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.]

Teapots, surfaces and screens

My next installment of a series on the standard test subjects of digital imaging research is up at Vague Terrain. I like the venue for the subject, since the writing can be less scholarly and the subject geared more toward a user group than a discipline.

Winter’s End

document from DIRT (image: Bonnie Fortune)

As we move thankfully into Spring, here’s some evidence of Winter activity. My presentation “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills” at Links Hall in Chicago put in me in some fine company, as did the inclusion of some drawings in the Winter issue of Ausgang. You can also find the next installment of my “Arbitrary Legends” series for Vague Terrain over here. By the way, I’ve bid adieu to Facebook, and should probably explain why somewhere. Loving Tumblr more all the time though.

Context, Context, Context.

Selected reference books behind one of my favorite workspaces on campus:

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Disconnected thoughts from holiday Limbo

from Dore's illustration of Dante's Limbo

Grasping at some definition in the amorphous time of family holiday visits. A few shapes emerge in the mist:

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Eclo

Lately I’ve been teaching language games through compositional experiments. This AP File Photo from photographer Eric Gay reminded me right away of some of the Kay Rosen projects we’ve been looking at. By the way, after trying and failing to Tweet, I’m back to Tumblr.

New object in process

When everyone else goes short, I go long

Welcome to my new workspace. I’ve been at this for a while in secret - and finally I’m convinced that it’s gonna take for me as a new habit. So it’s time to hang out my sign.

Admittedly, I’m asking a lot by writing in the long-form, especially as everyone else is turning to the short form. But my days are full of short-form thoughts, and I need to discipline myself to follow some of these through.

Not all of this site’s ramblings will make sense to all folks. I do work in academia, but I also work in art - which means that I’m expected to be a specialist for a general audience. Since that’s pretty much impossible, I’m shooting for a site that speaks to a variety of audiences, even if not all of them speak each others’ languages. I hope you’ll stop by from time to time, and see what you can catch that might be familiar or strange in the right ways.

Dada Journalism (exit stage left)

The Onion’s writers are talented, but with the advent of the Daily Show, Colbert, or even of Letterman’s move to the primetime slot in the 90’s, their brand of humor seems far less rare. So their recent series of headlines about Bush in the closing days of his presidency stood out for their unique approach to the absurd. These aren’t the stuff of South Park celebrity appearances, which revel in sort of glee that bad 10 year old boys take in throwing live frogs in the air. The Onion’s series of Presidential mishaps take their shock less from the content of each horrible event, and more in demonstrating just how irrelevant the Leader of the Free World has become in the dominant news cycles.

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Another choice letter to the editor

from my local paper, the News-Gazette:

Terrorists who smoke are really despicable

I fully support our teachers, our churches and our police officers. I do not support terrorists or smoking.

Susan xxxx xxxxxxx
Champaign