Skip to content

Categories:

Logan Center for the Arts to Celebrate Grand Opening with Three-Day Festival

The Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts is celebrating its grand opening this month with the three-day Logan Launch Festival, October 12-14.

“The Logan Launch Festival will highlight the breadth of arts study and performance opportunities currently taking place across the University, from theater to visual arts to music to the written word. The festival represents the unique mix of professional, student, and community programming that we anticipate at the Logan Center for years to come,” said Bill Michel, Executive Director of the Logan Center.

Highlights include:

The New Budapest Orpheum Society, an eight-member ensemble in the Division of the Humanities at the University of Chicago, performing Jewish Cabaret music and political songs from the turn of the century to the present (1:30-2:30 p.m., Friday, Oct. 12)
UChicago Visual Arts Professors Laura Letinsky and Geof Oppenheimer, along with students from the MFA class of 2013, discuss their recent trip to China that sought to investigate and develop cross-fertilization across geo-political and cultural arenas (2:30-3:30 p.m., Friday, Oct. 12)
Creative Writing showcases its thesis students with a multi-genre reading of their work (2:30-4:30 p.m., Friday, Oct. 12)
Architects Tod Williams and Billie Tsien in conversation about the Logan Center, their first Chicago commission (6-7:30 p.m., Friday, Oct. 12)
Richard and Mary L. Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry presents The Project, a year-long collaboration between Professor Patrick Jagoda and Visiting Mellon Fellow in Arts Practice & Scholarship Sha Xin Wei to launch an alternate reality transmedia game (8-10 p.m., Friday, Oct. 12)
Interactive performance and discussion moderated by composer Augusta Read Thomas, featuring pianist Daniel Schlosberg, UChicago graduate student composer Andres Carrizo, and a panel of active UChicago composers (2:30-3:30 p.m. and 3:30-4:30 p.m., Saturday Oct. 13)
“Wall Text,” an exhibition exploring the relationship between text and space, featuring works by UChicago alumni and current and past faculty (ongoing)

A full calendar of events can be found at the Logan Launch Festival website. The festival is free and open to the public.

Posted in Uncategorized. Tagged with Logan Center.

By Michelle Neuffer

October 3, 2012

Chicago Demotic Dictionary Featured in the New York Times

The New York Times recently featured the completion of a dictionary of ancient Demotic Egyptian, a language named by the Greeks to denote its use by the demos, or common people. Janet Johnson, the Morton D. Hull Distinguished Service Professor at the Oriental Institute and editor of their Demotic dictionary, explains that the language “was used for business and legal documents, private letters and administrative inscriptions, and literary texts, such as narratives and pieces of wisdom literature” and that the 2,000-page dictionary is “an indispensable tool for reconstructing the social, political and cultural life of ancient Egypt during a fascinating period of its history.”

From the article:

The Demotic dictionary, begun in 1975, supplements and updates a more modest glossary of Demotic words published in German in 1954 by Wolja Erichsen, a Danish scholar.

The new Demotic-English work includes new words not in that glossary, as well as new uses of previously known words and more extensive examples of compound words, idiomatic expressions, place names, reference to deities and words borrowed from other languages. Completed chapters have been posted online from time to time in recent years.

“What the Chicago Demotic Dictionary does is what the Oxford English Dictionary does,” said James P. Allen, an Egyptologist at Brown University. “It gives many samples of what words mean and the range and nuances of their meanings.”

The dictionary is available free online. Eventually there will be a published edition, primarily for research libraries. Read more about the Chicago Demotic Dictionary here.

Posted in Uncategorized. Tagged with Faculty, Janet Johnson, Oriental Institute.

By Michelle Neuffer

October 1, 2012

Augusta Read Thomas to Premier Four New Compositions During 2012-13 Season

The world premiere of Resounding Earth by Augusta Read Thomas, University Professor in the Department of Music, will be performed on September 30, 2012 by Third Coast Percussion at the University of Notre Dame’s Debartolo Performing Arts Center. This is the first of four major worldpremieres this season. Earth Echoes will premier on October 11, 2012, at Carnegie Hall featuring the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke, and baritone Nathan Gunn. Harvest Drum will be performed on December 20, 2012, featuring the National Centre for the Performing Arts Symphony Orchestra, Beijing, China. Lastly, Cello Concerto No. 3, will debut on March 14-16, 2013, featuring the Boston Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Christoph Eschenbach, featuring cellist Lynn Harrell.

For more information, please visit the webpage of the Department of Music.

Posted in Uncategorized. Tagged with Augusta Read Thomas, composer, Music, premiere.

By hhayes

September 13, 2012

Four Faculty Members Win ACLS Fellowships for 2012-13

The American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) awarded fellowships to four faculty members in the Division of the Humanities for 2012-13. ACLS fellowships and grants are awarded to individual scholars for “excellence in research in the humanities and related social sciences.”

Lauren Berlant, George M. Pullman Professor in the Department of English Language and Literature, was awarded a fellowship for a study that charts the emergence of a generation of queer and “independent” aesthetics from the mid-1980s. Victor Friedman, Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, was awarded for his project on Balkan languages and identities. Richard Jean So, Assistant Professor in the Department of English Language and Literature was awarded for his study reconstructing the history of the vibrant U.S.-China literary network that emerged in the 1930s and 1940s, and Hung Wu, Harrie A. Vanderstappen Distinguished Service Professor in Art History and East Asian Languages and Civilizations for his study on the art of the Northern Qi (550–577).

Since 1919, the ACLS has granted scholars in the humanities and social science fellowships for major research projects. For more information visit the ACLS website.

Posted in Uncategorized. Tagged with Awards, Division of the Humanities, Faculty.

By hhayes

September 10, 2012

Civic Knowledge Project program featured in the Chicago Tribune

The Chicago Tribune featured the Civic Knowledge Project’s “Winning Words” program, a project that brings philosophy students into local Chicago public schools to engage students in critical thinking. The Civic Knowledge Project (CKP) is the office for community engagement within the Division of the Humanities at the University of Chicago. Established in July of 2003, The Civic Knowledge Project aims to build programs and institutional affiliations that enhance the circulation of knowledge on the South Side of Chicago across lines of race, ethnicity, class, and religion.

From the Tribune:

While discussing classic texts and critical thinking are second nature at U. of C., where Socrates and Plato reign supreme, Winning Words is bringing the same process of lively give-and-take and critical thinking to Chicago Public Schools students at 15 South Side elementary and middle schools. The U. of C. tutors serve as philosophy coaches, adapting the ideas of classic and contemporary philosophers and authors like Socrates, William Shakespeare and educator John Dewey to provoke spirited debate among nearly 120 students enrolled in Winning Words.

Last February fourth graders led by a philosophy student presented at the annual American Philosophical Association conference. Earlier this year, Bart Schultz, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy and Director of the Civic Knowledge Project, received the Faculty Initiative Award for 2012 from the Office of Civic Engagement’s Neighborhood Schools Program. The award is in recognition of his work in building community connections through such programs as the Winning Words as well as the Poverty, Promise, and Possibility initiative.

To read the Tribune article, click here. Learn more about the Civic Knowledge Project by visiting their website, and read a Chicago Maroon article here.

Posted in Uncategorized. Tagged with Civic Knowledge Project.

By hhayes

July 3, 2012

Library to Add Videogame Collection

The University of Chicago Library will soon make available a collection of videogames in response to “an emerging research interest on campus in game programming, the sociology of games, videogame music, and other areas that touch on videogames, gaming and gamers,” according to the Library’s announcement. Patrick Jagoda, Assistant Professor in English, helped shape the Mansueto Library’s new videogame collection along with the student group Ludic Union for the Investigation of Gaming Interfaces (LUIGI). According to the Library news office, the collection was assembled with “faculty and students working on transmedia, new media, or comparative media studies” in mind.

