100 Days on a Fulbright: Day 76: Women in Gaming at Unity Unite Europe 2017

Screenshot from Astroneer, space-based sandbox adventure game released in 2016 by System Era Softworks

https://astroneer.space/ Veronica Peshterianu from System Era Softworks will speak at the Women in Gaming Speaker Series

I'm excited to attend the Women in Gaming Speaker Series event, on Wednesday June 28, at Mossel & Gin restaurant, located next to Unity Unite Europe's main conference venue.

The session will include learnings from Producer Veronica Peshterianu, who has spent time at a variety of gaming companies (Pop Cap, Msft etc), and insights from Unity Technologies CEO John Riccitiello and Head of HR, Elizabeth Brown.

100 Days on a Fulbright: Day 75: Back in Hamburg, Off to Unity Unite Europe 2017

Unity Unite Europe 2017, https://unite.unity.com/2017/europe

Excited for Unity Unite Europe 2017 in Amsterdam this week. The schedule is packed. Handy tip: use the Unite 2017 app to access the schedule and bookmark your favorites. Many thanks to Davidson College for funding to attend!

#unity, #unityunite, #amsterdam, #gameresearch, #conference

100 Days on a Fulbright: Days 61-74: 2-Week Blog Break

Image source: From the boat tour of Hamburg’s harbor that I attended one week ago.
Details about “Port of Hope” Harbor Tour – Colonialism, Migration and Racism

I’m taking a two-week break from the blog to deliver my daughter back to my parents in the States. This six-year old bravely navigated my husband’s Fulbright to Austria last spring but has done less well here in Germany. This morning I’m reading the collection of Fulbrighters with families posted here: https://storify.com/FulbrightPrgrm/fulbright-families  I see I am not alone with my daughter’s range of reactions to this experience. It’s both amazing and hard to be overseas. If we had a year-long Fulbright in one place, we would make this work and she would adapt, but in the unusual case of my 3-country global award, it’s time to take her back and give her a much deserved break.

While back home, I’ll continue my Fulbright-related research and related studio production, but it’s time to take a brief break on the blog. Bis bald.

100 Days on a Fulbright: Day 60: Blender’s Grease Pencil

Image source: Blender Sushi blogspot under section titled Voronoi Fracture Using Grease Pencil

Eager to learn Blender grease pencil. Imagine that it will feel more intuitive. Loosen up the models.

Some related links:

• Beginner: Using The Grease Pencil from Blender Sensei, https://youtu.be/3lIX10qcPWk
• Add On: [Addon] Align Selection to Grease Pencil, https://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?332160-Addon-Align-Selection-to-Grease-Pencil
• Advanced: http://blendersushi.blogspot.de/2012/07/vfx-voronoi-cage.html

100 Days on a Fulbright: Day 59: Buildings in Blender

Image source: Blender Architecture 2 Visualisation DXF Modeling @ Roland Mayer

Still learning how to make buildings in architectures. Amazed again by the power of arrays. Shouei Shouei (slowly slowly)

100 Days on a Fulbright: Day 58: Building a City

Hamburg 1700. Created by Johann Baptist Homann, German cartographer, publisher and copper cutter. Image source.

I’m still focused on blender, but finally working the whole city for our game. I’m not so zoomed out as the image above, but I love this image. From the 1700s.

Different view below. Plague hit in Hamburg in 1712 so below is from after. I have similar images of Rotterdam maps that I found during a research trip to the Getty in LA. For a later post.

Hamburg 1730. Published by Covens & Mortier. Image source.

100 Days on a Fulbright: Day 57: Back to Blender

Back to Blender

100 Days on a Fulbright: Day 56: Exhibition Catalog Research

Oblique Drawing: A History of Anti-Perspective (Writing Architecture) 
by Massimo Scolari et al. The MIT Press. 2015. http://a.co/eGawgmF

As Owen and I oscillate between 2D, 2.5D and 3D spaces in our game experiments, how refreshing to stumble upon Oblique Drawing: A History of Anti-Perspective by Massimo Scolari, who was a visiting professor at Yale University until 2012...not sure what he's up to now. Today was spent looking up such books for own library and an exhibition catalog review assignment that I will give my students in the fall. List coming soon.

