week #10 excerpts

Shannon

Alejandra

Mike B

Selina

Carolina

Brianne

Anne

Allison

Courtney

Gino

Harrison

Kelsey

Seano

Monica

Wes

class stats

week #9 excerpts

Gaming is for Grown-Ups: A View of the Industry

Jack Buser, Sr Designer, PlayStation Digital Programs

HARRISON:  I felt like such a geek because I loved this lecture so much!  AND HE DIDN'T EVEN TALK ABOUT ANYTHING GROUND BREAKING!  But it was so cool, because he put up pictures and played trailers for games and he made nerdy jokes that I understood.

Jack went over the different kinds of games which I will summarize because it is necessary to know when looking at the future.
CORE. People’s preconceived notion of ‘games.’ First-person shooters. Heavily graphic games that people get invested in.

CASUAL. “Time wasters” that people can just sit down and play for a bit. Like Rock Band or Guitar Hero.
ANCIENT. Mancala. Games have been and will be around forever.

SOLO. Pac-Man. Single-player games were a product of the 1970s. Before that single-player was basically limited to solitaire.

SOCIAL. Farmville and Facebook games. These games are redefining what it means to be ‘social.’
MASSIVE. World of Warcraft. MMORPG (Multi-Massive Online Role Playing Games). People do not consider these as “Social” games but they are. People meet people online, get into gaming guilds with them, and often consider them close friends or even get married to them.
MOBILE. Phone and handheld games that would be impossible to realize in the living room.

MOTION. Kinect, PlayStation Move (focus on getting the player active). He didn’t mention Wii even though Nintendo changed the industry by focusing on motion.

AR. Augmented Reality is the future. On the Nintendo 3DS, there are games that use the camera to capture the world in real time and then you fight things that are changing in this “world.” Down the road, this could be used for many things. For example, Jack showed a prototype photo of a street view and bubbles popped up displaying reviews for restaurants, common tips, tweets about a place, etc. Completely immersing the user in social media bullshit. Twitter is stupid… but it is still pretty cool.

There was also a Homestuck (Homestuck is a web comic that is vastly popular among geeks and nerds on web forums right now) sitting behind us. I didn’t get a picture, but here’s kind of what she looked like (sans horns). 

MWUAH <3

PANEL: Wildly Imaginative Voices & Visions

@ Harold Washington Library
Reading/Conversation/Signing
Led by Ann Hemenway

w/ Writers:
Susan Hahn, The Six Granddaughters of Cecil Slaughter (not present due to illness)
T. Geronimo Johnson, Hold It 'Til It Hurts
Adam McOmber, The White Forest
Emma Straub, Laura Lamont's Life in Pictures

HUGH:  So I rushed over to this lecture not knowing any of the authors, and only knowing about this CPL/Columbia College Chicago fiction writing department led festival called Story Week Festival of Writers.  I missed out on an artist lecture (Jacob Hashimoto at SAIC) but this turned out to be a pretty neat event. It all started with the writers reading an excerpt from their books, and then Ann, the host, asking some great questions and overall being one better host speakers of a panel I've seen. The conversation traded among the writers well and each of them had very distinct things to say about the writing, writing process, and publishing process.

ANNE

Restless Heart: The Confessions of St. Augustine

Tivoli Theater in Downers Grove

Monday March 18th, 7:30pm

MIKE B:  At 7:30 on Monday the Tivoli showed, Restless Heart: The Confessions of St. Augustine, it was presented by some local church group, I forget the name. I got there at about 7:25, and it was pretty much what I expected, a relatively low attendance, around 200 people, average age hovering on the high side of 50, and the only people anywhere near my age looked like they were way to into Jesus. I felt like people could tell I didn't belong there, but maybe that was just me feeling like I didn't belong there.

METRO

Patrik 1.5-Sweden, 2008

GINO:  I went to an event at the Foreign Language Building on campus. It was Scandinavian night, and there was literally NOBODY there but myself and two other people. The plus side, they made us these cute Scandinavian sandwiches to snack on. As you can see, it was a small classroom with a small television. I'm guessing not a lot of people showed because many are already home for Spring Break. The crowd looked sad. Anyway, I chose this event because the movie sounded really interesting to me because it was about a gay couple who was trying to get a baby. I didn't know if it was a documentary or a fiction, but I was still interested nonetheless. It turns out it was a fictitious film, but it turned out really good! The only thing I didn't like about it was the small subtitles on the little television screen. My eyelashes were getting in the way of my reading.  

interviewing skills 

ERIN:  You would think by now one would know how to conduct themselves in a interview, but, Michele stated she has had many complaints from some of the businesses who have been at the current job fairs. For example, interviewees showing up with bad breath, sweaty arm pits, body odors and much more is unacceptable. SHANNON:  The main point that stuck out to me was to : always be courteous to everyone you meet.

week #8 excerpts

Engineering Open House

METRO:

I was really happy with the software that I created. But, since this was a collaborative process, I ended up using pieces of it and merging it with another project that one of my teammates was working on. The end result was better than I could have expected. We ended up using my particle physics and fluid simulation to encapsulate each user’s body. As they walked into the (virtual) space, meteors would fly randomly onto the screen. Each user’s hands would have gravity, so the meteors would become attracted to theirhands and start orbiting around them. Allison: What's important to note here is the fact that left and right brain individuals are able to coexist in a space such as this. Finding overlap between engineering/science and art/design has been a college-long crusade of Metro's, as evidenced by her work for our design classes and blatant dedication to her non-art extracurriculars, and here in this room a union occurred. She used her skills to bring an inexplicable elegance to an engineering exhibit. Well done, Miss Metro.

Christian: Conclusion.
-Why is the engineering quad so far from the Art building
-Why is it so secluded
-Why is collaborative peer-to-peer interaction always good
-Why are engineers to myserious
-"Engineering Design Algorithm" (algorithm; noun, a process or set of rules to be followed in calculations or other problem-solving operations, esp. by a computer)

1)Identify the problem or design objective 2)Define the goals and identify the constraints 3)Research and gather information. 4)Create potential design solutions. 5)Analyze the viability of the solutions. 6)Choose the most appropriate solution. 7)Build or implement the design. 8)Test and Evaluate the design. 9)Repeat all steps as needed.

Courtney:  My final stop was to the civil engineering building where I explored different booths. I made my own cement coaster, learned about an amazing water prufication system that is used in Guatemala and that only costs 30 dollars to make and lasts for at least 10 years and I saw a working canoe made of cement.  

Tessla Coil Concert.

 Alex:  Literally the coolest shit i have witnessed in a long time.

This week, i went to the Tesla Coil Concert near the engineering campus. I met up with Anne, Molly, and Bri, as well as a few of my other friends outside of Mining. This was an event held during all the fanfare that went along with the engineering open house last week.  Harrison:  A lot of the songs played were sci-fi theme songs (Doctor Who, Star Wars) or video game music (Mario, The Legend of Zelda). They knew how to play to their audience. The crowd loved it.

Here are some cool videos I found online. I was far away 

from the action on Friday night because there were 

thousands of people at this concert:

HK Associates

Shannon: I was expecting the lecture to be very technical and hard to follow for someone who doesnt have a background in architecture. I was surprised when HK's main focus was on the concepts and processes of their work. Because of the nature of their lecture, it turned out to be extremely valuable for me even as a graphic design student. Erin:  My curiosity brought me to a lecture on architecture and why they think and perform the way they do. In my opinion architects are boring artist, but, thats my opinion.

Gunning For Campus:  Examining the Impacts of Gun Violence on College Universities.

Gino:  When I showed up to the lecture, they had a huge buffet and a line of people waiting for their free lunch. This guy sitting in front of me ate like a barbarian. Snapping his gums all disgustingly. Ew!  Of course I didn't have any because I haven't eaten anything since 1997. Anyway, I went to a lecture in about gun violence which was lead by Dr. Nicole Anderson Cobb. She is a member of the Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence.

Bill:  I attended the "collecting impulse" symposium that was held over the weekend.  The keynote speaker was an english professor from the University of Chicago named BIll Brown.  He is most known for "thing theory," and as you can tell it is a theory involving things and thingness, and when an object becomes a thing.  I have read, and enjoyed some of his writings before.  (is it wrong that one of the reasons why i like it was because it shows me that academic writing can be a more refined, peer reviewed version of 19 year old stoners contemplating the existence of a bong?)

 

Hitchcock à La Carte
Jan Olsson (Stockholm University)
Response by Pat Gill (Communication/Gender & Women's Studies)

Carolina:  Alma, Hitchcock's wife, was mentioned during the talk as well. Olsson points out her importance to Hitchock personally and her value as one of his greatest collaborators throughout his career. It was interesting to hear that mentioned and then realizing that many of his films not only portray women as weak characters who are often killed or strangled but also are portrayed as deadly temptations, hard to resist. Pat Gill, the other speaker also mentions how eating, when examining Hitchcock's films are read as metaphors for sexual desire and how the death, killing, or in particular, strangling the sexually desired body reflected the idea of punishing for one's appetite.  Hugh:  Hitchcock features chicken and turkeys often in his films. Whenever a "sexy lady" was part of the film, they would almost exclusively not be featured with film because that would be "too sexy." Instead, women who appeared in the kitchen or with food tended to be killed or were killers in his films.  Food was seen as a way to display desires.

 

MUWAH>3

again: course outline!

COURSE OBJECTIVES + OUTLINE

Mining the university

Spring 2013

Here’s the deal.  We never meet.  We have no classroom, there are no lab fees, no materials to buy.  We are on a scavenger hunt, excavating the intellectual resources of the university for stimulation.  There are no guarantees, no direction.  Learning in this class will be self-directed, self-selected.  Self-service.  Grades will be self-determined. 

Each week you will attend a lecture, or event outside of your major.  To be more specific, if you are an art major, no lecture or event sponsored by the school of art and design will be credited for this class.  If you are a physics major, you may not post or attend any lecture/event from the Physics department, etc., etc., etc.  It is assumed that you will avail yourself of those opportunities because they are part of your 4 year study.  Instead, you will excavate, share and attend minimum one lecture per week OUTSIDE the school of art and design or your major program (but within the Champaign-Urbana area).  Entertainment does not count (concerts, movies, openings, parties; unless you can make a case for the expansion of your awareness and knowledge bank).  Any event that provides growth outside of your intellectual neighborhood will work. 
  

You are required to ‘excavate’ and post one event or lecture per week on the class blog (edited by me if necessary).   This must be posted by Wednesday noon of each week (reply to the blog post I have already created for each week with your events).  If you find that someone has already posted the event you were about to post, then you must excavate another to post.  Each post should have a short description  of the lecture or event so that others might consider going, and should include times and locations.  Links would be great if available.   

From this list, you will choose one event or lecture to attend.  You do not have to attend the lecture/event that you excavated/posted.  You may attend alone or with friends from or outside of class, but you must also document your attendance in two ways:  a photograph of yourself physically at the lecture or location (insert creativity here) and a journal entry about the lecture, what you thought about it, what surprised you, what you thought was interesting or boring, a connection to your work or anything else.  Discussions with friends immediately after are obviously encouraged.  No matter how bad your lecture or event might turn out, you must find something worthwhile from the experience, and communicate that.  This journal entry and photo must be posted on your own blog page (linked to the class blog).  You will need a gmail account so that you can create and link your own blog.

Class requirements summary:

-Post notice of one unique event or lecture per week on the class blog by Wednesday noon

-Choose one event to attend

-Document your attendance

-Write about it and post along with attendance documentation on your own blog.

-Semester summary of what you have gained, written for your blog.

Grading: 

excavations (25%)  journal/documentation (25%) summary (25%) quality (25%)

Participation: One for your excavation and post of a lecture/event (by Wednesday noon) and one for your attendance/journal and documentation.