Jagoda taught an English course in the winter quarter of 2012 called “Critical Videogame Studies” that drew students from departments throughout the University. Jagoda and LUIGI students wrote an introduction to the collection and provided a sampling of games in the collection. In his introduction, Jagoda addresses the question: “Why should a university library add videogames to its holdings?”

In recent years, the humanities and social sciences have started attending increasingly to the historical, technological, and artistic properties of videogames. There are many ongoing debates among scholars and game designers about which properties of digital games derive from other forms, including novels, films, theater, and sports contests. There are discussions about which components of digital games — interactivity, networked communities, hypermediated interfaces, and so on — make them unique. Cultural studies has also raised critical questions about the ways in which race, gender, class, and sexuality are represented (or often go underrepresented or misrepresented) in popular games, as well as the ways in which players negotiate these categories during play. Increasingly, the overarching question of “Why should we study videogames?” is yielding to more refined questions and significant research projects that are shaping a rich field of study.

Read the rest of Jagoda’s story and notes from the LUIGI group on some of the games in the collection here.

Posted in Uncategorized. Tagged with English Language & Literature, Mansueto.

By Bill Hutchison

June 19, 2012

Jessica Stockholder’s “Color Jam” Opens in Loop

An installation by Jessica Stockholder, Professor and Chair in the Department of Visual Arts, opened this week as part of the public art initiative sponsored by the Chicago Loop Alliance. Color Jam, a large-scale public art installation covering the intersection of State and Adams, opened last week and will be on display until September 30. The art work involves 76,000 square feet of colored vinyl that covers portions of the street, sidewalk, and sides of building and is the largest contiguous vinyl project in the U.S, according to The New York Times.

From The New York Times:

By wrapping the four corners of State and Adams Streets (and parts of buildings there) in swaths of burnt orange, lime green and turquoise — think of Christo meets Hans Hofmann — she deconstructs this slice of the business-as-usual world and transforms it into a playful and imaginative realm. Ms. Stockholder, whose work has been shown at Dia Art Foundation in New York, the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Pompidou Center in Paris, is the chairwoman of the visual arts department at the University of Chicago and is known for multidimensional, site-specific works that merge painting and sculpture.

MSNBC interviewed Stockholder and filmed the installation process; you can watch the video here. Read The New York Times article here, and a Chicago Tribune review here.

Posted in Uncategorized. Tagged with Faculty, Jessica Stockholder, Visual Arts.

By hhayes

June 12, 2012

James K. Chandler Reappointed as Franke Director

James K. Chandler

James K. Chandler, Barbara E. & Richard J. Franke Professor in the Department of English Language & Literature, the Department of Cinema & Media Studies, and the College, has accepted reappointment for a third term as Director of the Franke Institute for the Humanities, effective July 1, 2012. The announcement came from Martha Roth, Dean of the Division of the Humanities, who lauded Chandler’s leadership over the last decade.

“Jim’s collaborative efforts with foundations and with other universities, and his vision for the role of the humanities within a contemporary research university have all made the Franke Institute one of the premier humanities institutes in the world and one of which we are all rightly proud,” said Roth in her announcement.

“I know that you all join me in congratulating Jim on his accomplishments to date and in expressing our confidence in a successful and ambitious future for the Franke Institute for the Humanities.”

The Franke Institute for the Humanities was founded in 1990 with a mission to foster the development of innovative advanced research across the various disciplines of the humanities. To read more about the Franke Institute visit their website.

Posted in Uncategorized. Tagged with Faculty, Franke Institute for the Humanities, James K. Chandler.

By hhayes

June 7, 2012

Dean Announces Two New Deputy Dean Positions

Bill Brown

Dean Martha Roth announced the addition of two new academic positions to the Division of the Humanities. Bill Brown, Karla Scherer Professor of American Culture in the Department of English Language and Literature, the Department of Visual Arts, and the College and a past Master of the Humanities Collegiate Division (HCD), has agreed to serve as the first Deputy Dean for Academic and Research Initiatives for a three-year term beginning July 2013. The second position, Deputy Dean for Languages, will be filled by Mario Santana, Associate Professor in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures and the College and past Master of the HCD (as well as current interim Master). Santana will serve for an initial one-year term in the 2012-13 academic year.

