will take anything i can get.

http://www.notcot.org/post/10552/

Moco Loco, Kind of.

2008-05-12T21:08:00.000-07:00

Moco Loco picked up on the Inhabitat coverage of Brooklyn Designs.

Brooklyn Designs show. Good press.

2008-05-12T07:02:00.000-07:00

I got to show at the Pratt booth at the Brooklyn Designs show. I learned a couple things.

1. The Pratt booth this year was exceptional. On Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, our booth was packed solid for a good three hours.

2. We were given some major attention by some big interior designers, Amy Lau being one of them (http://www.amylaudesign.com) unfortunately, none of her attention was lavished on me, but that's ok.

3. If you have a booth with a lot of different things, you get people to stay in there longer. People would just walk by other booths, while almost everyone came in and sat in all our chairs, looked at all our lights, layed in Chas' coffin (kidding)

In anycase, I got some attention from inhabitat. I gave a good talk on LED lighting, and they featured me on their site. Check it out.

here are some photos:

Pratt booth:

Lead Photo on entry:

Image for BKLYN DESIGNS Galleries:

The ball is starting to roll. NICE!

Moving on.

2008-05-12T07:00:00.000-07:00

I never really finished blogging about my thesis project, but the project itself got to be so crazy that there was never really time. So its too bad about that. But I did make some amazing things out of it, and those are starting to get some press. From now on, this will be my press page.

Environment chapter stub

2008-01-30T18:44:00.000-08:00

Below is a stub of a chapter, or section on environmental considerations.

Keeping things out of the land fill.

Companies large and small are feeling the pressure to become “environmental.” This urge manifests itself across a spectrum of involvement. For some companies, they seem only to claim they are making moves, while others are working hard to change their processes from the ground up. The task of reducing use of resources, from energy and oil, to raw materials such as iron ore and wood, is a challenge for even the smallest of objects. But these considerations only pay attention to the life before it gets to the consumer. Most of the life of the material that goes in to that product is going to spend much more of its time buried in the ground.

Think for a moment how long you use a toothbrush. It is recommended that you get a new one every six months. Meaning, for six months, the plastic in that brush will be “in use.” It will be used for the purposes for which it was produced. But how much longer will that object be around? The old tried and true method, the standard, is to throw it away, send it to the landfill. But why does it have to go there? Why does its life have to be done? It must be de rigeur for the designer to think about and examine the use of the product, but also imagine the life of a product. Perhaps more directly, they must think of the lives of the materials from which the product is made. They must have a plan for the making, the molding, the machining, the fastening, the coating, the assembly, the use, the re-use, the disassembly, and perhaps the distribution of the materials once again.

One of the challenges that a new product, or its designer, faces, is the overwhelming number of ways in which we deplete resources in our current production/design cycle. There is so many different modes of transportation, raw materials, production methods, coatings, as well as re use methods, recycling options and disposal questions. Being at the beginning of this exploration, it seems like there is a lot of confusion regarding priorities.

My priorities for this project were:
Keep as much out of the land fill as possible.
During use phase, The object should be able to capture and store its own energy.
i.e. does not need to be plugged in.

Special attention must be afforded to the electronic components. Many of these things are multi-material and manufactured. I want to try to reduce the number of components which fall into this category, but making a light-up bookmark, Energy must be stored and discharged on command.

I am trying to use a number of production methods encourage recycling, and reuse. first, be mindful of the expected use stage for the product. How long do I think this is going to last? Work to make it possible for the user to disassemble and repair on their own. Try to have replacement parts available and cheap for sale. Engage a community of people who see products as a sum of parts. These physical hackers, work to explore the possibilities of objects as a hobby. They generally interface with objects through disassembly and reassembly. Creating objects which appeal to these people will, hopefully, lead to more and more people understanding the ease with which this object can be repaired or reused.

Second, To construct the original object, I want to focus my search for materials on types of materials which are easily recycled, coming from recycled sources, or come from the consumer themselves. This group includes: Steel, copper, other commodity metals, wood, paper, and simple electronic components which could be scavenged from other broken electronic objects.

Robert Blinn, in his thesis, The paradox of weakness : embracing vulnerability in product design, suggests that we work with screws not glue, claiming that we work hard to make things last for ever, when we only use them for a limited amount of time. Applied here, that means we would use folding tabs to hold this together, instead of laminating the thing together. This concept plays even closer to the hole when you realize, its not just easy to disassemble to make it easier to recycle, it also makes it easier mod the thing to alter the desired use. For instance, it should be easy to turn a light-up bookmark into a night light.

