Lawrence Hall Gallery Installation

My roommate Zach Trow was part of an exciting art installation here at the University of Oregon. I wrote an article about the exhibit for the local campus newspaper, the Oregon Daily Emerald:

UO student Michael Williamson enters the white-walled gallery space filled with colorful shapes and forms. He walks the length of the room, examining each piece of art, before returning to the center to gaze at a dark and monstrously large painting dominating the middle of the room.

The graphite forms appear to writhe upon the canvas – their nearly human qualities vying with shapes that are clearly neither man nor woman. They catch the eye for a moment before otherworldly clouds and tendrils grasp the eyes’ attention away.

“I love it,” Williamson said. “I absolutely adore it.”

The painting entitled “Mass-Spore” is part of a larger exhibit in the floor level gallery of Lawrence Hall. Three University of Oregon art installation students are displaying their work. The unusual month-long student-driven exhibition is the result of hundreds of hours of work on the part of the three students.

UO senior Zach Trow, master’s student Lorie Heagle, and master’s graduate Chang-Ae Song joined together to independently fill a gallery usually reserved by professors for course-driven art projects. Entitled “View/Viewed,” the installation is composed of separate installation pieces by each artist.

The unifying theme of the three works is to challenge the viewer’s ideas of perception. And each artist approaches the theme in a different way.
Trow, a sculpture major, created an immersive sculpture installation that draws observers into the artistic space. In an attempt to explore the perception of value, he created a variety of replicas of luxury items that seemed at once realistic and clearly fake.

“I first started playing with the role of logos and how luxury items are found in visual advertisement,” Trow said. He modeled his sculptures after the two dimensional photos of Louis Vuitton products he found online.

His handbags, made out of wood and paint, are sliced in half. The open, un-painted wood is shown to the observer, while the highly realistic other side is reflected in mirrors to give the viewer a different perspective. Similarly, an unassuming black suit and purse stand to one side. It is quite difficult to realize that the suit is completely made of steel, and covered in a thick acetylene ash that looks like paint.

“I’ve always been interested in steel sculpture,” Trow said. “You are very involved with the piece of work.”

Lorie Heagle was similarly involved in her artwork, but in a different way. Heagle created a video installation that incorporated many different layers. Using projectors, she displays a film of herself laying in bed, restless in her sleep.

The artwork was intended to portray the complex thinking and layered experience that occurs at all times, but is particularly noticeable just before falling asleep, Heagle said.

Chang-Ae Song’s large painting summons some of the darker thoughts in those late hours. Her painting is beautiful, but also somehow disturbing. The reason behind this becomes clear when it is understood where the source of the art comes from.

“The original source of the figure drawings I incorporate into landscapes comes from online newspaper photos of the Abu Ghraib detainees.” Song said. “One photograph in particular shocked me. It depicted naked figures climbing on top of one another in a pyramid. It was the most appalling and humiliating photo I’ve ever seen.”

The figures are the direct result of photocopies of the Abu Ghraib photos. As such, the painting contains a strong feeling of unease. The viewer initially sees something of a classic landscape painting, but closer inspection reveals humanistic figures wrapped into contortions.

The installation will remain on display until Oct. 3. Lawrence Hall is the home of the School of Architecture and Applied Arts. Other art and sculpture is on display throughout the building on a rotating schedule during the academic year.

Tiffany Mills Dance Company

I wrote the following article for the Oregon Daily Emerald. Tiffany Mills is a distinguished graduate of the University of Oregon, and I attended her lecture on Monday. I'm not sure I communicated the extent of her success, but I figure that most people who are interested in the dance industry will understand my meaning:

Lithe figures writhe around each other in a chaotic jumble onstage, each being lifted high by the others before being pulled back into the group. The six artists are clothed in layers of tattered clothing and remind the viewer more of struggling survivors than the professional New York dancers that they are.

However, in time an order begins to take hold. The frenzy slows to a controlled movement. A lone woman emerges, balancing carefully upon the backs of the others. The men and women form a human chain, slowly guiding their cargo offstage.

Applause. But this isn't a live performance, the video, part of a larger piece entitled "Landfall," is part of a presentation by UO honors graduate alumnus Tiffany Mills. She visited the university campus on Monday, Aug. 4, to talk about her experience founding a successful New York dance company.

Mills spoke at the UO Robert D. Clark Honors College to a room of more than 15 faculty and guests, several of whom had taught Mills during years at UO.

"She's doing really cutting edge work," said Theresa Picado, the honors college communications coordinator. "It's really quite exciting."

Mills’ presentation comes at the end of a month-long visit to the Northwest with her husband, Andrew. She says she regularly returns to the West Coast during the summer to visit family and to teach.

