Web 2.0, Social Media, and Academic Advising

This summer I am working as a Student Technology Assistant for the Computer & Informational Services (CIS) department at Brown. I expected to be doing a lot of website design, handout design, or even teaching professors how to use programs for their classes in the Fall. The job has surprised me everyday, basically it encourages me by how much I’ve learned over the past three years and how much I’ve improved over the past month working as an STA, but then also has taught me how little I knew about the process of design and all of the steps involved.

I’m working on two projects so far for the summer, one an animation project for Professor Christine Janis of the Biology Department at Brown. Professor Janis started a project with an STA last summer, but unfortunately due to the complexity of the task it has still not been finished. Over 200 hours have been spent on this project. The goal is to create animations of the evolution of cardiovascular systems from invertebrates to vertebrates–quite a lengthy task! So far a lampfish, shark, lungfish, frog, and intermediary amphibian have been designed, with intricate designs of blood color, flow, veins, arteries, air passageways, etc and transitions between every animal. I can share some pictures of the project:

Lampfish, Stage 1

Shark, Stage 2

Lungfish, Stage 3

Lungfish (air), Stage 4

Frog (kinda?), Stage 5

I know very little about biology, so I have been learning a lot! The eventual goal, once all of the key evolutionary stages are completed, is to create buttons with additional information on each animal’s status, play/rewind/pause timelines, and potentially closeups of certain key changes from step to step. I’ve been told this project is a never-ending one, but my goal is to at least have working evolutionary stages by the Fall for Professor Janis’ next course.

The second project that I’ve been assigned to is designing a new Curricular Advising Tool for the incoming freshman class. All of Brown’s advising, from course recommendations to faculty/advisee meetings, are recorded on paper and unretrievable to the students. The goal of the new Curricular Advising Tool is to create a networking space for Faculty and their incoming class of freshman Advisees so that students can have one place to go to for all of their requirement/ course registration/ advisory needs, and so that faculty will be able to keep in touch with their students better and have a checklist of requirements online and close at hand. The project has been called “Advisory Sidekick”–very descriptive of the interface’s purpose.

My design has been uploaded to the Brown Webpublishing site so that the Deans of the College and the advisor to the project, Sarah Bordac, can study the mock-ups.

Colleen Brogan’s Advisory Sidekick Mockups

I’ve learned a lot in terms of organizing text, designing widgets, and anticipating how faculty and students can easily move throughout a space. Does a checklist need a scroll button? Should widgets be collapsible? Should you create a widget or a link for the Dean of the College Mailbox tool? A delete button? All of these things that otherwise I never think about when visiting websites, now I realize that if one of them were missing it would be a major flaw. I’m sitting here writing this post and even considering how the Wordpress design is set up: updates on the top dashboard, tags large and visible underneath, related tools and shortcuts on the side. What if the “save” button was called “archive” instead? Would that make sense, or be ambiguous? What other tools would have been nice?

What is also interesting is that yesterday, I had a meeting with Dean McSharry, Sarah Bordac, and the programmer for Advisory Sidekick, Chris Klein, to present the mock-ups that my co-worker Karynn and I created. While making this presentation, I was under the impression that Karynn and I were in charge of creating concept pieces as well as implementing the final product…it turns out that we were only doing the front-end, conceptual piece designs, and Chris would be programming the site based on our concept pieces. Of course there were discrepancies, a lot of the facebook and twitter-like interfaces that Karynn and I had built into our concept pieces were too complex for Chris to design for the first launch in August. It made me wonder, however, if this separation of work is typical of web design. It’s nice from my side of the equation, but it seems a bit unfair to Chris who would be the final creator of the beast. We will see how it goes.

Remember The Old Times: Cape Verdeans in Providence

How does an immigrant community shape the identity of a city, a university, and a culture? What right, and what precautions, do museums and curators have to take in order to “speak for” a cultural heritage that has been displaced?

While taking a class with Professor Steven Lubar in the American Civilization Department, entitled “Methods in Public Humanities”, a group of students and I considered these questions and other ethical issues of public humanities while designing a final exhibit on the Cape Verdean immigrant community of Providence, Rhode Island from the “golden years”, 1920-1945, before many of the Cape Verdeans were forced out of Providence and into surrounding towns in Rhode Island by Brown University officials.