This widespread inclusion of the “prosumer” user, is slowly gaining ground. Lego used a small number of these people to develop their latest robotics kit, the Lego Mindstorm NXT. (quote) through a process of combing message boards, devoted to people sharing information, they were able to identify a number of people who seemed, both highly knowledgeable in the existing products, and therefore exceptionally active in these community boards. They are not the only companies to have success in this strategy. Spyderco, an american pocket knife company has a lively forum section to their website, where even the president of the company is a frequent contributor. I myself used this board to “interview users” exploring their thoughts on knife innovation. Through a phone interview with one of spyderco’s engineers, he told me that they take those forums very seriously, using them to identify problems, new materials, consumer wishes, not to mention receiving serious fan mail. Many people spend a lot of time on these forums, and ask nothing in return, they seem to be happy contributing to the success of an object they love. This seems like a simple and strong way to recruit what Guy Kawasaki (quote) calls Evangelists. People who love the product, and are willing to speak out on their behalf, because of their own love.

One more stand out example, is the iMate Roomba. A robotic vacuum cleaner, the story goes, that the engineers used a number of different circuit boards because it was cheaper, not knowing that it would make it easier to hack. (fill in)

These steps, enlisting help, providing a meeting place, and making it accessible can help draw people to your product as well as give them ownership of it. This ownership, creates an emotional bond, ultimately driving the user to want to keep the object around for longer. It is partly up to the designer to help find uses, beyond the original use, which appeal to the user, perhaps convincing them that they have gotten two objects for the price of one.

Bookmark

2008-01-30T18:28:00.000-08:00

After a lot of thought, and a long discussion with Fred, I decided to cut down the product section of my thesis to one object. Looking at my mindmap and outline, I realized that there would be way too much time taken for prototyping. In light of this fact, I decided to explore the desk lamp at a later date. I think the focus of this project should really be: Ecological strategies, product selling strategies, and Aesthetics. In that light, I have started learning Solidworks to model some designs. It's an interesting exercise to model things by hand and in computer. The computer really changes the way you look at things, and the way you think about making things. Here are some quick renderings, no lights, no material skins, just to see what I am thinking about, It really reminds me of a wing right now, I am working on different ways to add depth so I can get some electronics in there...

Enjoy.

Perspective view.

Detail view.

Front view.

Side view.

From THESIS LIGHTS

Reposting, and linking.

2008-01-12T13:07:00.000-08:00

I rewrote the last entry, I think it's clearer.

Also, if you don't know, you can see some earlier lights here:
www.Studio1Thousand.com

Back to the grind soon.

Aesthetics: No Excuses

2008-01-10T03:11:00.000-08:00

In the creation of objects, one must design for both the conscious and unconscious mind. One must appeal to the conscious, rational centers, along with the unconscious, or subconscious centers.

The rational mind expects, or looks to understand form through objectifying patterns, complimentary colors, things that make sense. These little idea-ettes lead the eye and mind to read patterns, leading to understanding without actually examining the whole object. The mind groups like items with like items. These visual ideas can use historical references to create shortcuts in the mind, explaining different forms and functionality so the user can make sense of the object more quickly. Through different signifiers: historical forms, traditions, people’s past experiences with similar objects, I can help lead people to a rational understanding of the object.

This rationality, a certain predictability, calms the soul. It provides a sense of foundation, which you, the user can feel comfortable. I seek to give you assurances that everything is where it should be, and you can rest easy. This is not to say that these ideas or patterns, or colors, or forms will be simple. It is not to say that they will be easy to understand, but at their core, they feel right.

This cannot be the entirety of your interaction with the object. Be it a light, a phone, jewelry. I would call this a one trick pony. If the forms only conform to this, you will discover, and “figure it out.” When the mind feels like it has solved this puzzle, it will become bored with this and mentally discard the object. That is why there must be a balance between the rational centers of the brain, and the irrational wanderings of the subconscious.

These areas of cognizance, where we expect the unexpected, and wait or hope for something to challenge us, must be tapped each time we interact with items. Be it visually, tactilely, or emotionally, it is my job to try to incite and excite people over and over.

