Radical Cartography

For this project I chose to map out my three years (so far) at Kansas State. I first listed all the classes I took Freshman, Sophomore and Junior year at KSU. Then I thought of other activities I did a lot while in Manhattan. For example, I'm involved in a sorority on campus, so I mapped out the route I took to get the my sorority house on a weekly bases. I also thought about going to the rec, football games, basketball games and of course going to Starbucks for coffee.

Overall, my map is incredibly simple yet extremely personal. I thought this was a cool way to map all the places I've been while in college.

Here is my list of activities I planned out before actually making my maps:

Here is the final projects:

Radical Cartography Proposal

I have a couple ideas for this project that I haven't quite decided on. 

The first one is to simple map out the paths I take to my classes. To make it a little more meaningful and different, I was going to map out the paths I've taken every year I've been at KSU. So, starting with my freshman year all the way to current (junior). I also thought it might be need to highlight moments I've had at KSU on this map. For example: getting accepted into the graphic design program. This event happened while I was in my metals studio in Willard. So, I could make a star or somehow label this memorable event. I could go back and do this for every year as well. All the different years could be a different color to help seperate them from each other. 

My second idea is based around my plans to study abroad this summer in Italy. I was considering taking a map of Florence (to be specific) and map out all the places we plan on seeing while in Florence. I chose Florence because this is where we will be located for the majority of the trip. We are planning on study at Lorenzo de Medici for 4 weeks and the taking 2 extra weeks to backpack around Europe. I thought this could be a fun way to document our plans and how it's coming along as a "work in progress" piece. I wasn't sure if that would be alright to have it not so finalized and definite, but it was just an idea. 

Logo Heist

The company I chose to for this exercise is Urban Outfitters. They came out with a shirt that said "Eat Less" on it and was shown on their website by a teeny, tiny girl wearing this shirt. This causes a major uproar from many customers saying they would no longer shop at this store. Urban Outfitters had many other shirts that they sold that were just as bad. One has the Jewish star on it and another with blood stains. All of these shirts have created a terrible image for their company. I, personally, used to love their store and after seeing all of these and hearing about the "Eat Less" shirt changed my views on what they consider "fashion".


Here is how I changed their logo:

The quote: "Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels" was said by famous super model Kate Moss. Her saying this caused a big stink since she is a "role model" to many girls and women everyone. How can someone who is such a large icon say something so damaging? I thought this quote fit the Urban Outfitters attitude with their select styles perfectly.

Mail Art

The mail art I designed is based on Italy. I honestly had no idea what to design in the beginning, and I researched some mail art and saw several that had been inspired by different countries. I'm planning on studying abroad this summer and I thought it might be cool to design postcards that would be personalized to me that I would want to send back to the states while I'm over there. These are how they look originally. I would like to print them and write on them about my travels, or what I hope to do while I'm in Italy. Just to add a little something more to it. I also really like them just the way they are here, as well.

Augmented Body

A couple of pieces that sparked by interest for my design were Sensory Substitution:

Seeing With Your Tongue and cat ears brain waves. The first one, Sensory Substitution, designed a way to see using your tongue. I found this incredible due to the fact that I have terrible eye sight. One of my biggest fears in life is losing my eye sight because it is already incredibly bad. For me, laser eye surgery will not work on my eyes and my only other option is major surgery to implant a contact onto my eye. The idea that if I lose my eye sight and could somehow see in a different way is encouraging. 

The other design, the cat ears brain waves, was interesting in how they used brain waves to control cat ears to show your emotion. The fact that it was using brain waves is what caught my attention and really blew me away. I wanted to dig deeper into how they were able to grasp brain waves to control something like simple cat ears that a person could wear on  a daily basis. 

For this project, I started thinking about other things I would like to help cure for people, such as sight, hearing, vocals, etc. But I wanted to dig deeper into things rather than just senses. I then thought of different things that effect my family and could one day effect myself. Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and multiple types of cancers are in my family. These diseases have no cure and they are still struggling to find one. Doctors are coming close, but in my opinion not close enough if it's not solved yet. I wanted to come up with something that could cure these, but also be painless and effortless. 

I then thought of Nanobots. These little robots that go into your system and do multiple things in there that I never quite understood when reading about them (it was all scientific and hard for me to follow). I decided to go off of the idea of Nanobots but change multiple things about them to channel them to exactly what I wanted. 

I decided first off, that they should not be made of metal. Metal is something our bodies can possibly reject if put into our system. So, I then thought of DNA printing. What if we could take a sample of our DNA and print it into a mini robot such as a Nano. So that's what I came up with. These little guys would then go into our system, basically a part of us from the start. They could go in and fight the multiple cells that carry the disease, whatever it may be, to take care of the issue for us. You would get them into your system by taking a small pill. That way, it's completely effortless and you only have to take one pill once. Not every day, or once a month, just once. 

After the Nano's are finished fighting the disease in your body, they would be able to communicate with your doctor that their job is done. They would do this by using a wifi chip that is embedded inside them. It's so small and cased around their little bodies that it wouldn't be an issue in your system. This way, the doctors can monitor exactly what they are doing to ensure that you are being taken care of.

Once the doctors have the information and you no longer need the Nano's to do their job anymore, they Nano's simply become a part of you. They are already printed to your specific DNA so they don't really need to go anywhere. This way, they can continue to monitor your body to ensure you are always completely healthy and safe from other diseases. Also, because they are designed specifically to you, if for some reason rather than fighting a disease they needed to mend a failing organ or failing cells, they could just simply replace them. They couldn't replace an entire organ, but they could make up many cells to help mend one. Again, simply becoming a part of you as they were printed. 

Here is the step by step explanation of what I came up with: