Compton, 1895, Der Mauvais Pas an der Aiguille Méridionale d’Arves

All,

Hi, please be sure to think about working on more of your Achievements as we wind down the term.   The term is going quickly and there are still opportunities for Achievements, but also the window of opportunity is closing fast.

Here are some that we think could be taken advantage of before the end of the term.

**********

Failure is an Option:  This one is actually easy and VERY important in terms of connecting to your research and Creative Display process.

1.  What was the “failure”?

2.  How will you learn from this failure and build upon it for the next stages of your creative and/or research process in the seminar?

3.  Reference the BBC article “Viewpoint: How creativity is helped by failure” and how the writing connects to your specific failure and/or your learning from that failure (article link: http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-34775411?post_id=10207428879533532_10207428879453530)

4.  (If possible answer this, but may not fully apply to the failure you are addressing so #4 is optional)  Do you have examples of how this failure has informed experiences you are having outside of the seminar; such as, did what you learn from this failure help you in another class, work, your approach to a project, your mindset about the failure, etc.?   Or did you have a “failure” learning experience outside of the seminar that is informing ways in which you are approaching your work in this seminar?  (Thank you, Erin Meyer, for this idea!)
**********

Events Specialist:  Still time to attend a couple outside of class events and report on them!
This new achievement is to attend at least 2 outside of class academic events (talks, performances, etc.) and write up a “reflection” reaction posting about your event attendance in your blog Journal.  If you choose to write up a Journal entry for this achievement be sure to include “Event Specialist” in the title so we can easily identify it.

Your Journal Postings will need to answer the following questions:

**********

Resources Librarian:  Have you submitted all 3?  If you have we still would like more!

Did you provide the instructors with more than three resources to use on the course site (ones the instructors approved)?

**********

Others?   Keep working on the Achievements!  Remember you need 5 to bring up your grade one letter grade, and 4 to bring it up by half a letter grade.

Best,

Robert and Julie

Hello all,

It was great to see so many of you for pizza at Pegasus last night.  We enjoyed our time with you finding out about other interests in your lives, what types of flavors you like on your pizzas, where you are from and where you hope to go. It was nice to see many of you connecting in new ways with one another. It wasn’t quite like this, but you get the idea:

Here is some feedback from yesterday’s midterm presentations that we think apply to everyone’s project at this time.   Though each project is at a different stage, these areas of improvement and refinement are important to each one. Consider where your project is and how you can apply these categories to your work at this point in time.

*Return to and apply the FutureLab chart re: scientific, artistic, and social activity.  How does mapping this help establish the central core of your project? How does it help you define what science you are exploring, the art you are exploring, and the social application of the project?  This can be tough to define but is important to the work you are developing.

*Define what you want to learn through this project, whatever approach you take.  How can you share this learning goal in a clearly defined purpose statement?

*Make a firm decision about what you are doing with this project and run with it. While running, have fun! And don’t be afraid to get muddy in the process.

* Make a timeline/schedule for yourself between now and the final presentations during week 10. Use a backwards design style by looking at where you need to be and defining the steps along the way that you need to get there.

*How do you state the core idea/story of your project in a single sentence? A title for the project?

*How will your project inspire/attract others to participate with the project and/or to make a difference in the world?

* How are you transferring your project to the blogosphere to share the work with a larger public and for a longer length of time?

*Consider mapping out where your ideas started and how they have progressed as a way to help refine and define your project more specifically and accurately.

Remember the following for Tuesday, February 9:

Journal 11: This journal entry is your response to what you learned about your project following the presentation during class on Thursday.  What did you learn about your project through the peer responses you received? What are your project’s strengths? What are its weaknesses?  What are opportunities you can build upon? What may be threatening to or risking the best outcomes for the project at this time?

Journal 12: Reading Response to the chapter we are reading on Scientific Looking from the chapter in Sturken & Cartwright’s book, Practices of Looking. What are key points of the article?  What is confusing you or what do you want to know more about or discuss with others? What questions does this chapter raise for you?

And then, this coming Thursday, February 11, Report 3 is due. This is the annotated bibliography assigned.  See the Report 3 outline on the blog site for further details.

Greetings, Everyone.

