Artists: Manria feat. Poolside
Created by: Maria Fox, Amanda Appiarius, Sarah Meek, Rachael Chiseck, Josh Whelchel

DAAP Slap’d

…did I mention you can buy it on iTunes??!! Yeah, that’s right — DAAP Slap’d on iTunes

More to come…eventually.

I’m pretty excited because one of the big projects I was working on at my co-op at RushCard/Unifund is now live!! It is a fee calculator that I designed and coded to determine which RushCard and plan would be right for you, based on a series of questions about your financial habits and card usage.  This project posed a huge challenge to me because I haven’t done anything like a quiz or calculator in Flash or ActionScript 3 before, and there was a large amount of math (eek math!) to work with determining the totals for the monthly costs.

Check it out and let me (or RushCard!) know what you think of it!

http://mariacfox.com/feecalc.html

Here is my course rundown:

Digital Design III — we are creating a piece about the importance of design education.  It is an open-ended group project and we can decide whether to do interactive or motion (I think our group is doing a mixture, which will be fun).  We are going to make it humorous and somewhat like a parody of design students at DAAP.

Motion Design II — we started off with a matte painting project, and now we are doing green screen.  I’m pretty excited since I’ve never done anything like this before, so hopefully it’ll be a good quarter for learning and experimenting with motion.  Later on in the quarter we will be doing title sequences and some 3D integration.  Yay!

Design Ideation III — a cool project on How Stuff Works (like a watch, etc.) which can be interactive and motion and include a timeline of some sort.  It’ll be a good exercise in information visualization and architecture!

Digital Design Seminar — talking about design research, methods, and other design-related stuff.  We had a lecture about the importance of research in history and visualizing information of a historical nature this past week (mmm….history…..).

Culture of Books & Reading — this class is AWESOME.  We are reading several books (the first of which, Riddley Walker, is a bit difficult because it isn’t written in grammatically correct English….but a very interesting read!!) and have been shown some really interesting ancient artifacts such as Egyptian papyrus, a large cuneiform tablet, and several Korans (which we had to wear cotton gloves to touch since we are not Muslim)!  I am loving it.

World Prehistory — a class about the anthropological and archaeological origins of our world.  We’re discussing some archaeological methods (which I know now since I took archaeology last quarter!) and we are beginning with human origins (Lucy and other prehistoric human ancestors) and continuing with ancient civilizations such as the Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, and Mycenaeans. It is also going to be an awesome class.

So hopefully this will be a good quarter!! I just updated my portfolio to the new version, which I’m super excited about and have been working on this whole summer (on and off…gotta take a break to read!!).  We are starting to look for co-op jobs for winter quarter already as well!  A little bit overwhelming since the quarter just started but it’s good to get a head start.

Since I usually like to do my little book updates, here is my most recent: I am currently reading The Gone-Away World by

The Gone-Away World

Nick Harkaway. It took me a while to get into it, since I started it on vacation and have been reading it for a few weeks now, but it has gotten really good!! It is a sort of post-apocalyptic science fiction novel about picking up the pieces and trying to make a life after a nuclear holocaust.  The descriptions and situations are quirky and funny at times, biting at others.  Here is a quote from the novel, my favorite so far (sorry if it gives anything away….):

“We were deluged together in the raw, unbalanced Stuff of the universe. Inevitable consequence:

My own little reification.

I was made flesh, and in the process taken from him. I was never supposed to be real. How terrifying to confide your every doubt to an imaginary companion, to bequeath to him every alternative, and then one day turn and see him standing before you. Gonzo must be feeling so hollow inside, with me spun out and separated from him. It must be quiet and empty in there.

And that, of course, is how I survived being shot. Freshly minted, new, I wasn’t real enough to die.”

…I love it.  When I finish this one, I’m going to read Joseph Campbell’s The Hero With a Thousand Faces, which I have read parts of, but never the entire thing.  I am pumped.  I love Joseph Campbell (I wrote my senior research paper in high school on the hero journey in Harry Potter….I know, I’m a nerd).

Well I think that’s all for now.  Yay school!