The class learned to balance historical research and general exhibition ethics through this project, and on a very short timeframe. An exhibit that generally takes 6 months to a year to produce was completed in less than 8 weeks. Luckily we were helped by Erin Wells of Wells Design with the practicality of exhibit design, Claire Andrade-Watkins, a visiting scholar of the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America and a Swearer Center Community Fellow, and Lou Costa, a Providence resident with a large repository of photographs of Cape Verdeans from the early 1900’s-present day. Claire was especially helpful; she grew up in Providence and produced a documentary film called “Some Kind of Funny Porto Rican” on her experiences as a 2nd generation Cape Verdean and the experiences of other Cape Verdean immigrants in Providence. With this network of educated and connected professionals and 30 energetic undergraduates and graduate students at Brown, the project was underway.

My involvement, practically speaking, was working on the exhibit design of the Bar Scene. Along with two other students, we were in charge of completely outfitting a display with labels, text, useful information/background information, and time-period bar architecture, bottles, coasters, picture frames, and signs that would have been in a bar on Wickenden Street of Providence, Rhode Island in the 1920’s-1945’s. With the help of Erin Wells, we set out with the intention of making our bar as realistic as possible–maybe a half-smoked cigar and some ashes in an ash tray? Antique bottles filled with colored liquid? We also asked ourselves, starting out, some of the general ethical questions: Would we touch on alcoholism in a label or panel? Would we idealize the poverty and despair sometimes associated with bars, which were often associated with fathers and brothers being out of work, or drowning their wages in a cup of whiskey?

The first, practical lesson we had was that “historical recreations” emphasize re-creation to such a degree that it can be considered fabrication. Nothing is malicious, just out of practicality our group had, at best, 2 photographs of bars from our time period in Providence to work off of, and “authenticity” was second to recreating the feel and carrying the message of the exhibit to the visitor. We couldn’t find original bottles and the contemporary alcohol labels did not fit with our aesthetic, so many hours were spent peeling labels off of wine, gin, and whiskey bottles found in recycling bins around Providence. The bar was built by the John Nicholas Brown Center carpenter and 2 days were spent staining it to look authentic. Each section of the exhibit had a rough budget of $100, which we spent on two stools and boxing gloves, the one authentic (in terms of time-period) object in our exhibit, but not from Providence. We bought some heinously cheap cigars from the local tobacco store and set up our dream half-smoked cigar with soot on an ashtray. We also discovered that coasters were first invented in Germany in the 1880’s and didn’t reach popularity in America until the late 1950’s, which was outside our time period. In all, the practicality of the exhibit design was my favorite part, and became our group’s obsession for the final two weeks before the exhibit opened. We stressed every detail, from the correct recipe of food coloring to recreate Jack Daniels to the color of the framed photos.

Ethically, we decided to avoid the topic of alcoholism completely and instead focus on general bar culture of immigrants in Fox Point (the neighborhood of Providence where most of the Cape Verdeans lived) and the popularity of boxing among the immigrants. We didn’t feel bad about this, because in general there were plenty of topics being “avoided” by this exhibit: such as the fact that there was an enormous, comparable Irish immigrant community living in Fox Point as well, and that women were not allowed in the bars, etc. This seems to be one of the big ethnical cruxes of most recreational, historical exhibits: when one thing is focused on, there are at least three other potential focuses that are eliminated, excused, or avoided. Of course we know that life is not that simple: personally, I took issue with the “Home and Household” design on the other end of the exhibit hall, which seemed extremely idealized and stereotyped to me, with a cross hanging on the wall, a rocking chair in the corner, and welcome mat on the floor.

It really begs the question what is the purpose of the exhibit, is it to protect and display artifacts (such as old photographs that would otherwise sit in a box in someone’s basement), is it supposed to recreate the reality or complexity of a time period, or is it solely educational, with everything a facade, re-fabricated, just to veil the fact that the exhibit is trying to push information and history onto its visitors.

In short, every exhibition is a combination of all three, with the asterisk being that all of these speculations are in reference to history exhibits, not art or performance exhibits. Personally I am far more interested in art museum exhibits, but I am also intrigued by how the two relate. I’m sure they overlap.

“Remember the Old Times: Cape Verdean Community in Fox Point, 1920-1945″ will be open at the John Nicholas Brown Center Carriage House exhibit space until October 16, 2009. Exhibit hours are Monday-Friday, 1-4pm, and free and open to the public.

John Nicholas Brown Center

357 Benefit Street

Providence, RI 02912

A brief, cinematic production success

Cinema Speramus

Zack and I created a 1m30sec film for Brown Financial Aid. It was a terribly trying experience, but satisfactory (hopefully?) in the end.