Thanks for your strong engagement with the class session today.  I think the Brought to Light exhibit is an excellent example of how to read cultural and historical narratives/stories through the visuals, images, and artistic creations of science.  I hope you got a sense of ways in which time, duration, perception, fragmentation, unity, wholeness, and individuality are all represented and depicted within the images.

Brought to Light: Photography & the Invisible exhibit catalog cover, SFMOMA

How do such cultural moments and concerns assist in changing the way others see the world?  What other technologies have and are changing cultures of looking, objects and ways of understanding, etc.? What are the personal, compositional, and other aspects of works that help us understand the stories/narratives of a given era or of our own context and aesthetic?

Chameleon Christatus

Regarding your own work, what does your work reveal or how is it relevant personally, culturally, aesthetically and scientifically? Are you/is your project concerned with stewardship or sustainability of natural resources, access to clean water, medical longevity and physical health, mental health and psychological care, access to well paying  and meaningful employment; access nutritious foods, climate change, understanding brain-body connections, etc.?

These are the types of questions we’re hoping that you explore in your project for the term. Remember on Thursday to bring your sketches, mockups, samplings, flow charts, or other examples and ways in which you are considering what you will create and do with the project during this particular term. Be ready to speak about your works with as much specificity as you can while also recognizing that this is the middle of your process and you have questions about it that you would like peer feedback about. This will all assist with further refinement of the focus and clarity of your project.

Remember that student projects from last year (2015) are available for you to review and get ideas for approaches they took.  Those projects are linked here: https://blogs.uoregon.edu/aad199artmeetsscience/resources/student-sites/.

Molecular Gastronomy by Christina

Colin Hartman, Scarf Hat project 2015

Hurricane Word Cloud, Rachel Hanks, 2015

Robert and I particularly recommend the following three projects:  Hurricanes: The Art, the Science, and the In-between; Art in Virtual Reality; What is Love?; and Molecular Gastronomy: Scientific art in Culinary;

A new article, “The Water Next Time: Professor Who Helped Expose Crisis in Flint Says Public Science Is Broken“, from The Chronicle of Higher Education to think about cultural contexts and science.

Word Science Festival

You may also be interested in the World Festival of Science (http://www.worldsciencefestival.com/) and The Story Behind the Science (http://www.storybehindthescience.org/index.html).

Pizza….. Don’t forget: Pizza on Thursday!  We will send details via email.

As always, please let Robert and I know of questions you have.

Best,
Julie

Hi all,

A good session today.  I hope this was helpful in practicing how to find a variety of sources and consider their usefulness your projects.  The ability to find relevant, accurate, well-resourced information, theoretical content, and imagery is key to building a strong project this term (and with any research project you present).

Keep working toward how you will present your project for public display and public audience.  What is the nugget of the social or environmental problem you want to examine in the artist’s work? How is that relevant to other people and the world we live in? How does the science help in understanding the artist’s approach as well as the significance to the world?

See also this UO Libraries resource section for “Getting Started with Research.”

Reminders of deadlines:

***Journal #10 (by Tuesday of Wk5): Post some quick notes about the types of search terms you used today — as well as those you think you should try — to search for articles, books, etc. about the science behind your project, the artist, etc.  Don’t forget, you may even want to contact the artist or a scientist directly!

***Creative Display 1 (due and presented Thursday, Feb. 4) — first draft(s) of the research visualization you are developing for the project. Remember, if you haven’t already spent 4-5 hours on the project, you need to bring that focused energy/time to this stage of the process now. See details at https://blogs.uoregon.edu/aad199artmeetsscience/resources/assignment-resources/creative-display-1/

***Report 3/Annotated Bibliography (due Thursday, Feb. 11) See: https://blogs.uoregon.edu/aad199artmeetsscience/resources/assignment-resources/report-3/

**We’ll have more detailed responses to Report 2 back to you in the next few days.

**Pizza party Thursday!   Details will be forthcoming in an email.

As always, let us know if you have questions.

Thanks,
Julie

Video Resources:

Serious Versions for Your Reference:

Four Search Strategies for Library Research

Developing a Search Strategy

Not so serious version!

And the don’t worry about being too weird with your research video!

Hi!

Okay, we are fast approaching the mid-point of the seminar and the term!  As such let’s review today’s session with the idea of really thinking about the key takeaways from each section below and applying those towards moving quickly forward on your research, project site design, and Creative Displays.

