Author: arybin

Assistant Director, Visual Resources Collection, University of Chicago
THATCamp Organizer

Categories
East Asian Modern - Contemporary News

1001 Chairs for Ai WeiWei

Chinese artist Ai WeiWei is still missing after having been detained while trying to board a flight from Beijing to Hong Kong in early April.

A question posted on Facebook about what we, as an arts community, can do to support the safe release of Ai Weiwei sparked great ideas, including one by curator Steven Holmes to reenact Ai Weiwei’s project Fairytale: 1,001 Qing Dynasty Wooden Chairs—an installation which was comprised of 1,001 late Ming and Qing Dynasty wooden chairs at Documenta 12 in 2007 in Kassel, Germany—in front of Chinese embassies and consulates around the world. This Sunday, April 17, at 1 PM local time, supporters are invited to participate in 1001 Chairs for Ai Weiwei, by bringing a chair and gathering outside Chinese embassies and consulates to sit peacefully in support of the artist’s immediate release.

Via Facebook.

Categories
Luna Tech Support VRC

Need Help Finding Images in LUNA?

Are you looking for images for a class presentation or paper? The VRC is here to help!

LUNA is the Department of Art History’s teaching resource of more than 165,000 digital images designed for use in conjunction with current classes. To access this database, click here. You will be prompted to login with a Cnet ID and password.

Next, you can browse the Art History Department Image Collection by clicking the center link.

Narrow your results using the What, Where, Who and When facets on the left.

Keyword search is at upper right. To do an advanced search, click the link under the keyword search box.

Limit your search to the Art History Department Image Collection, and then search any of the fields in the drop-down menu. Limiting to this collection allows searching of more specific fields, though you may find searching multiple collections useful as well.

Now that you’ve found some relevant images, you may want to return to them later. Use the Share This function to email yourself a link to your search results, or create a media group to access at a later time.

To learn more about searching for images in LUNA, please feel free to contact the VRC to schedule an appointment. We provide image searching orientation for individuals and small groups. Additional VRC-created LUNA tutorials and LUNA-provided flash tutorials are also available.

 

Categories
Architecture Modern - Contemporary News VRC

UofC Lantern Slides in the New York Times

Lantern slides that belonged to the University of Chicago Visual Resources Center were donated to Theaster Gates’ Dorchester Project, which was featured in a recent New York Times article.

Mr. Gates has combined a former candy store, a single-family house and a duplex across the street into a site of artistic and community change for a neighborhood that has suffered years of blight and cultural neglect. The installation is an entry in a growing art movement to create “hybridized” arts spaces that serve multiple functions, taking inspiration from installations in Houston and Los Angeles, as well as in Chicago’s Woodlawn neighborhood in a community center called the Experimental Station.

 

Categories
Images on the Web

Celebrate April Fools with an Edible Book

Happy April Fools’ Day! In celebration of spring, check out the International Edible Book Festival.

April 1st is the birthday of French gastronome Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (1755-1826), famous for his book Physiologie du goût, a witty meditation on food. April fools’ day is also the perfect day to eat your words and play with them as the “books” are consumed on the day of the event. This ephemeral global banquet, in which anyone can participate, is shared by all on the internet and allows everyone to preserve and discover unique bookish nourishments.

Enjoy!

Categories
American Architecture Exhibitions Museums

Department of Urban Speculation at the MCA

During the month of April an installation by Chicago architect Alex Lehnerer and his Department of Urban Speculation will be the featured UBS 12×12 exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art. This work, called Roadside Attractions,

looks at such ubiquitous and abundantly available urban elements, or “attractions” that are perpendicular to the road: doors, roofs, windows, lobbies, stairs, or walls. The exhibition examines how these can become protagonists, which, if exaggerated, over-extended, or misused, can form the urban between structure and situation.

The architect’s Department of Urban Speculation, founded in 2009,

was set up to create a link between Lehnerer’s work as practicing architect and urban designer and his academic role in the same fields.

Alex Lehnerer will give a free Artist Talk in conjunction with the exhibition on Tuesday, April 12th at 6pm. The “First Friday,” April 1st, marks the unofficial opening of the show. UBS 12 x 12 is a program at the MCA designed to feature new work by new artists. An archive of past exhibitions is available here.

Categories
Image Quality Luna Orders Tech Support VRC

Send Image Updates to VRC Staff

VRC staff members know that our faculty and students have subject expertise and can provide excellent additions to our image data. We want your contributions, and it’s easy to notify us! You can automatically generate a link to individual images or entire search results in LUNA. This function may be used to share images with VRC staff when corrections or updates are needed. Find the image or images you would like to share with VRC staff, click on the “Share This” tab, and copy the link into an email.

Please direct all image updates to visualresources@uchicago.edu.

 

Categories
American Images on the Web Innovative Technology

PhilaPlace: Explore the City of Neighborhoods

 

PhilaPlace is an interactive Web site, created by the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, that connects stories to places across time in Philadelphia’s neighborhoods. PhilaPlace weaves stories shared by ordinary people of all backgrounds with historical records to present an interpretive picture of the rich history, culture, and architecture of our neighborhoods, past and present. The PhilaPlace Web site uses a multimedia format – including text, pictures, audio and video clips, and podcasts – and allows visitors to map their own stories in place and time.

PhilaPlace creates a dynamic virtual view of a city, browse-able via maps, topics, and collection groupings. For example, clicking on the map view and then selecting “Verbal and Artistic Expression” from the left menu will bring up artistic sites throughout the city, plotted on a map. Click on each point of interest for more information including images.

Categories
Images on the Web Innovative Technology Modern - Contemporary Museums Renaissance - Baroque

Discover, Experience, and Share Art with Artfinder

Artfinder has partnered with over 400 museums worldwide to provide online access to hundreds of thousands of artworks. After creating a free account, Artfinder users can start building profiles in order to receive personalized recommendations. Users can “collect” favorite works and then share their virtual collections on Facebook or Twitter.

Right now Artfinder includes many Renaissance, Impressionism, and Baroque images. The selection continues to grow.

Via Deep Focus.

Categories
Images on the Web Innovative Technology

Interactive Online Tool for Image Annotation

Speaking Image, a web tool for annotating images, is available in beta. From their website:

Speaking Image is a web application which allows users to upload high-resolution images, work on them adding information over specific areas of the image and interact with other users through standard social network tools.

Videos describing how to use Speaking Image are available on their help page. The annotated version of Pablo Picasso’s Guernica shows some possibilities for annotating works of art with Speaking Image.

Categories
Powerpoint Presentation Tech Support

How to Bring Your Presentation to Class

As the end of the quarter approaches you will probably be presenting projects in class. Whether you’re using Powerpoint or Keynote, here are some best practices to keep in mind:

  • Load your presentation to Chalk (using the Digital Dropbox feature – click here for a PDF guide to Digital Dropbox).
  • Alternately, load your presentation to Webshare.
  • Bring a backup of your presentation on a flash drive. Flash drives are the second-best option, since not all drives are recognizable on all computers.
  • Resize images for use in Powerpoint or Keynote (to 1500 pixels on the long side). This will reduce file size and ensure your presentation loads quickly.
  • Be sure to always insert images from your computer by selecting Insert > Picture in Powerpoint. Dragging and dropping images creates links in some versions of Powerpoint (rather than actually copying the image), which is a problem if you use a different computer to present.
  • If your presentation contains video, be sure to save copies of those video files and load them to Chalk/Webshare or bring them on a flash drive. Videos display differently in different presentation tools and sometimes these slides may need to be re-inserted.

If you have any questions, please contact the VRC!