If the conscious mind is given a foundation of understanding and comforted by the rationality of predictability, only then can the subconscious be free to explore and fantasize. From this point of departure, things appeal to us that are not explicable. The subconscious is free to make connections that the rational mind cannot make because it is too wrapped up in reality. Perhaps they can reconnect some memories that were dormant. These are the things that we are drawn to. Not only that, these are the things that we cannot explain what draws us to them. Some of us who are lucky (or unlucky) enough to have a vocabulary to explain visual elements, can probably construct some sort of commentary on proportion, relations, hue, saturation, etc. But does that really explain why people like or dislike these things?

In my designs and choices for people looking at my objects, I am not really thinking about whether other people are going to like/dislike these things. My first concern, as many people know, and have commented, is to ask myself, “is this different enough?” Can we make this different enough so that it is outside the realm of what people have seen before? At the same time, I want people to know what it is, or at least I want people to feel comfortable near and around these things. I want them, the people or the objects, to feel familiar.

Upon immediate reflection, I hope these objects can generate gravity through a combination of familiarity and curiosity of the unknown. In different objects, the view from far away will be familiar and draw people in, while others will employ the guile and intrigue of the unknown, only revealing a familiarity within a close proximity. This doesn’t work as well in longer lasting relationships with objects. To really be long lasting, I believe there must be an instant familiarity, which leads to a rabbit hole of intrigue keeping interest close, slowly revealing inspirations.

Where What are the GOOD ideas?

2007-12-27T17:42:00.000-08:00

I think there is a sense in school that ideas can be left on the floor. As in, lost on the cutting room floor. There are so many good ideas that come from a school environment, where all you have to do is think of the idea. But when you have to come up with an idea every week, every month, every class, there are so many pearls, seeds of good ideas which could really ride with more work. Most, if not all of these, get a pic taken, and are set in the pile of old foam/ideas.

I'm in Seattle now, and I have the luxury of working in the Koolhaas library. There is a sense of completion which I think a designer of any kind should be proud of. Standing in the wings of this stage, I know what it takes to make a simple light, and can appreciate even more, what it takes to make something, anything of interest. I think Seattle made a really good choice to build this, its been full every time I have been here, there is always room, and it's always interesting to work in.

But how does a student decide which ideas are good enough to revisit? Does she gage the amount of interest in the studio? Does he listen to his peers? Perhaps he simply "believes." I think it has become obscenely clear that the ideas we work with in the studio are a long way from anything that can be made. What is the level of preparation which pratt should work to explain to the students? I think in some ways the program has dug itself into a hole because it has a very wide set of exit parameters. I.e. people from Pratt find themselves doing all sorts of things for work. Small furniture, Smart Design, design consultancies out on Long Island, automotive... It would be so easy to shave the program down to only a couple outlets, and focus on those things. I do not advocate that. The thing that keeps me going back to the studio, day after day, is to listen to friends who have very similar interests.

Furthermore, I think that any sort of tracking will kill the "liberal arts" style of education that Pratt ID seems to have adapted. But that leaves us in the same place, where people who come out of school are not really prepared to come out and just start producing objects, which seems like it should be the most basic of operations for a recently grad with a MA in design. Maybe I have it wrong, maybe being able to produce nice things in limited quantities is the pinnacle of the design world, the piece de resistance. Even then, why do I not feel ready to produce the things I want to make?

Ok, but back to the original question. How do you identify good ideas? is there a strategy for this? Is this something that people have been thinking about for a long time? I guess I could read about this for endless nights, and maybe at the end I will be smarter. Can we learn to identify only the good ideas in a forest of all sorts of ideas?

Some thoughts on from the airplane

2007-12-18T01:42:00.000-08:00

Thesisisisisisis

Some thoughts about thesis.

The more I think about thesis, and my place in design, the more I think about design selling things. Here’s a problem: I have never been good at selling things. I am not a salesman. I find myself to be more of an intellectual, more in the pursuit of knowledge. Where does that leave me? I had a very interesting conversation with an old friend today. She is starting a company to provide luxury goods to people that are sustainable, and can be certified as such. I immediately thought about all the ways I can help her.