Important: Remember that we will be meeting next Tuesday at the CAMCOR labs (http://camcor.uoregon.edu/visit/), meet us in the courtyard between Huestis and Deschutes (in front of the Lewis Integrative Science building).

*********

First, we worked in peer groups to help each other work on the main titles of our projects.

Takeaways:

1. Think about these as “working” titles that will change as you research your topics in more depth, and also begin to really work through your Report #2 ideas in terms of your Creative Displays.

2. We have a wonderful group of peers to bounce ideas off of and work with.  As noted with the presentation about peer review feedback do NOT feel alone in your process.  We ALL (your peer students and us instructors) have been at very rough stages in all of our projects.  Tap into all of us for help as you move forward!

3.  As we move forward on giving peer feedback to each other, think about the examples Robert showed from the peer review process and ways in which you can be constructive and detailed in your feedback (more on this later in the term!).

4. Think about the concepts of the ‘research question’ and ‘purpose statement’ and how the feedback you received today, and your working title will help inform developing these two VERY important components of your project.

Resources:

Research Questions: http://twp.duke.edu/uploads/media_items/research-questions.original.pdf

Purpose Statements: http://www.crlsresearchguide.org/09_writing_state_of_purp.asp

*********

Next we went over ‘Elements and Principles of Design’, all of which will be: informing your work on creating a dynamic and interesting project site; AND informing the work you do on your Creative Displays; AND giving you more of a “language” to use when writing about the art work your chosen artists produce and writing about your own work (hint: look back at the DARC brochure about where these type of uses of this design language can inform your writing!).

Note:  We will be talking about the Creative Displays guidelines next week, but very much start to think about how you will be designing a visual representation of the research you are doing about your chosen artist AND the areas of science they address within their work. = VERY important!

Takeaways:

1.  Design begins with a “point” or “dot” on the paper, the pencil tip on the paper, and moves up from there.

2.  As such good and dynamic (non “flat”) designs will utilize a strong combination of ‘elements’ and ‘principles’ of design. Dots form lines, lines create shapes, shapes combine with repetition and proximity to create balance, and so on!  (See the example  below!)

2a. Oh, and don’t forget about COLOR!

Megan Sundquist, Retrieved from: Designer of the Week: Megan Sundquist, Print, Amanda Aszman, January 14, 2016

3.  Remember and apply Robert’s very important added “Principles”:

• Contrast,
• Repetition,
• Proximity,
• Balance,
• Rule of Thirds, and
• Visual Vectors (leading lines).

Be sure to consider all of these!

4.  You need to think about, and apply all the design concepts as you continue to work through your project this term!

5.  Work on the design of your project site!  Play around with those Themes!

6.  Think outside the box!  And remember that sometimes an “outside of the box” approach can itself become a new box! How can you keep pushing the box boundaries???  How can you tap into the power of the boxes (sometimes rules can be good too!)?

Resources:

Previous posted design pages for reference:

http://64.13.255.16/articles/elements_of_design/

http://64.13.255.16/articles/principles_and_elements_of_design/

http://64.13.255.16/articles/designing_for_the_web/

Examples! =

http://12musketeers.com/

https://streetart.withgoogle.com/en/

http://contests.gdusa.com/competitions/web-design/2015-american-web-design-awards

http://www.cssdesignawards.com/woty/finalists.html

Cool Poster Designs (note the various uses, and “thinking outside the box” aspects, of the design elements!): http://tinyurl.com/hlntxut

*********

Assignments for Next Week:

1. Post questions, comments, ideas about your project and visual presentation of the research, creativity, art, and science you have explored for your project to date. (Journal #7) Due no later than 10a.m., Tuesday, January 26th.
2. Write/Record and Post Reading Response to Richard Taylor’s article in your blog: http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fnhum.2011.00060/abstract. Due by 10a.m., Tuesday, January 26th. What are two questions you have for Dr. Taylor from this reading? (Journal #8)
3. Continue working on research of sources, ideas, etc. regarding the artist for your project.
4. Begin developing and creating ideas for display of research (Creative Display 1). Draft Due and Presented in Week 5.

*********

As always please let us know if you have questions!

Best,

Robert and Julie