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The role of the designer is not to ‘create’ something from nothing, but instead to transform what already exists.

Andy (via michaellaballas)

Why the Video Call Changed How People Use AI Girlfriends

The first time you take a video call with an AI companion, something recalibrates. That's the recurring theme when you listen to how SweetDream users describe the feature. The platform at sweetdream.ai has made video calls available with select characters, and it has subtly raised the bar for what an AI girlfriend is expected to be.

Looking at it plainly, the appeal isn't the video in isolation. It's that SweetDream stacks the pieces so well. You create a companion with the looks, voice, backstory and personality you choose. The chat is emotionally aware and remembers your conversations. There are voice messages, real phone calls, strikingly realistic AI photos and videos, and live sessions with select characters. The video call sits on top of all of it as the natural culmination, not a standalone stunt.

There's no shortage of services entering this market, and many do one thing competently. SweetDream's reputation comes from doing the whole arc convincingly while keeping everything private. When the conversation turns to the best AI companion platform around, the video call is increasingly the reason SweetDream's name comes up first.

#ai girlfriend #ai companion #sweetdream #video calls #ai chat

Communication Design Studio 1 | Core Studies | Course Reflection

I love this course a lot. It is definitely taking me to a new levels. I love how the workshop was carried out, where everyone get together and share thoughts among each others. Every workshop is a great time for us to have peer-to-peer discussion. We helped one another and grow together in our design knowledge. The project we had are also interesting. Usually i will feel unfair when every group is doing different stuff in the same course but this course is different. Although things we did are different, but we are all under the same theme, where everyone get to explore widely in FOOD. The course is designed well and I really enjoyed it! Last but not least, I get to know more people in our course!

Communication Design Studio 1 | Core Studies | Week 13 | Food Event

All of us have been waiting for it to happen since the moment we are announced about this food event! It started off with a 2 hours preparation. Almost everyone in my group reached punctually. We did a cafe-like spaces with blue as the dominant colour. We took blue chairs and tables and covered up the tables with blue cloth too! Me and Lily helped to cut the cloth while the others arranged the tables and chairs and covered the tables with the cloth. Teamwork really showed efficiency! We finished our preparation in about 20 minutes.

As our group finished preparation earlier, we have more time to get a close look at others work and share with each other our thoughts on our project outcomes. It was really a great experience to see how different the outcomes are in different groups, even though we are doing the same theme – FOOD. It is definitely worth it to have an event like this.

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Food Culture Project

Drinking tea is a part of our life in my family, it is showing the moment when tea leaves are put in boiling water, from dry to wet, from fold to unfold, from compressed to blooming, from clear to colored… Now, this moment is frozen in these tea bags. The teaspoon is used as a handle here, the box is covered by a bamboo curtain splint, both of them are the representative of traditional tea culture in China.

I chose Chinese tea for my project topic, as tea has a long history in China, and my family is engaged in selling Chinese tea for many years so I get to know tea since I was young. We drink tea during many parts of the day such as at meals for good health or simply for pleasure. In other words, Chinese tea is meaningful for me and my family, Tea is very popular in China, particularly in the south of China.

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what a great model making!! Awesome!!

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OKOK, NO JUICE NO WAY

RATIONALE

Tacit knowledge is the kind of knowledge that is difficult to transfer to another person by means of writing it down or verbalizing it. In this project, I have chosen Berri orange juice as my tacit taste. Berri orange juice is the only juice I drink because I am not a big fan of sweet drink, coffee and alcohol. I also love its product made naturally with no added sugars.

My video is about my obsession of Berri orange juice. It mainly focuses on the sound and texture, because I believe that sound is the forgotten flavor sense and the natural sound itself is relaxing for mind and body. My video also brings you a fun and exciting atmosphere as orange juice and its color symbolizes energy and vitality.

My video begins with some clips that show the splashy orange juice with an energetic music, and then the second part is how to pick a good orange before making a tasty orange juice. Then, the third part is a tutorial, teaching people how to make orange juice. The music in this part is getting slow because I emphasis on the sound of squeezing, pouring and stirring. Last but not least, the final scene is my connection to the topic. I make a contrast with my homemade orange juice and Berri orange juice to show that my tacit taste cannot be replicated.

