THESIS, UPDATES, COMICS

IN THAT ORDER.

Hi. It's been a while. How have you been? I've been better myself, but at least I have my voice back. A nasty cold seems to have been making its rounds of the entire population of Cincinnati, it seems, and I am no exception.

So, first things first: THESIS. I just turned in my draft to my professors, and had my visual critique. I'm in the second round of the Dry Run show so I have a week to think about presentation and hanging the work... but I'll leave you with some images of my favorite pieces, and a link to the google doc of the draft if you feel inclined to read it.

UPDATES: I have been working on gifs in my photography class, and I think they're turning out pretty rad if I do say so myself. They're big, so I'll post one here (EDIT: I'm not sure why this one isn't animating but just go to my tumblr and look at them, guh).

Also, Cry-Baby and The Big Lebowski are coming up soon. Here's where you'll find more information on that.

COMICS: I've been working on the Order of the Golden Bear wordpress site, and while it's not quite up and running yet, I did put up all of Third Culture Kid. So go and read, and follow, and be on the lookout for more things! Also, Alison Bechdel will have a new book out soon and I've never been so excited.

Hetero-Types: Electron Microscope Tour

I'm late with this, it happened over a week ago, but... the tour with the Hetero-Types show to the Engineering Research Center's scanning electron microscope went really well! It was David Rosenthal, Laura Fisher, a couple other photographers from DAAP, and me. Dr. Rosales and his graduate assistant Manna were very accommodating with us, they didn't even mind us yelling "TAKE THAT PICTURE" every few seconds.

The best part for me, though, was helping Dr. Rosales prepare the samples. In order to be properly viewed by a scanning electron microscope, samples must be conductive--in this case, coated with a gold-palladium alloy. Samples were cut down, affixed to carbon tape, and placed in a vacuum chamber. Electricity was run through the gold-palladium, which caused it to vaporize and settle on the samples (it also glowed purple, which was cool to see).When I was smaller I had a kid's microscope, complete with slides, and I got rather good at putting together various organic and inorganic slides. So I really enjoyed putting on gloves and cutting little finicky bits of things and using tweezers to settle them just so on the dime-sized sample holders.

Actually viewing them in the microscope was something else, though. One of the samples was a fresh leaf from my creeping charlie houseplant. The leaf was fresh enough to still retain water--which made it more vulnerable to disintegration.The higher the magnification, the more focused the beam of electrons becomes. If the sample is improperly coated, or if it retains too much water, it will start to disintegrate. Which is what happened here.

The other samples were: a housefly, a lacewing fly, the inside of a seed pod, a gingko leaf and a butterfly wing.

This is (presumably) pollen, caught on a fly's back.

Flies are hairy, hairy bugs.

Closeup of a gingko leaf.

Scales of a butterfly wing.

Broken scale on a butterfly wing.

The spongy inside of a seed pod.

All the magnifications are specified on the images. These are not all the images, just the ones I liked best. All 26 can be viewed on my Photobucket account if you want to see more.

What I did on the Net today: personas

So, I've been thinking.

My last Net Art project resulted in this: mot-ljuset-le.tumblr.com. Before that, I was doing YouTube video performances (like the Pony response video). I have my main blog, mid-atlantic ridge, and one for reblogs, ebolazaire. I have a facebook page. I have a photobucket. I have a livejournal and a deviantart, both mostly inactive.

Somewhere in there, there's a sort of Internet-version of myself, which is quite like me, but not wholly so. It's an inadvertent Internet persona, the version of myself that exists on the Internet, that may be a little more eloquent than the person sitting at the keyboard, that may be a bit more raucous and raunchy than the person who presents in the classroom. I make decisions on the Internet, not to build this Internet persona, but simply to react to whatever virtual situation has presented itself. Comments and writing and reblogs are generally automatic--I am not representing anyone but myself (or, at least, my Internet-self), why would I think about it too hard?

So... what if I DID think about it? What if I went about creating an Internet persona totally from scratch? It's like building a character in a story, in a totally disjointed way. There's no narrative, just an entire person to create, to be viewed through a screen. Nothing is explained, there's just photos and brief captions and "likes" and reblogs. When you get on the Internet, you don't go about laying out your life's story on every website--you simply jump in, like a stage scene, starting from the middle. So what if I decided to simply start monitoring everything I did on the Internet, on certain websites, to appear to be anyone other than the person I am now? It would have to be exhaustive in order to be convincing. I would have to create a person totally from scratch, in order to act like him/ her/ hir on the Internet.

