First Contact exhibition features a lot of amazing artists. I am so happy that my work “Jakarta: Bad Traffic” is in the exhibit!

More information about the show:

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Gallery Project presents First Contact, a multimedia exhibit in which 33 regional, national, and international artists explore our desire to encounter extraterrestrials, our preparedness for such an event, the event itself, and its possible consequences.

Technological development has brought us to the precipice of first contact, but has humanity kept pace? Is our search for extraterrestrial life simply a search for answers to our own existence? What makes us believe that we are prepared for a relationship with other worlds when we have difficulties on our own planet? Is it our innate curiosity or primal fear that motivates us? ‘Artists,” wrote Ezra Pound, “are the antennae of the race.” Media analyst Marshall McLuhan expanded on that idea when he wrote, “Art as radar acts as an ‘early alarm system,’ as it were, enabling us to discover social and psychic targets in lots of time to prepare to cope with them.” If art is an ‘early warning system,’ then what does art about First Contact foretell?

Contributors include Seder Burns, Thomas Carey, Ross Carlisle, John Causland, Debra Davis, Lynda Davis, Rocco DePietro, Zeek Earl, H.R. Giger, Brad Gieske, Clifton Harvey, Mayumi Haryoto, Dan Hernandez, Nicholas Kahn, Tanya Kavakoza, Charles Lindsay, Kevin Margo, Ian Moersen, Gloria Pritschet, Simon Ray, Michael Rea, Kris Rudolph, Richard Selesnick, Sara Schleicher, Douglas Scobel, Brian Spolans, Derek Stenning, Po-Wei Su, Mike Tarr, Jacob Tebbe, Brana Vojnovic, Lynn Whitney, and Barry Whittaker.

The exhibit is curated by Seder Burns, Lecturer of New Media, University of Toledo, and Gallery Project collaborator.

Thursday, February 14 – Sunday, March 24, 2013
Reception: Friday, February 22, 6-9pm
215 South Fourth Avenue, Ann Arbor, MI 48103

http://www.thegalleryproject.com/

On January 30, 2013 I had the privilege to teach at a small workshop by Intel Indonesia for digital drawing in order to demonstrate the ability of Ultrabook Convertible at KOI Gallery Kemang, Jakarta. If you don’t know what an Ultrabook is, it is a hybrid of a notebook and a tablet inspired by Intel. That could also mean the likelihood of toting around less devices for me and less ‘huffs and puffs’ because I get to carry just one device in my bag everyday.

Windows 8, as we know, has a fresh user interface design. One of the interesting features that Windows 8 has is the Snap feature where we can use two apps at the same time. I use this feature when I want to draw something out of an image sample or reference and just put the image side by side with whatever drawing app which I choose. Then I wonder if Adobe Photoshop will develop its touch version with full performance on Windows 8, that would be also something I’d love to try.

Anyway, I got to use a Dell XPS 12, while all the other participants got to choose other available devices provided by Intel’s partners. And since most of the workshop participants were non-artists–most of them were lifestyle journalists and bloggers, we chose a more playful applications such as FreshPaint and Glow. Generally, I gave them basic introduction on how to play around with colors and shapes so they could feel the touch experience on the smooth surface of the screens and create something out of it. I was happy when I saw colorful sketches starting to show on their screens. All the participants were hooked to their devices and had a great time playing around. Thank you Intel Indonesia for the experience!

I finally decided to create a blog. Yay! I will try to share some of my activities or random things I like and, you know, maybe some useless thoughts that can’t fit in 140 characters. Oh, no! So basically it’s just like any other blogs out there? Well, yeah… I’m not going to argue that.

I’m not sure what should be my first post here, so I’m just going to share you the very first book that introduced me to the world of design. It’s a typography book that was written by my late great grand father, Yajima Syuichi. My mother showed this book to me and some of his paintings probably when she noticed I developed an abnormal amount of love to crayons. I was only 8 years old and as a kid who liked to draw ballerinas dancing in pink dresses, a book that tells stories about how beautiful letters were made actually couldn’t steal my attention that much. As I grew up I began to grow interest in what he did for a living. When I finally got my first job as a graphic designer she gave all his stuff that she owned to me.

To be honest I haven’t read this book thoroughly myself, I don’t really understand Japanese that much and my mother is a bad translator. But I can say this book basically tells about basic knowledge and brief history on calligraphy and lettering. It covers alphabets, hiragana, katakana and kanji. The book has 332 pages and was first published on Nov 1, 1975 to mark the 50 years he had spent on his career. Of course there were no computers in his time, as you can see in the pictures below he shared some of his techniques on how to move the pen or brush to create delicate lines for the letters. I’m always amazed by strong craftsmanship people had back then.

Anyway, I’m thinking to try to digitize some of the font type he designed that are shown in this book. I’m curious on how it’s going to look like. I’ll let you know when that happens.