-->

15 excavations = A   15 journal/docs = A

                           14 = A-                       14 = A-           

                           13 = B+                      13 = B+

                           12 = B                        12 = B

                           11 = B-                       11 = B-  
                           10 = C+                      10 = C+

                           9   = C                         9   = C

                           8   = C-                        8   = C-

                           7   = D+                       7   = D+

                           6   = D                         6   = D

                           5   = D-                        5   = D-           

                           4   = F                          4   = F 

there will be no excuses for lack of a post, and excuse for missing lectures/events must come from emergency dean or mcKinley stating you are out of commission for the entire week.  Don’t even think of asking for any other excuse.

In addition, you will be graded on the quality of these posts as well as your summary of the semester’s experience. 

week #7 excerpts

Memory/memoir: readings + Discussion

LeAnne Howe (English/American Indian Studies), Audrey Petty (English) and Robert Ramirez (Theater)

Metro: I originally decided to go to this event because Professor LeAnne Howe’s story “An American Indian in Japan” sounded so interesting. And it was. But Professor Audrey Petty’s stories from people who lived in Chicago’s (now extinct) housing projects was phenomenal as well. She wrote/told all of her stories in the first person — of the person she had met that had experienced living in and being evicted from their homes.

"Dear Mandela" Film Screening University YMCA

Alejandra: "Dear Mandela" is a documentary about people being forcibly removed from shacks in South Africa.  Much like in the apartheid era, the government is using violent tactics to separate those in power from those not in power, but this time they are focusing on economic differences rather than race.  

Found Magazine:
Davy Rothbart

Gino:  What is Found Magazine? It's a collection of notes, receipts, crumpled paper, or anything found, like below. How did the magazine start? Davy found a note on the windshield of his car one day. It said "Mario, I hate you, I don't know why your car is here if you're supposed to be at work. I really hate you. Page me later." He thought it was a shame that only the people finding these hilarious notes were able to witness this hilarity. He wanted to share it with the world, so he started a magazine.  

Intimate Moments: Davy Rothbart

Seano:  Today he shared with us the first piece he did for the public radio fixture TAL, a piece on neighbors featuring some striking responses from Fred Rodgers, who you may know as Mr. Rodgers. The part that stood out most to me comes after Davy explains a difficult relationship between himself and his old  neighbor in an apartment building, stemming from Davy's music being too loud and his neighbor pounding the floor with a broomstick in attempts to silence him. The producer poses the question to Mr. Rodgers of "what is it that we're afraid of do you think?" when we're confronted with these neighborly conflicts. "Perhaps, we think that.........[long pause].........we won't find another human being inside that person. Perhaps we think that 'oh there maybe are people in this world who I can't ever communicate with. And so I'll just give up before I try'. And how sad it is to think that we would give up on any other creature who's just like us." This part struck me. 
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/184/neighbors?act=1
 

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ENTREPRENEURSHIP IN ENGINEERING

Jerry Kennelly, founder of Riverbend Technology

  at the Siebert Center

Allison:  These were some big ideas that really resonated with me regardless of not understanding the complicated jargon associated with techie culture:
1) Despite being wealthy beyond a broke college kid's comprehension, Mr. Kennelly urged us to not make becoming a rich a priority. We should all strive to change something that bothers us, to amend or advance the world as much as possible. Money may bring stability but being a part of something bigger that gives back exponentially is far more fulfilling. Says the millionaire. 

  Jovi Radtke

 Harrison:  Wooohooo!!! Jovi Radtke was such a nerdy, silly, queer person. I could dig it.
She identified as a boi, which means she identifies as female, but often expresses her gender more masculine-ly. After a quick research session (wikipedia) I discovered that this term is also used for young boys who like older men, butch lesbians, and by Avril Lavigne.