I'm not sure I could do it. I am not a good actor--I am too firmly planted within my own head. I can imitate and follow a script--pure creation is a different story.

Impersonation is possible, but only if I could find someone to switch Internet-bodies with (like in that old Goosebumps story where the guy switches bodies with a bee). Jeremy Bailey mentioned in his lecture doing a similar thing with Petra Cortright, I think... but that was only on facebook. It involves a massive amount of trust, not to mention feeling comfortable with baring very private details of your Internet life with someone. And I'm going to go right ahead and say that I'm not that close to anyone, not even my sister or my boyfriend. I could consider letting someone into my facebook account, maybe, but that's mostly because what I have on facebook is not very sensitive. Other venues of the Internet are a different story.

I don't know if I'll end up doing this, at least not immediately. It will take massive amounts of Interneting, which I simply do not have time for right now. Perhaps in the future I will have the time to build a whole new being out of a few Internet profiles.

My computer is home!

Yaaay! I had to have the logicboard thingie replaced, since it just up and died on me... but now I can post photos and write the rest of my proposal for the Prairie show and waste time on tumblr and watch Mystery Science Theater 3000 again!

HUZZAH!

As for artworks... I've been on vacation the last ten days or so, but I did do a little series of tiny ink drawings in my sketchbook as well as a schematic drawing of a sandwich. So eventually I suppose I'll get around to scanning those and posting them. I also took a good many pictures, but with a film camera. I did take some digital images with my cell phone and with my dad's full-frame Nikon, but I have to go through them and edit them so they'll follow in another post.

Work for the show (which might be called something like Hetero-types) is progressing, artists are being collected and negotiated with, I'm meeting with David Rosenthal on Monday to discuss things.

Tonight is The Denton Affair's production of Cry-Baby, which hopefully will be a great time. We've done a pretty good job with costumes and props, I think. I made a car muffler out of a giftwrap tube and some cardboard yesterday and I even figured out how to make my hair do this:

Following are some pictures from my cell phone that I did get uploaded, but more will follow (and be posted on my tumblr, which is slightly more active than this blog, hah).

Schooool's out!

Alice Cooper isn't quite right on this one, I've got a year left... but hey. Summer.

Things that will be happening this summer: I will continue making comics (albeit more sketchy, journal-y ones). I will maybe do some Japanese tutoring. My sister will be in a production of Rigoletto as a supernumerary actor. I will be co-curating a show with David Rosenthal of Prairie Gallery. I will be in a shadow cast for John Waters' Cry-Baby (I'm playing Dupree) in August.

DAAPworks this year was pretty spectacular. I'll just let you see for yourself. I tried to document as much as I could. (I'm so proud of the people who had comics, my friends Alex and David, as well as Dan--there have been comics as thesis projects in the past and these were by far the best I've seen).

Mike about to grope the comics display.

Carol Tyler (in the pink) organizing things.

Amanda reading our kramer's ergot pages.

Performance.

Work by Alex Hananel (in the black frames).

Work by Laura Fisher.

Laura Fisher's photo booth.

Work by Dan Wolff.

Work by David Miranda-Klein.

Work by Jacob Riddle.

Work by Michelle Ulmer.

Work by Caitlin Robinson.

Work by Chris Thompson.

And of course there was so much more. I just didn't get pictures of it all.

Guess what I'm doing again

If you guessed intaglio (etching), then huzzah! You get a virtual biscuit.

For Carol Tyler's comics class, I am starting to work on a collage comic that will involve etching, sewing, and (hopefully) black-and-white photos. I'm drawing inspiration from this, amongst other things (this is only one page of it, click the link for more):

 As for photography with Janie Stevens, I am actually going to work on something very similar, but less sequential and more conceptual in nature. And I will utilize the Van Dyke process, as it is an alternative processes class. I'll be doing these, but in a more photographic form.

Duck-a$$

Jordan Tate says that everyone should have a place to put art that's not really "there" yet, or just plain bad. So I started a tumblr, just so I have to keep posting, even if it's horrendous stuff. I'm hoping it will keep me on track with the YouTube project, even while I'm working on school things this coming quarter.

P.S. This:

 (Reblogged from thisisnthappiness)