Besides work, I’ve been hanging out with friends (we like to watch True Blood–AWESOME show) and trying to relax.  That doesn’t always work out, since a few weeks ago I had to move out of the old apartment and into the new, which was a bit stressful.  Before that, of course, I had a bunch of weird/random stuff happen like recurring bouts of hives (why am I allergic to EVERYTHING?) and right after I moved in I got sick for a week with what I thought was bronchitis….and I lost my voice (which was rather odd and didn’t really connect to anything).

I’ve started to redesign my portfolio again and I think it’s going to be a LOT better than the old one (hopefully).  I have been doing a lot of reading, as well.  It calms my mind like nothing else and it seems to make me happy no matter what, so yay reading!! (on a sidenote: a project I did last quarter was a design for a  book blog that I would like to at some point actually do, but who knows when I’ll have enough time for that!)  Here is my reading list so far (forgive my girliness):

The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell (just started)

Lavinia by Ursula K. Le Guin

The Constants of Nature by John Barrow

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by JK Rowling (reread)

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by JK Rowling (reread)

Vampires and Vampirism by Montague Summers

The Seduction of the Crimson Rose by Lauren Willig

Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse, and Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer (reread…I couldn’t help it)

And that’s been my summer so far!  Only about a month left….I will be going on vacation to Ocean City, Maryland in a couple of weeks so I’m pumped for that.  Ready to get pummeled by some waves (I miss Virginia Beach!!).

http://www.amazon.com/wishlist/1ADH01R7RYWXQ

P.S.  School started a few weeks ago so I’ll be pretty busy with school work for a while so there may not be many posts.  Sorry!  But hopefully I’ll have some work I can put up every once in a while and keep you updated as to what I’m working on.  For instance, I have an archaeology exam Tuesday.  Yay!  The weather is so beautiful here I want to go outside and study but I know I wouldn’t get anything done if I went outside…

So I kind of wanted to write about something different this time.  Every time I’m in a car for a long period of time (which lately always happens to be through virginia, west virginia, and pennsylvania), I pass by old rusty barns and decaying houses.  And I get this ridiculous urge to take pictures of them.  And it made me realize that I have a secret ambition to go around the United States and take pictures of rusty stuff.  Mainly decrepit barns and rusty bridges.  It sounds beautiful.  I have kind of a different idea of beauty, where things that might seem disgusting or dirty seem beautiful to me.  Sophomore year I had to do a photography project where I had to find all of the letters of the alphabet in objects of a theme.  My theme was “urban decay,” aka rusty stuff (some of the photos from that project are on my flickr).  I found that I really liked that project.  I’m not sure if it was the texture, the colors, the idea that the things we created to be permanent were changing and decaying all around us, but something in those photos stuck with me.  And every time I drive past some sign of desolation, abaondonment, or ruin, I just want to grab a camera and shoot it like there’s no tomorrow.  So maybe some day when I have the time and the drive, I’ll go out and do that.  Because that would be awesome.

And that reminds me, I also have a secret desire to hike all along the woods that are next to the interstate.  Like Into the Wild style, except without the dying.  I don’t know but when I’m driving along an interstate that is bordered by trees, I just want to be out in the trees, walking along there and camping.  And if there is a river, I want to kayak along it.  Just because.  Maybe I’ll do that someday, too.

I never thought I had those things that you just have to do before you die, you know, like how people say they have to write a book before they die, or climb to the top of Mount Everest or something cliched like that.  But it seems I do have something I want to do.  Take pictures of rusty stuff and hike along an interstate.  What grand ambitions I have.

So my new portfolio is finally up and live!!  Check it out (if you notice any kinks let me know….) and hope you enjoy

A similar blog design will hopefully soon be appearing!

And just for reference….my motion piece from last quarter was a self portrait titled “5 Inches Too Short” and it was about me wanting to be a model but getting rejected for being too short….a humorous piece of course (I don’t actually want to be a model….except kind of….).  

OMG.

So my friend Rich sent this article to me.  It’s about how anthropologists help companies understand users and their interactions with technology.  Tech companies are hiring anthropologists to research and work with designers….so how awesome would it be to hire and anthropologist and designer all in one???  Handy, isn’t it!  And people called me crazy for loving anthropology so much.  

Every day it seems the two become more applicable and related to each other.  Therefore, I keep chugging with my love and obsessive interest of anthropology.  Though my knowledge of forensic and physical anthropology may not come in handy as much in the future…..but who knows!  

I feel happy now.