The Rose that’s Starting to Wilt

Brandeis University President Jehuda Reinharz announced on January 26 that due to a projected multimillion dollar deficit this year, the Board of Trustees and President had unanimously voted to close the Rose Art Museum on Brandeis’ campus and deaccession the 7,000 piece collection to pay for administrative tasks. The student body, faculty, and art community were outraged by the decision, especially since the employees of the Rose Art Museum were not included in the discussion of the matter, nor was any member of the faculty or student body. The legality of the decision was in question as well, since according to the American Association of Museums (AAM), no museum may sell works of art unless the money is then used to buy more art to replace it. It is specifically cited that no works can be sold to cover administrative costs. Also in terms of legality, much of the art in the Rose were donated as gifts to the museum under restricted status: meaning that they were donated for the sole purpose of educating and enriching the experience of Brandeis students, and in no way could they be sold or taken off display. For Brandeis to sell these restricted works, the status would have to be overruled in a court of law.

The Rose Art Museum is one of the largest collections of modern and contemporary art in New England, houses works by de Kooning, Pollock, and Warhol. Director of the museum Michael Rush issued a statement posted on the Brandeis website, saying that the loss of the Rose Art Museum would be disastrous to the respect and educational potential of Brandeis, and would be a detrimental blow to the greater Boston art culture and heritage.

For “Methods in Public Humanities”, an American Civilization course I am taking this Spring with Professor Stephen Lubar of the graduate department in Public Humanties, we were asked to write a memo to the Brandeis University president giving counsel on the situation as our first assignment. In my letter, I explained in the beginning that while the economic logic may seem practical and reasonable in the short term, the loss of the Rose Art Museum would be disastrous to Brandeis’ liberal arts departments and in no way would they be seen as a credible, competitive program OR be entrusted with art ever again in the future. While the economic payoff would save the University for now, the decision would break away at the very heart of the institution and would totally discredit it, potentially ending in Brandeis closing for good.

My solution proposed in the memo was that Brandeis, if they were serious that there was no other option to remedy the economic crisis but to sell the artwork, focus on how to best serve the public with these sales. I proposed that the artwork without restricted status be sold as planned, but any with restricted status be donated to the Institute for Contemporary Art in Boston, where they would still be accessible to the Brandeis community, and available to an even larger audience in Boston. This would at least make Brandeis look more philanthropic and interested in preserving cultural heritage and staying true to agreements with donors. It would also save them the time and cost of lawsuits.

Fortunately, Reinharz announced today that he apologizes for the mismanagement of the economic crisis and the hasty decision to liquidate the Rose. He e-mailed apologies to the faculty and students and released statements to the public. As reported by the Boston Globe: “In an attempt to quell the public outcry, Reinharz also walked a fine semantic line and said in his letter that “the museum will remain open” and “be more fully integrated into the university’s central educational mission.” The art community can breathe a sigh of relief.

But not so fast. As the Boston Globe pointed out, this decision was not without it’s grain of salt.

“In reality, the Rose museum as it exists today will eventually cease to operate and instead will be turned into an educational center for Brandeis students and faculty, Reinharz told the Globe on Wednesday. It will include more student and faculty exhibits, and the public will still be allowed to visit.”

While I’m proud of the art appreciators for making Reinharz realize his big mistake, it worries me that agreements, contracts, and policies can be easily brushed aside in the face of economic woes. Museums never want to admit that their precious works have monetary value, and directors and curators are never proud when they must sell of artwork for the survival of their collection, whatever that may mean. I’ve begun to think of the museum as the material version of the animal rescue non-profit. If the animals/ objects were left to fend in the cruel world of pure economics and practicalities, they would be ruined, lost, destroyed, or neglected until they were in too poor of a condition to ever be of use. These precious objects that are prized and cherished in museum settings could so easily be defaced and ruined. Their value comes from their preservation and conservation. So when a place like Brandeis decides that not only is it no longer their mission to protect and preserve these cultural objects, but they see no purpose in them whatsoever except for monetary assets, the cultural value of the objects ceases to exist. Yes, due to their conservation, the works that make up the Rose Art collection would catch a nice price at auction, but what if every museum was to see their artwork as a chance to make some profit? Soon they would be seen as a form of currency and nothing more. No one preserves a dollar bill. It is in constant exchange, there would be no value to holding on to it or preserving it. Art would eventually be lost and destroyed. It worries me that there is no enforcement for the protective laws and agreements of the AAM. This should be a lesson to the AAM that they need to hold their museums and members accountable.