Some concerns in the arc of my career. What if I like helping people with their ideas better than thinking about my own ideas? Am I too scared of my own ideas? Am I too scared of my own ideas? I have ideas that are validated by other people. Do I spend too much time in my own head? What is going to get me the most fulfillment? Am I scared to do the work? Am I seeking approval too much? I think there is a level of jumping that I am scared of. Not a gambler by nature, its hard for me to make that leap when there is no sight of the other side. I have confidence that I can do the work in what ever I do. I can work until something is done, work until I am satisfied. Is now the time to make the jump? Can I gain more confidence doing other things which will improve my station in life?

SCCARRRRRRYYY.

Are the people who make this leap, the great people in this world? Do I need to be one of those people?

Perhaps it is more that I need some sort of partner doing this. How blind do I have to be to try to do this. What are the emotional and psychological elements which have to go together to do this.

This thesis is about:

1. This thesis is about a business plan.

This thesis is about making some nice lights.

3. This thesis is about new and emergent technologies

4. This thesis is about selling these things.

5. This thesis is about stretching my comfort boundaries.

6. This thesis is about doing things with a safety net.

7. This about learning about me.

8. This thesis is about making creating confidence.

Or is it:

1. This thesis is about me.

2. This thesis is about creating confidence.

3. This thesis is about stretching my comfort boundaries.

4. This thesis is about doing things with a safety net.

5. This thesis is about some nice lights.

6. This thesis is about selling these things.

7. This thesis is about emergent technologies.

8. This thesis is about a business plan.

added adsense

2007-12-10T00:45:00.000-08:00

Its late at night. I just added AdSense.
If anyone comes to this corner of the internet, and then clicks on some advertisements, I get money.

Its free to you, so click on some ads.

Doin' some drawings

2007-12-09T10:34:00.000-08:00

Ideas have been coming fast these days, There has been a lower amout of things around to do, and I have been able to put more subconscious effort towards lights. I have been doing some sketching.

Here are some pics of some sketch books.

From THESIS LIGHTS

I have been thinking a lot about my desk lamp recently. I know the sketches are rough, and perhaps indecipherable, so, welcome to the rawness.

One more week of this mess that is fall semester.

This winter, I really want to put the skeleton together for the actual paper. Some topics which I think should be in there. Energy conservation, LED History, LED Technology, Inspirations and Aesthetic decisions, Marketing and penetration, perhaps consumer profiling. Also, thinking about mentors for this. Who should those be, and what fields should they be in?

Comments, in the comments section or email directly are great!

KTC

Class today

2007-12-06T14:58:00.000-08:00

Today was the last day of thesis A. That means I am really one semester away from the end.

Before that happens, there is so much to do.

Today in class, Fred gave us another peptalk. Its comforting. its peppy. I like that he does this. In many ways I feel like I just need to keep being encouraged to get things done. I knew this going into his class. Today we had a chat about the thesis process in general, Directed Research II, Thesis A, and Thesis B (B stands for Best). He reiterated a couple things:

1. The thesis is a project in which you must be personally commited to.
This was something that really was not communicated in DRII and that made for a lot of lost people. I think that people in Fred's class are now on the right track, and there will be some real success in that class.

2. You must engage people to test in some way, your ideas.
Your ideas come from your opinion, there is some sort of process that you use. Its important to show that idea, some how, in what ever form, to people so that they can comment on it.

3. Writing. Writing must happen, in some way.
One of the reasons I started this blog, is because it gives me a place and a time to think about, and collect thoughts about thesis. Its provides a place, which is semi-public for people to look at the thoughts I have and comment. But as well, It can be referred back to by me, so when I start writing this document, there is a lot of ideas and writing already written.

4. The role of the Designer.
The role of the Designer (with a capital D), is that to make connections of different disperate things. How a designer puts these things together is what makes the designs interesting. How are ideas infused into objects?

Here are the things I am trying to get done during break:
1. Drawings of lights
2. Thinking about goals in what I am doing. What is the goal of this? what is going to make this successful?
3. Perhaps some market research?

I think I am heading towards a desk lamp a wall unit and a chandelier, and I would like to think about what will make that those successful.

The(sis) blog

2007-12-05T19:44:00.000-08:00

From now on, this blog is about my thesis. I do this in some attempt to put down a lot of thoughts "on paper" through out the process, so there might be some sort of record. I am going to try to show progress on the process.

In many ways this thesis has mutated over the months. Part of this comes from a lack of time, but also a drive to really ferret out what is the core of the thesis.

