little changes

cistern

Capstone is never done durr. At least I get a trip to Vancouver out of this, I'll take that as consolation for being waitlisted for the Global Grand Challenges conference in D.C. 

gloss

I am so convinced:

The leather clicking is so beautiful, I really like how the smaller scales are closer to the sole.

...

Now the scales reminds me of meshing in ANSYS, where the mesh is smaller closer to walls and inflates farther away.

tulips

Day out along Queen W with mom:

Started off at the Flower Market, aka how I roped her into travelling all the way to Toronto. The size was somewhat disappointing to her since her hometown has a large flower and bird market every weekend.

Hopefully by the time convocation rolls around the "peonies" in her backyard would be blooming.

Lunch at Fresh, the menu didn't have many hot items which was what I was craving, but the squash tacos were pretty tasty. Their hot sauce is on point. But the best order was the gojiccino, which is a goji berry based drink with coffee and chocolate flavours. Maybe it'll be the next "it" drink after turmeric lattes.

My appetite has really shrunk since two tacos filled me up really well. But there's always a separate stomach for desserts at Nadage. Mom was unimpressed with macarons.

...

lol by this recount it seems like she didn't have a terribly great day. In my defence she got nice botanical art cards and this rose that she couldn't find in the garden centre close to her house.
Thanks mom :)

cider

Better than Tokyo Grill curry

relocation

My team member would be proud, a lot of swearing was involved in the making of this series of implementation graphics for capstone. The misalignment will annoy me to no end in the gif, but no one is going to notice on a poster. On one hand, using different artboards is better practice management, but it was an absolute nightmare lining up the CAD drawing with my basemap 7 times.

It was sort of useful having done 3/6 of UCL's online urban planning graphics course. The first three that I've watched is also the least helpful since I was already familiar with the programs and have no access to the baseman database "orz

Soundtrack of tonight:

Wabi-Sani: Further Thoughts

I thought it was odd that the library doesn't have the first book in the series, but I don't think I'm missing out on much except aesthetic theory.

First a short interlude on Japanese aesthetics via Stanford. Some concepts that stood out to me are:

1. Mono no aware (物の哀れ), which gets translated into "pathos of things", a phrase that means close to nothing to me. Instead I think of it in relation to impermanence: “awareness of the fundamental condition of existence is no cause for nihilistic despair, but rather a call to vital activity in the present moment and to gratitude for another moment's being granted to us.”
2. Wabi, I think of this as an anti-thesis to beauty in perfection: “If for the Buddhists the basic condition is impermanence, to privilege as consummate only certain moments in the eternal flux may signify a refusal to accept that basic condition."
3. Yugen (幽玄), explained as “depth of the world we live in, as experienced through cultivated imagination” 
4. Kire, translated as cutting and explained as "“In severing the flowers from their roots, Nishitani suggests, and placing them in an alcove (itself cut off from direct, as Tanizaki remarks), one is letting them show themselves as they truly are: as absolutely rootless as every other being in this world of radical impermanence.” I now have an introductory book on ikebana because of this.

I found the explanatory notes of this book to be more helpful (as in I can understand) compared to the main body text. This is more so my lack of knowledge on aesthetics rather than the fault of the book. The notes define many of the keywords used in the main text, which made me now understand why my ENV222 course was such a stickler about assuming the audience has no background knowledge and to define all of your key terms (a tall order for less than 800 words). Anyways.

The best definition of Art I've read so far:

A powerful dynamic of the art-making process is representing the ordinary as extraordinary, and making what was heretofore invisible visible. Most artist realize that anything can be "beautiful", or at least very interesting, if properly contextualized. Contexts, or conceptual frames, are especially useful if the focus of attention is something very subtle. Sometimes "contextualizing" or "framing" means placing things in isolation. Sometimes it means placing one thing that to another, as a contrast. The calm, clean, ordered frame or context allows the viewer to perceive the featured qualities without distraction

Defining elegance:

"Elegant" refers to a graceful acceptance of restraint, inconvenience, and uncertainty.

This quotation lodged the concept of empathy in my head for the past couple of days, to the point that I'm framing my scholarship applications with that concept:

Iconographically, Wabi Sabi is often represented by the entropic processes of nature made visible. Entropy precipitates chaos and unpredictability, and this produces variety and interest. [...] Imperfection also implies a "spiritual condition". Under the right circumstances, imperfection-embodied things can arouse a sense of empathy.

Try to be better at both:

Thinking - conceptual thought - is about building up mental structures. Experiencing reality non-dualistically is about being free of them.