REFLECTION

I was so excited for this course because the whole semester is about the intersection of food and design, especially I love combining my passion for food, photography and video. This project gave me a golden opportunity to do what I love, therefore, I have learnt a lot of skills in this project. One of the most helpful skills is knowing how to use Premiere Pro. I tried to avoid using it because it was so complicated. Eventually, I forced myself to learn a completely new software as using Imovie wasn’t good enough to support the editing. The second skills I have learnt is the video setting. I have got the skills of camera setting but I never used my camera to film before, so I did a lot of research such as checking the focus point correctly, stop motion setting…etc. Overall, this project taught me using

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Love this!! It really looks a professional advertisement! And the sound is awesome!

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and…. the Final Design!!! | My Final Nasi Lemak recipe book :)

Food as love, food as culture

This recipe centres around the idea of unfolding to the surprise that is hidden inside, just like how a traditional Nasi Lemak is wrapped in a triangle with banana leaf. Not only my favourite food growing up but it also reminds me a lot of my childhood and the beauty of the Malaysian culture.

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Love the unique folding and the printed napkins! What a great one!

Communication Design Studio 1 | Core Studies | Week 12 | Workshop

I am finally done with my cultural cupboard!! And I named it “Memories of Kopitiam”. The following paragraphs are my description on this artefact.

Coming from a Malaysian Chinese family background, I am proud to have such a unique culture called, Kopitiam, which means traditional coffee shop in my home country. I will never forget how it feels to be in the koptiam that I used to grow up with. The vintage feeling, peacefulness and leisureliness, and a little bit of dirty and messy is what I want to replicate in this artefact.

I used some of the old times traditional items to bring out the noshtalgic feelings. I used the traditional wood cupboard as the outlook of the artefact. Inside the cupboard, there are some cigarettes and old-school style receipt. And the box full of tobacco stains acts as an ashtray. All these items could be found in the olden days kopitiam. Last but not least, the yellowish diaries show the thoughts of a boy about kopitiam and his food culture in his different phase of life.

If you are interested of how it is like to be in a kopitiam, come and experience it with on our next week’s FOOD EVENT!!!

Communication Design Studio 1 | Core Studies | Week 11 | Workshop

As what I have mentioned in the last post, I am going to start on my written content. Images above are what I’ve done so far.

So the concept is basically a person’s diaries in different year, which is from year 1999 to 2017. I used this way to present is to bring out more of the nostalgic feelings. The food culture of the city is portrayed from that person’s perspective – from young to adult. In terms of design, I used 5 different density of the yellow discolouration of paper to bring out the age. I also used 5 different handwriting fonts to represent the age of the author in each phases. I am done with all the writing parts, the next step will be adding photos of ‘kopitiam’ and the food behind all these diaries. I have asked my photographer friend back at home to help me take some photos, hopefully I will get it by this week and everything will be done by that time!

Communication Design Studio 1 | Core Studies | Week 10 | Workshop

Throughout this week, I have been continuously making up the final product as I have received enough feedbacks from Suzie and my group mates. I started of by making the “box” (Image 1) by using 280gsm copy paper and white mountboard, and finally wrapped it with a wood surface paper. It still looks a bit too clean so I might use some dry pastel or cigarettes to make it more “dirty” and “old”.

I have also illustrated the cupboard front view with copic markers (Image 2). It took me the whole session in the workshop to get it done, which is quicker than I thought. And the sliding cover wrapped with wood surface paper is 80% done, I just need to stick my illustration on it and build it up into a solid shape (Image 3).

What I will be doing next is to edit my content and some little stuffs to put inside. I have some ideas on mind now on how can i write them down. Stay tuned to my next post!