There are a lot of ideas about LED lighting these days, its coming from all angles. In the past couple years, its pretty clear that there is no concensus on what is a good idea, or what makes one of these lights successful. Yves and his light the leaf light

debuted at the same ICFF as this light, the Z light

With all the acclaim heaped on the Leaf light, the Z light still came away with ID magazine's design of the year. Why? Is this a better light? What makes this a better light?

through out the next couple of months, I am going to explore all sorts of ways to add light. These lights are in many ways different than the lights I have been making. I have been making lights to look at, these being more task oriented, lights to iluminate your work.

I invite comments, suggestions, and any other feedback here.

Lastly, here are some models I made the other day, I hope I can show lots of the things I am doing here.

From THESIS LIGHTS

Final CPH post, near christmas

2007-12-05T19:14:00.000-08:00

So this blog is my multi use blog, I don't feel like I need to make one little blog for every little thing. So I am posting these last couple pictures in here to finish up the CPH era and make this into my thesis blog.

Check out some of these pics from the end of DK days.

at the final exhibition

From Late CPH

DIS uploaded a lot of photos that they took, you can see them here
here are the ones just tagged textile

Finally, Here are my fotos from the end of days there:

Check them out.

Kenzan

finishing up.

2007-08-19T02:18:00.000-07:00

So its been while, we have been all over the place. Check Picasa for some good pics. On one of the last days, Keen and Ola and I were sitting outside, and we ended up emptying the fridge. They went to get beer, and we had a dinner that consisted of these items:

Popcicles/Ice Cream bars
Gummy Bears
Potato Chips (Sour Cream and dill, and Plain)
Tuborg
mini Calzones
Peanuts
All in Ones Crackers (carrots, Parsnips, Celery)
Yogurt (Chocolate Chips or Blood Orange)
Cookies

It started with popsicles, beer and chips and went on from there.

From Bad Picnic

Later that night Luis, Ola and I went out to find this party on a beach, which proved very difficult to find, but, ultimately really fun.

From Beach Party

There was a fire, and some partying, it was a great finish to the program. The next morning was a little slow.

Finally, I am sure you want to see some good pics of the studio, and work process.

Here is a good one of Kim and her colors.

From In the Work S...

There is now a whole gallery over on the picsite of us working in the studio. It doesn't really show process, but Its fun enough.

What? what? what? what?

2007-08-10T13:03:00.001-07:00

Tonight, after long hours preparing, I have finally started my final print. Seeing as it is in progress right now, I can't post any pictures.

K.

Waiting for the copy center to Open.

2007-08-07T07:39:00.000-07:00

Its been a good portion of time since i have updated this. Not to despair, nothing has happened. I thought it would be boring to keep updating this thing saying, "nothing has happened, nothing has happened."

Well yesterday something happened. Yesterday we went to the dyerhavn. pronounced "deer-hawen," it used to be the kings' hunting grounds, we stopped at a place, which has a really long name (forgot it), which was the place where the king would eat lunch when he was hunting. Of course, this small lunch spot was the size of a large mansion with all the statues and gargoyles to go with it. Now Denmark doesn't even have a king, they have a Queen, who i doubt is that interested in hunting, but she will come up later. They do use the grounds once a year for a fox hunt, in which I doubt they find many foxes because apparently a large population of commoners come out to watch the spectacle. For now, there are just a bunch of people riding around up there, its in this area north of Kobenhavn called the wiskey belt, which the NYtimes did a piece on in the last week, and it is just overall beautiful. There is a golf course, with some horrible golfers on it, and the deer have magnificent antlers.

We trekked through this area on our way to this little settlement where George Jenson had is factories. He also believed that his workers would be more productive if they were happy, so he built them a little town, with a lot of amenities. By town I mean under 100 buildings and houses. Now the only people who live there are artists and traditional crafts makers. They apply to live there, the list is really long, the woman we visited Lisbett Friis, applied right out of school, and space just opened up, now that two of her kids have gone to college themselves. She also got some studio http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifspace there, which she says, "I will never leave." She does all sorts of cool textiles, like reupholstering all the chairs in the Queen's yacht, making pillows for Fritz Hansen, anhttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifd art projects. She is more of an artist than a designer, and admitted that she needed to be convinced to turn her art into a business. We walked back through the dyrehavns, it was nice. When we got back to the train station, Ola and I decided to go to the beach for an hour before heading back to school. It was nice, but we ended up talking about my ex for a while, and that put me in a really bad mood.