  

Big Data:  Jon Orwant, Google Engineering Manager 

Carolina:  A lot of what he was talking about reminded me of last week’s talk by the CEO of eBay but I noticed how different I felt between the two. Last week I felt like the talk was geared towards profits and money that  Erin:  This week I went to a lecture called Big Data with Google engineering manager Jon Orwant. Which started off with I will be talking about chickens, potholes, and get around to big data. After that announcement I couldn’t wait to see how an engineering manager from Google would incorporate such silly things like chickens in relation to big data. Especially since I thought that he would speak very dull, slow and all genius like. Me being judgmental I actually ended up laughing most of the lecture he was quite the character. He didn’t just talk about numbers and scientific facts when it came to Google and how big data works globally. I was able to absorb more information that way. Orwant made a point that big data really doesn’t mean anything but, some how it is understood as well as attractive as a title when it came to bringing a crowd together for his lecture.  Selina:  Another thing that I didn't know Google was capable of is this: Say you type in the question "who is the president of the US" into Google and you get the answer "Barack Obama." If you type in "where was he born" next, Google assumes you mean Obama and answers with his birthplace, Honolulu. This action by the search engine is called parsing queries. Orwant showed us screenshots of these searches doing the above during the lecture, but when I tried it at home Google didn't know that I meant Obama when I typed "where was he born" after the first question... so I'm not sure if I was doing something wrong, if Google was doing something wrong, or whether or not it is a live, usable feature in Google yet.

The Museum of the Need to Know: the Consumption of Digital Infrastructure on the China-Russia Border

Christian:  The "infrastructure" (in quotations because infrastructure is the exact term used in the brochures of the e-city building) in mind is a mysterious location on the border between China and Russia where transnational commerce and exchange takes place. A small tourist location with one major hotel, this physical building being built is known as the 'e-city building' (much of this lecture was made secretive, hidden, and confidential). One of the biggest attractions to the e-city building was not its pretty facade, covered in binary relief, but the technological advancements in promised. A slide was shown that uncovered its surveillance room and in it, in homage to science fiction cyber crime films, there was a massive wall covered edge to edge with monitors that could become larger monitors to focus on surveillance details and two operators who seem to have been linked into the surveillance system as if their brains were linked into its matrix. The photograph only showed the backs of their heads and the glow of the screens haloing their ears, but you feared if they turned around their eyes would have been replaced with the cool lifeless touch of those exact monitors. 

The year I broke my voice

by Madsen Minax

Monica: The film was very interesting and unlike anything I had seen before. It was a film with a series of vignettes based on 1980s films such as: The Outsiders, Stand by Me, and The Year My Voice Broke. The element of sex and sexuality drives the whole film, but also shows how fragile the transition between childhood and adulthood can really be. Puja:  Okay, maybe it doesn't sound too different from every other movie but this one just seemed like it was on a different page altogether. If there is a predictable plot or traditional story line, it's not very obvious.  Roshni:  He explained how it was not a narrative and rather a compilation of random scenes. He planned for each scene to be taken all the way through without any retakes,

 Lemann Lecture Series. Kids & Politics: Civic Engagement and Service Learning in Brazil Professor Terrie Groth, Political Scientist from University of Braslia, Brazil 

Becca:  In these last two pictures you can see him actually asking us to come forward and be a part of this "game" where one guy (who he is pointing at) finds himself on a beautiful island alone where he gets to do whatever he wants, whenever he wants.  All of a sudden the rest of us are shipwrecked on the same island.  Now, we have to figure out how to eat together, sleep together, keep peace together, and this he says is how they teach politics to the youngsters.  There is no designated leader at least not in the beginning because politics starts with everyone asking questions together and trying to answer them together.  It was really interesting because, not that I have thought about it ever, but I realized my view of what is politics has not changed since our mock bush/gore election in fourth grade where we didn't learn much about politics at all except from what we heard form our liberal surroundings.  This guy is good this guys is bad, done.  It is really interesting to see the basis of politics in learning change.  I think I might need to join the kids class to have a refresher on politics, because as the Prof said its all about being involved and participating, something I knew but didn't believe completely.  I went home and voted on the student fees and our mascot.  

Hello there, I see you. MWUAH <3