COMMUNICATIONS LAB
SYLLABUS

EXPERIENCE JOURNALS

ASSIGNMENTS
Response to Blogs of War
Found Digitally Altered Images
Photoshop Piece
Bear Chair Stop Motion Animation
Audio Piece Using Garage Band
Anil the Ninja Video
Story Board for Flash Animation
Flash Animation (NOT Original Intention

INTRO TO COMPUTATIONAL MEDIA
SYLLABUS

ASSIGNMENTS
BALL TRACER
KITTY PAINT (read code for instructions)

PHYSICAL COMPUTING
SYLLABUS

PERSONAL LINKS

LIVE JOURNAL
DEL.ICIO.US
RESONATOR MAGAZINE

photos are used with permission and trademarked to christopher choyce
photo is of russ marshalek

this page best viewed:
on mozilla firefox
1400x1050
32 bit color

This week, for the first time, I took a train (not a subway, but a train) in the United States. I went from South Norwalk, Connecticut, into Grand Central Station, which I hadn't seen since the renovation. The trains in the States are very different to me than the ones in Europe. They are slower, so you can see more of the landscape as you travel, and going from car to car is potentially very dangerous, but exhilirating. It feels like being a train heist movie: nothing between you and falling to the side and under the train, except your own balance and ingenuity.

The landscape was a lot like that of where I grew up in Tennessee, but the foliage was quite different. At home, the trees are a very dark green the whole year, which makes the shade much darker, and light doesn't filter through the leaves very much. In Connecticut, the trees are a very intense light green, and as the sun hits them, they seem to glow. I didn't recognize many of the leaves (I don't know the names of trees, but I know the shapes), and it was very like being in a different world based on the one that I knew, but different. The weather, too, was quite different-- very, very low humidity, and quite cold. Where I'm from it is extremely humid almost the whole year, and it only gets this cold in late November, early December.

The people were very different than what I am used to on a train. Everyone was disinterested in the surroundings, and simply read their books or chatted with friends, and it was evident that for them the ride was simply a means to an end-- to leave sleepy Connecticut and get to the city for the weekend. For me, having New York as where I live (even if its very recent), the charm was in Connecticut, not in leaving it. I stopped off at the dining car to get a water, and there were many couples and groups of friends laughing and sharing overpriced beers, thoughtless of the world outside the window, standing up with their backs to the outside.

When I arrived at Grand Central Station and made it into the main concourse, I was blown away. The whole station looked completely different from when I had been there so many years ago. It was beautiful, but it looked like what you would imagine an old train station in Paris would look like, but clean and shining. The ceiling, of course, was the highlight-- the green background that was like verdigris with the gold constellations. I felt like a tourist for the first time since I've been in New York this year, with my head thrown back and mouth hanging open! I stared at it, unheeding of all the people who were bustling past me with luggage. The same people who weren't interested in the countryside of Connecticut were also uninterested in the beauty and grandeur of the station, but they were the ones who were the visitors! I guess as much as I think that I am acclimatized, there are still so many things that are landmarks of New York that can amaze me.

This week, I decided to explore Greenwich Village, as I've always felt very uncomfortable right when I get to the edge of it, and the streets suddenly are at strange angles instead of clean, simple blocks. I decided I was going defeat my fear of all those strangely intersecting lines and learn the neighborhood once and for all.

As often happens in life, my plan went awry, but the ensuing results were perhaps better than they would have been had my plan gone off perfectly.

I went over to the West side of Bleecker, and I walked South and South and South. It after dark (I think it was probably 10 o'clock) and before I knew it, there were absolutely no people on the streets and I truly did not know where I was. It was so strange to be in Manhattan and walk for an entire block or two without seeing a single person. Everything was shuttered and dark, but it wasn't scary at all, the way it would be in another city. It wasn't that there was no one there but homeless people or people looking to mug, kill, or rape you. There was just literally no one on the streets.

As I walked a little further, this started to change, and I found myself next to a graveyard. I realized I had walked through the financial district, and I was standing next to the church across the street from Ground Zero. As I walked to the site of the World Trade Center, there were suddenly many people, reading the signs on the gate, all silent and mirthless. I walked to the gate to see how the progress was coming on the new building, but because I had already seen this before, I walked on.