Brown and Santana will join the Deputy Dean and Master of the Humanities Collegiate Division as senior academic officers in the Division of the Humanities.

In the announcement, Dean Roth noted “The Division has accomplished great successes in recent years – hiring and retaining stellar faculty members at all levels; recruiting, supporting and graduating our students; and launching innovative research and pedagogical initiatives. With these new Deputy Deans, we will have the leadership team in place to realize our ambitions and to ensure the success of the humanities in the upcoming campaign.”

As Deputy Dean for Academic and Research Initiatives, Brown will work with faculty throughout the Division to develop and articulate new initiatives that advance humanistic inquiry. He will coordinate with the directors and chairs of the master’s programs in the Division (MAPH, CMES, CLAS, DOVA) and help develop new graduate programs and tracks.

Mario Santana

As Deputy Dean for Languages, Santana will oversee language instruction, appointments, and reviews; ensure appropriate graduate student language pedagogy training; oversee the appointment of the Director and the academic mission of the Center for the Study of Languages; and interface with the College and the Master of the HCD/Deputy Dean, the College’s Study Abroad programs, with the University of Chicago global Centers in Paris, Beijing, and the soon-to-open center in New Delhi, with the offices of the Deputy Provost for Graduate Education and the Center for Teaching and Learning, and with Departments and Area Centers.

The two new Deputy Deans will join Thomas Christensen, the Avalon Foundation Professor in the Department of Music and the College, who will return from his year of research leave in Berlin to a second three-year term as Master of the Humanities Collegiate Division and Deputy Dean (formerly Associate Dean) on 1 July 2012.

Posted in Uncategorized. Tagged with Bill Brown, Division of the Humanities, Faculty, Mario Santana.

By hhayes

June 6, 2012

Three Faculty Members Win Teaching Awards

Three faculty from the Division of the Humanities were honored for their excellence and commitment to teaching. Elaine Hadley, Professor and Chair in the Department of English Language and Literature, received the Faculty Award for Excellence in Graduate Teaching and Mentoring, along with Wendy Doniger, Mircea Eliade Distinguished Service Professor of the History of Religions in the Divinity School, the Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations, the Committee on Social Thought, and the College.

Jason Merchant, Professor and Chair in the Department of Linguistics, will receive the Quantrell Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching.

From the University New Office:

Although each award has a distinct history and traditions, they all speak to the University’s dedication to fostering a culture of teaching innovation. That idea dates to University founder William Rainey Harper, who saw excellence in teaching as essential to maintaining a globally preeminent research university.

To read the full story and interviews with prize winners click here.

Posted in Uncategorized. Tagged with Awards, Divinity School, English Language & Literature, Faculty, Linguistics.

By hhayes

June 4, 2012

Martha Roth reappointed to five-year term

Dean Martha Roth, Chauncey S. Boucher Distinguished Service Professor of Assyriology, has accepted reappointment as Dean of the Humanities Division for a five-year term, effective July 1, 2012, The announcement came from President Robert Zimmer and Provost Thomas F. Rosenbaum, who pointed to the growth of the Division of the Humanities since she was first appointed five years ago, as well as her dedication to working to “refine the intellectual and educational directions of the Division for the future.”

During her first term as dean, the Division realized a twelve percent increase in the Humanities faculty, including two University Professors and four Neubauer Family Assistant Professors. The Center for Jewish Studies was also re-conceptualized and revitalized, and a new chair in Indian Studies commemorates the legacy of the Hindu spiritual leader Swami Vivekananda. Further, the Division has taken the lead in the burgeoning field of digital humanities. The president also lauded Dean Roth for being “an essential partner in the development of the Mansueto Library and the Logan Arts Center.”

