I successfully defended my thesis project last week! Here is the full video of my presentation as well as additional video documentation.
Author Archives: Angela Monique
Call for Submissions – Digital Denver
Digital Denver is a project that I am creating for submission to the National Conference for Media Reform that will take place at the Downtown Sheraton in April. I will be gathering all forms of media, then using the Layar platform for mobile devices to geotag them. The goal is to create an explorable map of Denver that is enriched with the voices of everyday people. The media I am hoping to receive includes poems, music, stories, videos, paintings, podcasts, and pictures, but is not limited to these forms.
Since this project is designed for participants of the conference to explore while they are in town, I am looking for submissions roughly within a one mile radius of the Sheraton, which is located at 1550 Court Place (15th and Court).
Please send submissions with the following information to DigitalDenverVoices@gmail.com:
- Title/Description of piece.
- Location of event (approximate cross streets are fine).
- Name (optional).
If your submission is too large to email, or you would like to get together to record your submission, please email me to set up a meeting.
Digital Denver is a project to give voices to everyday people. The stories told might not be reported on the news, or reflected in popular culture, but they exist and they are important. Please share this with any individual or organization that you think would like to participate. I would love to have as many experiences as possible represented in this project.
Thank you for your help in making this a reality!
What I Learned in Grad School
I am currently in my last quarter of classes at the University of Denver, and apparently the stress is making me nostalgic. I thought I would take a break from juggling my three pending projects to reflect on what the last year and a half has taught me.
I’m not going to lie – the first quarter of grad school, I cried nearly every single day. I frequently thought, “Why did I do this? Can I quit? I can’t quit… can I?!” A large part of this might have stemmed from the fact that I got married on September 4th, went to Hawaii from September 5th-11th, and started classes on September 12th. It was clearly very poor timing on my part, and I really did not have the mental faculties left after the wedding to prepare myself for graduate level classwork. The bigger aspect, though, was that I just didn’t feel I belonged in the program. My cohort consisted of 7 people that appeared to know everything about anything Ars Technica had ever written about… and me. A theatre nerd who didn’t even have a smartphone. Seriously, what had I gotten myself into? Continue reading
Site Revamping – DONE!
Hooray! After much slacking and whining and frustration, the site overhaul is finally done! Many thanks to Steph Calvert of Hearts and Laserbeams for the amazing logo and repeating pattern background! You will always be my favorite graphic designer and I wish we could toast White Castle hamburgers every single day.
Now that the site is complete, I am moving onto the next big projects. Right now that looks like working on my thesis project in order to present and defend in April, and making sure I am completely ready to dazzle employers with my super amazing skills of awesomeness. I cannot wait to see what this next year is going to bring!
Living Memory – A Podcast Project
Here is the final version of a podcast I created for Digital Audio Production. Many thanks to Kelly Costello and my parents, Earl and Teresa Daniels.
This was created using Adobe Audition and a few loops from Ableton Live. Overall, I would change the location and equipment used for recording our narrating parts, but I am quite happy with the finished product.
Creating Touchability (and why using bubble wrap is not cheating)
I was recently tasked in my Digital Design Concepts class to create something that called out to be touched. There were no other limitations, except that it must fit into a seven square inch envelope of space. As a type 2 Enneagram personality, I work well with defined rules and specific guidelines. I can therefore say that this ultimate creative freedom was terrifying.
Reading Response #2 – How Technology Makes Us Jerks
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In the introduction to her book, When Old Technologies Were New, Carolyn Marvin makes the point that electric media history begins with the telegraph and the electric light bulb, and not just with the development of film and broadcasting like previous studies had asserted. This is a shift in the process of studying electric media history from focusing on the technological devices to looking at the impact these technologies had on actual people. She states, “It (her study) argues that the early history of electric media is less the evolution of technical efficiencies in communication than a series of arenas for negotiating issues crucial to the conduct of social life; among them, who is inside and outside, who may speak, who may not, and who has authority and may be believed” (Marvin, 4). This change in thinking on the focus of evaluating electric media history changes it from a study of technological advances to affects of technology on society, or as Marvin describes it, social media history.
The points that Marvin makes for starting the history of electric media with the expansion of electricity into everyday lives as opposed to limiting it to film and broadcasting seem valid. We can spend many hours reading about new technologies, but without knowing how they impacted normal people and inspired subsequent technologies, the history is incomplete. Marvin spends time discussing how previous methods of evaluating electric media history negated the role of electricians to mere players in the broader field of mass communication (Marvin, 7), but by exploring how they developed their craft and asserted themselves as experts, Marvin brings to light a much more interesting role for these electricians. The same can be said for the “Age of the Information Superhighway” both in that its impact on daily lives is as important as the technology itself, and also that the pioneers and experts were not simply an evolution of technical efficiency. Continue reading
Projects I Love #2 – The Little People Project
When thinking about what projects I love means to me, I kept coming back to the idea of something I see and can’t stop thinking about. Which is exactly what happened with The Little People Project.
In an excerpt from Laughing Squid, artist Slinkachu describes the project as, “My ‘Little People Project’ started in 2006. It involves the remodelling and painting of miniature model train set characters, which I then place and leave on the street. It is both a street art installation project and a photography project. The street-based side of my work plays with the notion of surprise and I aim to encourage city-dwellers to be more aware of their surroundings. The scenes I set up, more evident through the photography, and the titles I give these scenes aim to reflect the loneliness and melancholy of living in a big city, almost being lost and overwhelmed. But underneath this, there is always some humour. I want people to be able to empathise with the tiny people in my works.”
Continuing the Conversation on Revamping
Today I read a blog post by my colleague Thomas about the current need in our culture to remake classics, which you can read here. While I was thinking about his views and pondering my own thoughts on the subject, I ran across this article about the new adaption of Porgy and Bess that is currently running in Cambridge, MA and slated to open on Broadway soon. How interesting when something is mentioned and then you start seeing it everywhere!
The most interesting aspect of this post to me is how upset Stephen Sondheim became when he heard about the new project. He went so far as to write a letter to The New York Times. This outrage of people that so clearly loved the original so much may be valid, but is it productive? I have to agree with the point in the article that this project is a way to reach a new generation that most likely does not frequent Opera houses. The same could be said about Sondheim’s own revamped movie version of Sweeney Todd starring Johnny Depp. I know many a musical theater purist that was up in arms over the fact that a “real” musical theater performer was not cast as Sweeney Todd. However saddening it might have been to those of us that grew up watching Angela Lansbury play Mrs. Lovett, I have to admit that Tim Burton managed to bring the power of Sondheim to a much larger audience.
Of course, I might be biased because of my admitted unadulterated love for Audra MacDonald. Either way, I wish I could see this new adaptation of Porgy and Bess and draw my own conclusions.
Semi-symbiotic?
I recently bought a smartphone, or as I call it, The Precious. Compared to my previous “dumb” phone that could call, text, and give me basic access to email, my relationship with The Precious is much more symbiotic. I am having trouble calling it a true symbiosis in Licklider’s terms, though, because I cannot fully see what I give to the device.