But things are looking up, People are printing, and things are starting to roll.

k.

PS. New pics on the picasa

Post posty post.

2007-08-02T23:06:00.000-07:00

Blogggo
It's early in the morning here in copenhagen, and the reason I know that is because sun is up and its shining on me at my desk. The sun only shines on me at my desk when its nice out, AND, its morning.

Last night I traced, (traced because I cannot draw worth two galleons in a stupid Harrpy Potter book), some clouds in ink. They look good. Here they are:

And the best one:

They took a while to do, but its fine, they will look good against all the illustrator art that I used for the rocks. The rock pictures will have to wait, its a really huge image (140x95cm) and it would be sad to see the thing small.

Silvia's intown now, she went to helsinki for a quick jump, and came back. she might guest blog on this thing if I can convince her, and get her near a computer. Anyway things are coming together, I am really tired, and the work is starting to catch up. I am supposed to have all my screens and color seperations done today, but I dont think that is going to happen.

Later

Kenzan.

Not about CPH.

2007-08-01T12:26:00.000-07:00

Please, with humbleness, enjoy this movie.

A field trip and a check in

2007-07-27T06:19:00.000-07:00

Yesterday went on this field trip out to a fabric showroom. There we saw a lot of fabrics that people use for industrial/commercial upholstry. See the pics over in the usual place. It was way out in this convention center type of place. All of Scandanavia is on vacation for most of July, so there was no one there, and we got to look at a lot of different types of fabrics, Laser cut, burn out, and all sorts of weaves in all sorts of colors. It was pretty nice to see some of the things that are available on the market right now.

For the past couple days we have been thinking and doing exercises which are leading to final patterns for the end piece. We have been working on preliminary ideas in color and pattern. You can see some of the things that I have been working on. Now I need to take a lot of these things into line art, to make sure they can be accurately represented on a silk screen. Today we had a Checkin with the instructors to see how our progress was going, I was the last one to go, they had very little to say, I think it went well, they liked what I had to say, and they are excited to see the next step.

Anyway, Silvia comes in tomorrow, so the amount of posting might go down, unless I can convince her that she wants to guest spot on here, in which case the writing will get so much better.

http://picasaweb.google.com/kenzan

Some patterns, and other unrelated thoughts

2007-07-25T07:47:00.000-07:00

So we have been back for a while, been working in the studio now. These days we have been doing a lot of work at the desk, and the print rooms have been quiet. I had a chicken falafel for lunch. Check out the photo page for some early work. These were tests to show us the variety of things that we can do and how to place things on the page to get repeating patterns. I have been working a lot right now on my final project, I have been sticking to my guns on the clouds and rocks pattern, to which a number of people have commented that my designs are very masculine. Perhaps that is true, but I maintain that the only reason people think that is because my design is not based on flowers, trees, little girls, or leaves.

Tomorrow I can show you some of the work I did today on the rock section. I want to have a pretty large repeat, something that is more scenic than graphic. A couple of the instructors thought that wasn't a very good idea, but I think its going to turn out great. As on of my friends said, its interesting because rocks always seem to be waiting to get rained on anyway, so this will be some sort of discussion of that. But really this is going to be an expression of the study tour, most of the images that I am using, come from the study tour. It really has become an expression of patterns that I have seen in those cities.

The weather has been unusually shitty here, even the danes say so, but they are prepared for it, most every one has a full rain suit, complete with wellingtons, and happily ride around in anything up to a full downpour, and even then they are out on their bikes.

I went to see Die Hard four point oh, AND harry potter last weekend, both amazingly bad/good in their own way. If you want to see a balls out action movie, go see DH4.0, you can see how bad of an actor that "i'm a mac" guy is.

Anyway movies here are $15-$17 so that will not be happening too much more, although My friend Carly wants to go see Transformers this weekend, I think I will go.

In any case, the sun is shining, and that's a rare occurrence, So I'm off to ride around, and look out for some more photos tomorrow.

k.

pictures

2007-07-24T07:49:00.000-07:00

http://picasaweb.google.com/kenzan

some more crap

2007-07-22T07:19:00.000-07:00

I have no idea how often I am going to up date this, but if i can get to school early, I will post small updates as often as possible. I am also currently accessing the interweb at a internet cafe, mostly used for CS and CandC. So its not my computer and therefor no photos yet, but i did take 546 on the study tour, and of course video. soon my friends soon.