From the University News Office:

“It is an honor to serve as dean of the Division of the Humanities at this visionary institution,” Roth said. “Throughout the University, our work is supported and advanced by the administration and staff at every level, by the dedicated faculty, and by the outstanding students. I look forward to working with my colleagues during my next term to keep our culture of rigorous inquiry, scholarly debate, and inspiring pedagogy alive and vibrant.”

Read the article from the University News Office here.

Posted in Uncategorized. Tagged with Faculty, Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations.

By hhayes

May 30, 2012

Comics Conference Makes Headlines

Despite competing with the NATO summit for attention, the recent Comics: Philosophy and Practice conference received wide acclaim in local and national media. Held May 18-20 at the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts, the free conference was organized by Hillary Chute, Neubauer Family Assistant Professor in English, and sponsored by the Richard and Mary L. Gray Center For Arts and Inquiry. The three-day conference was the first in an annual series of conferences sponsored by the Gray Center as part of a major new arts initiative aimed at fostering creative innovation at the intersection of academic inquiry and artistic practice.

The seventeen comic luminaries in attendance included Alison Bechdel, R. Crumb, Art Spiegelman, Chris Ware, Lynda Barry, and Daniel Clowes. Among the panelists at the conference was W.J.T. Mitchell, Gaylord Donnelley Distinguished Service Professor in the departments of English, Art History, and Visual Arts. Mitchell and Spiegelman shared the stage during a discussion called “What the %$#! Happened to Comics?”

From the Chicago Reader:

Mitchell and Spiegelman covered an enormous amount of ground during their conversation, holding forth on everything from William Blake’s poetry and comics in the digital age to New Yorker covers. Both men illuminated a fascinating history of images.

From the Chicago Tribune:

The rock scene had Woodstock. The jazz world famously gathered on the steps of a Harlem brownstone in 1958 for Esquire photographer Art Kane. In the 1920s, New York literati met at the Algonquin Round Table.

“It feels historic,” Bechdel said. “I realize how grandiose that might sound to someone who doesn’t know much about comics, but that’s the word that keeps coming to me. The whole thing just blows my mind.”

The Huffington Post covered the conference, and praised Professor Chute, who:

“did an amazing job of bringing together 17 of some the biggest names and influences in cartooning.”

Time Out Chicago covered the conference as well, giving a peek behind the scenes of pulling conference together.

How did Chute assemble this particular league of heavy hitters? Herself an author of a book and numberous articles about comics, she already had a number of close contacts in the field; most notably, she’d worked with Spiegelman as associate editor for MetaMaus. And she was friends with hometown hero Ware before moving to Chicago in 2010; through him, she began hanging out at Quimby’s and met Ivan Brunetti. “These people had all talked to me before, and they trusted me to put on an event that they’d want to be a part of,” she says. Because of their friendships, Ware and Brunetti committed early, and then it just began to flow: “Once some people started saying yes, other people started saying yes too, because they were excited to see those people.”

Read stories from the Chicago Tribune here, here, and here.

Read the Chicago Reader story here.

Read the Huffington Post story here.

Read the Time Out Chicago story here.

Posted in Uncategorized. Tagged with Faculty, Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry, Hillary Chute, Logan Center.

By Bill Hutchison

May 29, 2012

Faculty Members Receive Recognition from International Scholarly Societies

Two faculty members from the Division were among the eight from the University to be elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 2012 class of fellows. Martha Feldman, the Mabel Greene Myers Professor of Music and the Humanities in the College and Chair of Music, and Augusta Read Thomas, University Professor of Composition in Music and the College joined this prestigious group of scholars.

Read the University News Office story and find complete list of new fellows from University faculty here.

Wu Hung, Harrie A. Vanderstappen Distinguished Service Professor of Art History, East Asian Languages and Civilizations, and the College, has been elected to membership in the American Philosophical Society.

Wu Hung specializes in early Chinese art, from the earliest years to the Cultural Revolution. His special research interests include relationships between visual forms (architecture, bronze vessels, pictorial carvings and murals, etc.) and ritual, social memory and political discourses.

