[Jessica's] New Experience – Part 1

Hi everyone,

I was approached by my good friend Charlotte to help with her New Media senior project.  I am very intrigued by her concept of absent presence.  She has told me that she wants me to help her interview people around the University of Toronto at Scarborough campus to get an idea of what people of college age think about their experiences with communication technology today.  I hope to get a better understanding of this concept so that I can ask people the right questions.  Hope to see you around campus!

- Jessica

Derek’s Introduction

Hey everyone,

So, this will be my introduction to the blog. I’m Derek Au, and I’m one of Charlotte’s volunteer helpers in this senior project. My background is actually similar to Charlotte in the sense that I’m from an city studies/geography background, so I understand how her project emphasizes on the social realm of geography. I am also unofficially minoring in Studio, as in I’ve taken many studio courses. I feel that this project meshes the social sides of new media and city studies very well. Charlotte had discussed the rough ideas with her project about absent presence. After a short discussion about the theme and brainstorming various ideas, she had asked for my assistance in documenting the process of the project. In terms of my role within the project, my responsibilities included photographing the interview process and recording short videos of the interviews. I also photograph some events for the school SCSU events, so I thought this would also be a good opportunity to help out Charlotte, as well as gain some insight on this increasingly popular topic of younger generations and their relationship with technology. That’s all for now, looking forward to speaking with some of you at school.

- Derek

By Common Consent

Hi Everyone,

I’d like you to welcome Jessica and Derek to this blog! They will be assisting me throughout the process from henceforth. As a side note, Derek will be providing me with the photography equipment to document the process.

Recently, I came across a blog by Randy Connolly, a tenured instructor in the department of Computer Science and Information Systems at Mount Royal College in Calgary that also talked about absent presence. He provided some ironic but effective representations of absent presence. An interesting point he made was that we have given rise to a labyrinth of technology that supposedly helps us expand our social connections but in reality, don’t they do the opposite?

I’ve made made some revisions to the initial t-shirt design:

Currently in the process of finding a good printing place for a good price. Unfortunately, most places are 15$+ to print both front and back of the t-shirt.

- Charlotte

iPoditude

Good afternoon,

So I’ve just received confirmation from both my prospective group members that they will be joining me in this process of encouraging face time. Hurrah! They will also be documenting their thoughts and experience along with my own on this project. All I need is a consent form signed from both of them.

In other news, I’ve been working on the designs for the t-shirts and find myself constantly running into a design block… so far I’ve come up with one design.

This was designed using Adobe Illustrator CS3, drawing from last week’s photo idea of iPod solitude or as I like to call it, “iPoditude”.

And I’m off, until next time!

- Charlotte

Synonym: Accompanied Solitude

Good Evening!

Depending on whether or not we will be having the show for our senior projects, I’ll have to make sure the quality of the printing press is good enough. I’ve spoken to a friend who may be able to help me with printing some high quality shirts. Exciting times!! I’ve been researching on some images of how people have portrayed “absent presence”.  I realize that although the name fairly intriguing and sparks a lot of curiosity/imagination, this concept is actually much harder to represent it in visual form than it sounds!

I just thought this was quite an amusing example of absent presence or as it says in the caption “accompanied solitude”. This is exactly what I do on the bus or subway. How about you?

Getting it started

So far I’ve asked around and pitched my ideas to some of my friends, and I’m just waiting on them to give me a confirmation whether they are interested in assisting me with this project or not.

Hello world!

Hello there!

Welcome to my blog for Absent Presence: Making Face Time! senior project. Stay tuned for more! =)