Fall 2009

I will be representing the Experimental and Media Arts area of the department of art in the GARC committee for the next two academic years.

Primary agenda items to which I will be contributing are:
-space reconfiguration in Regis: working with Marc Knierim and area representatives to identify and reconfigure under-used spaces in Regis. the focus is to create spaces for cross-area collaboration for the graduate students
-coordination of materials for the new art department web-site.
-coordination of EMA incoming graduate student applications

Fall 2009: Development of the new Art Department website is underway. As chair of this departmental committee, I am acting as the main organizer and communications agent between the department, CLA-OIT and the CLA Web Team. All coordination of the department's efforts are organized through this website. First draft of text revisions will be gathered by 12/9/09; in the mean-time, I will be working with area heads and staff members to get all necessary content components in place for the CLA Web Team. For more information about tasks and time-line refer to the above website.

Fall 2010: Development site of the Art Department website is now on-line and being regularly revised.  In addition to collecting and generating necessary/missing content for the site I am coordinating a larger effort to the departmental site to a much more visual appearance (by consisten attachment of current stills and videos to various site nodes) as well as a more communally maintainable one (by creating areas/roles within the site/staff).  

Fall 2009: COLA 3950/5950

Title: Make Anything Talk to Anything: Cross-Media Real-Time Programming with Max/MSP/Jitter

This course is intended for visual artists, musicians, designers, computer scientists, engineers and architects (among others) interested in exploring real-time interactive software applications. Such applications allow translations/interactions among various media; examples include sound to video (e.g. music visualizers), gesture to sound (e.g. the theramin, Wii controllers as musical instruments), gesture to video (e.g. motion tracking for interactive visualizations, interactive architecture), interactive sculptures (e.g. sensor controlled mechanics, robotics, lights, LEDs). The Max/MSP/Jitter new media programming environment will be the primary instrument of the course. Max/MSP/Jitter is a graphical programming environment that provides user interface, timing, communication with electronics, communications with the web, MIDI support, real-time audio and video synthesis and processing. The course will be a rigorous boot-camp for this instrument; after the initial introduction in the first third of the semester, the course will be project-based where each student will develop several independent projects/works/experiments. The course is offered as an upper-level undergraduate/lower-level graduate rank. In-class meeting hours will be similar to those of studio courses in the Art Department, i.e. two three-hour sessions per week. Like other studio courses, much of that time will be spent on supervised individual work. In addition to the 6 weekly in-class hours, students are expected to considerable time outside of class mastering this powerful instrument. Students are encouraged to collaborate with one-another; collaborations with the instructor are also possible. Familiarity and comfort with laptop-based technology is a pre-requirement; this includes experience any of a variety of desktop publishing tools (Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, Dreamweaver, GoLive, QuickTime, Final Cut) as well as a general sense of interest and curiosity in the creative potentials of the laptop and software platforms. Previous programming experience of any kind is welcomed but not required. Similarly, previous experience with Max/MSP/Jitter is not required but also welcomed.

For more information see the class blog.

Fall 2009:

I am the EMA area representative for the visiting artist committee, chaired by Jenny Schmid and Chris Larson. In addition to recommending and reviewing recommendations for visiting artists, my primary goal is to create an online presence for the visiting artist program to 1) coordinate organizational efforts and 2) to make the programs activities more publicly visible.

The visiting artist committee's new website is here. Committee members are charged with gathering and submitting appropriate content for this site. The new Art Department website will be able to receive feeds from this site in order to make our activities visible on the primary art department website as well.

During August 3-7, 2009, Robin Mandel and I taught a week-long intensive workshop on physical computing at Anderson Ranch. The workshop was titled Physical to Digital (see Anderson's flier).

I created a course blog that includes arduino code, references for working with kinetics as well as videos of the students final projects.

I was invited by Dave Schroeder (of Pilot Vibe) to give a lecture at the his annual Flashbelt conference. My presentation was primarily on MAW's use of a mix of digital and physical technologies to create real-time animation for public projections (i.e. "livedraw").

Spring 2009: ART 3350/5350: Kinetic Sculpture

Professors: Chris Larson, Ali Momeni

This class introduces students to the diverse practices of movement and rhythm applied to sculpture. Instead of a literal translation of kinetic sculpture as sculpture that moves, we seek to deconstruct presuppositions about the limits of this practice and its history. By exploring notions of the body, movement, function, gesture and the relationship between objects in motion we will find expansive ways to collaboratively redefine this medium.

For more information see the class blog and the course syllabus.

Spring 2009: COLA 3950/5950 Art for the People/Art on Wheels

The second season of Art on Wheels, the course that allows students to get involved with Minneapolis Art on Wheels, is here! For more information please see the class blog, and more specifically the syllabus.

As a founding faculty member of the Collaborative Arts program, my colleagues and I have devised the major/minor requirements, established the core curriculum, created the fundamental COLA 1001 course, as well as a number of to-be-permanent course, currently offered as workshops (among the Art for the People/Art on Wheels, the precursor to MAW.

Spring 2008, Fall 2008
Together with the two other core faculty of COLA, Michael Sommers and Guerino Mazzola, and our director Michael Cherlin, we finalized and submitted the following:

1) Requirements for a COLA major in the CLA
2) Description of the COLA Fundamentals course (i.e. COLA 1001, The Art of Collaboration). The course is approved, and will be co-taught by all COLA core faculty.