This year she spent a week teaching at Conduit Dance in Portland, and three weeks at the Velocity Dance Center in Seattle, where she created a new piece.

“My language is movement,” Mills said.

In her presentation to the honors college, Mills said she is a Eugene native whose interest in dance began in her early years with tap lessons and gymnastics, and eventually involvement with musical theatre and the Eugene Ballet.

After graduating from the University in 1992, she received a Master's in dance from Ohio State and moved to New York in 1995 to work as a dancer and choreographer. Five years later, she had started the Tiffany Mills Company, a nonprofit dance studio.

Mills says she wants to use the company to diversify interest in dance as a medium for communication. To expand beyond the "same people at the same concerts," and to grapple with broader issues that affect a wider audience.

"'Modern' dance is a problem word," Mills said. "We're neither modern nor post-modern. We are contemporary but that's not the right word. We are creative moving beings. We need a title."

Following that creative vein, Mills' work in progress is entitled "Tomorrow's Legs," which incorporates movement and speaking to explore real stories in the dancers' lives.

Produced in collaboration with British theatre artist Peter Petralia, Mills used a Skype-equipped laptop to allow Petralia to work with the company from his home in England. "Tomorrow's Legs" will premiere in February at the St. Mark's Church in the East Village, New York.

To prospective dancers and choreographers who want to make their living in the industry, Mills has both words of warning and encouragement.

"Cultivate lots of skills," Mills said. Competition is forcing many professional dancers to work at several dance companies at once. Dance companies like hers, with a dedicated cast, are a dying breed, while "pick-up companies" with one-time dancers are becoming more popular.

"Gotta love what you do," Mills said. "That carries you on."

The Tiffany Mills Company offers internships to university students interested in the dance industry. More information can be found at http://www.tiffanymillscompany.org/.

Eugene City Brewery

It's been about a week or so since I've posted, mainly because I've been busy either working or watching the West Wing, but I did have time to get hired on as a freelancer at the Oregon Daily Emerald, the college newspaper of the University of Oregon.

The Olympic Trials are going on here in town right now, and I wrote an article published 30 JUN 08 that was about a local brewery owned by Rogue Ales that is going all out to support the Trials.

This is the original form of the article, as the published version had some editing:

Many of the bars and restaurants around Eugene have become Track Town-flavored during the two weeks of the Olympic Trials here at Hayward Field. Posters of track and field stars and televisions tuned to sports channels seem commonplace.

But the downtown Rogue Ales Eugene City Brewery is pulling out all the stops in its support of the event. Apart from a $10,000 donation to the Olympic Trials, the brewery kicked off the Trials with a Eugene celebration at all of the Rogue pubs.

“Track Town is about a town, not just Hayward Field,” said Jack Joyce, a founder of the Rogue River Brewing Co. He said he has supported track since he was a student at the University of Oregon in 1960, and the Track Town events at the brewery a way of showing that support.

In an effort to become Track Town Central for locals as well as the many visitors here for the trials, the pub house has opened up its doors round the clock and offered a breakfast menu including duck eggs.

The Eugene City Brewery has also started a shuttle service to Hayward Field, as well as pizza and beer delivery service and has put all of their award-winning Track Town Ales on draft.

People seem to appreciate the service. Though the first days were slower than expected, by early evening Saturday the building is filled with patrons parched by the hot day. Servers push past with trays laden with food and drink, while customers at tables talk and laugh together.

In one area of the brew house, an Adidas representative has set up a Wii console and a man and woman excitedly play the Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games videogame.

At a table outside, a group of people visiting for the Trials sit and enjoy the evening. Tom and Faith Miller, of Pittsburg, Penn., are the parents of Fawn “Deloma” Miller, a high-school sophomore pole-vaulter competing in the Olympic Trials. They are accompanied by her high-school coach Grey Slatcoff, and her NCAA coach Mark Hannay.

This is the second time they have come to the Eugene City Brewery, after finding out about the place from a pamphlet at their hotel, and all seem to be enjoying themselves.

“We’re doing just fine,” Faith Miller said. They are all fans of Northwest microbrews. The four had ordered tasters of some of the 34 varieties of beer on draft, and they were picking out favorites. Hannay called the large number of choices “kind of overwhelming.”

The Raspberry Mead was Faith’s favorite, while her husband liked the Hazelnut Brown Nectar. The Track Town Triple Jump pale ale was also well liked.

“There has not been one beer that I haven’t enjoyed,” Tom Miller said.

There was one beer that was a point of contention. The Oregon Golden wheat ale seemed to strike the wrong chord with Slatcoff.