I decided I would explore Battery Park City, as I'd never actually done this before. I'd been as far as Ground Zero, but never to the park or the Battery (whatever that was). I walked a little bit east before going down to the water, and found a building that was some sort of museum (there was an advertisement banner in the front), all of white stone and with two gigantic, neo-classical sculptures along the entire length of the stairs. Since it was late and no one was really there, I climbed into the lap of one of the huge, white stone women, and sat for a moment. I was rather tired from having walked so far, and it was nice to take a rest, even if it wasn't terribly comfortable. After a few minutes, I decided it was time to see the park, so I climbed down and made my way to the park.

If the financial district had been dead and Ground Zero solemn, it was a different story in Battery Park. There were many street musicians playing, and people were sitting in couples and trios all along the benches, chatting and snuggling and generally having a good time. I walked around the park and found it very beautiful, but the sudden injection of life after so much silence was a bit jarring and clashed with my mood, so I walked down to the water and watched the black waves come up to the edge of the island. The lapping of the water was soothing, and drowned out the various conversations and buzzing from the people who were still quite close behind me. I looked up and out over the water, and I saw the Staten Island Ferry, and I made a connection between locations I'd never made before. I must be right next to the Ferry dock. Suddenly, I had the next step on my exploration.

I walked over to the Ferry, and went inside to wait for the next boat. How everything had changed since I'd last been there! The inside, which before had looked just like a warehouse, was now remodeled with marble benches and LED displays wth the time, and a giant wraparound print of the first lines of Edna St. Vincent Milay's "Recuerdo." I had always loved this poem, and now that I was reading it in this context, I realized for the first time that the ferry on which she and her friend had gone back and forth all night was the Staten Island Ferry! This made me very, very happy.

I had only been on the Ferry once before, and it was smack in the middle of July with my mum in the middle of the day-- there had clearly been more tourists than people who had any interest in going to Staten Island, and it was crowded, and loud, and I thought rather silly. Tonight was different. There were very few people in the station, and those that were mostly looked tired and ready for bed after a long day's work.

The Ferry ride during the night was completely different than during the day. Standing on the prow of the boat, everything was dark but the Statue of Liberty, lit from below, and a bright white building that seemed to glow from its footlights. While the ride to Staten Island was pretty, it was the ride back that took my breath away. Manhattan, completely lit up, like a horizontal sky, all black with a million stars was one of the most beautiful things I'd ever seen. When I returned to the city, I was exhausted from walking, but glad I'd missed Greenwich for this solitary, night walk along the river.

Danny Rozin's work is really well known to me because of school, obviously, but it was a real treat to get off the floor and to see his work in a new environment. His show at Bitforms is amazing! I don't know if Bitforms always looks all white (even the floor was white!) but it really offset his work brilliantly. The lights were also very bright, and the design of the space just complemented his work so well.

Above and beyond anything, his Circles Mirror was the most amazing piece of his I'd ever seen. While the software mirrors were pretty interesting, and the effect of Self-Centered Mirror was cool once pointed out to me by the person working at the gallery, Circles Mirror just seems to have so much effort and time put into not just the functionality, but the design. I can't believe that anyone would be able to figure out how these differently patterned discs would create a whole picture with so much depth! I took pictures with my camera phone, and strangely, when looking at the mirror on camera, the pictures were even more refined. You could tell details of my face and my movements, and there was defitely gradiation in the shading of the representation. I was blown away.

It becomes really easy to forget that the people I see every day and know on a first name basis are actually these giants in their respective fields. It really renewed my appreciation for school and the resources available to me.

I took a trip to the Museum of Sex this weekend to see what all the fuss was about and to check out the current exhibition on objectification of the male form. I have to say I found the exhibit to be very interesting, especially the parts about media technologies being quickly adopted by the gay community to create erotica from the first photographs onward to video and easily producable print media.

There was also an exhibit on the history of the porn film-- I found myself giggling more than tittilated. Its amazing what was once considered shocking, and how low budget and simple porn used to be, especially when compared to the slicked up, plastic people that star in porn today. Strangely (or perhaps not), it really got me thinking about media more than sex. As film technologies developed and it became easier to edit and perfect film, it seems that the actors and actresses also became more edited and perfected-- plastic surgery, impossible body shapes, and chemically altered hair (to match the brains underneath). I'd never really considered the implications of media to the human form, but even in mainstream cinema everyone is slicked up and thinned down more than ever before, and it seems that the more we come to expect from our media, the more we come to expect from the people who are the content of it. Since computer graphics are de rigeur these days, it seems that people are also having to fulfill the impossible rather than just look like real people.

