connections
elsewhere on this site
Kidz Connect Tampa / Amsterdam
Posted on May 4th, 2008 by dan.
Categories: Kidz Connect, teaching.
I just got back to NYC from several days’ preparatory meetings at the Patel Conservatory in Tampa, FL, where I met the educators and admin staff we’ll be working with for next month’s program. You can read the blurb at kidzconnect.org for more info about what we’re up to. It was really exciting to meet everyone — we’ve got some bright, sharp people on board, like Demario Henry (hip hop dance) and ranney (music), who’ll be collaborating with our students to develop a music and movement piece, er, song ‘n’ dance, if you will, in the final show, which will be a live, mixed reality performance by the Dutch and American students. This incorporation of music and movement is a new aspect of this, the second Kidz Connect program, which I’m particularly excited about.
Yes, Kidz Connect is now spelled with a Z instead of an S. F*cking domain squatters.
p.s. I have begun to Twitter.
Video workshop for artists at 3rd Ward
Posted on March 21st, 2008 by dan.
Categories: teaching.
Next month I am teaching a Video Workshop for Artists at 3rd Ward, an artists’ center in Brooklyn. This will be a good class for artists who are just beginning to use video in their work or those who have hit a stumbling block in doing so.
This hands-on, project-based workshop is ideal for those wishing to take their video work to the next level, and is aimed at artists with beginning or intermediate experience with video systems. Problems solved, questions answered, video mastered! Participants will broaden and deepen their practical and theoretical knowledge of video through the development of existing or new projects. Topics will include the ins-and-outs of video installation, hardware- and software-based systems for display, compression/conversion, and dynamic (live) control systems.
Specific technologies and techniques explored include compression and conversion (ffmpegX, Compressor, types of video: DV, HDV, etc) as well as hardware systems for display. We’ll cover general signal routing, sync’d DVD players, cameras, routers, distribution amplifiers, types of cables, the whole thing. We’ll talk about the nuts and bolts of installation - choosing projectors, keystoning, color matching, spanning multiple screens - and how to control them - MIDI, OSC, remote administration, overview of sensor technologies. For the slightly more adventurous, we’ll also probably touch upon video software Jitter and Quartz Composer.
Students are encouraged to come to class with a project in mind, but there will be plenty of material and tricks to try out that we’re sure you’ll be inspired. This class will conclude with a small group show at 3rd Ward.
Please help me spread the word and get the class filled! 
I’m also taking a class in light sculpture taught by Daniel Rossi, which came highly recommended. We’ll be making light fixtures out of bamboo, LEDs and old power adapters. 
we call him Dances With Humorousness
Posted on May 8th, 2007 by dan.
Categories: webcasting, teaching, art-making, connections.
Today my students taught me how to dance
In addition to playing with the new old My First Sony Electronic Sketch Pad I brought them
I made them laugh
And they liked the sketch pad
It will serve them well when they do visuals at the 80’s party this Friday
(I will bust the moves they taught me)
And tonight I worked on a patch to share with them: an exquisite corpse maker
It’s coming along
Also I am webcasting a nifty event on Thursday
Buda and Pest and me and you
Posted on March 17th, 2007 by dan.
Categories: travel, work, webcasting, Budapest, community, teaching, share, art-making.
I’m off to Budapest today to teach workshops and host a Share jam in the Ultrahang Festival. Wish me luck!
Thursday was the end of my five-week project at the Institute for the Future of the Book, helping them get ready for the next big alpha release of Sophie. It was a pleasure working with them and I hope to do so again. If you haven’t heard, check out the call for visualizations of Gamer Theory 2.0, which I’m happy to say I had a hand in formulating. It looks like we’ll be seeing some really nifty visualizations in the next couple weeks.
Also, if you’ve come here looking for info about my work in webcasting, please check out WebcastNYC.com for info about what we can do for you in the telepresent realm.
More for the back burner…
Posted on August 10th, 2006 by dan.
Categories: secondlife, art-making, music, programming, art, Grad school.
Last couple thoughts for the night:
- i’ve finally got time to play around with a media-textured avatar (think video skin)
- i want to make an avatar (in SL) that moves like Duchamp’s Nu qui descend un escalier #2 (nude descending a staircase #2)
- I learned a lot about texturing from the SL fora today. Check the end of the GIMPshop texturing tutorial I wrote last week for some illuminating reading on the subject.
- i made a couple ringtones last week — one of the tiny projects I squeezed in to entertain myself after long hours of teaching — in GarageBand and easybeat was very handy in the mastering stage*. Recommended.
* that is, playing it on my phone and transposing it in nudges until it sounded good.
thesis tidbit
Posted on August 9th, 2006 by dan.
Categories: politics, secondlife, nyc, education, structures, Grad school, philosophy.
As I said earlier today, I’m writing, writing, writing my thesis paper stuff, which, thank god, is not as painful as my writing process used to be just a few months back. It’s an engaging challenge putting my motivations for Kids Connect as clearly as possible…without using bullet points. 
Here’s one of my objectives, which will form the template/questionnaire for the thesis paper itself. Your feedback would be much appreciated. Here are some guiding words on clarity if you need them. If you prefer, add your thoughts on my page on the ZoomLab wiki.