Since I have gotten here, I have learned basic silk screening techniques and then ran off to on the study tour to Stockholm and Helsinki. Both of those are so amazing, they deserve their own posts. Conceptually, I have been thinking about clouds and rocks a lot these days, and they might be the final concept in my pattern.
I have been attracted to a lot of lighter colors and pastels here, that has been reinforced by a lot of work in watercolor, the color pallet of helsinki and just a general shift towards more delicate colors in my general thought process. I think there is certainly an excitement in being able to make 5-10 yellows and make them feel different and vibrant. But when i say yellow, I more mean to say, is that it has been raining and there has been a lot of looking at clouds seeing so many gradiations and tones in the grey of the clouds. the weather and the physicality of the area are so similar to the PNW in the way that it can be hot and sunny and 3\4 of the sky is cloudy and threatening rain. Also watching the people, they dont stop when the weather gets bad, they go out in all types of weather, and seem to have a sunny disposition. well, as sunny as the danes get, which is equivalent to mildly overcast all the time. I have also been watching some danish movies, and those are really wanked. If you think Lars von Trier is wierd, wait to see all the ones they dont let out of the country. Anyway more thoughts from the northland, Cristiana and the euro disco on the boat, and all of that too.

bye

Welcome to Copenhangen, all that and the rest.

2007-07-10T07:24:00.000-07:00

Its 18:27 in Danmark, as the Danes spell it. I'm sitting at Julia and Kandice's house waiting for them to come home. They live 2 blocks from us in a nice two BR renting from a nice guy named Thomas. They have a lot of flies. No one knows Whys. I have been going to school for a little over a week now and have learned a number of things. I have learned how to mix reactive dyes, how to mix opaque pigment, how to do a burn out, how to wash and set pieces, and learned a lot about repeat patterns. Today we had a big lecture about scandinavian designers.

Some things I have been doing:

I went to Paris. There, Ben and I walked around a lot. We got kicked off the Metro when it closed at 1. In Paris, there is not a last train, which you catch or don't catch. at the stroke of 1 or slightly before, it stops at a station, and everyone gets off. not matter where you are. You could be all the way across town, and you are walking or in a taxi. We drank a lot, we visited all sorts of nice people, we saw ocean's 13 in version original, I bought a bunch of clothes.

That leads me to the other winding thread which ties all this travel together. Britsh Air, or BA or Bitch Ass, Has not been able to get my baggage to me from the transfer at Heathrow. No one I know has been able to get a good experience getting over here, people were late all over the place, baggage has been all sorts of lost, and remember that I got to Paris on the 26th of June. SO, I have been buying clothes like a rich man; not too many, but some nice things because they have not been able to get the luggage, which we now know is in italy, to paris, Amsterdam, or here. yesterday I bought a really nice jacket from a danish designer, a pair of levis and a hoodie. Today I bought a backpack, a digital camera, a matte knife, a ruler and some other shit. I was expecting to buy things, but its getting out of hand. H&M is a friend of mine. I'm about to start buying watches and a new Sport Coat. I'm hoping for a 1st class upgrade on the way home, because I don't really want to ever ride this airline again. Heathrow has been a mess, they shut it down for 24 hours, after there was a threat at galwaith. not to mention that we were delayed at all points on both legs of the flight.
For instance:
1. Off the gate at JFK
2. On the taxi way at JFK
3. Waiting to land at Heathrow
4. On the taxi way at Heathrow
5. At the gate at Heathrow
6. In the terminal at Heathrow (I wrongly rode the tram all the way back to terminal 1 went through security, was told to go back to terminal 4 to talk to the ticket agent there, and I still beat some of the people who went through security at terminal 4.)
7. Before pushing off at Heathrow
8. On the taxi way again at Heathrow
9. landing at CDG
10. On the taxi way at CDG
11. Waiting for a malfunctioning Jetway, and then waiting for the stairs to be driven to the back.
12. That was the one bright spot was that I was in the last row, so suddenly I was first off the plane. I was taking pictures of getting off, and they asked me to delete the pics on the camera. I think If it was JFK, they would have arrested me or at least detained me. But the guy walked away before I erased them. I will show you that pic later when I can get my computer hooked up to the internet.
13. Then, everyone who was on the original flight was missing their luggage, the whole thing went to Milan. Where I assume, its been sitting since then.

