Leon Lim

Today, I am going to research on Malaysia's artist which name Leon Lim. I heard from my seniors about a biography. He made me feel proud because he is also one of the citizens from Kedah, and I do so from Kedah. 

Leon was born in Kedah, Malaysia. He has been profoundly and proudly deaf since birth. His first language was American Sign Language and as a child, he drew and painted incessantly, inspired by the colorful covers of music cassettes. Instinctively, his deafness has served as motivation to examine ways of telling a story through his artwork without speaking, reading, or writing. He built his world without the need to hear sound or music by living alone at 14. 

After graduating from Rochester Institute of Technology and De Montfort University in the United Kingdom, Leon settled in New York City to explore his passion. Leon dabbles in a wide range of art forms, including painting, photography, multimedia, installations, and performance objects. His art has been exhibited in galleries, museums and major festivals including the Total Museum of Contemporary Art in Seoul, the CAFA Art Museum in Beijing, and the John F. Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. Recently, Leon's transformative portrait work of Julian Assange was featured in the 2010 TIME Magazine's "Person of the Year" issue. Leon has worked tirelessly to make a name for him by demonstrating the real meaning of being an artist without ability to hear. He seeks to explore the dispositions and aftereffects of creation, evolution and abstraction, working with the elements of fire, water and sunlight.

The Recycled Head Anatomy in George Town, Penang

The 3(656) in Rochester, New York

The 3(656) in Rochester, New York

Lim continues working on his creative installations for further exhibitions in Asia and Europe. Lim's recent multimedia installation has been exhibited internationally at Seoul's Total Museum of Contemporary Art, South Korea in July 2008 and Beijing's CAFA Art Museum, China in August 2009. His works have been exhibited at galleries such as the John F. Kennedy Center, Washington DC, the World Financial Center, New York City, Bevier Gallery, Rochester NY and Gallery R, Rochester NY.

Lim was commissioned in 2008 to create a permanent art installation, The 3(656) for a study lounge in the new center at Rochester Institute of Technology. The installation is an introduction of Lim's inspiration from the unknown history from the dream of building a college to the reality of a college to Lim's arrival. The grand opening of the installation was launched on May 2008.

Lim is one of 17 selected artists from New York City, (including Artist Chuck Close) featured in the 2009 calendar for the Mayor of New York City. Bank of America, Bank of America's Disability Affinity Group, Pitney Bowes and Williams Lea donated their time and effort to help make the calendar a reality.

Graphic Design

Sensitively, when we talk about graphic, most of them will indirectly relate their thought to Media Innovation. Why? Is that because our work is more on these? This is what I thinking of. As one of my lecturers said, we have to know this knowledge as well, not only for specific student. This is because before the invention of other majoring such as Interface Design, Media Arts, etc; the very basic design are the origin from graphic. Therefore, all of us have the responsibility to get know and understand what Graphic Design is. I do hope that no one is going to say that Graphic Design is just for Media Innovation's student.

Graphic Design is a visual communication towards audiences. It is the most important thing. The design must be understandable between designer and receiver. If you can't even figure out what is the design about, that is called Communication Breakdown.  Graphic Design is the combination of image, picture and information. It works with drawing, painting, illustration, photograph or computer-generated images which mean pictures. Besides, it also work with typography, they can create their own typeface and make up various typeface. Graphic Design can be found in movie credits, TV ads, books, magazine, menus, even on computer screen.

As a conclusion, Graphic Design is part of our daily life. It informs, persuades, organizes, stimulates, locates, identifies, attracts attention and provides pleasure.

And this is why i love to design a graphic thingy. Every time when I designed for the purpose for assignments or my own stuff, I felt very satisfied and proud with my own design. This is because it is all origin from me. It is all right reserved. 

Mr Zakii =]

Few Days ago, I have met with my ex-classmate during primary school on Facebook. He is good in drawing. Honestly, he had inspired me before. He made me want to be an artist just like what he dreams before. Today, I found an artist which is from Malaysia. He named Ahmad Zakii Anwar who born 1955 in Johor state, Malaysia. Mr Zakii is a well-known Malaysian artist. A graduate of the School of Art and Design, MARA Institute of Technology Malaysia, the artist began his career as a graphic artist, producing some of the leading advertising graphics of his time before turning to fine art practice.