I finally got around to seeing MirrorMask this weekend. On the visual front, I was blown away, but I was rather let down by the simplicity and predictability of the story, considering I've been a big fan of Neil Gaiman for awhile. The animation made it absolutely worth the price of admission, though. Dave McKean is absolutely brilliant, and apparently the budget was really small (something I'm surprised by, since the visuals seemed so intense). Apparently there was not a liberal use of CGI, but it was mostly cutouts from photos. The costumes and make-up were also really impressive, especially the dark version of Helena.

I really hope to be able to do something as interesting as this for our video presentations, but it might be taking on a lot to do something so visually intensive as a beginner. Maybe in future semesters I could try something this ambitious.

Wow! I have seen the best rock show of my entire life this week, and by a band I totally didn't expect to rock. A friend of mine called me up kind of last minute to ask if I wanted to go see Franz Ferdinand for free, and since I didn't have anything else to do, and Madison Square Garden is always out of my own price range, I said yes. I'm so glad I did. While I liked their first album, I didn't expect much since most of the new indie rock bands are TERRIBLE live, and I figured that FF would be no exception, but they've made a rabid fan of me with their totally energetic performance.

The stage set was all black and red and white, as were their outfits (which didn't exactly match, but were perfectly coordinated). The lights were consistent with all the colors, and while there wasn't a lot of complex synching up that I've seen in other rock shows, it wasn't needed. Their stage presence was absolutely amazing, and they acted like total, proper rock stars.

The highlight of the show for me was when, for the last song before the encore, one of their drummers came out and started playing the drum kit at the same time as the regular drummer. Then another person came out and started playing on the same kit, and finally another! It was crazy-- eight sticks on one drum kit. I've got to see them again as soon as they come back.

The opening band, Cut Copy, from Australia was really amazing (though I've always found them blase on CD), but TV on the Radio, whom I've seen once before, still underwhelms me, and I can't begin to understand the critical hype surrounding them.

On Thursday, I went to see Death Cab for Cutie with my boyfriend, Mike. It was the first time I've seen them post-Postal Service, and it was crazy packed. I remember seeing them four or five years ago, and being one of maybe a hundred people. Then when I followed Postal Service around for four days, the shows were always sold out, but they were small... Now, they seem to be gigantic thanks to the success of Postal Service (and I'm sure their much poppier sound). The show was really good, and very cathartic-- while I'm past the whole angsty teenage "love is hard and painful and heartbreak is so cool" thing, its a nice place to visit from time to time. Ben Gibbard's lyrics can consistently bring me to tears, and tonight was no exception. I'm glad I got to see them again, as the next time they're here they'll probably be at MSG and I won't be able to afford tickets. I'm glad to see them so successful, but there's a possesive part of me that's a bit jealous and wants to see them in small venues again. I feel like I've put in so many years of fandom that I am sort of owed it, which is ridiculous, but true.

I've seen the most amazing video piece EVER in Chelsea this past weekend. Its called Stereomongrel, and its by Luis Gispert and Jeffrey Reed. Its basicly a nonlinear version of a kind of Alice and Wonderland dream story, and it has some amazing post-production effects. Here are some stills-- I think they speak better for it than I ever could.

Well, I thought that nothing could top Franz Ferdinand (and while they are still the most ROCKING rock band on the planet), I've seen the most well done visual rock show of my life. I saw Nine Inch Nails earlier this summer, and while it was musically really good, there wasn't much that was amazing as far as lights and visuals go. Not so on this new tour! They had a scrim that showed video for a good four songs in the middle of the set, and the music was perfectly timed to it-- the best example of VJing I've ever seen. The lights were absolutely mindblowing, as well. I found some pictures on Flickr (not all of these are from the New York show, but they show the visual elements really well):

Went back to Bitforms this week to check out Mark Napier's OpenGL works that are on display. While I really enjoyed playing with the different programs, I was a bit confused by the content... Why all Empire State Building things? Strangely, I also made it to another gallery in Chelsea where there was a series of pictures painted with industrial acrylic on metal of the ESB, and they seemed a lot more evocative of the building in its own context, so perhaps since I saw these first I was a little disappointed with Napier's stuff. It seemed all a bit "much ado about nothing." Since Mike has been working on OpenGL stuff lately, I can really respect the work that went into the programming, but I guess I wanted more out of the content.