I don't really want to fly back with them.

From paris, Ben and I took a Beautiful Thalys train from Paris Du Nord, to Amsderdam Central Station. The weather continued to be bad, and we quickly found Mr Charles Mitsui who took us back to his amazing flat. We kept going to this coffeehouse near his flat because they had internet, and we wanted to use it. He lives at this intersection of two canals and over a nice restaurant, and there never ceases to be interesting things to look at. we spent the first couple days looking out the window, but quickly moved to sitting in the window sill and hollering at girls who would ride by on their bikes. We again, walked around a lot. It was interesting because we visited Berenis, our friend in paris, and Chuck in the twilight time of their stays in Europe, and they were both so excited to have some american people around. There was a lot of chilling. There was a lot of lurking. There was a lot of walking around just checking things out. Drinking beer. At Chuck's we BBQ'ed s couple times. We relaxed in his palatial flat.

From there, Ben headed out to London, I got on a train bound for Dusseldorf. I have to say that the german ICE (InterCityExpress) has some new trains just delivered by Siemens which are super smooth and quiet. they have this fresh fold down step that almost disappears when the door is closed. The trains got worse as I moved north. the train from Dusseldorf to Hamburg was a little less nice, and the train from there to Copenhagen was the oldest and least smooth. But it had the distinction of riding the ferry. I had been asleep, when I awoke everyone was getting off, and we were clearly on a ferry boat. They had loaded the whole train on to the boat. The boat itself was two cafes, a money exchange, a huge duty free, ( why are they always basically perfume and booze?), and an ice cream stand. I was awake when the train rolled off the ferry.

Tell you about CPH soon.

K.

why does this happen?

2007-02-26T13:08:00.000-08:00

I am trying to get last week's assignment to work before going into this weeks
it seems to not like line 2 (int switchPin = 7;)
why do i get a:

error: redefinition of 'int switchPin' In function 'void setup()':
In function 'void loop()':

for this:
int ledPin = 13;
int switchPin = 7;
int pulsePin = 3;

int pulseLevel1 = 500;
int pulseLevel2 = 5000;
int pulseWidth = 1000;
int switchValue;

void setup() {
// make ledPin an output pin for mr. led
pinMode(ledPin, OUTPUT);
// make switchPin an input pin
pinMode(switchPin, INPUT);
//set internal pull up resistor
digitalWrite(switchPin, HIGH);
}

void loop() {

switchValue = digitalRead(switchPin);

if (switchValue == 0) { //i.e.: you've pushed the switch
//remember we're normally HIGH
// because of the internal pullup
pulseWidth = pulseLevel2;
} else {
pulseWidth = pulseLevel1;
}

//we actually do the pulsing here
digitalWrite(pulsePin, HIGH);
delayMicroseconds(pulseWidth);
digitalWrite(pulsePin, LOW);
delayMicroseconds(pulseWidth);
}

Thanks
k.

too small

2007-02-15T15:07:00.000-08:00

that pic is too small.
im gonna email you.

debug time.

2007-02-15T14:58:00.000-08:00

I am pretty proud of myself for writing this little program, its a lot easier than the LED, counting all that crap. But I have written this from scratch, and I cannot figure out why this is happening. ideas?

Reading ideas

2007-01-26T21:58:00.000-08:00

Since I assume that you will be reading a lot of what I write here, a lot of ideas that I have are going to come out.

Idea of today:

Take one of these:
http://www.suck.uk.com/product.php?rangeID=50&PHPSESSID=aab7b5a45186ac292077591a1c22127f

and fill pot holes with them via resin, in the same vein as:
http://graffitiresearchlab.com/

solar powered light up potholes.

that's my idea.

Welcome to 1000

2007-01-23T20:28:00.000-08:00

Welcome to This blog. This is the first entry for a blog that chronicles a semester in the art of electronics.

The goal is to improve the inner workings of the lights which I hope to bring to market soon.

you can see the present state of affairs at:

http://www.studio1thousand.com.
Make sure you play with the dimmers.

I hope to parlay this class into some large light up boxes, perhaps side tables using these as well:

http://www.anigmo.com/

Thanks,
Kenzan.