English

A partir de una fecha que ya quedó inscrita en la historia de Chile, el “estallido social” del 18 de octubre de 2019, comenzó un enorme movimiento social al que yo personalmente suelo referirme como “movimiento por la dignidad”, por ser ésta una palabra que se ha vuelto clave en la discusión pública. Desde entonces hemos tenido protestas masivas y violenta represión por parte del estado. Las razones de la protesta son muchas, pero decantan en el reconocimiento de que nos regula un sistema que favorece los intereses económicos de los grupos privilegiados por sobre los derechos, la seguridad social y el respeto al medio ambiente. Ya que el problema es sistémico, a partir de esto se instala la petición central de una nueva constitución, escrita en forma democrática, que reemplace a la escrita durante la dictadura de Pinochet. En pocos días será el plebiscito que decidirá el camino a la nueva constitución. […]

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A date that’s now been etched into Chilean history, the October 18, 2019 protests breakout marks the origin of what I personally refer to as the “dignity movement”, since dignity has become a keyword in the collective discourse. From that point on, massive protests and their corresponding violent suppresion by State agents have been daily occurrences. The reasons to protest are too many, but they all boil down to the realization that the overarching system of our society favors the economic interests of a small privileged group, while rights, social security and environment protection take the back seat. Given that the problem is deep-rooted and systemic, the central demand became the formulation of a new and democratic constitution, drafted to replace the one written during Pinochet’s dictatorship. In just a few days the referendum that decides the future for this constituent process will be held. […]

I kept the previous design (archived here,) it turns out, for a whole eight years. I modified it slightly over that time, changing the words, the links, and the colors. Its main conceit (the text getting increasingly obscured with time) never changed, and while cute, is not very helpful to the visitor. I decided to change it to be simpler and nicer. My website in general has always reflected my contrary attitude somewhat, but I guess the front page should just do its job of introducing who I am and link to some relevant places, to anyone nice enough to want to know. Yes, I am aware of how obvious the previous statement is.

The new page is a completely static HTML+CSS design optimized for mobile devices. My original plan was to give it a tiny bit of interactivity in the form of language selection, which I wanted to make my first Elm miniproject. But I ended up going to the Valdivia International Film Festival and had to hurry it up a bit, since I wanted something presentable in case anyone would take my card. (I might write about the festival later.)

Elm is a rather new language that compiles down into javascript, and which I’ve been learning recently. It’s been a pleasant and enlightening experience. I first considered learning the specific configuration of React plus whatever frameworks are needed to be able to develop for the web in a “fully” functional programming environment. But the overhead of learning all of that to, in the end, just having a sham of a functional environment, made me turn my attention to Elm, which was a language I’d been eyeing for some time. Basically, using just javascript, very little of any complexity can be made for the web, thus needing a bunch of libraries/frameworks of dubious compatibility and ease of use, laid on top of the shaky foundation that is the javascript standards. On the other hand, Elm has been made from the ground up to address the current landscape of the web, with a purely functional design. An easy tradeoff for me: I’d much rather learn a well-designed new functional language than be forced to hold my breath while navigating javascript’s murky waters.

One unexpected thing during my stay in Japan was becoming a performer. Friend and seminar-peer Hiramoto Mizuki needed people to carry out her Sushi performance, which involves humans taking on the appearance of the popular traditional Japanese dish in the streets of the crowded night-life district Roppongi, as part of the Roppongi Art Night festival. So I became the rice to her tuna. I was actually part of the (huge) camera crew half of the time as well. I don’t normally enjoy performing in public, but the experience was actually pretty fun. She made a video out of the copious material her little army of camerapeople got for her, and made it her graduation project. The video’s spoken in Japanese, but if interested just skip to the performances.

Another performing experience was for a series of videos promoting a student art competition called the “21th [sic] Campus Genius Award.” They were going for a Hollywood aesthetic, and thus needed ‘foreigners.’ I’m awful in it, but here you can watch the whole slick sci-fi movie-inspired little series. The company in charge of the web and promotion was TNYU, which is run by former students of the program I studied, so that’s how I ended up there. I actually appeared in a different video ad, did some translation work, and did (terrible) voice work for them after that.

I was also asked by another friend from my seminar to develop her website in three short days, since she apparently needed it to apply for an art residence (she happily succeeded.) I just made a static site, since there was not enough time, and she made the design. Other than that, I made a little web flyer for a friend’s party (she’s a dancer and often participates in such things,) which marks one of the few chances I’ve gotten to do actual, standard graphic design these days.

先日の投稿で英語で紹介したプロジェクトを今回日本語で紹介したいと思います。「ことばから考えてみると」とは、２年間をかけて東京藝術大学映像研究科メディア映像専攻で学習した…証？である、その修了制作です。このブログなら英語だけで紹介して済んだはずですが、特に日本語で書いた作品解説は日本語のまま載せる意味がないため、載せませんでした。翻訳するのが厳しいがブログには載せたいと思って、解説をきっかけに今回特別に日本語で投稿してみました！ […]

Even though I’ve been making a lot of stuff and been involved in many projects during my stay in Japan, I’ve failed to keep this blog updated, so I’ll try to slowly and retroactively add everything. I’ll start with the latest: my graduation project.

I spent the last two years in the New Media program at the Tokyo University of the Arts (named the university thus as it may be, I actually lived and studied in Yokohama, where the Film and New Media school is located.) The second year is when most of one’s energy goes into the graduation project. I’m not going to get into details here, but it was a rough year for our generation, and I’m glad it’s over. I had a first start with my Nendo project, of the design of a programming language inspired by art and design thinking, but the last six months or so had me switch over to what I call in English the Come to think of language project, which I guess you could call a linguistic experiment. I’m of course not a linguist, but I am very interested in the field and inspired by some of its thinkers. The linguistic relativity principle, or so-called Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, was one idea that drew me to the original programming language design, and that inspired the project that I ultimately completed. This is a very simple but powerful idea: the observation that language is deeply linked with thought, and that different languages would foster different ways of thinking. This has been highly debated in the linguistics field (Chomsky’s followers are very much against this idea, for, I dare say, mostly historical reasons,) but rather than attempt proving or refuting it, I assumed its truth and let it influence me. […]

This was long overdue: a browser for all of my released games, including the terrible ones, and covering all the range up to the mediocre. I used a binary system for highlighting the ones I consider to be less unremarkable; they use up double the space of the others. There’s also a handy tag there called gamey that marks the games that are more traditional in scope, so you don’t have to bitch to me about how my games are not really games.

I’ve refreshed the front page. The new design sports a rather subtle effect that nonetheless took me a fair number of hours to pull off, in part because I’m still not that familiar with javascript, but also because it was far more complicated than I originally estimated. It may not work as it’s supposed to in browsers other than Firefox and Safari’s latest versions, since it hasn’t been tested beyond those.

The previous design‘s been archived.

I wanted to highlight some new stuff on the front page, but ended up redesigning it. I like this new version much better than the last one, even though it’s just a retool gone a bit out of hand. Other than still featuring Cleo, it includes a favorite feature of mine: random colors. Another ‘feature’: it doesn’t work properly in IE.

As always, the previous design has been archived.

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I can now hold in my hands the physical result of half a year of work, the freshly printed book for children called Jugosa cocina para niños (juicy cooking for kids) that, in addition to containing plenty of recipes meant for them to prepare by themselves (with an adult’s helping hand), includes all sorts of trivia about ingredients and the culinary art, and which, the author says, is meant to help the children recognize the value in the food that they eat, think about nutrition, and put their creativity into practice. It was a fun project, in which I was involved as an art director and layout designer.

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