“You can quote me on this,” Slatcoff said with a grin, “this is the worst beer I’ve ever had in my whole life.”

To each their own.

Increased Cost of Commuting

I finished writing this enterprise article today. I've been meaning to write about rising gas prices since the beginning of the term, but it wasn't until the end of the year that I found an opportunity to do so. This article was submitted to my Reporting II class with Prof. Mark Furman, and I also sent it over to Gini Davis at the Creswell Chronicle, where it hopefully will be published next week. Let me know what you think!

Commuting Costs on the Rise

A daily commute to work, a child athlete, and errands in town. What do these three things have in common? They are driving commuters to the fuel pump, which is up a third in price since last year.

“We’re on the road a lot,” said Christopher Presley, a Creswell resident who works in Eugene at Hynix Semiconductor.

Presley has been following the same 30 minute commute in for the last four years, and he estimates that with his wife’s Honda Accord he spends $170 per month in fuel for the commute alone, never mind his three sport athlete son, Garrett.

“I would like to ride a bike,” Presley said. But Creswell is 10 miles south of Eugene on the freeway so biking that distance isn’t viable, and he calls the bus service “really inconvenient.”

Presley said that he is thinking about buying a scooter to help mitigate fuel costs, though he does have concerns about safety. When asked if he might try out his son’s efficient homebuilt motorized bike, he replied, “Oh hell no.”

Rising gas prices are forcing drivers to be more frugal in their fuel consumption, and to consider cheaper ways of getting to work. Public transportation, carpooling and smaller vehicles can be good ways to drive down costs, but safety and convenience can be real concerns.

For many people, like Richard Milne of Eugene, conflicting schedules make it difficult to use public transportation or set up a carpool with co-workers.

“It’s not really an option,” Milne said. As a coach and teacher at Creswell Middle School, most of his colleagues have left by the time his athletes go home.

And while more and more people are using the bus system, the Lane Transit District saw an increase in ridership of 16 percent over the last year, LTD Service Planning and Marketing Manager Andy Vobora says that funding concerns make it harder to make it more convenient for people like Milne and Presley.

“There’s a couple of tough years coming up,” Vobora said. He said budget cuts and a slow economy have mixed with rising oil prices that “couldn’t come at a worse time.”

80 percent of LTD payroll funding comes from taxes, and recession worries are making the service look for other sources of funding. Vobora expects a five to ten percent decrease in bus service next year.

But there is hope for Creswell. The Creswell / Cottage Grove bus route is the highest utilized of the rural communities around Eugene, with busses serving the community 10 times each day. While expansion is unlikely, the service probably will not be cut down.

“Don’t expect any changes to that route,” Vobora said.

So if bus service isn’t expanding, how can people save money on gas?

Companies are beginning to take notice of the commuter’s dilemma. LTD is working with them to provide vanpools to help employees, where vans are rented by LTD, fueled by the company and driven by employees to provide a cheaper and more accessible solution.

Van-pools can also be set up by the drivers themselves via the LTD website. The vans are centered around Eugene, but there are van pools that run all the way down from Corvallis.

Hynix spokesperson Bobby Lee said Eugene Hynix recently began offering the service, as well as on site bus service, and that biking and traditional car-pooling are also very popular.

Despite these options, high gas prices remain frustrating for drivers.

“The number one talk is gas prices,” Presley said. Narrowing down that cause is difficult, and will probably play a large role in election politics and national policies to come.

Presley says that he and his wife are leaning towards Barack Obama in the upcoming Presidential election, in part due to Obama’s fuel policy.

“It’s affecting our voting,” Presley said.

But Milne doesn’t think that prices at the pump will impact who he will vote for.

“I don’t spend that much time thinking about it,” Milne said. He compares the fuel crisis to similar worries in previous eras.“It’s a new wave of change that’s going to happen in my lifetime.

“It’s futures in Wall Street,” Presley counters. “It’s people in Wall Street, it’s Americans getting rich on Americans.”

Fast Prototyping

I was talking to my roommate today about an article I read about a group of graduate students researching game development, and he suggested that I share the article on my blog. Four members of the Experimental Gameplay Project over at Carnegie Mellon spent a semester developing over 50 flash games, while noting their successes and failures as they did so. Their article over at Gamasutra is a great look into the process of developing creativity on demand, and it has implications that go far beyond the casual gaming industry.

The project started in Spring 2005 with the goal of discovering and rapidly prototyping as many new forms of gameplay as possible. A team of four grad students, we locked ourselves in a room for a semester with three rules:

1. Each game must be made in less than seven days,
2. Each game must be made by exactly one person,
3. Each game must be based around a common theme i.e. "gravity", "vegetation", "swarms", etc.