Artistic Inspiration

I was just poking around on Facebook, as is totally customary during winter breaks, and noticed a particularly dazzling facebook photo. Apparently, according to the little copyright autograph on the side, it was made at Befunky.com. I went to the website, and it has some brilliant free ways to make pictures look like comic book sketches and black and white pencil drawings. There’s even an option to super-impose your head onto a different landscape, which my friend Lindsy has become particularly enjoyable this Christmas season. Though she didn’t do it with Befunky (that I’m aware of) the santa bodies with pictures of me, her, and our closest friends’ heads bumpin’ around to Jingle Bell Rock was too good to be true. Give it a go, and see if you can make anything cool. It looks like a great way to get Photoshop-like effects without the cost. I’m going to test it out later tonight on some of my own pictures and post ‘em, if they turn out okay.

I’d Like to Thank the Academy: theories on climbing the intellectual ladder

What does it mean to be a cultural intellect? How does knowledge exhibit social status, privilege, and in any case, importance? I’d like to point back to a rather unlikely source…Flemish curiosity paintings from the 1600-1700s. Rather unexpected…but nevertheless it can possibly be connected to the emergence of the music “mash-up”, the likes of GirlTalk and the Hood Internet.

Painting in the Netherlands from 1600-1700 saw growth in two very different directions: large scale religious iconography, and small curiosity paintings. The resurgence of religious iconography had a lot to do with the Catholic Counter-Reformation in response to Lutheran criticism of iconoclasm in the late 1500’s. Catholicism was re-instated as a religious power due to Catholic Spain’s takeover of Southern Netherlands.  Small scale paintings and woodcuts in general were seen as a forte of Netherlandish artists…Italians controlled the market for large-scale ceilings and altarpieces. Southern Netherlands saw an increase in trade and international exposure due to their relation with the Hapsburg Dynasty, which accounts for two developments: the increased appeal and value of traditional Netherlandish “small-scale” art, and the development of a new social class, the merchants.

The merchants, now with their sufficiently increased wealth due to international trade, were interested in using their wealth to elevate their social status. Merchants began to commission artists as early as 1614 to depict intimate paintings of their material wealth, which would then be discussed and displayed with guests. Why not just set up a room with all of your rare possessions? Because they wanted to show they were well-connected and wealthy enough to pay for a famous contemporary artist from their time, such as Peter Paul Rubens or Willem van Haecht.

Now, for how this connects to intellect: the ‘curiosity’ painting, though occasionally meant to illustrate an encyclopedic, indexical record of the merchant’s belongings, also included other paintings by famous artists from the time, even if the merchant did not own it himself. So, the painting of paintings became a game: just how many of the miniatures will you be able to name?

Willem van Haecht. Collection of Cornelius van der Geest. 1628.

Every painting and sculpture in “Collection of Cornelius van der Geest” is a recognizable masterpiece, and it was considered a symbol of status, intellect, and privilege to be able to name them all. Also, what should be mentioned about this painting is the fact that every person’s face is a miniature, recognizable portrait of a courtier/merchant/royalty who had visited van der Geest at some time in his life. (So not only is the painting a commodity, but the friendship of nobility was as well). For example, the man in the large crowd, to the right of the painting (and gesturing with his left hand) is Cornelius van der Geest himself.  While I recognize, personally, several of the statues from the Villa Borghese in Rome (which points to the fact that van der Geest did not own all of the artwork depicted) the only other painting that sticks out at the moment is the Battle of the Amazons by Rubens in the far left corner. Here is a larger example:

P.P. Rubens. Battle of the Amazons. 1618.

Naming paintings/people/sculptures within another painting was a courtly game. The Spanish king and queen had paintings done of their vast collection. Being able to participate in the game elevated you to an intellectual status of nobility, and also inducted you into a guild specifically for intellectual and appreciative art supporters, the Guild of St. Luke’s.

After a very long winded history lesson…now how does this relate to pop culture knowledge today? For starters, an ability to catch “references” in films, television, advertisements, and music has become a mark of cultural mastery. Being able to identify duplications and origination is valued even more, such as recognizing that a song is a cover of an original song from the 80’s, or an advertisement that uses the signature Warhol 4-paneled silkscreen effect. And let’s not forget the music mash-up…artists like GirlTalk have been especially masterful at whittling a recognizable song down to just two or three bars of accompaniment, overlaying it with several other bursts of songs, and then moving on to the next. While always fascinated with the technical skill and composition of these pieces, we always find ourselves trying to name the songs that we recognize, and search for the songs that we don’t. And because it is near impossible to look up the songs that GirlTalk uses based on one or two beats, the only way to become a well-rounded, pop culture intellect is to expose yourself to as much music as you possibly can outside of the song, and then return to it. We have it easier, with the help of the internet…in 17th century Netherlands the equivalent of a wikipedia search for “Borghese” meant an actual trip to Rome. Not saying that’s a bad thing…

