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!

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.

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.

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.

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!!)

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.