As the project progressed, we were amazed and thrilled with the onslaught of web traffic, with the attention from gaming magazines, and with industry professionals and academics all asking the same questions, "How are you making these games so quickly?" and "How can we do it too?" We lay it all out here.

Through the following tips, tricks, and examples, we will discuss the methods that worked and those that didn't. We will show you how to slip into a rapid prototyping state of mind, how to set up an effective team, and where to start if you've thought about making something new, but weren't sure how.

We hope these well-tested guidelines come in useful for you and your next project, big or small!

Supanchick Article Reflection

I have a couple things I wanted to say about writing the article on Tyke Supanchick.

First, it was quite interesting in the courtroom. Many people were rather emotional, and the atmosphere was very different from other trials I’ve been involved with.

It also gave me a chance to wear a good suit, and I was disappointed to see that most journalists did not follow suit (though Meghan from KVAL was an exception). I understand that it is just work to most people, but frankly I thought it disrespectful towards a man whose life was on the line.

Writing the article was relatively quick, though it was difficult to cram all the quotes I wanted in there. I ended up cutting out a good kicker because it made the article appear overly biased towards the prosecution. I bolstered the defense statements a bit, but it wasn’t until I found out the defense attorney’s name that I was satisfied.

Overall, most people who read my article found it slightly biased either towards the defense or the prosecution, which I understand is a good indication of neutrality.

I submitted the article to the Creswell Chronicle and the Junction City Tri-County News, which is why the article has a dateline, etc. However, the editor there had the following to say:

Tristan,

I appreciate that you wish to contribute to our newspaper, but it is customary in the industry not to accept freelance work on hard news stories such as the Supanchick trial.

Feature stories are a different matter though. We may accept features if they are current and within our coverage area.

Again, thanks for your interest.

Cheers,
Phil

The Corvallis Gazette-Times published the AP story a couple days later, which makes me think I should have submitted it there as well, but I just wasn’t sure how to go about doing that. Later I found that jurors had read and posted on this blog, and then I got a critique from Prof. Rea, who I BCCed the article.

All in all it was a very educational experience, and one that I enjoyed very much. I hope for as much success tomorrow at the Lane County budget hearing. The Creswell Chronicle sounded interested in that story, because it is part of Lane County, so hopefully I’ll get a clip.

Air Force Retardation Indeed

Recent American media coverage has focused on the primaries, but other news proceeds apace.

A senior Air Force general has publicly disagreed with Bush administration comptrollers who want to shut down the F-22 Raptor production program to save money. About 110 of the air superiority jets have been produced, with a research and development cost of about $60 billion.

Gen. Bruce Carlson disagrees:

The general, speaking to reporters Wednesday, said the Air Force was "committed to funding 380" F-22s regardless of the Bush administration's budget policies. "We're building a program right now to do that. It's going to be incredibly difficult ... but we've done this before."

Carlson's comments came as Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England was testifying before congressional committees. In an exchange during a Senate Budget Committee hearing Tuesday, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, asked whether the Pentagon would buy F-22s to replace aging F-15s, some of which have been grounded because of structural defects.

"I do not believe the F-22 will be the replacement for the F-15," England said. "I would expect instead to try and accelerate the [F-35] joint strike fighter," which he called a capable and far less costly replacement.

The office of the Air Force quickly back-pedaled after Carlson's statements, but they have already raised controversy. Some supporters believe that the Air Force's plans should be looked at separately from the costs of the war in Iraq, while their critics lambaste the F-22s as an unnecessarily complex and expensive aircraft built for a war that will never occur.

In my opinion, it is important to see the issue in context. The Air Force has responsibilities that extend far beyond the Middle East. They can't keep on using old aircraft, and they can't fulfill those responsibilities with only 180 air superiority fighters (the number of aircraft that have been funded). F-15Cs are a 30-year old platform, while F-35 Lightning IIs are at best a distant second replacement for the role of F-22s, and are pretty expensive as well (~$75 million per, compared to ~$125 million per).

Once you factor in the extended lifetime of the aircraft (at least 40 years), the decreased maintenance and personnel costs and the added capability that this aircraft provides, this isn't that hard of a sell. Adding another 300 aircraft to the existing 112 (meeting the Air Force's goal of ~400, or a 1 to 1 replacement of the F-15C) would mean an additional $1 billion cost per year for the lifetime of the aircraft - equivalent to the B-2 Spirit Bomber program. This price would further decrease if future advances extended lifetime of the F-22. Funding the fighters is a smart decision, and one that needs to be made.