Objective [1]: teach read/write media literacy and cultivate a critical stance to mass media
Why: One of the primary goals of Kids Connect (KC) is read/write media literacy. What does this mean? To be literate is to be able to read and write. A full understanding of media (new, mass and otherwise) necessitates practical know-how of audio and video recording/editing, creation and synthesis. [Quote Mark Twain about reading the river]. In order to be critical of media, you must be able to distance yourself from it. A practical understanding of the craft of media creation and manipulation cultivates that distance. Moreover, a one-sided conversation is a lecture. Few young people are learning how to master the written word, to produce a compelling argument in nouns and verbs. It is vital that young people learn to write media, to raise their voices over and around the constant shouting match and join the discussion.
How: In the first two weeks of workshops, students learn to shoot video with cameras of various quality, record audio with a variety of microphones, go on sound walks and video walks (experiential exercises in listening and seeing), composition and framing, editing and compression. Each technology is approached through exercises with storytelling, improvisational and/or experiential frames. For example, convey a given emotion through a sequence of still images. In the subsequent weeks, these skills are built upon in exercises exploring expression of identity, neighborhood and community experience. Example: take photos, audio and video of your home in your neighborhood, edit together a gestalt, share it through Second Life. Furthermore, we introduce our students to the world of live visual performance. They learn the techniques of live visuals and VJ-ing: how to mix and synthesize live, streaming, and pre-recorded media, how to express emotion and narative through abstracted light and sound, and to do this collaboratively over networks. They’ve [Some have] already given up on the written word [for formal purposes, e.g., an argument –thank you, Anton]: we teach them the new multimedia communication skills they passionately desire.
Evaluation: How can you tell if someone has developed read/write media literacy? By seeing what they’ve expressed through various media. At the end of the workshops, we will have a large collection of work by our students to examine, as well as many hours of teaching experience to consider. We’ll sift this for patterns and I will write it up in my thesis paper.
Done, wow.
Posted on August 8th, 2006 by dan.
Categories: performing, secondlife, nyc, education, live visuals, Grad school.
Wow, done.
Eight 13 - 15 year old New York City students + five 19 - 21 year old Amsterdam students + 1 co-director + four assistant teachers (later, two and a half) + nine guest teachers + two Amsterdam teachers X (five weeks here | eight days there) + three-ish administrators + a whole lot of help from other people, especially Andres :), == quite a lot of work. Kids Connect workshops concluded on Friday. I’m stunned and delighted at the relatively huge quantity of free time I have now. Back to three squares + eight hours sleep + a social life (! surprise) + a whole lot of thesis writing to do, not to mention the proposals for the next Kids Connect workshop ~= relatively not as busy but quite busy and it’s a good thing I like being busy. I gave Carl and IDMI a little posable man as a token of our thanks (I find it amusing that his IKEA name is “Gestalta”). Carl got quite a giggle out of it. I’ve got three minutes left on the remorseless Pester before it’s back to writing thesis stuff…what to say. Hmm. My friend Adam Kendall gave me a DVD of some of his work the other night at the Speigel Tent EyeWash show. I have yet to watch it but it’s a beautifully crafted CD and jewel case so it allures me. Perhaps in 10 minutes or so Pester will give me a break to check it out….au’voir.
Welkom!
Posted on July 24th, 2006 by dan.
Categories: teaching, secondlife, education, Grad school.
How can you argue with this video? These kids are cool.
Kids Connect is going very well. Our students are learning a lot, they like us, we like them, it’s an avalanche of busy and all good. Tomorrow we’ll open a window (read: video conference) with our counterparts in Amsterdam; we put the above video together in VJ-U today with Benton Bainbridge, who thought it’d make a great welcome when they join us on the Kids Connect island. More later, stories and pictures now:
in direct line with another and the next
Posted on July 21st, 2006 by dan.
Categories: art-making, teaching, secondlife, nyc, education, art.
Things are going very well.
We students and teachers are making lots of stuff for the island.
I made something today that gives me great pleasure. I took a photo of one of the Lawrence Weiner manhole covers and made it a 3D texture in Second Life. Click the pic for full effect.
Games 4 Change
Posted on July 4th, 2006 by dan.
Categories: 06-G4C, secondlife, nyc, education, Grad school.
Last week, Josephine and I attended the Games 4 Change conference, put on by the Serious Games Initiative (among many) and hosted at Parsons. It was an energizing experience that gave a definite boost to Kids Connect. We met other educators (many from Second Life), program directors, game developers, and one futurist; saw several really good panels on serious games, funding of, grassroots organization with, benefits of, big media interest in, building alternative spaces in, and reaching new audiences through; and — a subject I’m keenly interested in — the realization/evolution of the 3D Web through virtual worlds like Second Life. We met Barry Joseph et al from Global Kids (the first educational initiative in Teen Second Life) who not only gave two excellent presentations on panels but also gave generously of their time to share their learning experiences in Second Life with Josephine and me. A lot of this is covered in one their Holy Meatballs’ stories, which I’ll call What (Not) To Do When Starting an Educational Island in Teen Second Life (pdf) and it’s an essential read for anyone starting to teach in SL. We’re going to ask the Lindens to put our island next to theirs so our students can skip right over without a teleport. We may collaborate on some projects in the future, too.
Tomorrow is the first day of Kids Connect workshops in New York. It will be a somewhat messy start because of some typos in the mailing but no matter — most things start messy.
Today’s Second Life recommendation: check out Svarga (teleport link), an artificial ecosystem where all the plants, animals, rain, clouds, sun and terrain communicate with each other, grow and evolve procedurally a la The Game of Life. See Pathfinder Linden’s photoset of Svarga and the New World Notes post about it.