The Heads on Fire Community

The "Library Project" Team, after a month of working on a design of an exhibition, we are finally done with the prototype. Everything fits perfectly, but it wasn't as easy as I thought it would be. It took us a long time to make sure it was stable enough with the press-fit tabs we made on the sides. There were so many small details that we started noticing as we printed more and more prototypes. It was very frustrating because something always use to go wrong, one way or another. However, everytime  we got closer and closer to perfection.

Melia, Zaira and I have been working on interviewing immigrants/refugees from Sudan. On Saturday, Aug 8th, Melia and I interviewed a man named Lam Muamg at the Sudanese Center on Fairmont Ave. They were having a fundraiser buy selling tradtional sudanese food and we also got a taste of this food. Mr. Muamg was very helpful and we enjoyed getting to know him.

Heads on Fire Health Survey:

General questions:

Cambodian shadow theater has a long history, dating back over a thousand years to early Angkorian times. It is one of the most revered and loved art forms in the country, but, like many other cultural traditions, was nearly destroyed in the 1970's during the tyrannical reign of the Khmer Rouge. Efforts are being made to recover the lost history of shadow theater and bring it back to its former glory and popularity.

Basically, Xavier assigned us to find and design a symbol that represents different countries, including Cambodia (my project), Sudan, Somalia, and Mexico. I finally finished my symbol on July 27th and it's of this Cambodia shadowpuppet. Shadow play or shadow puppetry is an ancient form of storytelling and entertainment using opaque, often articulated figures in front of an illuminated backdrop to create the illusion of moving images. It is popular in various cultures such as Camodia and many parts of Asian and India.

On July 22, the "Designers for Humanity" went down to Malcolm X Library to get a look at a new project related to the "Library Project". Our new assignment is to design and fabricate a totem pole for the garden area outside of the Malcolm X Library and the Beckwourth Library. There has to be an icon that is reconigizable to people from Cambodia, Sudan, Somalia, and Mexico. Xavier made an example of an icon and did a small model on the lazer cutter, but then did a bigger model on the ShopBot.

This is the second week I have been working with Xavier on the "Library Project". So far we have visted UCSD as you can read on my other blog and just yesterday Esteban taught us the basics of the laser printer, vinyl cutter, and the ShopBot. I was able to make a dragon design on Adobe Illustrator CS3 and make it into a necklace. It was my first time actually manually working the laser printer and I was pretty excited to have done it all on my own. Once you work it once, it definitely becomes easier to memorize what to do and eventually do it faster.

On July 6, 2009, a group of 2 middle school kids and 3 high school students visited Dr. Trefts at the University of California: San Diego with the help of Lemar Slater as the head supervisor. The purpose of this visit was to gather information about general health to improve our knowledge and research on health are our communities. On day one the professor had a review test for us. It pertained questions about conversions and measurements that are taught in middle school and high school education. Dr.