aesthetics/beautification project

Thursday, November 5

It was mostly a brainstorming day for us in class today. 5 different groups were created and I was debating whether or not to go into the Competition group or Tools group. I have an interest for Vinyl so I felt I could’ve gone either way, but I decided to be in the Competition group. Our group decided we were going to tackle down 2 projects within the next 4 weeks. Project 1 will be focusing on aesthetics. Our assignment is to beautify the object chosen by our Professor. Project 2 is still in discussion.

Tuesday, November 10
John Park has ordered lack tables from Ikea. We can be additive and change it in any way we like. Our group has decided to still have the object FUNCTION AS A TABLE. Our group was also discussing on how the class was going to decide which person out of our group won. We are still in discussion about the scoring system/feedback/comments.

Thursday, November 12
Today is a work day. I’m still a bit unsure as far as my ideas on what I want to do with the table. But Vinyl was the first thing that came to mind. I love retro-type photographs and vintage-like wallpapers. I might want to have vinyl covering the top of the table and legs. I did some web surfing on a few different sites to get inspiration.
* I want to use the table for my room to match
* I plan to paint the table either black or white
* Vinyl color choices: white (if black table), black (if white table), teal, orange, yellow
* I might want to shorten the table feet (not absolutely sure)

Friday, November 13 and Saturday, November 14
I decided to take an old wallpaper saved on my computer and pictures of wallpaper designs I took at a hotel and take the pieces out and re-arrange them so it would look a bit more interesting. I’ll be using Adobe Illustrator.

Monday, November 16
I went to Benjamin Frankin’s craft store to find spray paint for the table. Since I would still like the table to match my room, I bought dark chocolate. Vinyl choices are white, teal, or yellow.

Wednesday, November 18
I started to re-work the wallpaper I chose. I hope to go to studio this weekend and have the vinyl cut so that I can put them together over the weekend.

Saturday, November 21

I made a trip to Milrace to get the design cut. I ran through some minor errors and had to re-print the vinyl. I got the contact sheets on. I plan to spray paint the table tomorrow.

Sunday, November 22
I spray-painted the table dark chocolate. The paint did stick well on the table, but I think I just got it so wet from all the layers that in the end it left some holes.

Monday, November 23
The vinyl is on the table. I realized I got the calculation wrong while I was at studio and I ended up having to leave out a lot of pieces and so it ended up messing the original design. There were a few spots I had to re-spray paint over because the vinyl just got stuck on the table while I was trying to measure where I’ll be putting it. I took a picture every time I placed the vinyl on the table, but here are just a few to show! :)

Tuesday, November 24
This is the finished product! I still haven't been able to take pictures of the table in a nice setting, but once I do I'll be sure to upload them! This was a fun project!

final project posting~

2009.11.3- FINAL PROJECT POSTING~

My project is focusing on sleeping. Sleeping has been a really big issue. I find this project to be self-experimental and the goal was to observe the behavioral changes and stress levels, and if the attempted “forced schedule” to get more sleep failed or succeeded.

This experiment was documented for 2 weeks. One week was to A. document my normal daily schedule, and the other was to B. make an attempt to so “change my habits” and put myself in a forced schedule by trying out activities and/or others I normally wouldn’t do (and by this meaning activities that will bore me to fall asleep faster).

A. I documented my normal daily schedule and habits from October 15 to 22. This was just for me to observe how I’ve managed my time in doing things that week and to collect the total amount of hours I slept. (My schedule would’ve been more hectic if this project had started closer towards the end of the quarter. I would’ve slept after 3AM and get less hours of sleep a night.) Here are some of the things I’ve noticed on my habits after the 1-week documentation of my normal schedule was over.

1. Slept before 3AM on all 8 nights.
2. Spent my hours on useless activities on 4 of the 8 days.
3. Homework assignments not touched before 8PM.

I got more sleep than what I had expected. If I hadn’t put off any reading, drawing or studio assignments till the evening time or pushed it over for the following day, I would’ve been able to sleep earlier and not have to worry about catching up on any schoolwork.

B. I documented my forced schedule from October 23 to 30. This part of the experiment could’ve been approached in many ways. My goal was to sleep by 12AM. That week was to observe if my time was better well managed and (if) sleeping earlier affected me in any way. Here are some of the things I’ve noticed on the 1-week documentation of my forced schedule was over.

1. Slept by 1AM on all 8 nights.
2. Slept by 12:30AM on 4 of the 8 nights (activities and/or other attempted: watched the discovery channel, read a book, drank warm milk, and took Benadryl 2 of the 4 days an hour before I forced myself to sleep)
3. Homework assignments touched before 12PM on 3 of the 8 days.
4. Homework assignments touched after 9PM on 4 of the 8 days.

I got less sleep and I was surprised to see the results after totaling the amount of hours of sleep. I attempted to touch my assignments early during the day so that it would’ve given me more free time. Some of the problems encountered were:

1. Knowing my attempted goal to sleep by 12AM pressured me to complete everything on my “to-do list”.
2. Happen to have documented at the wrong week (Midterms week).
3. (Midterms week) = more stress = less sleep.

(Below) shows two graphs of the stress levels. Stress based on the thoughts, complaints, etc I’ve written in my journal daily.

A. This graph represents my stress level over the normal daily schedule. This week shows how my stress level is highest mid week and slowly decreases towards the end of the week.

B. This graph represents my stress level over the forced schedule. This week shows how my stress level slowly increases from day 1 to day 7. My stress level is highest towards the end of the week.

After comparing these two graphs, I was surprised that my stress levels resulted that way in the two weeks. I expected that my stress level each day on my normal daily schedule would be the opposite (stress level slowly increasing each day) because I tend to procrastinate and put things off till the very last minute, and that my stress level each day on my forced schedule would also be reversed (stress level high and slowly decreasing). Because I was on a forced schedule and pressured to get things done, I assumed I would be most stressed in the beginning of the week. My stress level went up day 5 (dark red area), which was the day I finally realized “I AM STRESSED.” I found that I experienced constant mood swings throughout the day, I was easily offended what people might’ve said to me and that my body was telling me to slow down on the loads of work I’ve been putting each day and rest. If this was a longer experiment, I would attempt to create a more structured schedule and try to follow that. Changing one owns habit isn’t that easy, especially if you only “attempted” to change your schedule for a week. My body couldn’t easily adjust to those changes and that's what had probably caused me to stress out early that week. But I definitely had fun with this project!

The red mark indicates my normal schedule. I got 62.5 total of hours of sleep. The purple mark indicates my forced schedule. I got 59.5 total hours of sleep.

and here is the poster!

TIME TO SLEEP! YEAH!