all over the map.

Welcome to the hemisphere devoted to all matters of the extreme freestyle hacking self of Carrie Solomon.

This website is an attempt to document and organize the chaos of a crazed ACTLab student. Should you choose to weather the storm, you shall lay witness to the trials and tribulations of an infinite journey through the abstract, inquisitive mind of Carrie Ann Solomon, currently identified as an Advertising Graduate student at The University of Texas at Austin. Watch with wonder as you explore the divergent paths to and from my three class projects, documented for your pleasure.

How to go places

Oh, to have direction in this world. Under most circumstances, I’ll be the first person to send you the opposite way. These, however, are not normal circumstances, so I have been able to make this as followable as possible.

Home - Where y’at right now. Should you wish to return, go to the top of the page and click on “Home”, and your wish shall be granted.

Pages - Each of my 3 class projects has its own personal space which is called a page. Note the modern minimalist cool bar above and the delicate no-nonsense bar to your right. Choose either route. They take you to the same place. This is for your own good. Sometimes it’s easier to look upward, sometimes, it’s sideways. I’m here for ‘ya. Click on the project that you want to see and off you go.

Projects – I made 3 major things for the course Extreme Freestyle Hacking.

For Project 1, I made a map. The umbrella is MindMap to Nowhere – subdivided into 3 stages: Hack-a-Patch Kid, Flat Map to Nowhere and 3d Map to Nowhere. The above video is an unofficial project where I attempt to bring everything together. The film is the least advanced and turbulent. Its more about the concept than anything else.

For Project 2, I made a device that reads the thoughts of dogs- Hackberry MindReader.

For Project 3, I made a movie about shoppers gone mad on the day after Thanksgiving.

Warning: some of the content of this site may be seen as offensive to those with fundamental-leaning views. By American standards, some of the viewpoints and verbiage on this site could be considered to contain adult themes. If sensitive to super-soft pornographic verbiage and content, you may wish to start reading at the middle of Project 1, MindMap to Nowhere. Scroll down until you see the subtitle “Flat Map to Nowhere” and then begin reading. If you would prefer zero exposure whatsoever to human body-related discussion, direct your clicking to Project 2, Hackberry MindReader.

What the heck is hacking?

My interpretation of the term is constantly changing. It was a constant topic of conversation and source of much misunderstanding and puzzlement. I was especially baffled by the ingenuity of the term. Professor extraordinaire, Sandy Stone defines it as “modifying something to make it do things it wasn’t meant to do” and “changing the conditions over and over again until there’s a different response.” Joey, our efh TA, describes it as “taking something apart and building it back up into something new”. One final interpretation is “taking somebody’s stuff and doing what you want with it”. Oh, the ambiguity of it all!

Trust me, I wouldn’t have looked twice (not that I could have tried) but I certainly wouldn’t have considered enrolling  in this class were it not a notorious Sandy Stone course nor would I have lasted had the class been limited to the traditional “techie thief” rep.

Do people use websites to pay tribute to those that helped them along the way? I originally came to Graduate school with the primary intention of creating a portfolio so that I could work in the Creative field, after spending 7 years of semi-gainful employment largely in an administrative, management capacity. As you can tell, I’m not particularly suited for such fields. I have basically turned this whole project into a semester-long dissertation of my own doing and want to thank Sandy for her uttermost patience, appreciation of the abstract and perhaps we can say, hacking of extreme freestyle hacking. If you’re reading this right now, most of the content on this page will be elsewhere. Because everything is always changing. As I embarked upon the task of documenting my efh process for this website, I continued to create content. In fact, I really just can’t seem to stop, hence the road goes on forever, nowhere because if that was the case, then that means that I have reached a final destination.

Quick & dirty definitions

ACTLab:  Advanced Communication Technologies Laboratory

CPK:  Cabbage Patch Kid™ - 1. ugly rag/plastic doll, “adopted” by gobs of  little girls (and some more progressive boys) in the 80’s;  2. hard-to-find toy instigating parent v parent fights

CPKbrator: 1. unconventional facilitator of pleasure;  2. adult novelty item in the state of Texas

EFH: 1. Extreme Freestyle Hacking   2. a New Media course in the Radio-Television-Film department at UT-Austin

HackaPatch Kid: 1. an act of resourcefulness by means of utilization of materials at hand;  2. description of actions undergone to create a CPKbrator;  3. alternative terminology for CPKbrator;  4. author’s first project

Hackberry MindReader: 1. innovative telecommunications device that facilitates (reads) the intellectual thoughts of dogs;  2. groundbreaking invention  3. author’s second project

Hack Friday: 1. refers to the friday of many colors: black & blue friday; grey thursday, the day Black Friday; 2. acclaimed short film about the day after Thanksgiving;  3. site administrator’s third project

Hacking:  see above definition

Mind Map: 1. website author’s first and unofficial fourth project;  2. diagram used to represent words, ideas, tasks, or other items linked to and arranged around a central key word or idea; used to generate, visualize, structure, and classify ideas, and as an aid in study, organization, problem solving, decision making, and writing (ref: wikipedia)  3. see “Mindmap to Nowhere” for better explanation

New Media: 1. stuff that you’ve never seen before  2. convergent media. new media art. intermodal expressive art and technology, digital media, digital arts, intermedia, transmedia, mind maps to nowhere

Preemie: 1. unconventional facilitator of pleasure  2. pint-sized Cabbage Patch Kid doll introduced to sustain dominant toy industry market share in the 80’s;  3. homosapien baby born prematurely

Sandy Stone:  1. inspiring anti-ivory professor extraordinaire  2. academic theorist, artist, and performer, Associate Professor and Founding Director of the ACTLab and the New Media Initiative in the department of Radio-TV-Film at the University of Texas at Austin, founder of the academic discipline of Transgender Studies  3. Allucquere Rosanne Stone

SoniCabbage:  motor that powers the CPKbrator

hack lab

Please feel free to leave comments and suggestions. This site (and the brain behind it) is always evolving.