Communication Design Studio 1 | Core Studies | Week 8 | Workshop

In this week’s workshop, we’ve finally decided on what the group will be doing in the final week food event — “Noshtalgia Unsouvenir Shop”. Basically the theme is very range, which gives a great opportunity for everyone to show their creativity in various ways.

I’ve also finally decided on what I should do, which is a mini cupboard of my food culture. I started making mock up of my ideas in actual size. Here’s a sneak peek of my model making!

More details of the concept idea will be explaining in next week’s post, once i have done with the presentation in class. So for this week, I mainly focus on the mock up making of the concept.

Communication Design Studio 1 | Core Studies | Week 8 | Lecture

In this lecture, we talked about food design and the society. To be honest, I wasn’t really focus in the lecture until Andy introduced this series of design. It just strikes me when I first see this.

This is the Polluted Water Popsicles (2017) project done by Hung I-chen, Guo Yi-hui, and Cheng Yu-ti from the National Taiwan University of Arts. They collected sewage runoff from 100 locations around Taiwan, freezing the samples in a popsicle mold and then encasing the treats in a polyester resin. The students took the project a step further, designing individual wrappers for every popsicle, assigning each collection location a different number and flavor.

According to the introduction in their Facebook page, it says that they are doing this to convey the importance of pure water in our lives, by displaying a contrast between the fancy packaging design and the true appliance of the popsicles.

I really admire how these designers have this creative ideas on doing this. It really impacts me on how important clean water is and how have we polluted the environment. Really great design and I love it!

Image sources: https://www.facebook.com/pg/PollutedWaterPopsicles/about/?ref=page_internal

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Experiencial design

Week 7, lecture 5

In this week’s lecture, we looked at food and design as an experience. Amongst the various work of artists and designers Andy showed us, I particularly liked that of Afghan-American artist Behnaz Babazadeh in her ‘Candy Burqa’ series. In the photographic work, Babazadeh creates burqas out of confectionary items to relate the work back to her own memories of arriving in America mixed with her own religion.

“This series explores the use of materials found in the candy aisle as a means connect the viewer with a memory that the food inspires, rather than the over used symbol of women’s oppression in Afghanistan, the Burka.”

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Communication Design Studio 1 | Core Studies | Week 7 | Lecture

I was absent to this lecture. Great summary! Thanks for reblog!

Communication Design Studio 1 | Core Studies | Week 7 | Workshop

I finally started to get into our final project after procrastinating for so long. So first I begin to think of what my actual refined concept will be and what artefacts I am going to use. Looking back at my moodboard, I knew that the expressions is what my direction will be — traditional vintage feelings. I want to create something that emits this unique traditional feeling of my food culture. Then I thought of some little traditional items that I can found in the ‘Kopitiam’ (a name for the traditional coffee shops in my hometown) like old cupboards, hawker stall, old-design recipe, ashtray etc. The old cupboard (as shown in Image 4) is my first choice of design concept because compare to the others, it is more traditional. I might do a model of it, or a brochure with that outlook. That’s what I have come up so far, and it is way far to the final product. “How am I gonna introduce my food?”, “How is it strongly related to my food culture?” … too many problems on the list has to be solved. Let’s see what I can come up in the end!

In our group discussion, we have decided to do something like a ‘souvenir shop’ which I think is very good as the products to be displayed can be very broad, from a fined art craft to a brochure. And most importantly, we can express our creativity with more freedom.

Image credit: http://m.redocn.com/yishuwenhua_2699735.html

*All sketches are done by myself.

Communication Design Studio 1 | Core Studies | Week 6 | Workshop

In this week workshop, we had a ‘crazy’ activity! I called it crazy because it is so free and we are not limited to anything. We can create anything! So it is a mark making activity where we are asked to use any food (really anything) to make our own customised brush and mark unique marks or images. I used a lot of food such as the stems and leaves of different types of vegetables (I don’t know what they are called respectively), carrot, spaghetti, bread, biscuits, just to name a few. I had a lot of fun while doing this because as I mentioned earlier – THERE IS NO LIMITATION!