Zakii has done exhibitions around the world including:

Solo exhibitions

·         Jakarta

·         Manila

·         Bangkok

·         Hong Kong

·         Singapore

·         New York

·         Kuala Lumpur

Group Exhibitions

·         Kuala Lumpur

·         Singapore

·         Vietnam

·         Macau

·         Bali

·         Perth

·         Beijing

·         Cheltenham

·         Fukuoka

·         Prum

·         Los Angeles

I have been searching for his website and finally I found it. Please click here. Actually, I want to share his artwork, but the images were too small. You can found his work which located in his gallery on his website. 

Interesting House Deisgn

I am going to share a post which about interesting house design which I search on web. This is because I heard my friends discuss on want to design a creative and unique house design for their future later. So, I decided to share some interesting house design here. Hope you guys enjoy watching them.

An interesting house concept was presented by Marcin Panpuch at the 2003 Royal Institute of British Architects' Future House London Exhibition. The Exhibition showcased a range of innovative housing concepts for existing London sites. The designs emphasized social, environmental, aesthetic and structural factors in various ways. Panpuch's house design is a reloadable sphere, which can either float on a water location or be lifted by crane and fixed to a tower beside other such spheres. The purpose of the spherical shape is to minimize the surface area of the house and thereby minimize heat loss to the environment.

Retro house design is an alternative house design architectural with classic style, but in the modern ages such now retro house design mostly gets influence of Modern Contemporary architectural. In Ludwigsburg, Germany, we found one of the most interesting retro house designs in Modern Contemporary architectural style which the design was completed by J. Mayer H, he is one of famous architect in Germany, the original Retro House Design ideas was inspired  when he designing Dupli Casa. . J. Mayer H. worked this modern retro house layout to his improvement, designing an extensive modern masterpiece that pays deference to the original house while redefining the space completely. Design with 2 level floor plan and completed with swimming pool this Retro House design has a contemporary architecture style on the exterior side while at the interior side was design with impressive minimalist interior design. Take as look on the next exterior pictures and interior picture from this Retro House design in Modern Contemporary architectural style to get the detail about this house design. 

This stilt house, the Froschkonig Tree house by tree house architects Baumraum, sits among the treetops of this private garden in Munster, Germany. Steps lead residents and guests through the lily pad-covered pool to the base of this stilt house, where a wood and steel staircase leads up to a tatajuba-wood terrace. This contemporary wood clad house in the sky features a modern, curved shape. A large picture window on each end of the home and a skylight brighten interiors while lending a transparency and a connection to the outdoors. Inside this compact home design, minimalist interiors boast walls, floors and furniture of white-glazed ash. The curved ceilings follow with the interesting home’s overall shape. Baumraum.

Lien Residence is a house in Singapore, designed by Singapore studio Ministry of Design. This is a building floor bungalow with one type of zigzag shape. Beautiful interior design ideas, wood floors, wide glass wall allows entry of light and air into the interior and basement levels. One of the more interesting features of the house is diagonally patterned roof planted with grass, so it can reduce the hot sun.

This curved abstract house is designed by Robert Harvey Oshatz Architects in the woods of Portland, Oregon. It belongs to a music lover so it got some inspiration from the music’s flow. It fits very well because it surroundings mostly made of natural materials. Besides it reminds the really big tree house because the main level is located in the tree canopy. The house evades the mechanics of the camera; It Is Difficult to capture the way the interior space flows seamlessly through to the exterior. One example is the natural wood ceiling; laminated wood floating on curved beams, passing through the generous glass wall wraps around the main which living room.

This new modular, sustainable and transportable low energy house is designed by German company Studio Aisslinger. Named “Fincube”, this interesting and sustainable architecture project house was built at an altitude of 1200 meters near Bozen, northern Italy. Built entirely of local wood, the building provides 47 sqm of living space with a minimal CO2 footprint this modular house is similar to the living space of a small apartment. Sustainable design plan implies a low energy consumption, minimal material-orientated, and in close touch with nature. The wooden space with a 360-degree triple glazing is furnished with a second facade layer, producing shade and giving the building a unique overall mushroom-like monoshape. The horizontal ledges give privacy to the ‘fincube’ and embed the building into forests, meadows, mountain sides or any nature resorts.

A Website design company

Today, I have accidentally found a website which is this.

It is a web design company which located in Kuala Lumpur. They have been established in 2005, which considered as a leading web design and development agency delivering a comprehensive range of services from Content Management Systems and Ecommerce Solutions to Branding and print design, all at very high standards and bespoke.