100 Days on a Fulbright: Day 55: Blender Day

Screenshot of my model from How to Create a City in Blender from Blender Guru

100 Days on a Fulbright: Day 54: Lithium in Chile

An aerial view of the brine pools and processing areas of the Soquimich lithium mine on the Atacama salt flat.
Photo by Ivan Alvarado/Reuters.

Research-based art practices are best when they take an unexpected turn. My 3-country Fulbright originally proposed to trace the history of the potassium nitrate trade from the late 19th / early 20th century between Germany and Chile. The profits from this business arrangement helped to build the fortune of shipping magnate Henry B. Sloman and the local landmark the Chilehaus. 100 years later, the extraction of lithium from those same salt beds in the Atacama desert, from which potassium nitrate was mined, is a focus for global trade. More on this soon, but a few links to get me started.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-09/where-your-smartphone-juice-comes-from

http://business.financialpost.com/news/mining/lithium-is-the-latest-hot-metal-commodity-but-investor-fever-could-be-cooling

http://www.amusingplanet.com/2015/10/the-lithium-mine-fields-of-atacama.html

100 Days on a Fulbright: Day 53: Exhibition Catalog Collection

Pictured above: a favorite catalog Experimental Geography by Nato Thompson from 2009. http://a.co/026qmxb 

I spent too much time yesterday and today trying to update my collection of new media art exhibition catalogs in preparation for my fall 2017 class Art and Electronic Media. In that class, the students choose a catalog, write a review of it, and then design their own exhibition. I’ll post the assignment once and list the recommended catalogs once it’s finished. But in the meantime, it seems like fewer venues are producing print exhibition catalogs.

Reader, I offer you this post from 2007 art journalist Marc Spiegler to start thinking about this debate: http://www.artworldsalon.com/blog/2007/03/exhibition-catalogs-time-for-a-serious-rethink/

Onwards…

100 Days on a Fulbright: Day 52: Grand Urban Rules

All images from the author's website about the book: http://www.plansandpolitics.com/publications/grand-urban-rules/ 

Another studio production day in Blender, but bookmarking this text as a possible influence.

Lehnerer, Alex. Grand Urban Rules. Rotterdam, Netherlands: nai010 publishers, 2014.

Link: http://a.co/d0nU925
Author’s website on the book: http://www.plansandpolitics.com/publications/grand-urban-rules/

Related links:

The author’s website: http://www.alexlehnerer.com/
His page as Assistant Professor of Architecture and Urban Design at ETH ZÜRICH  (currently ranked as 5th best university in the world for the subject of engineering and technology in the QS World University Rankings by Subject): http://www.plansandpolitics.com/

Alex Lehnerer | October 20, 2014 | UIC School of Architecture
UIC School of Architecture
https://youtu.be/2I3U9p5ctCI

German Pavilion at Venice Architecture Biennale 2014
Interview with Alex Lehnerer and Savvas Ciriacidis
Questions discussed:
- How is architecture used as a means of communication? How do we productively complicate easy meanings of architecture (i.e. glass equals transparency?)
- How do architects get into a productive relationship with the past?
https://vimeo.com/98869906

Alex Lehnerer - Architecture’s Present Perfect
Lecture date: 2015-03-12
AA School of Architecture
- Insisting on importance of urban planning
https://youtu.be/q7h8ggvwqMc

17 Volcanoes: Presentation by curators Alex Lehnerer and Philip Ursprung
CCAchannel, Talk at CCA's Octagonal gallery, October 6, 2016
Support from National Research Foundation in Singapore
https://youtu.be/jQ0Q7LQ4xTs

City planning with rules as index, spread example 1

City planning with rules as index, spread example 2

100 Days on a Fulbright: Day 51: Blender

Small post. Head and heart in Blender...the software program, not a machine that grinds up objects. :)