Category Archives: Session Proposals

Proposals for unconference sessions from THATCamp participants.

MAKE Session Proposal: Electric Origami

We experiment with combining art and technology in our classes at UNC Asheville.   Our projects focus on using technology for creative self-expression, and our classes include activities such as circuit bending, electric origami, microprocessor coding, 3D printing and milling.

In this make session, we will lead participants in creating electronically enhanced origami.  The project is suitable for beginners; both the folding pattern and the circuit are simple.  And the end product is a fun expression of the synergy of art and technology. Because of the hands-on nature of the session and material constraints, we will cap the session after the first 20 people to respond to this post.

Rebecca Bruce and I will both lead this session.

MAKE Session Proposal: Digital Humanities Best Practices

The start of a digital humanities project comes with many considerations, but what you might not think about are the legal complications that could arise later. In this session, we’ll work together to build a best practices document to serve as a guideline for scholars engaging in collaborative digital humanities work. Ideally, the document will ensure that deadlines, deliverables, and funds are clearly communicated, and that contract terms are transparent and mutually-acceptable. It will also address questions like: Who owns which aspects of the project? What kind of contract should be used, and what are the legal ramifications of collaborative work? With your help, we’ll make a document that solves problems.

Talk Session Proposal: Got Data Visualizations?

We propose a session on the use of data visualization tools in the field of art history. In response to large sets of art market data becoming available, we are interested in visually representing relationships within the data to allow for more dynamic analysis of the historical exchanges. Large data set analysis like this provides for a unique opportunity to challenge or supplement traditional art historical narratives through a dynamic process that is iterative and multi-perspectival.

A few questions for discussion are: Do you have large sets of structured data? How are users accessing your data? Do you use any data visualization tools, if so, which and why? Have you hit any roadblocks on your path to aesthetically engaging data visualizations? With unlimited resources, what data visualizations would you build to represent your research? We are specifically looking at art market data but are open to all types.

Teach Session – Creative Coding 101

I am open to teaching or co-teaching a 2-3 hour workshop that would be for beginners and non-coders to get their hands dirty and have some fun learning the basics of computer coding with a focus on the visual and interactive. I could teach it in Processing or in P5.js

I have been teaching creative coding to artists and designers for over 8 years so we can adjust on the fly to explore some things together depending on the interests of the attendees.

Project Demo: METRO – from animation to VR

I am currently working on a project where I am taking a body of work from an initial animation to a VR experience for the Oculus Rift. It started with a set of 3D scans of a day of riding a light rail train which I then turned into a single channel animation using open source 3D software. I then was asked to recreate the project as a 4 walled surround visual experience and am not exploring what it means and what is technically involved in porting the project into an interactive VR space with Unity for the Oculus Rift. I would share the process and love to talk more about creating artworks in VR space in terms of balancing control, interaction, fidelity, performance and so on.

You can see the original project here: digitalcoleman.com/METRO-Re-De-construction

Talk Session Proposal

I’m interested in a discussion of anything about animation. Topics could include working methods in animation process, 2D or 3D digital pipeline, artistic inspiration, the synergy of video games and film or in the academic side of how instructors are developing their courses, key principles and student assignments (objectives).

Talk Session: Experiments in re-contextualizing our culture

I’d like to propose an informal discussion having to do with a few of the projects I have been working on for the last couple of years surrounding the re-contextualization of cultural heritage artifacts. These are usually small experiments, but have grown to be “projects.”

1) Curatorial Poetry is a stream of decontextualized “descriptive” texts pulled from museum collection meta-data. These snippets of information, separated from their full object records and image representations, provide the possibility of a different entry point to the object.

2) Curatorial Poetry Derivatives — Encoded Catalog & Robot Readable Design Museum – These “iterations” continue the conversation around re-contextualizing information, with the hopes of creating a new understanding through the use of new audiences and entry-points into a knowledge-base.

3) Object Phone – Object Phone was an attempt to give our objects “voices.” The end result is a phone number that you can call or text to receive information about any object in our collection. It opens up the concept up an audio-tour, raises questions about accessibility and most importantly gives our objects their own voice!

4) Moment’s Notice – Moment’s Notice is an “experiment in correspondence.” This is a personal project of mine that I have just started. In a nutshell, people sign up, I send them a roll of 35mm film, they return it, I process it and scan it and make a permanent archive website. This project is about correspondence. It’s also about the dying art of analog photography. It’s about the avalanche of imagery posted to the internet every single second of our lives. It’s about slowing your brain down, and it’s about breathing. I’m curious about selection, and curation, and building a long lasting archive of images that communicate something cerebral–something that lives outside the current framework.

In the discussion, I would like to present these projects ( quickly ) and then discuss how and why I can to do them. I’d like to talk about how we as artists and sometimes employees are motivated to explore concepts like these, and how we can carve out time in our busy lives to make them come to life. I’d like to talk about how technology plays a role but is not necessarily the centerpiece of the conversation.

-micah

Talk session proposal – student e-journal publishing

I’m interested in hosting a session on the use of web publishing in the classroom, specifically in the format of multimedia e-journals. I’m teaching a course next term where my class will be co-editing an online e-journal using WordPress, so I plan to share the course structure and demo our site, and hope to get feedback and maybe generate some brainstorming on best practices for facilitating and producing collaborative student publications online.

Talk Proposal – Teaching with digital tools

I would be interested in creating a course that combines tools and content, specifically for students of art history.  I think we could do a better job of introducing digital tools and methods to undergraduate students, possibly by combining the content with the tool-set.  I’d like to see a combination work/play session, where a group could come up with syllabus that could do this for maybe something as overarching an art history survey class or for maybe something as specific as a set of archival works.  What digital tools would we introduce to the students and use within the class? How would be balance the technical learning with the reading materials? How much of the research methodology processes would need to be covered? This way students could be learning digital tools at the same time that they are learning about the content and theories that make up the discipline of art history.

Talk Session Proposal – Digital Humanities & Digital Art – Artists, Humanists, Boundary Crossing, and Educational Practice

Co-Organized by Ann Pegelow Kaplan

As discussions of digital humanities grow, along with interdisciplinary teaching practices in digital fabrication and critical making, how do these intersect with digital art the creative use of digital tools? Universities and colleges are increasingly instituting maker spaces, installing software, and buying studio tools such as 3D Printers. What is the relationship of these tools and spaces to studio art departments? How do we enable better collaboration between those with design and fabrication training and those who are exploring new frontiers in their fields? This session will both explore the practical logistics of maker tools and spaces – and consider the role of digital arts within digital humanities. Co-organizers plan to create a session publication with participants focusing on the overarching issues, disciplinary intersections, and the pragmatics of digital humanities and digital arts.

(This is a modified version of the original proposal)