Slow growth

Multiple projects and activities pushing forward these days:

• Ned O’Gorman and I will be in residence with the NEH/Vectors Fellowship Program this summer in Los Angeles, at USC. We’ll be working on a prototype for a new archive of American atomic test films, based in part on scraping existing databases.
• Lisa Nakamura and I recently wrote together about the scifi film District 9 for the online journal FlowTV.
• I’ve been writing more about the Palm Pre marketing campaign and its reception online. More about that to come somewhere soon.
• I’ll be presenting on computing history and Science Fiction cinema/tv next week in Minneapolis, at the annual conference of the Rhetorical Society of America.
• My design for a large mural on the histories of genetics and cybernetics is finally, nearly complete. Should be printed and installed on campus here at Illinois in the next month.
• My outstanding students Jeff and Bonnie invited me to go off about New Media education for the HASTAC blog recently.
• Some folks here at Illinois’ Beckman Institute recently invited me to talk about the role of the visual in the communication of scientific research to the public. I provided a little tour of the campus along these lines, which you can see here in a slideshow.
• Lastly, I have a new way of explaining the vocations of artists using dog breeds. I tested it out on some folks at Illinois State University during a recent artist’s talk there. Will share soon.
• [Praise be. Summer is here for us academics.]