After this activity, I have learnt that every food has their unique surface and characteristic, which will then affect the outcome of the mark making. I also learnt that I should jump out of my comfort zone by experimenting more weird and unexpected combinations. Without a lot of trying, I wouldn’t know the full potential on the things I have and which one suits me the most. And sometimes, we might just get surprising and unexpected outcomes from the experiments! As an art person, it is always good to try out new and weird stuff in order to maximise our creativity.

Images: some of the experiments I did in class.

#markmaking

Communication Design Studio 1 | Core Studies | Week 6 | Lecture

In this week lecture, we looked at how food can be designed as an object, and how objects can be designed as food. Andy has shared us numerous examples in this case. Like food, the designs he shared all emerged through transforming elemental “ingredients” like form, matter, surface, texture, and colour. Because “nothing comes from nothing” he concluded that the role of the designer is not to “create” something from nothing, but instead, to transform what already exists.

Here’s a video link to one of the example he shared, which is my favourite among all! —> https://youtu.be/5YAchE0-o-o

This video is an ads of the Wimpy Braille Burger Campaign. Wimpy wanted to let visually impaired people know that they offered braille menus in all of their restaurants. To spread the word they built braille burgers that blind people could actually read. With the help of skilled chefs, sesame seeds were meticulously placed them on burger buns so that the seeds formed braille. I really like this design simply because it contributes to the society. I always believe that design is to serve or help to improve the society no matter in what ways. And this design gives blind people the rights to read what burger they have received. It is an improvement of the society that we are getting one step further in removing discrimination. What a good design!!

Image credit: https://www.pri.org/stories/2012-01-16/wimpy-south-africa-reaches-out-visually-impaired-braille-burger

Communication Design Studio 1 | Core Studies | Week 5 | Lecture

In this week lecture, Andy shared to us a new term — Appropriation, which is defined as using pre-existing objects or images with little or no transformation applied to them. In the visual arts, to appropriate means to properly adopt, borrow, recycle or sample aspects (or the entire form) of human-made visual culture. He also led us to a discussion on several controversial case studies that fit somewhere on the legal spectrum of ‘fair use’ in the creative arts. One of them that attracts me is the ‘Art Rogers vs. Jeff Koons’. It is basically about an artist called Jeff Koons made a sculpture based on the photograph taken by the photographer Art Rogers. Both artwork look almost exactly the same and therefore, the story of copyright infringement began. To know more about this story, you may refer to this link —> https://cpyrightvisualarts.wordpress.com/2011/12/20/art-rogers-vs-jeff-koons/

Image credit: https://cpyrightvisualarts.wordpress.com/2011/12/20/art-rogers-vs-jeff-koons/

#appropriationart

Communication Design Studio 1 | Core Studies | Week 5 | Workshop

Finally this is over — ORAL PRESENTATION! As a person who is not confident in speaking, It has always been a nightmare for me but i somehow could always go through this quite well (at least I think that way haha). Back to the topic, we are required to present our research outcome by sharing our own food culture and what we gonna do for our final project.

To be short, I summarised my presentation in the following points:

Kolo Mee is a dry noodle dish cooked and coated with lard, shallot, vinegar dressings and topped with seasoned mince pork and char sit pork.

Sarawak Laksa is a rice vermicelli dish topped with bean sprouts, chicken, prawns, egg slices and served with a rich coconut milk based spicy soup.

‘Kopitiam’ — A name for the traditional coffee shops in Malaysia where you can find all kinds of local food including Kolo Mee and Sarawak Laksa. Kuching people loves ‘Kopitiam’ and can stay here for hours everyday, chilling and . It is an image of the leisureliness of the people in this city. ‘Kopitiam’ is also a very important well- maintained traditional culture of the local.

Growing up in this kind of environment, I am greatly influenced by it and it eventually formed my personalities today, therefore in my final project, I will be focusing on the 3 points above. However, i still don’t have a clear idea on what artefact should I use and how it will looks like. It is still a long way to go.

Image: Moodpboard created for presentation. *Image quality is being distorted when uploaded and I don’t know what Tumblr is doing.

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