Muzaffar Alam, the George V. Bobrinskoy Professor in South Asian Languages and Civilizations, has been awarded the Sir Jadunath Sarkar gold medal by the Asiatic Society in Kolkata in recognition of his contributions to Mughal and pre-modern history.

Alam’s research interests also include the history of religious and literary cultures in pre-colonial northern India, history of Indo-Persian travel accounts, and comparative history of the Islamic world as seen from an Indian perspective.

Posted in Uncategorized. Tagged with Faculty.

By Bill Hutchison

May 21, 2012

Armando Maggi Featured in The University of Chicago Magazine

Armando Maggi, Professor of Italian Literature in Romance Languages and Literatures, discusses the revitalization of myth, fairy tales, and his forthcoming book in the current issue of The University of Chicago Magazine.

Maggi’s forthcoming book, tentatively titled, Preserving the Spell, examines the evolution of fairy tales over several centuries and at the same time calls for “a new mythology.” According to Maggi, most people are drawn to fairy tales even though they have lost their resonance and meaning in modern times.

From the article:

Still, he can’t help asking that same question: where are the new stories? “There is a longing for reality that has something to do with our frustration with fairy tales. We want stories that we can relate to, stories that seem real, that seem complicated, that are messy, but also stories of confronting danger or difficulty, as memoirists do, and overcoming them. Stories of triumph.”

Several hundred people attended Maggi’s Humanities Day lecture on October 22 entitled, “Preserving the Spell: Fairy Tales and the Future of Storytelling.” To view a video of this lecture visit the Humanities Day website. To read the article in the magazine, click here.

Posted in Uncategorized. Tagged with Armando Maggi, Faculty, Romance Languages & Literatures.

By Bill Hutchison

May 21, 2012

Live Webcast for Conference: “Comics: Philosophy and Practice”

A live webcast will be available for this weekend’s conference, “Comics: Philosophy and Practice,” which runs from May 18-20. The conference brings together 17 world-renowned cartoonists to discuss the past and future of graphic narrative.

From the University News Office:

“This is a historic gathering of the generation of cartoonists who defined the contemporary field, and I’m so pleased it is taking place at a university that has been a longtime location for word and image studies,” said Hillary Chute, the conference organizer.

Chute, the Neubauer Family Assistant Professor in English Language and Literature, is a leading expert on the study of comics and the associate editor of Art Spiegelman’s MetaMaus. She is the author of Graphic Women: Life Narrative and Contemporary Comics, which analyzes the work of conference participants Lynda Barry, Alison Bechdel, Phoebe Gloeckner and Aline Kominsky-Crumb.

The free webcasts will be available via UChicago Live on Friday, May 18 from 6 to 7 p.m.; Saturday, May 19 from 9 a.m. to 7:15 p.m.; and Sunday, May 20 from 10:30 a.m. to noon. “Lines on Paper” will be webcast on Sunday from 10:30 a.m. to noon.

The conference is the first in an annual series of conferences sponsored by the Richard and Mary L. Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry, a major new arts initiative aimed at fostering creative innovation at the intersection of academic inquiry and artistic practice.

Learn more about the conference, participants, and the schedule of events here.

Posted in Uncategorized. Tagged with Faculty, Hillary Chute.

By hhayes

May 17, 2012

MFA presentations at Logan Center

Graduate students will be exhibiting their 2012 MFA thesis projects, a requirement and rite of passage for every student who completes the master of fine arts program in the Department of Visual Arts. The presentations began May 2 and will continue to May 26, 2012 at the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts. This is the first time MFA presentations will take place in the newly opened Logan Center.

Read about “The Making of an MFA” in the fall issue of Tableau. To see a schedule of exhibits and openings visit the DOVA calendar.

Posted in Uncategorized. Tagged with Logan Center, Master of Fine Arts in Visual Arts.