Here's my friend Jesse playing with the Empire State Building:

I went to see Clifford Ross's photos after he talked in our Applications class, because honestly, I couldn't understand what the big deal was about some big photographs. Now I get it. They're absolutely amazing! The clarity of them is almost surreal its so sharp-- my own eyes can't even see things at that distance so sharply. I've never been a big fan of landscape photography, but this was beyond anything I've ever seen before. The perspective he gives you is almost like being God, its so perfect.

One of the cooler things that I discovered was that if you close one eye and look at pieces of the photos through your hand rolled into a tube shape, they appear to be 3D! Its one of the weirder effects I've ever experienced. You really feel like you can just reach behind a bush or pick up one of the tiny houses in the photos. I think he really managed to capture the "reality quotient" he was talking about in class-- no its not the REAL reality, but its realer. Truth is a pretty relative thing, and his talk and the subsequent viewing of his photos really has me thinking about which is more true-- the experience one feels or the experience one actually HAS. As an artist, I think its necessary to bring your audience into your emotional realm, into the place you exist, and to take them out of themselves and into your work. I'm amazed that someone can do this with color photography of a mountain, but Mr. Ross and his love for this scene is so prevalent in his work its amazing.

I went home (to Atlanta to seem my friends, not Knoxville to see my family) and I did something I've never done before-- I cooked Thanksgiving dinner all by myself! Talk about feeling like a grown up. I fancy myself a pretty good cook, but I really outdid myself this time. I roasted a turkey breast, made sweet potatoes with lime syrup and chives, peas with caraway, parmesan, and black pepper, cranberry sauce with cherries, rosemary, and marsala, crunchy bread dressing with bacon and leeks, and two types of gravy (turkey for me and Choyce, and veggie for Russ). It was absolutely amazing. We also had a pack of Jones Soda's Holiday Flavors.

Its been a loooooooong few days since I finally made it back from Atlanta (airports SUCK!), and I really needed to unwind at the weekend... and what did my friend Ran introduce me to right around the corner from my apartment, but the best club night I've ever been to in New York or anywhere. Its a dance rock party called Trash at Rififi, and it was absolutely amazing. I've not danced that hard since I moved here. The music was perfect (a great mix of new and old rock music, with a few good electronic dance songs thrown in for good measure). At one point, every song for a good hour was something I absolutely adored-- I couldn't get off the dance floor if I tried. They had dancers wearing barely anything, and everyone was just having a great time and going crazy-- it was the most amazing vibe. I'll definitely be going back there as soon as I can, especially since its two blocks away and FREE! (I highly recommend this to anyone who likes to dance for hours on end.)

For our make-up class for Todd's PComp class, we went to see the model train expo at Citicorps. I was sort of skeptical at first, but it turned out to be really cool! I really enjoyed asking the people who made it about the technical specs of it and realizing I understood everything they were talking about. The architecture of the town they created was amazing-- my favorite part was the drive-in movie theatre that had a movie come on when the lights dimmed (every few minutes it became "night" in the train city) on this tiny LCD screen. I also liked counting the LEDs (I'm such a dork).

After the train expo, we headed to Bitforms for the Lynn Hershman retrospective. I found her work really unsettling, which I suppose is the point because its raises a lot of questions about identity and technology and bodies. I'm really not sure what I think of it just yet, but I'd really like to go back and get a longer look at the stuff without my entire class there-- I find it hard to think with social stimuli. But something really cool happened while we were there. The guy who runs the gallery took us to the private viewing room on the ninth floor to see Danny's Trash Mirror! While I still think Circles Mirror is his best achievement thus far, Trash Mirror seems to be so personal-- the most interesting part of it isn't that it makes an outline of what the camera sees, but the individual pieces of trash. It seems so New York, and I absolutely love it! I wish I had gotten to look at it more, but the curator had to get back to work. Still, it was such a special treat to be able to see something that I'd only ever seen in pictures or heard about from my professors.