84 posts tagged with "Grad School"

One of the courses I'm talking this semester is a Media Design course. ASU structures it's courses into three classifications, A, B, and C Sessions. A Sessions course run during the frist half of the semester (the first quarter), B Session courses run the second half the of the semester (the second quarter), and C Session courses run the full length of the semester. The course is a B session course, and is just getting ramped up. The first project is structured around the need that designers frequently face in building assets that are in specific to known period of time. Copy art is one of the many skills that a good media designer needs tucked up his/her sleeve, and this assignment makes a strong case for learning that process.

Media design is an interesting beast in the theatre. Designers are called upon to create digital scenery, interactive installations, abstract imagery, immersive environments, ghost like apparitions, and a whole litany of other illusions or optical candy. The media designer is part system engineer, part installation specialist, and part content creator. This kind of design straddles a very unique part of the theatrical experience as it sits somewhere between the concrete and the ephemeral. We're often asked to create site specific work that relates to the geometry and architecture of the play, and at the same time challenged to explore what can be expressed through sound and light.

This year I was fortunate to have the opportunity to contribute to the performance schedule of ASU's conference about art, science, and the future. This is the second year that Emerge has happened at ASU, with the final night being a culminating festival of performance and art. In the Fall of 2012 I worked with a group of artists to put together a proposal for creating a performance in Neeb Plaza on ASU's campus. This courtyard that sits nestled between Neeb hall, the Art building, and Design houses a new student generated installation called X-Space each year. Looking to solicite the creation of new works, the Herberger institute put out a call for artists interested in organizing a performance that occurs in X-Space. Called X-Act, applicants were asked to consider hw they would use the space and engage the campus. Early in January my team found out that we our proposal, Commons, was selected. One of the stipulations of the grant was that we would have a showing during the final showcase of Emerge. With this news in mind, our team started the process of creating the installation we had proposed.

Last semester Boyd Branch offered a class called the Theatre of Science that was aimed at exploring how we represent science in various modes expression. Boyd especially wanted to call attention to the complexity of addressing issues about how todays research science might be applied in future consumable products. As a part of this process his class helped to craft two potential performance scenarios based on our discussion, readings, and findings. One of these was Neuro, the bar of the future. Take a cue from today's obsession with mixology (also called bartending), we aimed to imagine a future where the drinks your ordered weren't just booze filled fun-times, but something a little more insipidly inspiring. What if you could order a drink that made you a better person? What if you could order a drink that helped you erase your human frailties? Are you too greedy, have specialty cocktail of neuro-chemicals and vitamins to help make you generous. Too loving or giving, have something to toughen you up a little so you're not so easily taken advantage of.

Today I spent a chunk of the afternoon making GIFs at the ASU School of Art Festival. I really made about 31 GIFs ranging in size from 5 frames to early 20. All in all it was a great event, made even more fun by the act of making something fun and silly in the process. It's amazing to me how fun it is to make really simple and silly animation.

I can't get enough of these Delicious Max Tutorials. In today's episode Sam walks us through a little bit of exploratory play with matrices, mesh blending, and geometry.

This week I was gutsy, I did two MaxMSP tutorials. I know, brave. Sam's tutorials on YouTube continue to be a fascinating way to learn Max, as well as yielding some interesting projects. This second installment this week is about building a vocoder. The audio effect now common place is still incredibly rewarding, especially when running through a mic rather than using a recorded sample. There is a strange pleasure in getting to hear the immediate effects of this on your voice, which is further compounded by the ability to add multiple ksliders (keyboards) to the mix. Below is the tutorial I followed along with yesterday, and a resulting bit of fun that I had as a byproduct.

Another MaxMSP tutorial from dude837 today in the afternoon. Today I the step sequencer in the video below. This seems like slow going, and maybe a little strange since I keep jumping around in this set of tutorials. This is a rough ride.

Twenty six of my thirty one years have, in some way, involved performance: from community musicals where I performed along side my mother, to gravity-defying circus performance for the Christopher Reeves foundation. I have also worked purposefully to provide educational access for populations that have not traditionally been able to engage with the arts. In this respect it was my work for an educational outreach program in rural New Hampshire and Vermont that had a deeply resonant impact on my view of the power of arts in education. Over the course of a five year period working for Keene State College's Upward Bound Program I was a residential director, teacher, advisor, counselor, college-coach, and facilitator. As I transitioned to another position at Keene State my role changed from supporting potential students to supporting college faculty and staff. In my role as Rich Media Specialist for Keene State's Center for Engagement, Learning, and Teaching I worked as an instructional designer, blackboard administrator, media maker, researcher, and faculty collaborator. While working full time in higher education, I also continued to develop as a performer through an ongoing circus training regimen. In thinking about graduate school I saw that I had been shaped by those three distinct forces: performance based art, technology, and a passion for teaching. I came to ASU to create a life where those three forces might co-exist in a meaningful and transformative program of study. In fact, that's what I've found at ASU. In my first year I will have participated in, or contributed to (as performer, media creator, or system designer) eleven Phoenix-area productions while also having served as instructor or TA to over 350 students. My introduction to ASU has been, to say it mildly, a whirlwind of exposure to new ideas, methods, and opportunities to collaborate or participate. Especially interesting to me has been the opportunity to engage other artists in a critical dialogue about the impact, consequences, and outcomes of including digital media in live performance.

Programming is often about solving problems, sometimes problems that you didn't know that you actually had to deal with. This past week the Media Installations course that I'm taking spent some time discussion issues of synchronicity between computers for installations, especially in a situation where the latency of wired or wireless connections creates a problem. When 88 computers all need to be "listening" in order to know when to start playback, how can you solve that problem?