Goals and How to Reach Them: The Pyramid Theory

Instead of looking at what types of classes I like and (fingers crossed) molding them in to a job post-graduation, I am going to categorize by the end result (top goal/job/personality trait) and what types of requirements or preparations I need to reach that goal. Of course there are problems with this (since I am close to halfway up several of these pyramids, and can only hazily see what I need to complete the rest) but at least it should help me outline beneficial classes for the rest of my Brown career, and help me focus my studies, jobs, and extra curricular responsibilities. How scientific of me!

I’m breaking my potential, budding personality, in to 4 categories: 1. The Preservationist 2. The Creator 3. The Academic Rockstar 4. The Lawyer. Some are more abstract than others, but here are the general details, and classes that are beneficial for all:

1. The Preservationist: future job in art conservation or restoration either in a museum or privately owned company, needs a 3-4 year master degree in specific medium of art conservation (sculpture, painting, photography, etc) and undergraduate science/chemistry experience. Potential Programs: 3.5 year program at NYU in conjunction with the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 3 year program at University of Delaware (cheaper, probably).

+ Classes +

Introductory Chemistry/ Organic Chemistry/ Inorganic Chemistry

French 40/50/60

Printmaking at RISD

Florentine and Tuscany Art/ Flemish Art

+ Job +

Something at List Art Slide Library or in conservation of books/donations at the Rock

The Creator: future job in web design, advertising, or electronic writing (blogs, fashion, news), double major in art history and literary arts or art history BA with capstone Literary Arts, highly skilled in programming, computers, animation, film, arts, graffiti. No significant need for graduate-level education, unless it was an MFA program.

+ Classes +

French 40/50/60

Intro to Animation

Cinematic Imaginations of Time: MCM Film Theory Class (in preparation for video production in the spring)

Art and Utopia in the 1960’s (upper level art history seminar)

5th class: Linguistic Theory/ Literary Theory class

**for the future: electronic writing/literary theory classes

+ Job +

Volunteering at the Children’s Museum, working for blogs

The Academic Rockstar: BA in art history, MA in public humanities in 5 year program, future work in administration/curatorial work at museum or public arts initiative, teaching and writing books on art presentation and exhibitions.

+ Classes +

French 40/50/60

Art and Utopia in the 1960’s

Intro to Public Humanities

not sure of 4th class. Probably another american civilization/anthropology course, maybe an MCM course. Something on material cultures. See: ANTH 1621: Material Culture

+ Job +

curatorial work at the Children’s Museum, volunteer work there or at List exhibitions

The Lawyer: finish out a BA in art history at Brown, go to the 2-3 year Sotheby’s Education Program in London in Art Business, work at an auction house or in art law and valuation in NYC or London (potential for international work).

+ Classes +

Introductory Principles of Economics

French 40/50/60

Florentine and Tuscany Art in the 15th Century/ Flemish Art

some anthropology/MCM/american civilization class in material culture, like ANTH 1621: Material Culture

**for future reference: independent research project in art law and valuation

+ Job +

working in conservation at the Library, or at exhibits at the Children’s Museum or List Art Gallery.

Well it’s nice to get that typed out…now I just need to figure out what to do with the rest of my life.

How Should I get my Hair cut?

Number 1:

Number 2:

Number 3: (not really…I was forced, for comparison sake)

Number 4:

I’m beginning to see a pattern: short, chunky, fun, bob-ish. And I know Maggie G isn’t the most attractive of beings, but her face (shape) is probably the most similar to mine of all the actresses on this page, and I thought that was a good barometer of complimentary hairstyles. Plus, her hair color is similar. Thoughts?

Bloody hell of a job, Radcliffe. But wait…

Pollution, Powerplants, and Ponies

an article by the NY Times on the extensive extra work that Equestrian Olympians have had to put in to making sure their horses don’t die from exposure to unsuspecting toxins before they compete in Beijing. Sounds like more of an advantage for the uncontaminated (note: immune) horses than Natalie Coughlin’s spacesuit technology swimsuit, but then again, Secretariat has never gotten as much press at Speedos. Promise more will be written on this in the days to come:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/sports/olympics/03horses.html?_r=1&ex=1218427200&en=30b9a32e07fd0fbc&ei=5070&emc=eta1&oref=slogin