By hhayes

May 15, 2012

Arts and Science Graduate Students Collaborate

For the second year, the Arts | Science Initiative has allowed graduate students in the arts and in the sciences to come together and work across disciplines on innovative research projects through the Arts | Science Graduate Collaboration Grants. A university-wide effort, the Arts|Science Initiative was established in partnership with the Office of the Provost and the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts, and with the support of the Divisions of the Biological and Physical Sciences, Humanities, and the Office of the Vice President for Research and for National Laboratories.

The initiative seeks to encourage cross-disciplinary dialogue and the pursuit of new connections in research and teaching at the nexus of art and science.

The following 2012 grant recipients presented their projects at the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts on April 26.

Nicole Baltrushes, medicine, Carmen Merport, English, and Sravana Reddy, computer science, “Trauma Under the Microscope: Collected Perspectives on PTSD.” Baltrushes, Merport and Reddy are creating a website that will offer a nuanced picture of trauma and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, one that includes interactive space for a variety of perspectives, including the art and writings of survivors.

Stacee Kalmanovsky and Clare Rosean, visual arts; and Philippe Tapon, medicine, “El Shaddai.” Kalmanovsky, Rosean and Tapon are creating a book that tells the story of two real individuals, Manoj and Shannon, each of whom have endured trauma. The story will integrate a scientific medical narrative with interpretive collage and drawings.

Chris Eastman, visual arts, and Markus Kliegl, mathematics, “Archetypes of Reasoning.” In this project, mathematical proofs become the subject of art. Eastman and Kliegl are fabricating sculptures through 3-D printing technology that communicate mathematical reasoning by way of shape, material, texture, color and opacity. Each sculpture will identify with a specific method of proof.

Jared Clemens, biology, and Marco G. Ferrari, visual arts, “Opening.” Clemens and Ferrari will explore the nature of neuroscience through a nighttime video projection onto the Surgery-Brain Research Pavilion at 5812 S. Ellis Ave. The project will include a montage of original and archival materials relating to various brain processes. (See video below.)

Sukanya Randhawa, chemistry, and Artemis Willis, cinema and media studies, “Performing the Night Sky: Heavenly Bodies, Microcosms, and the Moving Image.” Randhawa and Willis are examining the centuries-long connection between cinema and the sciences. How do scientists balance accuracy and aesthetics in their visual presentations, and how have their representational strategies changed over time?

William McFadden, molecular genetics; Heather Harden, psychology; and Mariusz Kozak, music, “The Music of Movement: Harnessing Motion Capture Technology to Measure Synchronization in Dance.” This team is using accelerometers to study gestures, especially those of dancers. The project involves experiments of rhythmic movement as well as the live feed of accelerometer data into a novel motion-based musical instrument.

Posted in Uncategorized. Tagged with graduate students, Logan Center.

By Bill Hutchison

May 3, 2012

Multi-University Team Launches “Alternate Reality” Game

Patrick Jagoda, Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow of New Media (2010-12) and Assistant Professor (beginning 2012) in the Department of English Language and Literature, is one of a trio of scholars directing a transmedia game project called Speculat1on, launched earlier this month.”Transmedia games,” also known as “alternate reality games,” are played across multiple platforms and media, providing an immersive experience that can weave itself into the player’s daily life.

According to Jagoda, “Transmedia games are an emergent art form and storytelling practice that taps into contemporary convergence culture.” Speculat1on is an eerie game about the culture of finance and the recent economic crisis. It is an immersive experience, and may have players looking over their shoulders in good-natured conspiratorial paranoia.

Jagoda directs the project with Katherine Hayles, a literature professor at Duke University, and Patrick LeMieux, a Ph.D. student in Art History and Visual Studies, also at Duke University. The interdisciplinary team is made up of participants from University of Chicago, Duke University, and University of Waterloo.

Learn more about the game at the Speculat1on website or watch the trailer; join the mystery by friending Nex Noitaluceps on Facebook here.

Posted in Articles. Tagged with Cinema & Media Studies, Digital Humanities, English Language & Literature, Faculty.

By Bill Hutchison

April 27, 2012

« Older posts Newer posts »