research /student

2009

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Laila Shereen Sakr: R-Shief proof of concept

Laila Shereen Sakr has published R-Shief's proof of concept in the peer-reviewed publication, Parsons Journal for Information Mapping! See the journal, PJIM Volume I, Issue 2 online or her publication in PDF.

Laila Shereen Sakr: Documenting Gaza on R-Shief--> a vj um amel remix

Video (video also uploaded onto YouTube.)

The R-Shief Initiative provides a platform for a community of users to archive their multilingual research—essays and articles, interactive projects, digital video, maps/images, project documentation, websites of organizations, journalism, as well as practical information on how to do research in the Middle East. Each user will create their own profile in which they will have detailed privacy control, ability to annotate their digital material using webcam, audio, and written notes, and access to share assets with other platforms including Google Books, Google Scholar, Archive.org, UC Digital Libraries, Facebook, Flicker, and more. This multi-lingual, multi-positional resource fills an urgent need for digital infrastructure designed to empower unheard Middle Eastern voices. The initiative is a call for a collective organizing of information by 21st century transnational researchers, scholars, artists, activists—people migrating to and from the Middle East—displaced yet networked online, within organizations and institutions, as well as through shared social and historical experiences.

In June 2009, R-Shief will launch the beta version of this bilingual archive using a recent collection of media that emerged in response to the war on Gaza, Palestine.

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Nick Lally and Nik Hanselmann:

A series of 15 large prints and a hand-bound book that represent their efforts to turn the everyday into a creative medium through the use of digital media.

First-year DANM students Nik Hanselmann and Nick Lally installed a sensor in the Sesnon Gallery that collects environmental data (light level, sound level, proximity and temperature) from the space and uploads them to an online database every two seconds. They developed software that creates a generative drawing that changes with the data over time.

The live generative drawing exhibited in the Porter Faculty Gallery and the DANM Lounge as part of "No Batteries Required", part of the Sesnon Gallery exhibition "Some Assembly Required". An online version can be viewed here: http://transmogrify.me (Let it run for a few hours for a rich, complex image.)

Exhibition: March 11-20, 2009 in the UCSC Porter Faculty Gallery.

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Nik Hanselmann: Basic Arduino Sequencer

video on Vimeo

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Kyle McKinley::Appropriations/Apropos:the Dialectics of Détournment and Recuperation Site-Specific Digital Printmaking

A collection of recent digital manipulations and photographs by first year DANM student Kyle McKinley that attempt to raise questions about the state of appropriation amongst radical/ anarchist communities.

about

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02.04.2009 :: BATTERIES NOT INCLUDED a collective exhibition by DANM students

WHAT

An assemblage of sensory interventions in the audio, visual and atmospheric climate of the Sesnon Art Gallery exhibition, Some Assembly Required, opening week activities http://arts.ucsc.edu/sesnon/

PARTICIPANTS

Lyès Belhocine, Drew Detweiler, Nikolaos Hanselmann, Jessica F Hayden, Alexander Konrad, Nick Lally, Kyle Forrest Mckinley, Joshua McVeigh-Schultz, Christopher Molla

WHEN

February 4, 2009 3-9 pm (Reception 4-6 pm)

WHERE

Sesnon Art Gallery, Faculty Gallery (D-222) and DANM Lounge (D-221) at Porter College, UCSC

Photos from event

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2008

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24hr Thesis

In the space of 24 hours, participants proposed, developed, prototyped, built and exhibited an art project. It is jokingly called the 24h Thesis, since it condenses the two year process of the mfa program into a day. Proposed by first-year DANM student Nick Lally, the idea was that people would come without preconceptions of what they want to do and work in small groups to come up with a project to exhibit. In his initial invitation, Nick said "I think it will be a good opportunity for us to work collaboratively, experiment, and play."

The day started at 10am on Saturday, October 25th in the Porter electronics lab, with the exhibit at 10am on Sunday at Porter College. Almost everyone from the first-year cohort and several second years participated; three made it overnight.

Photos More Photos

YouTube video on the collaboration between DANM students Antoine Abou Jaoude and Karl Baumann. (thank you Antoine)

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When you are not your body :: Lim Kok Yoong in collaboration with Roopesh Sitharan

Roopesh Sitharan served as a conceptual collaborator in conceiving the artwork. To view their critical discourse, please down the exhibition brochure

'When You're Not Your Body' by Lim Kok Yoong is video installation that stimulates a process of decentering, where an awareness of the viewer's selfhood is disrupted. Since the beginning of video art practices, one of the key quality that interested artists is its ‘live’ transmission. Video artists since the 60s, like Bruce Nauman and Vito Acconci, have explored this particular quality, creating works that challenges our sense of identity and self in a specific time and place through the effects of video transmission. This transmission provides the viewer with a concrete representation of him/her being in another space (the screening space for instance), while also telling us that we are in ‘here’ (in the gallery space), and this element of displacement can create feelings such as anxiety, alienation or amusement, challenging the way we understand optical perspective and cognition of both time and space.

By using digital video feed, the viewer is made to confront himself or herself as an 'other', an image or a subject that is separated yet recognisably part of oneself. Through this, the artist hopes to provoke the audience into thinking about the meaning of being in existence.

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Art as Photography as Art exhibition :: Curated by Roopesh Sitharan

Roopesh Sitharan, in collaboration with Gallery 12 from Malaysia is pleased to announce the solo exhibition of Puah Chin Kok. Best known for his intrinsic photographic works, the artist is making his debut comeback with cutting-edge and innovative ideas. Puah questions the field of photography as he expands the practice to include the subjects being photographed as part of his artistic enquiry.

Emphasizing on the power of image technology such as digital photography that saturates the appearance of image in the mainstream media circulation, Puah is able to reposition our interaction with everyday images such as pictures of a holiday trip, graduation, family reunion and even mundane activities such as self-posing to create viable locations of inquiry and interaction. The theme of subjectivity is also recurring in Puah’s work, and though it is at times perceived as playful and at other times confrontational, his installations always seek to engage the viewer in a critical way.

For further information, please visit 12’s website

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Laila Shereen Sakr :: R-Shief

R-Shief <an online journal> showcases and archives digital video of documentary film, radio, and live cultural programming. Real-time, automated transcriptions alongside editorially selected hypertexts in Arabic and English will feature current developments in the fields of web culture, media and the arts, civil society building and participation among people in contemporary Arab Diaspora.

The publication's Arabic /English content will be organized with added semantic annotations. The platform implements free extensions of the wiki-system powering Wikipedia, and extends them by incorporating a semantic media wiki in Arabic (released April 2008). Using the wiki publishing model, a form of processual publishing, the journal allows users to publish updates and corrections to the automated transcriptions and indexing.

R-Shief is designed for a public moving between the Arab world and the West, a transnational Arab public. R-Shief will provide its community with a hybrid platform to publish, visualize, and semantically organize both digitally sophisticated work and written articles. It offers its users a fresh perspective on the scene of contemporary Arab Diaspora, recognizing web culture as significant in the life of twenty-first century migrants.

A prototype of R-Shief is part of the November 2008 MESA conference in Washington DC.

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Roopesh Sitharan :: Interview by TV Primorka as part of ISEA08 Event Coverage!