Honestly, I have totally attracted by their portfolio. It was awesome. Their design is all copy right. As we can see, they have been designed for lots of company. It made me wants to learn and even work with them. They just did a good work. For me, it is not easy to design a website. We have to fulfill all the requirements of the customers. The most importance is, after we have design for them, they are able to use themselves without any problems. This show the design has to be user-friendly, which for the users that not even don't know how to function them well. However, nowadays people are so intelligent even they do not learn before. Even my friend who haven't step into university, has already know how to create a website. It was shame to inform that I am not really sure to do a good design website. I am now still learning how to create it. Hope one day I can create a nice work and sell to the one that interested and satisfied with my design.

Did you affected by social media?

First of all, I am here to ask a question. Are you totally understood what “social media” stands are for? Social media is a phrase being tossed around a lot these days, but it can sometimes be difficult to answer the question of what is social media. If MySpace is a social media site, and Magnolia is a social media site, and Wikipedia is a social media site, then just what is social media? Is it social networking? Is it social bookmarking? Is it wiki? The best way to define social media is to break it down. Media is an instrument on communication, like a newspaper or a radio, so social media would be a social instrument of communication.

(Image on Twitter)

Twitter is an excellent example of a social media website.

Obviously, as we can see, social media have almost occupied the spaces of our daily life and even affecting by it blindly. Do you speak “social?” There is a lot of writing out there about the effects of social media on business, marketing, branding and customer services. What about how social media communications is impacting our written communications, or even our oral communications? Anyone remember when email was going to destroy letter writing, and even the art of writing altogether? Well, it did destroy letter writing, but did it really destroy the art of writing, or just change it? 

Actually, it has made our word become more concise. When we first heard of Twitter and its 140 character limit, most of us wondered how in the world we could convey something meaningful in 25 to 30 words. Now we realize that Twitter pushes us to get to the essence of what we are trying to say. Who says you must have full sentences or paragraphs of text to make an impact or to drive people to action? The messages that we received nowadays are almost in short form, examples: btw - by the way, TTYL - talk to you later, etc. This may cause us slowly forgotten the proper and original word that we are going to use.

Due to some audiences reflection on how media social affect the society, almost 80% of them agreed social media have affected their attitudes, opinion and thinking through their life. Peoples started to make new friends via online more on face to face. They prefer on Skype than come out to have a meet. For them, this is a great way to stay in touch with their loved ones.

 On the other hand, the vast growth of social media companies is inevitable. As you can see that many companies become more popular and produce great phenomena, from Wall Street to Main Street or from Facebook to Twitter. Those are privately-held social media companies that gain more investments even before they go public.

Last but not least, I would like to share a video: "How social media affects us" 

(UNC students discuss ups and downs of social networking)

Click here to watch the video =]

We use our brain to think!

Obviously, we use our brain to think, our brain control the whole body parts to function. What we think in our mind may affect us to do in our daily life. The structure and functions of the mind suggests that the two different sides of the brain control two different 'modes' of thinking. It also suggests that each of us prefers one mode over the other. This is why we can choose or not to choose, prefer or not prefer to what we are going to do. Such as when we have several designs, we will struggling which to choose for the best for the final submission. I often face this trouble while selecting a work to present. Experimentation has shown that the two different sides, or hemispheres, of the brain are responsible for different manners of thinking. The following illustrates the differences between left brain and right brain thinking: 

Innovation & Invention

Innovation

Innovation is the specific instrument of entrepreneurship... the act that endows resources with a new capacity to create wealth. ~By Peter Drucker

Innovation is invention plus introduction, and it is increasingly seen as crucial for economies and governments alike. Expanding economies no longer produce more of the same products, but rather ever more new products with additional value. David Nordfors is co-founder and executive director of the VINNOVA-Stanford Research Center of Innovation Journalism at Stanford University. ~By David Nordfors

Innovation comes from the Latin innovates which means to renew. Innovation can therefore be seen as the process that renews something that exists and not, as is commonly assumed, the introduction of something new.

Invention

An invention is a new composition, device, or process. An invention may be derived from a pre-existing model or idea, or it could be independently conceived in which case it may be a radical breakthrough. In addition, there is cultural invention, which is an innovative set of useful social behaviors adopted by people and passed on to others. Inventions often extend the boundaries of human knowledge or experience. An invention that is novel and not obvious to others skilled in the same field may be able to obtain the legal protection of a patent.

Inventions are easy to define but can be difficult to recognize. An invention is "the discovery or creation of a new material (either a new manufactured product or a new composition of matter), a new process, a new use for an existing material, or any improvements of any of these."