I was talking with Andrew Ling the other day, and I told him that I had never made an html table before. Though I’ve been playing with html for a long time, I’m part of a CSS generation. In my web design class, tables have never even been mentioned. They’re a nightmare from the past.

fruit, my fictional smoothie restaurant, needed nutritional information presented in a simple, clear way.

I made a table.

fruit, at the location for critique: http://www.u.arizona.edu/~wilhelma

Dove&Snake, a local Tucson zine, interviewed me after I contributed to Issue No.2. I’ve always wanted to be interviewed, and I wanted to be a professional blogger once. I think I’m reaching goals.

Read the interview here.

Buy an issue here.

Thread and tape on paper.

“Create a subversive advertising campaign. Choose ad campaigns and create 4 ads that are a mutation of the original advertisement. You can subvert the advertisement by exposing the underlying logic of the ad, or contradicting it.”

When I saw this Gatorade ad, I realized that all Gatorade did was slap their logo on a photo that could be a Nike ad. By removing the other two brands represented in this advertisement, I deconstructed the image to emphasize what is really being advertised.

This ad is an invitation to compare yourself to others. I highlighted what message the ad is really selling.

This ad was originally a two-page spread, and I purposefully cropped out the hint of jeans in the image. My instructor recommended Pop-Porn: Pornography in American Culture for further reading.

My version of this ad can be read a variety of ways, but I don’t have a problem with the original ad. I was thinking more along the track of NAMBLA, with the phallic reference in the background and the lone duck in the foreground.

This is 1723 photos, shown at 12/second.

I was in Asia for the summer, but I’m back in the States now. More to follow.

I went to Dubai over spring break. After looking back through my journal, I found ten impressions of the city.

1. There is no old, no ghetto, no broken, no ugly.
2. Everything is under construction and I’ve only been to one place so far that is complete (Madinat Jumeirah resort).
3. On paper, the city is logical, but it doesn’t flow like a normal city, so in that sense it is illogical. There is no definite downtown area. You can’t walk to anything.
4. The only thing to do here is spend money. I guess you could drive to the beach. Shopping is the only acceptable activity for Muslim women to do.
5. It feels like I’m in Scottsdale, but a huge Scottsdale.
6. Arabic and English are alongside each other on everything. Even numbers. License plates from the rest of the UAE have Arabic and Western numbers, but plates from Dubai have only Western numbers. Maybe an attempt to be more Western than Eastern?
7. High ways run everywhere. There are very few intersections. High ways lead to off ramps, which leads to a roundabout, which will take you to a building.
8. There is little uniqueness here. The only art I’ve seen is a spin on other famous works, classical Arab art, or sculptures that are non-expressionistic and realistic (people on camels, birds, horses, etc). I saw a camel on a base, it was white with painted blocks of color, but it’s like those cows that we have in the States that I began to see 10 years ago. (I was referring to this.) There are no art museums, only galleries. This could be a reflection on the consumer culture—why would you only want to look at art? Why not buy it?
9. No chai tea. But there is lime juice and fresh mint, which tastes like a botanical garden. Amazing.
10. The city and everything in it is meticulously planned by a master designer. It’s unnatural, and it is extremely visible that nothing was left to chance or the plight of humanity. Things are counter-intuitive because you can’t see a natural progression of growth, different centers, nor randomness. It feels generic because of that.

Upon closer inspection, I found that there is a broken and ugly, organic part of the city. Old Dubai, the birthplace of the city, feels like China Town meets my imaginative version of Beirut, perhaps. I felt like I could live there and be happy, because I could see signs that other people lived there, and that communities had formed. Communities have not yet formed in Dubai, there are no certain characteristics of different parts of the city, and that may be because it is all so new, or it may be because “birds of a feather flock together” unless they are not given the opportunity to build their own nests.

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To see all of the photos from my trip, click here.

I went to Mexico two weekends ago. This picture was taken from that weekend.

This screenshot is taken from a new project that Adam and I started together. 

http://adamplusalisa.tumblr.com/

My friends and I went to San Diego, California for the weekend. We decided Thursday evening to leave Friday morning. It was one of the best trips that I’ve ever taken because there wasn’t room for disappointment. Our only plan was to touch the ocean, and we did that.

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See more photos from the trip here.

View this photo larger, on black.