ARTS341 IMAGEPRACTICE

Course News

Wednesday Meet-up & Install

We're on for putting the project up on Wednesday at 4pm. The location is the empty storefront at 34 E. Main, on the corner of Walnut & Main in downtown Champaign. I'll have the posters that folks left with me on Monday, please bring supplemental materials that are needed for your project (those of you with digital 3D renderings, bring a couple of rendered images). If you've made any changes to your poster, bring that as well obviously.
Those of you with physical models, have someone from your group meet me at my office at 3:30 to help transport them.

View Larger Map

posted by ryan griffis at 1:29 PM Tuesday, December 9, 2008

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Vermont Town Turns to College in Bid to Guide Change

In today's New York Times, there's a story about Starksboro, VT and its attempts to create a sense of place with the help of students in a class titled "Portrait of a Vermont Town".

"The key is to project beyond immediate controversies over applications for subdivisions and to say, ‘Let’s envision the future that we would love to have,' " said Prof. John Elder of Middlebury, "at which point there is considerable agreement."

They have spent the semester attending town dinners, exploring farms and forest, and visiting dozens of homes. Some students grew up in places where sprawl is the norm, so they were eager to explore a small town and its singular sense of place.

"I'm guilty, like most of us, of really romanticizing Vermont life and Vermont towns," said Max Kanter, a junior from Phoenix. "Now I have a sense of the challenge they have to stay afloat."

Link

posted by ryan griffis at 8:46 AM Thursday, December 4, 2008

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Following the Break

Monday Dec 1, our first class back, groups should have (at minimum) mock ups of the poster concept and a clear plan for the secondary visualization. These can be worked out as a group, or done as individual sketches to be discussed by the group in class.
Our last reading will be Chapter 4 ("Working with Place") from the Cresswell text (the 5th chapter is a sort of annotated bibliography) . I'm sure many of you are glad to see that phrase...
Your summary post wille be due Wed, December 3.
Final group projects (Transforming Place) are due Monday, December 8. We'll have some kind of exhibition of the results on our last day of class, on the 10th.
Hope you all have a great break (+ Thanksgiving for those of you who celebrate it), although many of you seemed to have started the break early...

posted by ryan griffis at 1:43 PM Monday, November 17, 2008

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For Monday, Nov 17

1) Groups need to have first draft proposals, in some visual form(s) and descriptions as necessary. These proposals should include photo-research of the site you're working with - think of the perspectives that will best facilitate the presentation of your proposal.
2)Your archival visualization montages capturing the "feeling" of your place ideas (that we started in class on Wed) should be uploaded to Flickr (remember to optimize your image to 72ppi if it's not already).
A map of our 2 locations.

posted by ryan griffis at 3:47 PM Wednesday, November 12, 2008

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Speaking of Global Senses of Place...

(Professor of Urban Planning) Ken Salo will facilitate an open discussion with transnational studies guest speaker Prof David McDonald on Thursday November 13 at noon in Rm 223 Temple Buell Hall on "Spatial Inequality, Racism and Environmental Justice Movements in the Global South."
Temple Buell Hall is located at 611 Taft Drive, near the Education Building, south of the quad.
I will try to attend this discussion (but also have and will make a post here about it, but if anyone else makes it, please write a post to your blog about it (will be counted as extra credit, in the form of an extra reading post).

posted by ryan griffis at 9:44 PM Monday, November 10, 2008

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For Monday November 10

You should have your groups formed for project 3.
Other things we will do:
1) discuss Cresswell, Chapter 3 (which you should already have read)
2) discuss Park Fiction & Buster Simpson short readings (look at this before we meet for class - it's not long or difficult reading)
3) watch Flag Wars documentary on gentrification
Also remember that groups should also be starting the interview process - interviews need to be completed by Wed, Nov 12. I'll be discussing these with the groups then.

posted by ryan griffis at 8:05 PM Wednesday, November 5, 2008

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Event of interest, Wednesday, Nov 12, 1pm - Beehive Collective

For anyone interested in intensely detailed graphics and social justice causes, you should definitely check out this event if you can.
"Plan Colombia", a visual exploration of globalization and militarism in Latin America, by The Beehive Collective.
Wednesday Nov. 12 at 1 pm in the TBH Atrium
The Beehive Design Collective is a non-profit, volunteer driven, political arts organization based in eastern Maine. The group's mission is to "cross pollinate the grassroots" through the creation of images as an effective medium for deconstructing and educating the public about complex geopolitical issues.

The bees create collaborative, hand-illustrated posters of dizzying intricacy which are patchwork "quilts" of personal stories related to them in their travels by communities in the global south. In their incendiary "Plan Colombia" presentation, the bees take participants on a "tour" through a larger than life graphic narrative of the multifold effects of globalization and "drug war" policies in Andean region of Colombia. Interweaving anecdotes and statistics, they perforate dubious "drug war" rhetoric and expose broad connections between militarism and resource extraction.

This graphic is the product of many exchanges about the issue of colonialism in the Andean Region of South America that took place between our collective and organizers over the spring of 2002 in Ecuador, Colombia and the U.S. These exchanges of information and inspiration were collaboratively sewn together into a quilt of images, that are organized into a circuit of progressions and contrasts that inform and engage the viewer throughout their journey of the graphic.

posted by ryan griffis at 10:39 AM

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Previous Posts

| Wednesday Meet-up & Install | Vermont Town Turns to College in Bid to Guide Chan... | Following the Break | For Monday, Nov 17 | Speaking of Global Senses of Place... | For Monday November 10 | Event of interest, Wednesday, Nov 12, 1pm - Beehiv... | For Monday, November 3 | Class Information for Week of October 27 | Event of Interest, Monday, Oct 20, 7pm

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