100 Days on a Fulbright: Day 93-100: One-Week Catchup / Final Post

Not surprisingly, I’m lumping together my final week in Hamburg in one large post. The mad dash to get studio work done before leaving has me feeling a fantastic sense of accomplishment. This first leg of my 3-country Fulbright has had its ups and downs, but mostly many, many ups.

Here’s the final stretch in summary:

HFBK Graduation Show
- Opening was Thursday, July 13, 7 pm to 2 am.

Artistic Influences
- Tru Luv Media on video games for people who don’t like video games
- Burly Men at Sea by Brain&Brain
- Tearaway, Media Molecule, 2013, UK
- Johnny Lui’s graduation show in London
- Elemental Incremental Housing in Chile

Technical Hurdles:
- More work in Blender (z-fighting), Unity, After Effects

Upcoming

October 2017:
Two-person exhibitions with Owen Mundy at:
- Lake Forest College, Chicago, Illinois
- University of Tulsa, Tulsa, Oklahoma
- Art Center Nabi, Seoul Korea

December 2017: 2nd part of Fulbright in Santiago and Valparaiso, Chile

February 2018: Co-chair panel about women in new media art with Kathy Rae Huffman at College Art Association conference in Los Angeles

More details on my news page soon.

100 Days on a Fulbright: Day 92: Blender Struggles

Another day of Blender struggles, but hopefully soon will have a breakthrough.

Hong Kong's main container terminal, Kwai Tsing Container Terminals (Kwai Chung Container Terminals until Container Terminal 9 was opened on Tsing Yi)

I'm using a Blender addon called blender-osm (documentation on Git Hub). I wanted to download the port, downtown buildings and mountains (makes it clearly Hong Kong), but the model became too complicated.

The addon allows you download terrain...

Then OSM buildings. See Open Street Map wiki to figure out how the edges of land masses are tagged. Still figuring that out

But building do not seem to land correctly (note on the left, the plaza floats above the land)

100 Days on a Fulbright: Day 91: Wim Wenders and Laurie Anderson

Today, HFBK's 250 Year Anniversary Celebrations kicked off with Laurie Anderson's film Heart of a Dog. She was there, introduced by Wim Wender's who said: "A film is about what you invest, and if you invest a lot of love, that’s what you get out of it." Owen and I were feeling that recently during our studio production for the Korean hackathon. Sounds cheesy but it's absolutely so true.

Also true: Laurie Anderson's thoughts on death, the focus of this film. Released in 2015, the film was created as she mourned the death of her husband Lou Reed in October 2013. There is no mention of him until the end, but during the film she walks us through her mother and their dog's death. A Buddhist, she explains that the Buddhist do not cry when someone is dying, it confused the dead. As my aunt on the other side of the Atlantic is dying, I find this comforting, especially since I cry so easily. More here and here: From a Buddhist viewpoint, that kind of situation is one that’s just going to set off your attachment and make it incredibly difficult to leave. If somebody’s dying and their relatives are in there crying and crying, “How am I going to live without you? I love you so much!” Doing these things invokes a person’s clinging and attachment, making it very difficult for them to die peacefully. The mind is agitated, making it more likely for negative karma to arise.

That makes so much sense. So impressed by Anderson and Wenders. Both seem to be filled with kindness and compassion. 

100 Days on a Fulbright: Day 90: Observatory of Economic Complexity

Looking at economic complexity of my 3 Fulbright countries. From MIT Media Lab's Macro Connections group and their Observatory of Economic Complexity.

100 Days on a Fulbright: Day 77-89: Conference Studio Production Blur

Should I be lumping together Fulbright days on this blog? It is what it is. It has been a long time since I’ve been in such a happy, frenzied state of studio production so that needs to take priority over blogging. Because I get to make fun animations like the one posted above! But a few quick highlights from my last two weeks.

Unity Unite Europe conference in Amsterdam (June 27-29)

Filled with non-stop workshops, Unity Unite Europe inspired a week of game-making, from which we’re now just emerging…and about to dive back in.

Women in Gaming Meeting at the Conference

My best guess is that there were about 100 women at a conference of about 1000 people, and many of those women seemed be running registration or testing the games (maybe paid to do so?)…I can’t say any of that with certainty. What I can say with confidence is that I was grateful for the Women in Gaming meeting. Producer Veronica Peshterianu from System Era Softworks emphasized the importance of mentors for young women in the field. So true.

MIT Lab Observatory of Economic Complexity

This lab’s research completely aligns with our blockchain game.
I need to be in touch.

Korean Hackathon during the G20 Protests

While Trump visited Hamburg and the G20 Protests raged on, Owen and I participated in Hackathon held at the Art Center Nabi in Seoul. We won the top prize and will be in the exhibition this coming October. The plug animation is from that event. More details soon…