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Critical Experience
Critical Experience is a space for documenting practice-based research at the intersection of critical making and user experience. Posts in this category reflect applied exercises, readings, and ethnographic activities that explore how design, media, and materials shape interaction. Since the course emphasizes individualized inquiry, each project represents a personalized investigation—testing ideas through prototypes, reflections, and experiments that connect theory with practice.


Week 11: Research by Making and Arrangements in Public Space
Ideas, Arrangements, Effects Reading Response Part 1: Annotated Space Over the weekend I went to Hallett Nature Sanctuary in Central Park to conduct a live prototype session away from tourist areas. I covered a large piece of deadwood in saturated red fabric with neon green accents. Fall colors appear naturally in the woods this time of year but I chose the most saturated versions to highlight that relationship between natural and synthetic color. When I left I accidentally c

Alexandros Barbayianis
3 hours ago
Week 09 & 10: Guerrilla Fabric Interventions in Public Space
Three Quotes from Hito Steyerl's "On Games" You will have to imitate a not yet existent reality and game it into being. This is how playing grows into acting. It seems that automation didn't necessarily free people from labour. Instead, it turned some workers into robots. Have algorithms and data-farming short-circuited relations between computers, games and the economy, to create a world of involuntary play—and can critical art practice suggest ways to turn the tables? Refle

Alexandros Barbayianis
4 days ago


Week 08: Daily Practice: Freestyling as Flow
The Accidental Ritual My daily practice wasn't planned... it emerged organically during Project 1's production phase as a way to blow off steam. I tend to overthink everything, and freestyling became my antidote: a practice that forces me to literally go with the flow. No scripts, no plans, just pure spontaneity. The ritual, when it exists, is simple: I need to get out of my head. Sometimes that means freestyling about pooping (which I find hilarious), other times it's whatev

Alexandros Barbayianis
Oct 28


Project 1: Final Reflections
What I Made and What It Does My guide ended up being a satirical video on how to engage with TikTok content without falling into the rabbit hole. Except it's a guide that fails. The user falls anyway. I removed the narrator voiceover and when I presented via Zoom I narrated through the chat instead typing instructions as the simulated TikTok scroll played. The chat narration disappeared the deeper the user got until they were already too far gone watching some conspiracy theo

Alexandros Barbayianis
Oct 24


Week 06: Pre-Presentation Reflection
Presentation Slides Project 1 Final Reflections im not sure how i got here honestly looking back at all the research i did the systems mapping the interviews all those blog posts about weather balloons and metaphors none of it feels connected to what i actually made. i kept researching and researching but when it came time to make something i pivoted hard into this TikTok fever dream that doesn't really feel like a guide at all. i cut the narration because it felt out of plac

Alexandros Barbayianis
Oct 14
Week 05: How to Launch a Weather Balloon (and Fall Down a Conspiracy Hole)
what even is this project?? My guide is actually a satirical tutorial on how to consume TikTok content, using weather balloons as the...

Alexandros Barbayianis
Oct 6
Week 04: Metaphors and TikTok Terrain
Metaphors We Live By - The Highlights Lakoff and Johnson's main argument: metaphors aren't just poetic language, they structure how we...

Alexandros Barbayianis
Oct 5
Week 03: Weather Balloons, Conspiracy, and the Air Between Us
Reflections on Figures in Air Okay so I'll be real - this Micah Silver text is dense as hell, but once I started actually engaging with...

Alexandros Barbayianis
Sep 30
Week 02: Weather Balloons and Systems Thinking
Okay so I’ve been diving into weather balloons for Project 1, and honestly, the more I look into it, the more complicated it gets — which...

Alexandros Barbayianis
Sep 29
Week 01: Floating with Weather Balloons
Responding to Emergent Strategy Prompts Q: In your view, what is the function of humans in the universe? I dont see humans as healers or...

Alexandros Barbayianis
Sep 9
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