telluricAesthetic process blog
exploring symbolic undercurrents of the Philly aesthetic

Now our sexy nerds and geeks can look wii-ly sharp!

47 year-old Susan Boyle wows and woos an initially cynical crowd. Amazing and heart-warming at the end—even for Simon!

Alright all  you Shmitten fans, get your hottest nerd aesthetic votes in, and then add some Spring to your own aesthetic with these Milton Glaser-inspired SK tote bags.

Shmitten Kitten tote bag

I love when someone invests his/her cash in a domain name, just to get a single message across to a very specific audience. Now, I don’t know if it’s bleak mid-winter-induced cabin fever, but around this time last year BarackObamaIsYourNewBicycle.com came into being, answered post-haste by HillaryClintonIsYourNewBicycle.com (now an obsolete blog) and JohnMcCainIsYourNewBicycle.com.

Thanks to Bianca, today I discovered  tightsarenotpants.com:

Simple and to the point. But of course, the creator(s) of this site deemed it necessary to include a manifesto:

An authoritative typeface was chosen. And the text layout is well-thought out and effective.

If it’s on the Internets, it must be true—Barack Obama is now everyone’s new bicycle; John McCain is still super awesome; and tights are not pants (dot com).

Speed demon or carnivorous avian? This helmet is for ravenous road warriors only.

Hello new America!! Happy #Inaug09!!!

For any of you who may still be following this blog, I think an update is past due, so here it is:

I received some excellent feedback during the Q&A session of my final presentation. I haven’t really taken enough time to process all the feedback. Honestly, I feel that I’ve just recovered from what one of my favorite former profs called the ‘whiplash’ of a semester (and now my college education) coming to a screeching halt.

That being said, I do plan to have a beta version ready to for the Multimedia ‘09 seniors’ exhibition in May. But for the time being, I’m focusing on finding a job and giving a proper kickstart to the side project Bianca and I are working on.

I plan to pick up with tA again in February, but for now I will stick to posting anything related to the semiotics of visual culture and fashion.

Stay tuned!!

I’m sorry Wired, but this really is a dorky dome.

Bianca is finishing the postcards for me!!

Here is my revised abstract:

telluricAesthetic is an online gallery of user-created avatars based on perceptions of the Philadelphia cultural aesthetic. Each avatar samples the symbolic connections people make between personal artifacts (e.g. clothing and accessories) and cultural labels. The gallery will allow viewers to visually compare perceived differences and commonalities of Philadelphia’s cultural subgroups.

Heard this quote in my Religion, Art & the Apocalypse class last week:

To name is to destroy,
to suggest is to create.

—Stephan Mallarme

This really resonated with me, since it quite adequately articulates my thrust in this project.

To this end, I may be rethinking the tagging functionality, which won’t come until I have basic functionality anyway. (So close!!)

Per feedback from my last crit, I asked Mike to add some ethnic diversity into the illustration mix. Here’s what he gave me:

Now Jeremy did mention green as a choice for skin tone, but I’m not sure if he was serious or not. Are there martians and purple people in Philly? I’ve yet to see one… But nevertheless, green and purple avatar people are amusing, if nothing else.