Weapons of Mass Networking in North Korea

source: www.twitter.com

Social Networking in North Korea is sticky and behind the loop of many other countries around the world. North Korea has a government that tolerates censorship to the extreme.  In North Korea, all media outlets are strictly owned and controlled by the North Korean govenrment.  All news comes from the Korean Central News Agency.  Mass media is used as a weapon by the government in North Korea, as the much of the media released is in propoganda form, and promotes the personality cult of Kim II-Sung and Kim-Jong-iI.  Routinely, the media is used to make false claims to attack the western world, Christianity, The United States, Israel, Japan, and specifically South Korea.  

    Radio and television are preset to government run channels and set to recieve only govenement frequencies, with technology in place to prevent tampering.  It is a serious criminal offense to tamper with the sets, or to receive North Korean radio or television programs outside of North Korea.  Possessing a personal short wave radio is illegal, but confiscated radios are commnly resold by corrupt agents of the government.  

    In 2006 Reporters without Borders described North Korea as the world's internet blackhole, probably because internet usage in North Korea is illegal.  It is limited to few government officials who have connection through secretly rented Chinese connections.

  Until last year, North Korea was hardly on the social netwroking scene.  North Korea's government run website Uriminzokkiri opened a twitter account and YouTube channel in July, 2010.  Though not accesable by it's own people, North Korea uses the networking sites to blast the US and South Korea,  among many other countries, religions, and ideas.  The South Korean government blocked all access to the youtube channel and twitter account after only one week of activity.  

    Suspiciously, hours after the sites were blocked by the South Korean government, a North Korean facebook page was created under the name uriminzokkiri, which directly translates to on our own as a nation.  The facebook page was soon blocked by the South Korean government, so as not to have it's people flooded with anti South Korea and US propaganda.

    For all of the good that social networking can do-bringing people together with similar ideas, making the sharing of ideas extremely easy and accessasable for all, and doing it all peacefully and at the will of the common person, it is very sad that North Korea's government would chose to represent themselves in such a negative and bully-like manner.

sources:
http://www.cnbc.com/id/38753870/North_Korea_Takes_to_Social_Networking
http://science.discovery.com/stories/week/north-korea-social-networking.html
http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2010/s2996087.htm

Light Box Final

Natural Light- No Outside Light Source

Outside Right View

Outside Left View

Top View

Changed to Cloudy Setting on my Camera

For the light box project I, naturally, wanted to put the light inside the light box and create a glow.  The challenge to create shadows really toggled my brain.  I went with the idea to create a light box that looked like the light was erupting from behind the board; the shadows would create a wall of light cracking through dark.  The inside of the box design was chosen so the light would have a full surface to reflect onto, since (hypothetically, if the box was the inside of a building) the sun would probably not be straight over the building at all times.  I did not design the box with the intention of the light being stationary, as i enjoy the ever-changing patterns the light creates on the inner wall.  I designed the curved wall not all the way to the floor because i like the straight on permanent division of light that the darkness creates.

Catal Huyuk

New Year, New Header

    When asked to design a new header for our class design blog, I was first a little puzzled.  The class was instructed to create an 8.5 x 2.5 inch header using print from a computer and an illustration or design telling a little about ourself as a designer.  For my header design, I chose a peacock feather.  The feather is symbolic of a whimsical, colorful design agenda.  The peacock feather has many colors, all of which shine in different hues depending on how the light catches the feather.  I also have feathers attached to the walls of my workspace in the iARC studio.
     I created my header in Adobe Illustrator, by using the brush tool and using the art brush stroke.  The stroke is set to .25 pt so the lines would be crisp and not too harsh.  I wanted to experiment with Illustrator, which is how I designed the feather doodle.  I often doodle in my sketchbooks, so I wanted to incorporate an original doodle into my header.  The use of color was easy, as many people know the general colors of a peacock feather.  The colors of the feather are fun enough that the exaggeration of color on illustrator, as opposed to what an actual feather looks like, are acceptable because the art brush stroke makes the feather look like it is done in water color.  The header is very light an airy, which I think reflects a lot of the ideas I have as a designer, since I tend to stray from straight lines and hard edges.

Up in The Clouds Luminaire Final

Front View- Focus on Clous Shape

Full Front View- Cloud and Legs

Side View

Bottom View (Not visible unless lying underneath)

Detail View of Layers- Layers were accomplished by sewing the paper together so that it overlapped to create shadows amongst thicker paper.

Detail Side View

Materials- Cloud: Craft Paper, Wire, Fishing Line, Pipe Holders, Wood, 2- 15 W CFL bulbs, A Few nutz and boltz and TLC

Legs: Wood, Paint

Up in the Clouds

Our final project in studio was to create a luminaire, based on a natural light phenomenon.  My light phenomenon was a large body of clouds, with the sun at the very base of the clouds, illuminating the mass of clouds so brilliantly it seemed to be bigger than anything I could imagine.  I wanted to take this idea, illuminating a mass of clouds and turn it into something real; I wanted to build my own cloud.  Cliche? Well, have you have seen a cloud up close?  Have you been able to hold a cloud?  Walk up to one and around it?  Now you can. 



Early Cloud Light Model

Building the cloud- Base

Base- Side view

Base with Half of Cloud and Bulbs Attatched

Completed Cloud In Natural Light- Not turned on

Turned On in Natural Light

Critique- Monday, December 6, 2010

     On Monday, December 6th, 2010 I was assigned to attend the 2nd year Iarc critique located in the lobby of the Gatewood Studio Arts Building at UNC Greensboro.  The focus of the 2nd year's fnal projects was showing movement through form.  The students had to represent a movement or a flow using a statis material.  Various students used plastic, wire, and glass.  The one that I found most interesting was Jasmine Jones and her project on showing fluidity using wire mesh. 



Left Half of Jasmine's Project Board

 
 

Right Half of Display Board




Jasmine's Display Model

  I enjoyed Jasmine's project because of her thorough look at how her ideas developed.  I liked her documentation of process and how she explained how she created the fluid figures. 

She said the metal in the wire mesh imspired her because it reminded her of water, with the reflective qualities of metal. 

Jasmine created the shapes using points on her hands and tried many different variations of shape.  I think that he project demonstrates a confident grasp of understanding 3D Models and Shape of Movement, and that which is not necessarily a figure.